Enough Already! Another Dowry Story

Today, I read a report in either the Hindustan Times or the Times of India -- I don't remember which -- of a bridegroom who was beaten up by villagers when he demanded even more dowry in what must have been not more than a few hours after the marriage ceremony.
He was given the keys to an Alto but wanted a Scorpio and one and a half million rupees in cash. The villagers beat him and his father up, kept some of his guests as hostages and took the matter to the village panchayat.
The panchayat amazingly enough got the man to divorce his new bride saying that he didn't deserve her and got him to pay her family eight hundred thousand rupees, the amount they had spent since the time of the engagement.
The story was such a refreshing change from the ones one usually hears. I just hope that it's true.

Informed Consent

In most countries, when you go to a doctor to have some procedure performed, the doctor is required to obtain your consent to the procedure being performed. He isn't simply supposed to give you the name of the procedure. Instead, he's required to explain the procedure to you, and tell you about precautions you need to take, what the risk factors are, what the possible consequences are, whether the procedure is likely to succeed, what the alternatives are, how much it's likely to cost, and whether it is necessary.

Somehow though, that's not something which the average Indian doctor does. True, they'll all ask that you sign a waiver to the effect that you are aware that death and a whole range of other disasters can result from being put under General Anesthesia, but that doesn't make you aware of surgery-specific risks. For example, scapulo-thoracic fusion involves a 90% chance of your winding up with a punctured lung, and if your orthopaedic surgeon isn't equipped to deal with it -- which it's unlikely he will be -- there's a pretty high chance that you won't leave surgery alive.

Or take something much simpler like being prescribed drugs. Prozac is capable of causing short-term memory loss, something which can be terrifying if you don't know what's going on. But you're still unlikely to hear a doctor tell a patient that when prescribing it.

Even drugs easily obtained OTC can have severe side effects. Something as simple as Aspirin can cause your stomach to bleed. That too isn't information you get when your doctor tells you not to worry.

The problem is that being badly informed makes one's consenting to anything meaningless. Somehow, this is entirely lost on many doctors who respond to questions about treatment and medicines not with answers but with a list of their qualifications. Apparently, the fact that they've got x number of letters stuck after their names entitles them to be treated like gods.

Online Impersonation ?

Sometime ago, I deactivated my Facebook account primarily because of the 'duplication of social networks' argument. Besides, I keep in touch with most of the people with whom I want to be in touch without Facebook; I'm not overtly fond of social networking sites.

As a result, I was a bit surprised when I received a message from Orkut saying I had approved someone's 'Add friend' invite. Soon after, I began receiving mails from the friend I'd supposedly added.

The friend signed his name as Sexy, Crazy something-or-the-other. And no, I don't know if he actually expected a rank stranger to reply to a name like that. The mails were in a mixture of Assamese and English, and were familiar to a degree my closest friends would not be.

After a while, I got sick of getting the mails and, on seeing a link to the associated profile, clicked on it. I found myself at "Nandita Saikia's" profile. I couldn't bring myself to read it carefully; the
two bits I remember are "fuck me harder" and the word 'condoms' along with a picture of an actress. I think it was Mallika Sherawat.

I went to the 'Report Abuse' section and filed a complaint. I wasn't sure if it was a case of impersonation since there could well be another person with my name so I stuck to complaining about the mail I was getting.

To my surprise, Orkut replied a day later saying that they agreed that the content violated their terms of service and that they'd removed it.

I feel relieved and grateful that it's gone. What I completely fail to understand though is why anyone would ever put phrases like that up on a public profile (assuming it wasn't about impersonating and embarrassing another person). And what leaves mr stunned is that there
are people who do not think twice before sending explicit messages to others whom they do not know from Adam.

Fictional Biographies

I love impressionism. The light and airy feel which so many of their paintings have. It doesn't matter to me that they -- or Renoir, at any rate -- have been written off as chocolate box painters; being inaccessible is not in itself a mark of great talent.

So far, I've read fictional biographies of four of the Impressionists: Renoir, Pissarro, van Gogh and, by Charles Gorham, Gauguin. There's much to be said for fictional biographies. As Guy Endore who wrote 'King of Paris', a novel based on the lives of Alexandre Dumas and his son, said, "One would have no excuse for adding a word to the existing records if human beings were not so obstinately determined to conceal the truth about themselves." And determined to conceal themselves, people are. Dumas, for example, who wrote a six-volume autobiography, devoted to his first Parisian mistress, Catherine Lebay, their affaire and their son a sum total of eight words. The second Alexandre Dumas did not write a six-volume autobiography but he did point out: "Autobiographies are meaningless because no man dares put into writing
the most significant facts of his life."

And then there are those who do not leave autobiographies behind them at all.

Perhaps that is why fictional works based on the lives of historical characters are so compelling. Left to a good author, it could well be that fiction offers far more truth and insight than cold, hard facts lend themselves to. In the hands of a bad author though, one is left with nothing but history mangled.

Gurgaon

For some reason, having discovered that Gurgaon is accessible without spending 1000 INR on each trip, I’ve suddenly found that I spend half my time not in Delhi but in Gurgaon.

The cheapest way to get to reach Gurgaon that I know of is to go to Dhaula Kuan and take another bus from there to Gurgaon – there’s one which leaves every few minutes. It costs between 10 and 14 rupees depending on where in Gurgaon one wants to go. It’s also possible to get buses from RKP, Safdarjung and Karol Bagh.

Every time I’ve been to the city – assuming it qualifies as a city – it always strikes me as a very strange place. For one thing, it is mall country and I can’t imagine what one would do there if one wasn’t into shopping. But even if every person in Gurgaon does love to shop, I don’t really know how the malls there are commercially viable. There are so many of them that it almost feels as though there’s a mall for every person.

Then of course, there are the offices. They, combined with the malls and ‘posh’ housing in the vicinity, are probably the reason why you have people make statements like: “There are no holes in Gurgaon.” And on that side of town, it’s entirely possible that there aren’t.

Go beyond where the offices and malls are though and you’ve left the Gurgaon you see in advertisements. You’ll reach a village that’s trying to be a town. It’s not posh. It’s not especially clean. There are no MNCs there. There are no malls: the shops are all in tiny little rooms which close by 8 p.m. The people are not the kind one meets on the other side of town. They’re conservative and they look it.

Gurgaon feels like a place that’s been split in two. The urban and the rural. And no, they’re not competing with each other for anything; they exist oblivious to each other.

Meanwhile, the ground water level in Gurgaon falls by an amazing 12 feet each year. One can only wonder if it’s just a matter of time before the place caves in on itself. Literally.

The Undomestic Goddess

I read ‘The Undomestic Goddess’ by Sophie Kinsella a few weeks ago. And then I reread it. It’s the first laugh out loud book I’ve read in a while.

This evening I told a friend about it and asked why there wasn’t a middle ground. Why did the story have to involve a woman choosing between a full equity partnership at a prestigious law firm on one hand and cleaning some else’s loos – Royal Doulton (I think that’s what they were) or not – on the other.

My first response to that was that it was probably because it made good reading. Had she become something else, she wouldn’t have been able to try to melt chick peas, or to manage to bleach her hair while cleaning the loo.

Thinking about it though, if one actually wanted a complete break from a high pressure job, what would one actually do? Become a librarian? Spend time renovating renaissance art? Turn into a shopgirl? The trouble though is that none of those jobs is necessarily low-pressure’. And neither is staying home and doing nothing.