Goan dy'Nasty' Politics

It’s that time of the year that every Goan must be looking forward to. After experiencing a tumultuous decade on the political arena in the 90's, the new millennium had dawned with relative stability. Baring a few unsuccessful attempts at toppling the government, the last five years had been uneventful; and I am saying this only in context to ‘the great political musical chair’ that we Goekars are used to. Blame it on the complex arithmetic of seats, incompatibilities of some of our political heavy-weights, the divine blessings of ‘Daam-baab’, or his turning nelson’s eye towards the misdemeanors of some cabinet colleagues, Digambar Kamat has been able to add his name to the Hall of fame of full-term chief Ministers of Goa. Quite an irony that he would find himself in the league of the visionary like Dayanand ‘Bhausaheb’ Bandodkar.

But with election dates declared, the Goans can enjoy what they have missed for past half a decade. The mad rush of the aspirants seeking tickets, their claims and counter-claims, the corner meetings and canvassing will be running thick and fast. Not to miss the ‘Chicken aani Soro’ parties and the life-size figurines of fat-bellied, gold encrusted candidates dressed in ‘political’ whites. The dangling banners off the electric poles and the giant billboards will soon be a commonplace.

But this election promises to be different. Not that the usual antics won’t be there, after all they have become an inseparable part, but the scale would be at unprecedented levels. Goa as I understand has historically always been a straight battle between two candidates (I deliberately didn’t say parties). During the period post liberation it had been dual between candidates claiming allegiance to the regional parties which were steadily replaced by the national heavy-weights. These elections promise to buck the trend and may turn out to be different, if not for any pre-poll alliance. With the other national party and the usual regional parties which mushroom only during the election times raising their heads, we can expect a multi-cornered battle. The deluge of aspirants powered by funds of their mining and construction business, often illegal, means these parties won’t be left wanting for nominees. What is most interesting to see though is that these elections may be less amongst the parties and more so an election amongst the political clans.

Not just son and daughter and brother and sister, veteran politicians are readying to field their friend, PA, son-in-law and wives (plurality intended ;)). With a single seat having the potential to turn you into a king-maker, it does harm noone to have ones kith and kin by their side when the political tug of war for the elusive CM’s chair begins. If not for the CM’s seat, they can surely land up with plump portfolios or/and the chairmanship of profiteering corporations, not to mention the power, perks and the much sought-after official white ambassadors (and often Camrys, Innovas and even Hummers too) with the red beacon.

To start with the gigantic leader and strongman (figurative too) who has been tirelessly canvassing for his daughter dear. As he likes to declare “not all of his children are interested in contesting elections”. Thankfully so, lest considering his not so small family there would have been hardly any seat left for others. Not to be left behind his brother, a sitting MLA himself, has been trying to secure his political lineage by demanding a nomination for his ‘social-worker’ son. His para-dropping his pilot son into the election fray might land him more leverage in the scheme of things post elections. And if all works in their favour, they would occupy an overtly significant 10 percent of the assembly.

Another over-ambitious first time MLA from the hinterland, who has inherited political genes from his long time politician father has been trying to up their tally in the assembly complex atop the Porvorim hillock. He has been rumoured to have been coaxing his wife to contest so as to increment their already sure-shot ‘father-son’ tally by another seat. Besides he has been getting ready his own army of toadies, some imported across parties, fuelling his juggernaut towards ‘Mahalaxmi’ at Altinho. For him, getting his foot-soldiers vindicated by the electorate might be a much less a herculean task than keeping his flock together post elections, when the poachers a.k.a horse-traders would have a field day. But until then his might emerge as the single largest ‘group’, thus propelling his chances of bringing the chief ministership back home once again.

From one former chief-minister onto other, but the game-plan doesn’t differ by much expect that this ‘patrao’ plans to field both his sons. Tainted or not, he thinks both of them have toiled enough under the 'sun' for the masses and its time for their ‘sun’ rise on the political horizon. His faith in the electorate and his confidence has prompted him to field one of the two against his bête-noire and the local strongman. Perhaps he wants to kill two birds with an arrow by adding to his number while getting rid of his nemesis.

That arch-rival is no political greenhorn though. While getting himself re-elected with a thumping margin, he has also secured another adjoining constituency for his brother to add to his political muscle. Both of them have successfully struck emotional chord with the constituent voters playing the regional party card and equating their win to the existence of their beloved party. The old guard and the party loyalists thus far have, unwittingly or no, played into their hands while trying to retain the existence and symbol of the old king of the Goa political jungle.

The other regional party, or rather its modern incarnation, hasn’t been as lucky in this regards. Virtually it has ceased to exist, but miraculously pops itself out of hibernation whenever the election commission rings its bell. Time and again, it has been used, reused, misused and abused by many mean politicians for their own good, trying to extract whatever two-bits of emotional calling it still has for a certain section of the society. It also acts as a watering hole for all those disgruntled candidates who or whose wife has been denied tickets by others. A la 'Ek Duje Ke Liye' scene at Dona-Paul, this 'smarter than fifth grader' hubby had denounced another sought after ticket at the eleventh hour, to take the plunge with his dear wife in the whirlpool of elections on this party ticket. Unfortunately for the duo while the husband was able to swim ashore, his wife wasnt able to stay afloat in the sea of ballots. Barring minor jugglery of seats I reckon this husband-wife duo are ready to sound their election bugle and also hoping this time to cross the finish line together.

Extremities do exist in life. While there are some who knock at the doors of some old party to get their ‘wedded’ wife a ticket, there are others who are floating new party entirely to provide a launch pad to his wife, wedded or not notwithstanding. This maverick has very grandiose plans to field candidates, many of them ‘wedded’ to him, throughout the length and breadth of the Goan paradise. It needs to be seen as to how many of them faithfully follow his footsteps on road to the state assembly.

With the fathers doing their bit for their wards, this matriarch wasn’t to be left too far behind in propping her son. This ‘Mummy’ of all like most of the mothers has depicted highest degree of sacrifice when she offered to bow out of her seat in love of her son. It needs to be seen whether this mother-son bonhomie would help pave way for son to become another ‘Goan protector’.

Though many have been able to field their blood relatives in the fray, the unlucky ones not bestowed with more ‘social-workers’ within the family have to look beyond. ‘Blood is thicker than water’ they say, but in politics it need not be always. While some ‘witty’ doctor who though in his sunset days of political career still seeks revival of his fortune through his son-in-law, there are also others who are willing to bet on their erstwhile personal assistant. And there are other ex-MLAs, ex-policemen, industrialists and mining barons who are all set to descend in the election ring with their kith and kin. It’s anybody’s guess how many of them will be able to walk out of it... 'triumphant'.

With the dynasties warring each other and the Alemaos, Dhavalikars, Ranes, Naiks, Pachecos and Monserrates entering the battle-field with their families en-mass, don’t get surprised if the elections results is reported by the election commission as below:

Alemaos : 4

Dhavalikars : 2

Naiks : 3

Monserrates : 2

Ranes+ : 5

Pachecos : 1

Brace Yourselves!

Cheers Bro!

I had been eagerly anticipating the day wherein I will get my rightful claim to the ‘mortarboard’. Though on the said Saturday and after the early morning rehearsals, I was a bit disappointed to be wearing only the black robe and the hood with the academic square-cap missing. However the disappointment was short-lived and the joy of being part of an academic parade had enthralled each nerve in my body. The moment wherein I will be awarded a degree by an eminent academician in presence of other noted intellectuals with the throng of people (including my own proud parents and my dear wife) clapping in the backdrop was no less captivating. 

Flashback half a decade, and it was my first chance at adorning such an academic robe, that I missed by a long shot. Among the hordes of engineering graduates passing out that year, my grades were too trivial to be awarded the gold medal and thus the distinction of being invited to the felicitated at the convocation ceremony eluded me. Cut to the present, I won’t let the history repeat itself. After three years of toiling and sacrificing the weekends over the same duration, I was determined to complete my education in management in timely manner. But it isn’t only my determination that helped me attain the distinction but much more than that, factors intrinsic as well as extrinsic. One of the major factor being Gaurish Ramesh Lotliker.

I just can’t imagine me persisting with the rigors without my bestest friend being there along with me. In fact I accredit the successful completion of my course to him. Be it waking me up from the Sunday siestas (thus being at the receiving end of my curses) to hitch-hiking me to and fro; from jointly working on the assignments to making presentations; and from proxies ;) to just hanging around doing nothing. Had he been not around, it wouldn’t have been half as interesting as it was. He in turn would be obliged to me because in a way I was responsible for him adding up to his qualification. You guys might get bamboozled to know that Gaurish had no plans to join the said course or wasn’t even remotely serious at getting a post graduate qualification and it was just my pestering to accompany me that got him into (and then eventually out of) it. With a tinge of modesty I would add (and he would acknowledge) that I even helped him to clear the hurdle of the aptitude test. All said and done, I think I owe him more than other way round.

But then getting enrolled for a weekend executive course was one thing and passing out successfully is another. More so if you have been recently committed, a criterion that applied to both of us. He did that jugglery with panache, sometimes directly zooming off to night shifts from college. Thus his actions were instrumental in motivating me to trudge our way to the beautiful riverside campus.

The very essence of management education, i.e presentations, case-studies and assignments, were hurled at us thick and fast. But together we successfully handled, quite often piggybacking onto others. And amidst these we always found time to dash to ‘Casa-de-cha’ for a quick tea or at times at Jaggu’s for a Aloo-paratha.  It wasn’t that uncommon for us to bunk a lecture or two to head to the Ribandar ferry-wharf for the tasty and spicy ‘kalwaa tonaak’. Thus sped two-years in a jiffy.

Come the third year, it was a special year for either of us. We had our respective wedding dates scheduled separated from one another by 10 odd days. As luck would have it, it was also clashing with submission dates of our project which would decide the fate of our degree. So amongst the wedding preparation to the actual wedding and post wedding celebrations, we didn’t lose sight of our objective and came trumps up. Even in here, you deserve much more credit buddy for I know what grave personal crisis you underwent.

Notwithstanding the better grades I fetched over you, I think you deserve more of the accolades. For you has been the true manager amongst two of us. For you managed the situation in a better manner, made best use of the time and resources, faced crisis situation with tremendous self-belief and came out of it with élan, while not losing your calm and composure. And to top it all, you motivated others most importantly yours truly towards achieving a goal and drove me towards it. Hats off to you. Cheers Bro!

Uparwaalah deta hai, toh chappar phaad ke

For anyone who knows me even a little bit, must have known about my passion for quizzing. For others who haven’t known me in person, but who happen to stumble upon here must have guessed it from the number of quiz related posts that dominate this blog. And for those who actually follow me through this blog and have borne the trauma of reading through each of the posts must have also got aware about my infinitely numerous narrow misses at such big quizzing events.

With the regularity that I was missing qualifying for the finals, and needless to say the wafer-thin margin, it was becoming more of a rule than exception. It wasn’t any soothing experience when all those qualified teams would ‘pass’ some question whose answer I would know better than the back of my hand. It goes without saying that it earned me some lousy gifts as audience prizes. ‘What the hell was I doing sitting in the crowd?’ I kicked myself time and again.

All I could do was pen my feelings down and give vent to the pent up frustrations in me. And that is what I did through my article ‘Luck! No chance’ (http://ameyadilse.blogspot.com/2009/02/luck-no-chance.html). An innocent suggestion from my friend meant that I mail the link to the god of quizzers, Giri. And wholla! he actually commented back to it. He, in a manner fitting to his character, was very appreciative about me and was kind enough to email me back a few words of encouragement. Oh boy! That was the only silver lining to my debacles all this while.

It was not to be the last time that I had to experience such narrow miss, and suffered the same plight at BITS Pilani Quark Fest. As I tied on the same score with the last qualifying team, it was the tie-breaker question that did me in. ‘deja vu!’ I sighed. ‘Seen it, done it, been through it’ was what I was feeling then.

Thus in frustration I called up my good friend as I do quite often than none. Though himself a good quizzer in school days, he had been on some kind of quizzing sabbatical since. But as his good luck would have it, one casual attempt at Tata crucible-Pune and he ended up on stage thus earning his quiet some accolades. He was someone whom I often turn up to when in tizzy and boy! What a motivation he instilled into me with his one statement. He said and I quote “Sachin Tendulkar took 89 ODIs to score his first century”. That one statement and the barometer of my spirit had spiked from the deepest abyss to its summit. And with new zest I was anticipating to participate in the next quiz.

Like a vulture on rain-starved barren land eagerly awaiting the next rain, I had my eyes glued onto the quizzing calendar. And boy! what a treat it was for my eyes. Come 27^th February 2010, and there were not one, not two but three quizzes lined up that day. Along with its yearly corporate quiz Wiz-Biz, GIM were also organising a college quiz ‘Inquizzitive Minds’ for the first time. But the biggie of the day was the Tata crucible that was coming to town the same evening. The initial schedule suggested that GIM’s ‘Inquizzitive Minds’ clashing with the ‘Tata Crucible’, but a quick rejig by the GIM organisers meant all was settled. So thus I had my schedule packed for that Saturday and it read something like this:

9.00 AM – Inquizzitive Minds – International Centre Goa

2.00 PM – Tata Crucible Quiz – National Institute of Oceanography

6.00 PM – Wizbiz – International Centre Goa

Though a Saturday was something I used to look up to for an extended siesta, this one was certainly different. I had to break the jinx and I was hoping to do it that day. So seeking blessings from my parents and the all-mighty I left my home for the venue.

Not expecting the GIM organizers to start their quiz on time, I was yodelling my way to the venue when my cellphone blared to life. ‘Lisa calling...’ the screen flashed. Few keystrokes and a short conversation made me realise I was wrong in expecting the prospective managers from GIM not to be punctual. However I was able to convince Lisa in delaying the start by just a few more minutes as I made indicator needle to gobble a few more notches on the speedometer. Oh! You must be wondering, Lisa who? Well she was my partner for the opening quiz of a day. By her own admission she was a quizzing greenhorn though I really didn’t mind that.

Rushing to the venue still gasping for breath, I panted my way through the prelims. The prelims wasn’t very easy and thought I shall be eliminated yet another time. But surprised was I, when my team name ‘Don Quixote’ was called up as finalists. The finals were easier, and had not been for some goof-ups from my part I should have landed in a better position than the third spot that we both secured. The positive take away was not just being able to break the jinx; I had another reason to celebrate. One of the member of the winning team was my partner for the next quiz, the big one of the day Tata Crucible.

The Tata crucible venue was just a stone’s throw away, albeit by a rather strong man. A quick lunch and we landed up at the venue quiet in advance of the reporting time. The organisers further had decided to wait for an ‘on-the-way’ team, which transcended in our wait being longer. But who mind this extra few hours of waiting period when we wait for the entire year this event. Post-prelims, and after discussing the hits and misses over tea, we settled in our seats with our fingers crossed. The format was designed such to eliminate crowding of stage with teams from same institute and ensure at least 4 unique institutes make it. Thus the top teams from 4 unique institutes would directly qualify themselves (even if and quiet often when their scores are lower than the second best team from another college) with the rest slots to be battled out for amongst the rest top six teams. My anxiety had picked out as Giri emerged to declare the names of the six wild-card teams that would slug it out for the last two slots in the finals. And lady luck was totally shining on me, as mine was the first name to be announced, albeit the usual pronunciation goof-up ( http://ameyadilse.blogspot.com/2009/12/its-ameya-no-no-its-ameya.html ). So it was me and my partner Pratyush representing GIM along with another 3 GIM teams and 2 from BITS that would have to face 8 questions on the buzzer for the coveted spot in the finals. A couple of questions into the round and one of BITS team had already got itself qualified leaving 5 of us. Till question 7 it was all even-stevens among 4 of us as some overambitious attempts by one of the team got themselves a few negatives. Thus it was for the Q# 8 to decide who would continue to be on stage?

“The secret formula of Coca-Cola stored in the vaults of Sun-Trust Bank” was our ticket to the finals as we banged the buzzer before Giri could complete the question. That was it... finally... finally I had got myself qualified for TC finals. The feeling was totally ‘on-top-of-the-world’ as for me I had won the battle. Probably me and my partner were a bit too overhelmed, as our performance in the finals was nothing but mediocre. As teams raced ahead, it was a team of young doctors from GMC emerged as the Goa champions. Not winning, yet as happy as the winners I was already on the way to the venue for the next quiz.

GIM annual corporate quiz ‘WizBiz’ would be the grande finale of the day. Being a student of eMBA at GIM, I had got special concessions to participate in the same; and together with my long time quizzing partner Chirag, I was looking to maximise our gains. Chirag was a great partner to have at any quiz, and he had specially flown down from Bangalore for this one. For he wasn’t the only one who had covered some miles to attend this quiz, but so had many bigwigs from the world of quizzing. The pretty handsome prize booty meant it attracted quiet some teams from the expanse of the country, especially from KQA. Although stacked against some formidable teams, we did fancy our chances of qualifying for the finals. For I was having a lucky outing and secondly the quiz-master was kinda lucky for us. Back in 2008 when Ajay Anthony has hosted WizBiz we were able to clear the elims and we were hoping to repeat the feat once again in 2010. And so we did as we qualified for the on-stage finals. Likewise the prelims, the finals too were a really entertaining and informative affair with a great mix of some tough ones sprinkled with old chestnuts. Though absolutely fair and unbiased format adopted, we still found ourselves wanting to answer questions that we knew but unfortunately were grabbed by our opponents. But all given and said, it was really a fun-filled and exciting one.

Thus there was me with my hands full, quite literally with prizes, certificates and gift vouchers and even more so having my heart filled with joy of the experiences I had over the entire day. I had been asking god to just break the jinx  and get me past one of the elims . And see, what he got for me? No wonder , somebody has said it right “Uparwaalah deta hai, toh chappar phaad ke” :)

It's Ameya. No, No... It's Ameya

A few weeks back the Times Of India – Goa edition was flooded with ads from a car manufacturer. Right from the front page to every alternate page thereon it had bought out the newspaper space to advertise itself. Needless to say the marketing department must have shelled out more than a few million dollars to grab the place on the newspaper and thereon grab the attentions of more than millions of TOI readers, only a small fraction of which could turn out to be prospective buyers. The high end and top-notch technology laden cars that the manufacturer was selling, I wondered whether it was a right strategy that they had followed to showcase their plethora of products. My half-baked (if I may say so ;)) MBA knowledge inclusive of the interesting and truly involving “Integrated Marketing communication” lectures that I attended professed that when a product is from a niche segment involving state-of-art technology and coupled with a price tag which only the “most blessed” section of the society could afford, then one should resort to direct marketing. Direct Marketing is the term given to the practice of reaching out to individual prospective customer and then marketing him the product as per his taste and specification. This made pure sense to me as it was very rational to follow this approach and not go for a mass-marketing through newspapers especially when each square inch of the prized newsprint space cost a bomb and could potentially burn a hole in the pocket to the tune of millions.

When the rule of directed marketing is so crystal clear, which even I can recite without flipping back through my notes, what propelled the marketing team into such a major Gaffe? After all they aren’t richly paid only to commit such a costly mistake; leave aside the major PR blunder that come alone. “No ways! The marketing team at this automotive giant aren’t this big a fool” I unknowingly said to myself . This very inquizitive thought made rerun through the entire series of ads once again and there I found the purpose for them follow this means of advertisement.

The reason was there right on the front page, which inadvertently I had missed during my first run through these Volkswagen ads. The line in bold read “Its Volkswagen. No, No... Its Volkswagen”. The foundation level course in German language that I had cleared with flying colours had ensured that I wasn’t the intended target audience for this catch line. A second read along with the small assisting para beneath it cleared all aspertions that I had regarding this marketing strategy. Here was this Deutsche major taking to get a strong foothold into our nation with their quality products. But before all this, they were onto a campaign which would set their brand identity firm into the people’s psyche. And how could they achieve that without getting the people to pronounce their name right. I am unsure about the etymology of it, but blame it on the Germans who pronounce “V” as “F” ( फ as per Indian pronounciation). Reminds of the awesome shahid kapoor in his movie ‘Kaminey’ wherein he were mischievously proclaims “mein fha ko fha bolta hoon”. On second thoughts VW could have used his character to get their name right into the Indian Psyche. Who better than a bollywood actor to influence the Indian masses? Thus I was really pleased eventually by their attempt to make the people pronounce ‘volkswagen’ as ‘Folkswagen’ (as it is actually supposed to be) meaning “people’s car”.

After this rather very long prelude, let me get to the core topic of this blog which deals with my personal identity crisis. Very much as VW suffered with mispronounciation, so has been me right from the time of my birth. It was the difference in the way ‘V’ is pronounced in the different parts of the globe for Volkswagen that proved its nemesis; for me it was the extra ‘a’ (or is it?) that did me in. As it has been a very much prevelant practice in this part of the world, my parents named me “Ameya “ (अमेय in devnagari script) which is one of the numerously infinite names of the elephant headed god, Ganapati.

Needless to say I was way too young and worse still very much ignorant of these happenings in regards to my naming ceremony to fight with my parents then. But that only meant I had to fight with the majority of the people I encountered till date getting to make them pronounce my name right. My parents had very lovingly bestowed with this nice name (which I personally love too 8)) thinking that I would have showcase all the virtues of the original bearer of the name; and so I did to a great extent if not all (I would rather say that with a tinge of modesty ;)).

On face-value it doesn’t look too tough to pronounce, but in reality I had been struggling to cope up with the numerous variants that I encounter when interacting with fellow planet-mates. The most common variant being the ones over-stressing of suffixing ‘A’ in my name. The way they pronounce it, makes me feel as if I have a stream of never-ending ‘A’s tailing my spelling (i.e. AmeyAAAAA.... and it goes on... :( ). I do emphasise to them the trailing ‘A’ in my name doesn’t have the tilde over it and thus spared from the hard sound (i.e. AA अमेया in devnagari) but it doesn’t seem to be effective convincing tactic from my side. For me it gets doubly tough when I come across instances (read people) of AMEYA without the trailing ‘A’, and then it’s just like fighting a losing battle. And to my bad fortune, I have many such instances of AMEY (with the trailing A missing), one at college, two at office, and many more in routine life :( . Their existence meant I had to back off and accept that my name is a typo (since birth :() and only justification being the trailing ‘A’ is silent. But even for that there are a handful few who don’t let go the chance to pull my leg and call me with the extended version of my name “AMEY with the silent A”.

The irony of the extra ‘A’ (or otherwise) is a bit bearable and I could blame it upon the inconsistency/incompatibility of English alphabets in the devanagari script (Spare me for dragging my feet into the Devanagari v/s Roman scripts tussle). But my plight doesn’t end there. Still struggling with the mysterious instance of ‘A’ in my name, I was stunned when I came across a superior at my workplace. He seemingly had donned the shakespherean hat and had conveyed to our international clients his prophecy. He said to them and I quote “All Indian feminine names ends with a ‘A’”. I had a tough time before I cleared the doubts in their mind about my gender. Although I was damn sure what my manager has professed was blatant lie and a brainchild of his own; but the todays corporate world is such that whatever your manager says is the rule. So I consoled myself by self-proclaiming my name as just a one off exception to his rule without totally discarding his hypothesis. I don’t know whether this existence of exception to his rule put him off, but he never awarded me any extra brownie points during the appraisal cycle.

Then there exists the variant of my name like AMAY ( अमय in devnagari)। I don’t know where that came from. But I still have a handful of my friends calling that. I don’t know whether its the ease of calling by that name that acts as a motivation to them but surely they have slipped into a comfort zone calling me by that name and I don’t see them changing it soon. This is not all and the weirdest version is yet to come. Rewinding back to my kinder-garten days and I remember my teachers calling me ‘AMBEY’ (where the hell that 'B' came from?). I even have a certificate at some drawing competition featuring that name. Anybody would have doubted whether it was actually me who achieved that laurel at the drawing competition back then, if they are unaware of the moderate talent that I possess even now. I was probably too young, too timid, and too ignorant to fight with argue with my teachers and must have not gauged what lie ahead. Probably that was just precursor to lie in stores for me.

So here I am, with more than a quarter of my life on earth behind me and still struggling with the identity. I won’t say it’s a identity crisis but still it’s not a very pleasing experience if someone don’t pronounce your name right. So humble requests to all the readers of this, for you are the only people who are aware of my plight and surely you can help me a bit. Not by anything else, but just by calling me by my name, ‘the right way’.

Its simple. It's Ameya. No, No... It's Ameya

Yup, you got it right. Thanks :)