Getting my car registered - Part two

I got to the window at around 1:40pm bracing myself for a harried and rude official. Instead I was pleasantly surprised to find a person who had an air of brisk efficiency and was not unfriendly. He gave crisp responses to my questions and moved my papers along with scribblings on what seemed like random pages in the forms. He asked me to rush for inspection as it was getting to be closing time.

Inspection involves driving up your car on a 2nd line to a waiting police officer. This line was not that long and I reached the head of the queue within a few minutes. The police officer pointed out that I am supposed to get an imprint of the chassis number on the form using a pencil. The friendly instruction sheet surely didn't mention that. I hastily moved the car to unblock the line and my driver - who had joined me by then for moral and logistical support -  ran to the nearby டப்பாக்கடை for a pencil. As I learnt that day, the chassis number can be found somewhere below the driver seat and can be reached conveniently by twisting your upper body into a sciatic pain inducing position. The police officer signed me off and sent me for the next stop which was in an air-conditioned cabin where some higher official (the RTO himself?) needed to give final blessing for  my form.

In the air-conditioned room, there was a guy ahead of me waiting to see this officer. The officer gave a quick dismissal saying it was past closing time. The guy ahead of me mumbled something apologetically and the official grimaced and looked at the form and said something about him really not needing to see it. In any case, he quickly scribbled a signature on his and my forms and sent us to the last stop where our signatures were to be captured electronically to be printed on the registration card.

There was another line for this (of course) which was getting multiplexed with the original slow moving line processed by the same efficient official.  Mercifully, by this time, they were draining the pipeline for the day and this was a short and fast moving line. As I signed, I was told that my license plate number will be assigned in the next few hours and I could look it up at the RTA web site. And the registration itself will arrive by courier within 2 weeks.

Hooray! I was out around 2:15PM. It had taken 2 1/2 hours on the 3rd attempt in which 2 hours was spent waiting in the first queue. While there were enough plot twists and tense moments, I suppose it was not too bad considering it was the peak hour.

Morals of the story when it comes to dealing with License Raj:
- Be prepared to make multiple visits in case you missed something in the documentation - double check the documents in advance to reduce the chances of this happening.
- Avoid Saturdays if at all possible (don't bother coming if it is the 2nd Saturday); if you have to come on a Saturday, come early in the day.
- Be prepared to defend the queue - this is true anywhere in India. We desis have the line-cutting gene.
- I don't think an agent could have helped in the process. You have to be there anyway to sign electronically and I think you have be present for the inspection  also. There were people who looked like agents in the line; they had multiple stacks of forms and hogged time in the queue and were also more prone to line-cutting. If we avoided the middle-men, I think this process will be a lot saner.
 - And finally, don't forget those no. 2 pencils.

- Balaji

P.S. I am planning to drive this car until its last breath.

Getting my car registered - Part one

For newly returned Indians, dealing with the Indian bureaucracy can be a traumatic experience after having been spoilt by the relatively smoother dealings with Uncle Sam. These days however, many government services are being made available online, so encounters with License Raj are far and few in between. It is however unavoidable if you buy yourself a new set of wheels.

When I got a 2-wheeler 2 years ago, I dealt with my fears through the tried and tested technique of procrastination. I registered it finally almost a year after I got the thing after multiple nudges from FIL. I could get away with it because it gets driven only for a kilometre from the house for early-morning dropoffs of my kids to the school bus stop or for emergency groceries close by.

We recently acquired a Ford Figo, a compact diesel hatchback that gives 15kmpl in the city and promises to reduce my fuel bill almost by half (Petrol prices in tax-hungry AP reached a whopping Rs. 62 recently). Unlike the US, where you renew your rights to emit carbon every year, in India you pay an one-time (hefty) road-tax when you buy the car and you're done. The dealer collects the payment from you when you buy the car, but does not get it registered. Instead he gives you a stack of forms and a nice instruction sheet as to how to do it. The instruction sheet looked quite encouraging. It assured that I don't need an agent, I just need to show up in the local RTA office with the aforementioned stack of forms and "enjoy the warmth of their hospitality".

My first attempt on a Saturday morning got quickly aborted as it happened to be a second Saturday and the office was closed. My second attempt was on one of the week days.  I reached the office early enough (around 9:30AM) feeling quite smug to be there before the rest of Hyderabad wakes up (usually around 11AM). The queue was short and I reached the window in no time. A guy who looked like an agent was helpfully snatching the forms from the folks to verify if things were in order and he did the same with me. He found that the forms were missing a signature and a stamp from the financing bank. Darn it.

The dealer and the bank's loan guy were supposed to work together and the bank's explanation as to the missing signature was typically vague. It seemed like the missing signature was by design and I was supposed to have contacted the loan guy after getting the vehicle to get the requisite signature.

Anyway, the loan guy picked up the form from me at work. We arranged to meet at the RTA office the next Saturday where he would come with the signed form.

So I reached the RTA office for my 3rd attempt on Saturday morning a bit later than I would have liked - 11:45AM. There were multiple long lines, with no signs as to which line was for what; word on the line was that one was for new driving licenses and the other was for registrations. I joined the line for registrations just getting beaten by two people who squeezed ahead of me.

The anxious wait started with less than two hours left before the office closed early on Saturday. People in the line had to be constantly on the vigil fighting back line-cutters, but were not always succeeding. One guy tried to get ahead of me saying he had just gone to park his car; I had been in the line for 15 minutes and had not seen him earlier, so I said nothing doing. He sulked and moved back and promptly cut into the line three spaces behind. The queue was getting increasingly restless and was pushing up forward as if that will make it move faster. The guy behind me was violating my air space big time and when I glared at him, he just pointed to the guy behind.

I was getting philosophical at this point and was fully prepared to find out at the counter after a couple of hours that some other thing was missing. "No registration for you!"

(to be continued).

- Balaji

CWG Part Deux

Although it is old news now, I feel like I should write one after the CWG. The games themselves went largely without incident. There was some whining from the media about how they were treated by the organizers. Apparently the games website was mostly down and information was poor to non-existent on event schedules. Some of the Indian players complained about not being able to get tickets for their next of kin. There was some noise about how the women ushers during the medal ceremonies were dressed inappropriately in bridal costume.
Still, considering the state of affairs before the start of the games, things had trended up significantly. Not a peep about about the athletes village once the games started, other than the exceptional food.

For TV junkies like me, the CWG was another landmark - the first broadcast of HD in India. Consumers in India have been conned into buying HD TVs for a few years now with no HD programming in sight. Finally, the programming is here, a bit like how it happened in the US when it started. Discovery and National Geographic have HD channels and they have started showing major sports events on HD as well. I have a Tata Sky HD set top box that cost Rs. 2500 with first year's HD programming thrown in at no additional cost.

The CWG opening ceremony looked rather nice on HD. So did the stadia - they stood up to the scrutiny of the higher resolution camera quite well.

As for India's performance in the games, it was its best ever - which was broadly expected given the host country boost factor. India finished 2nd in the gold-medal tally behind powerhouse Australia, just one medal ahead of England and 3rd in the overall tally. Curiously, England, Scotland and Wales compete as separate countries while they combine as the UK in the Olympics.

Going into the last day, India trailed England by 1 medal, equalized and then took the lead in dramatic fashion behind Saina Nehwal's come-from-behind victory in the Badminton singles finals.  The one thing that marred the proceedings on the last day for India was its thrashing at the hands of Australia 8-0 in the men's hockey finals.

There were many firsts for India, a handful of track and field medals including a gold in women's 10000m and an 1-2-3 finish in women's discus.

So that was the good part; once the games ended, we started hearing about how much money the organizers looted and we are back to reality again.

- Balaji

Returning to the country holding the CWG

I returned yesterday from a 2-week long business trip to the US where I was reading and hearing media reports about the CWG debacle in Delhi; must say I had my head down in shame a bit. The Indian media perspective (more like "The Hindu's" perspective) is decidedly more mixed. Clearly it was top of mind for The Hindu with 7 stories on its Saturday's edition.

"Get your act together, Manmohan tells Ministers" - Where was he all these years?

"Sigh of relief for Games officials" - The said relief comes after a guardedly positive statement from the president of the CWG foundation, Mike Fennell. IOC president Jacques Rogge threw in his support as well. They both seem to believe things can still be salvaged in the next 8 days. Apparently a lot of progress has been made in the last 3 days.

"A letdown for a proud nation" writes Peter Roebuck the sometimes controversial British cricket writer. This article and another report I heard on the NPR reinforced the notion that there is at least some sentiment in the West that is rooting for India and these people are saddened by this setback to India's standing in the world. Among other things, Peter Roebuck cites some study about India that says in around 15 years,  291 million will move from poverty to a sustainable lifestyle and the size of the middle class will grow to 538 million. I wish I could believe that.

"Mixed reactions to facilities at the Village"
"Athletes village comes in for praise"
An Indian table tennis player actually liked the accommodations. Another Indian athlete opines anonymously that the facilities are 95 percent ready but the lack of finishing touch is making it look bad. A Kiwi player says they were promised world-class accommodations and was disappointed. The Kiwis however really liked the setup for table-tennis.

The final verdict will have to wait until after the games, but it is likely only to decide how black an eye India is going to get.
- Balaji

Readings in history (part 5) - lecture by Dr. Parpola

During my last visit to Chennai, I attended a lecture by Prof. Asko Parpola, a well-known researcher on the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) and the yet to be deciphered Indus script (see my earlier post on Harappans and Aryans).  Prof. Parpola along with Dr. Iravaddam Mahadevan (another well-known researcher in this area) have hypothesized that the Indus script is a script used to write a proto-Dravidian language. Proto-Dravidian is the hypothetical language that Tamil and other Dravidian languages descended from.

In this specific talk, Prof. Parpola focused on a couple of possible connections between the Indus script and Dravidian languages. One was the preponderance of the "fish" symbol in the Indus script, some of which he claims to indicate a "star". Refering to a star as a fish is of course reminiscent of referring to a star as "Vin meen" in Tamil, where "meen" is Tamil for fish.

The more elaborate discussion was on the occurrence of a symbol that is taken to be the hind-leg of the wild-ass, an inhabitant of the salt-deserts of north-west India (the same area where the Indus valley civilization had spread).

Prof. Parpola hypothesizes that the Tamil word for donkey "kaZhuthai" referred originally to the wild-ass as it can be parsed as "kazh" (salt-desert) + "uthai" (kick), i.e. kicker of salt-desert. He also conjectures that the old Tamil word "taal" (தாள்) which has multiple meanings including leg and star is another possible link.

Okay, if you're like me, you are probably thinking this is a big stretch. However, if there are multiple such tenuous links, I suppose they could add up to a "preponderance of evidence" claim.

In any case, the deciphering is very much incomplete as Profs. Parpola and Mahadevan readily admit and Prof. Parpola says other interpretations of these symbols are possible.

One unfortunate aspect of research like this is that it gets politicians and other people with vested interests and foregone conclusions all excited. The "Dravidians are great" gang understandably grasps at such research feverishly. (Prof. Parpola was an invited speaker at the recently concluded World Tamil Conference at Coimbatore where he was bestowed the 2009 Classical Tamil Award by Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi).

On the other side, the "Aryan supremacists" frown upon anything that gives the Dravidians any kind of legitimacy. For some of them, contesting this hypothesis is not just about denying  the Dravidian connection to the IVC, but to appropriate an Aryan one (although there seems to be no archeological backing for the Aryan connection - there is plenty of evidence against it as John Keay talks about in his book).

There is however another school of thought (this by published scientists) that says that the Indus inscriptions were really not a script (of any language, Dravidian or otherwise), instead just a bunch of random signs (like a set of traffic signs).

The tension between the two sides (or is it three?) was apparent during the Q&A session after the talk.
Dr. Mahadevan alluded to this by asking the audience to limit themselves to "clarifying questions" on the paper. At a different point, Dr. Mahadevan (a Tamilian) also said that Dr. Parpola enjoyed some benefits as an IVC researcher that he himself did not have, because Dr. Parpola could not be labelled a "Tamil Chauvinist".

So, I was all prepared to witness some serious war of words, but it ended up fairly lame but for a couple of skeptical questions which Dr. Parpola answered rather diplomatically. I heard from my friend that an earlier talk by Dr. Parpola engendered a lot more debate.

Anyway, let us hope that this research is conducted solely by objective scientists with as minimal external influence as realistically possible. And I do hope they crack the script. Whether you consider yourself Aryan or Dravidian, the mystery of the IVC carries enough intrigue that you want to know the answers whichever way they point.

- R. Balaji


Related links:
An article in The Hindu on this topic
This blog post follows a robust debate on the merits of Parpola's ideas.

Historic visits - Kakatiya sites

We travelled to Warangal (140km from Hyderabad) and environs over the weekend to visit sites from the Kakatiya dynasty (13-14th century AD). Kakatiyas controlled northern Andhra Pradesh around that time and were feudatories of the Hoysalas of southern Karnataka. Their art definitely seems to have been influenced by their suzerains. Hoysalas of course built the famous temples of Belur and Halebid, arguably among the most beautiful sculptural temples of South India. I have visited Belur/Halebid as a kid but still remember some of the sculptural marvels.

Of the three places we visited

(I) the Kakatiya Fort complex in Warangal,

(II) the Ramappa temple in Palampet and
(III) the temple complex (mostly in ruins) at Ghanpur,

I liked the Warangal site the most, probably because it was the most well maintained. There must have been a stunning temple here once. What you see now are various pieces of that temple that have been arranged into some kind of order by the Archeological Society of India (ASI). One of the prominent features were the perfectly circular inserts in the pillars that look as if they were lathed. Except they didn't have lathes in the 13th century.

The scultptures show signs of systematic mutilation (right) suggesting that the temple was destroyed by an invading enemy. It is tempting to think of the Muslim invaders as the culprits - Malik Kafur, Ala-ud-din Khilji's general conquered these parts around that time. However my friend RG who accompanied me pointed out that vandalizing temples and monuments of a conquered kingdom was fairly common practice by kings of all religions throughout history. Wendy Doniger, noted Indologist whose "Hindus - An Alternative History" I am reading now, echoes similar sentiments.

It was fun to have my friend who is an "amateur enthusiast" of sculptural art in South India play unofficial guide; we looked for various clues to identify the deities and other mythological characters portrayed there. For instance, two sculptures standing on either side of a small shrine turned out not to be Dwarapalakas as their position might suggest, but Lord Shiva himself, considering that he had 4 hands, wore an Angavastram that didn't go below the knee and the serpent earrings; clearly the re-arrangement of ASI still needs some work.

The Ramappa temple was very curious in that it had a super-structure that was very much intact, while the base looked like it had been disturbed violently by an earthquake (picture to the right); or more likely because the temple settled into the ground that couldn't bear the weight of all that granite and basalt. The Ramappa temple had inscriptions that looked fairly close to modern-day Telugu script (I have picked up a little bit of the Telugu script in the last year, though I don't understand what I read).

The temple complex at Ghanpur was in the worst shape. The highlights there were the leaning temples and the temples with fractal patterns in their vimanas (vimanas unlike gopurams are the towers over the main shrine; gopurams are at the gateway of the temple).

For more pictures from the trip, see this Picasa album.

Life as a sports fan in India - Cricket, tennis and F1

For someone who was following the NBA, NFL, tennis and a bit of golf in the US, I needed replacements in addition to cricket and tennis in India. I love cricket, but there is just too much of it and you get saturated. I withdraw myself every few months, and come back to it refreshed.

I am on one such break now and I have discovered the joy of Formula 1. F1 features the most advanced and sexiest looking cars in the planet, super-talented egotistic young drivers with the maturity level of teenagers, challenging tracks (not the boring curved rectangles of NASCAR) and  plenty of on-track strategy (pit stop, tyre and fuel strategy).

On top of this, the intra-team dynamics between the engineers and the two drivers creates lot of intrigue. Clearly it doesn't matter to the team which of their drivers wins as the total points from both contribute to the team's points for the Constructor's championship. However, the drivers are also after their individual glory of winning races and the annual driver's championship.

So what's not to love? There was one little problem. There was not much overtaking. Too often, it seemed like the car with pole position ran away for a coast-to-coast victory.

This season, they have tinkered with the rules and there is lots of overtaking - I don't yet understand which changes caused it. One significant change is the no-refuelling rule which means that there is no need for a  "fuel strategy" . Fuel tanks have been enlarged to fill enough fuel to last the whole race. This implies that the cars get progressively  faster as they consume fuel and get lighter through the race. The pit stops are now only for tyre changes (or to fix any number of issues that can crop up in the car) since tyres don't last the entire race. Fewer variables and simpler racing.

This year there are two teams  (Red Bull Racing and McLaren Mercedes) that have the fastest cars and probably the four best drivers - Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel for Red Bull; Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button for McLaren. The Red Bull cars are faster in the corners, while the McLarens have better straight line speed. Any one of these 4 drivers can win on any given week. When one of these cars somehow falls behind in pole position or ends up behind because of a slower pit stop, they are certain to overtake everyone and come up front. Further there is a weekly battle within these four that makes for some seriously competitive racing.

Take for instance last week's Turkish Grand Prix. Webber and Vettel (the Red Bull drivers) were #1 and #2 going into lap no. 41 (it was a 58 lap race), when Vettel overtook Webber on the inside but inexplicably moved to the right, making contact. Vettel's car spun out of control and he retired from the race. Webber managed to rejoin the race as #3 behind Hamilton and Button (the McLaren drivers) who by now had taken the #1 and #2 spots. Vettel made a "mental" gesture as he walked out of his car, clearly blaming Webber for the incident even though the near-unanimous verdict from the pundits was that his move to the right (into Webber's way) caused the contact.

Then in lap 49, it was the McLaren drivers' turn for a duel. The McLaren crew radio-ed instructions to both drivers to "conserve fuel", so Hamilton slows down a notch; Button disregards the instructions, speeds up and overtakes a surprised Hamilton; Hamilton now furious, battles back and retakes the lead soon after. The McLaren crew is now in a panic as they don't want a repeat of what happened to the Red Bulls and repeat the instruction for conserving fuel, effectively asking them to stop dueling. The race ends with those track positions with Hamilton's first victory of the season.

As you can see from these videos, a lot of the action is now telecast with on-board cameras which is probably the best way to experience the race. I can't wait to watch this in HD when it does eventually come to India.

Talking of HD, Indian consumers have been getting conned into buying HD TVs for the last few years while there is no HD programming; finally Sun started HD service on some select channels (including coverage of this year's IPL) a couple of months ago. Tata Sky (which is what I have) promises to have it by end of year in time for the Commonwealth Games.

- Balaji