Antrix and Devas: A love story

I just read the first few pages of the agreement between ISRO's commercial wing Antrix and Devas, a multimedia company looking for a piece of prime spectrum pie. With no auction, with no announcement, a deal was struck. Here is what I have understood so far-

1. Antrix is to build two satellites for Devas, with 10 transponders each that the latter can use.

2. Antrix is to let Devas in on all the technical aspects of the process and to its facilities (except 'classified areas').

3. Antrix is to submit regular progress reports to Devas.

4. Antrix is to procure all relevant and necessary licenses, regulatory approvals and clearances for providing providing Devas with the satellites and bandwidth,

5. Antrix is to procure clearances for Devas for recieving it all. Devas will pay for any costs incurred.

6. In the event of delay in delivery, Antrix is to intimate Devas 6 months prior to the agreed date of delivery and pay a penalty to Devas.
7. Devas will pay Antrix an early delivery incentive, in case they deliver early.
8. ISRO can use part of the satellites, which Devas doesn't 'unreasonably' withhold, and if it doesn't disturb what was agreed to Devas.

9. Antrix may consider giving Devas part of a third satellite later on. And in case Antrix cannot provide that extra satellite, it is to help Devas in arranging for involvement of a third party who can provide this.

Right, you might have seen a patter by now - Antrix gives, Devas takes. You're not mistaken. ISRO's commercial wing is wooing Devas for some mysterious reason.

Embarrassing editorial

The Hindu published an editorial after the BJP managed to hoist the Tricolour in Lal Chowk, Srinagar. The headline was 'Trouble-making in Kashmir'.

Agreed, the BJP would have taken along a few hundred party flags along with the one Tricolour they hoisted. It is obviously a political strategy, an attempt by the BJP to drive another nail on the Congress' coffin lid, already weighed down by scams. However, to say that their intent was to heighten tensions and provoke violence is childish and myopic.

Pulverised in the General Elections, the BJP has tried to re-define itself, pushing the not-in-vogue hindutva and related agendas to the background and retaining only the political contrariness typical in an opposition party. The true test of this attitude has been the Ayodhya verdict. A foolhardy party would have seized the opportunity to revive the Ram Mandir issue, its veterans could have grabbed at it for another shot at glory. But all that the BJP displayed was a smug acceptance and token protests on a few points in the judgment. The party has been here long enough not to commit the immensely counter-productive 'historic blunder' of polarising religion and provoking violence.

The editorial also referred to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as an ally and quoted his disapproval of the yatra. The only context in which Mr. Kumar can be called a BJP ally, is numbers. He is hardly the example to use when attempting to point out sudden ideological differences arising out of foolhardy strategy.

As an employee of The Hindu, this editorial embarrassed me. Not for the point it made, many times over, or the stand it took. What troubled me was that it obscenely exposed to the reader the kind of journalism the daily employs.

A senior colleague of mine once said that every newspaper, like every individual, had a right to affiliate itself with a particular ideology or polity. True enough. However, as an entity, a newspaper is rather more exalted than an individual, for the reason that it is meant to be the voice of more than one individual. Consequently, a newspaper does not, in my opinion, have the luxury of ranting, however-much belligerence an issue evokes.

It is no secret that The Hindu leans to the Left, or that it will never publish a report on China the Chinese government doesn't approve of. And of course, anything remotely non-critical of the Hindu religion and anything else connected to it is treated like a fishy bit of news, which is given space with extreme reluctance. But this stance is usually not very blatant. There's usually a thick coat of articulacy, or at least ambiguity. Reading this editorial was like looking at the real face of an ageing actress without makeup - every line of paranoia and neurosis laid bare.

IPL Auction Action

Right, my penchant for alliteration must be quite obvious by now. I'm a closet poet. It's my dirty little secret. Here I am, in the thick of a rather professional report, when meter and allegory and analogy and alliteration leak from a gap in the mental seam. Gotta love blogging. I can get to the point I'm trying to make, right now, or later, or not at all. Don't like it? Bollocks to you. Fine, I'll get to it now.

Just trying to record my impressions of the player auction I updated live on thehindu.com over the last couple of days. It was an interesting experience, gives you an insight into the thought process of the bidders. At least that's what tracking an event constantly is supposed to do. But I must admit some of the buys flummoxed me. Not simply from a tactical perspective, because I'm not completely up to date on the skill levels of every player who went under the hammer. But even financially, some of the purchases didn't make much sense. Badrinath, for instance. Chennai Super Kings went all out to retain him and ended up paying $800,000 for him. They really could have done without him. He had a base price tag of $100,000. Sam was very vocally unhappy about this. He was hoping Chennai would drop him when the bidding got hot, but they didn't. The teams were more keen on retaining some of the old squad than I had imagined. He would have probably cost them less if he was part of the four they were allowed to retain.

The newsmaking shocker was of course the dumping of major leaguers like Gayle, Jayasuriya, Boucher, Anderson, Ganguly, Lara. Now Lara I can understand, he's admittedly past his prime. But he's been up the creek and over the mountain, as Siddhu would've said and could give his team a wealth of experience. And Gayle, Boucher and Jayasuriya would definitely have won some matches for their side.

Pain

From an itch you hardly notice, to an incandescent membrane that you can't see beyond, is the zone of pain.

There is no limit to pain. Even when you're in the prime of your health, lying in your soft bed, simply letting your body do what it does, there's pain. That unpleasant pull at the roots of a clutch of hair on your head, the pressure at the corner of your eyeballs as they swivel in the socket, tenderness in a dozen places where fabric has chafed your skin, the beginnings of a crick in the neck, unbidden spikes and tiny cramps as digestion lurches through your bowels, embers of little cuts and scratches fanned by a spurt of blood flowing under them.

You can't ignore pain. You can choose not to communicate it outside, but you really can't ignore it. In your consciousness, pain is an ectoplasm-like entity, whose purpose is to expand and envelop. Pain is how your body draws attention, your complete attention, to itself. A man with a migraine can feel the breeze laving his elbow, or the twitch of every hair on his head. A man with sciatica can feel interesting things, too.

To the uninitiated, sciatica is back ache with attitude. A slipped disc gives you back pain. Vertebrae pressing against the nerves that run down your legs gives you sciatica. The nerves in question are pressed together, squeezed and more or less chewed by two bones, according to the movement in your spine.

Here's how it gives you your first anatomy lesson: Imagine a little bead of raw electricity. It is born in your spine, and without warning or known trigger, travels varying distances along the lower half of your body at what seems like the speed of sound. A short, sharp, sudden spike, down to the middle of your buttocks, or along your thigh, or all the way to your heel. You can feel the trail of the nerves, you can feel muscles you don't usually think about.

Pain commands your attention and often, forces your compliance. But when it can't, when you overcome it and bend it through your will, what a victory that is. It's like internalising life's struggle. Your body becomes the stage, and your mind is the actor. It draws on every bit of unpleasantness ever experienced and runs it over again; from nowhere, emotional hurts, heartbreaks, losses blend into your physical pain. It's like instances of your mental anguish are disembodied spirits waiting for physical expression. When you're in pain, you're possessed. You're acutely aware and completely oblivious at the same time. Inhibitions lose their grip in the onslaught of your repressed reactions. In moments of reprieve, which reveal themselves to no one but you, you choose either to exercise uncharacteristic compassion, or lash out viciously. You think you can get away with anything when you're in pain. Your every whim is executed and if it is improbable, it is respected. As a man in pain, you can evoke anger, compassion, guilt, awe in whoever you choose. Your body is a throne, you are king. And when pain leaves you, you're a hero; in spite of your tantrums, in spite of your contrariness, your succumbing to weakness, your surrender to emotion, your penchant for hysteria.

Why the triumph, I wonder. There's little you can do to prevent pain, nothing you do can stop it leaving you. Clearly, I'm not talking about self inflicted pain. I don't want to go down that pointless path. What I'm trying to say is that you can't negotiate pain. It's an objective entity. It has no attitude. It has a very predictable pattern. If pain were energy, you'd be a wire it passes through. Realistically, you're a digestive tract which something entered and exited. You don't boast about living through lighting or rain, why get cocky about living through pain, just another natural phenomenon?

And what if will has nothing to do with pain? What if people are simply built with different thresholds, that some feel pain more acutely than others? What if all this 'overcoming pain' is simply the result of a higher capacity for handling pain? "A bee stung me, I didn't wince." "Well, you've got thick skin, figuratively". That would really take the juice out of it, wouldn't it.

I don't know how to finish this. There really is no end to pain. After we're through with it once, we're always expecting it in some form. We mould our relationships around it, we mould ourselves to avoid it. It is a sublime language, pain is. The body speaks it, yes, the mind does too. But really, they only understand the language - in varying degrees. Life itself speaks the language. I wonder what it is trying to tell us, I wonder what life asks us to do.

Perhaps, it is our resistance to that message which makes it all so painful.

The big picture

I wonder how long I'm going to struggle with my vision/goal/future/plans/what I'm going to do/what I ought to do.

The previous sentence was a perfect example of the struggle I'm talking about. There's so much potential in and around me. From my upbringing, to the environment I now find myself in, the universe has relentlessly conspired towards my success. At every turn, I have thwarted these schemes with consistent inaction and sheer dullness. Amazing. I feel like an OD'd junkie on the verge of coma, whose heart the world is trying to jump-start with a series of circumstances ranging from inspirational to embarrassing. My shell must be made of some rather non-reactive element.

I wonder how long I'm going to whine-post. Don't let the title of the blog mislead you. Like everyone else, the subject of my vision is invariably, me. I try to use a wide-angle lens, but it always turns around and zooms into me. Can be quite trying sometimes. No matter what I try to look at, I end up seeing me. The 'my' prefix always nudges itself beside the titles past, present and future.

All this introspection ought to be worth something. I mean, even a few insights have turned out to be money-spinners for many authors. I could write an entire series on myself. Who would read it? Not me.

Ganesan sir said he would find out about part time courses in the University of Chennai, probably Finance, Economics or Management. I'm at that stage in my life - here I must enter a paranthesis - {A 'stage' in my life is usually limbo. I've never been into a proper phase in life since as far as I can remember. I seem to be moving from one crossroads to an indeterminate state.} - when my wishes are taking on the tinge of ambition. Money, intelligence, maturity, stability. The order is right. I'm shallow today. I did ask for maturity, didn't I.

Potential. I see so much of it. It's like standing on a diamond mine. There's even a great big bulldozer and a cart full of tools. I have no idea how to use the tools yet. There are a hundred processes before I can wear a ring on my finger. But I'm sitting on the mine, watching a line of people walk past. Some are awed by the mine, I smile at them, smugness trying to pass off as indifference. Others are amazed I'm doing nothing to get at the diamonds. I watch them, I don't react. They are sad. I am restless, I can't sit still, but it's late in the day, I tell myself I'll start tomorrow. I remember that today is tomorrow.