Where On Earth Is Mr D?

Where On Earth Is Mr D?

Surprisingly last week I got another call from the South Block. It was my old friend “J”. He was profusely apologetic about our last encounter.  The conversation went along different lines this time: 

J :  How are you Potnis old chap? I am damn sorry we couldn’t fit you in on the Beijing trip. 

Me :  (Recognizing his voice) Ah! So it is you again J? Huh?  Glad to note that you got my name right this time. So where do you want to send me now? (I was still upset at missing out on the all-expense-paid-trip to China)  

J : Sorry Old chap (I don’t know why these secret service types still insist on  addressing each other as “old chap”). Now that the PM is back we won’t be sending any more delegations. 

Me : You mean the PM has exhausted all the countries of the world? 

J : Well.... Not quite. Let me see.... I think he is yet to visit Burkina Faso and Central African Republic. I could pencil you in, if you are keen?

Me : Er.. thanks. But no thanks! (I shuddered at the thought of spending time swatting hordes of tse tse flies and fighting off other insects waiting eagerly to sink their mandibles into me. A bite or two is not an issue but I surely object to these creatures injecting some deadly freshly discovered alpha-numeric virus which has recently jumped over from animal kingdom to humans). 

Me : So what’s new? (trying my to best to divert the spymaster’s attention to something other than serving me as a feast to all those hungry insects).  

J : Well if you must ask. (J seemed to be in an expansive mood). I am working on getting D back!!!

I could picture him in my mind’s eye, sitting in some darkened room in a nameless and faceless building, hunched over his SatPhone twirling dials and instructing his “assets”,  Abdul from Abbottabad, Karim from Kabul and Shabbir from Sharm-el-Sheikh, about how to trace the elusive villain. I could just discern  other details in the sepulchral room, his cloak neatly draped over the back of his chair, a couple of daggers placed carelessly on his desk, the curved one for slitting throats and the stiletto for plunging into the backs of unsuspecting victims.  I had to drag myself away from that fascinating scene.

Me : So where IS D? 

J : Till recently we were secure in the knowledge that he is in Pakistan. 

Me : Isn’t he? I mean, everyone from President of Pakistan to a minor bureaucrat in Islamabad and from ISI top brass to the constables on beat in Karachi is confidently saying that he is not in Pakistan, so it stands to reason that he must be in Pakistan. 

J : Tsk, tsk. How naïve can one get?  Everyone from President of Pakistan to a minor bureaucrat in Islamabad and from ISI top brass to the constables on beat in Karachi knows that we Indians don’t believe one word of what they say, so sometimes they just tell us the truth and hope that we go the other way.  

Me : A sort of double bluff you mean? 

J : Precisely. But we are not that RAW you know! We can see through these subterfuges. (I could picture the satisfied smug look on J’s visage.) 

My admiration of J and his team of nameless and faceless operatives went up by a couple of notches. 

 

Me : So how do you tackle that? 

J : Simple! We made one of our junior ministers make a statement that D is not in Pakistan. 

Me : So? What difference does it make? 

J : Ha! Got you there didn’t we? Now Pakistan has to take a diametrically opposite stand, and declare that D is indeed in Pakistan!!

Me : But then our Home Minister made another statement stating that D IS in Pakistan. Doesn’t that make our position ambiguous?

J : (laughing) That’s the master stroke. By making these two statements we have put Pakistan in a zugzwang. Now they have to make a statement contradicting both our statements, which are themselves contradictory to each other. Now let us see how they get out of this. 

Frankly this was getting too much Machiavellian for me. My head had started spinning. So I went straight to the point. 

Me : So do you know where D is at the moment? 

J : Don’t be ridiculous. Of course we don’t. Only Seymour Hersh knows where he is. 

Me : Aha! Has it occurred to you that you could ask him? Problem solved. QED.

J : Well... he won’t tell us. Not until we actually nab Mr D. 

LazyBee aka Shirish Potnis

 25th May 2015

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Mr Potnis Ki Amar Kahani

Mr Potnis Ki Amar Kahani

A few days back I got a call from someone in the South Block. He declined to identify himself -    security reasons. I was intrigued. The conversation went off something like this :

Me : RAW?

He : Not at all Mr Kotnis. I am a ripe mature senior citizen like yourself. (chuckles)

Me : It is Potnis not Kotnis. I meant to ask, are you working for RAW?

He: Kotnis, let’s say I am with a nameless organization which may or may not exist. Like the black        cat in Schrodinger’s box.

Me : (Impressed. The guy is not some derelict babu. He seems to know his quantum physics). And         what do I address you as? And by the way it is Potnis and not Kotnis.

He : Call me “J”, Kotnis.

Me : (Wow. This is getting more interesting - straight from Ian Fleming / John Le Carre). It is                Potnis please. But are you? (Couldn’t resist that!)

“J” : Are you what? J? Jealous? (roars with laughter). I like that Kotnis. I like your sense of                  humor.

Me : Thank you for liking my PJ (stressing the J). But it is Potnis and not Kotnis. So “J” you must         be senior to “M”? (I was now getting fully into the act, trying the map the hierarchy in the               secret world I was getting initiated into).

“J” : Well Kotnis, enough of your PJ’s; time to be serious now. In 1938 Dr Dwarkanath Kotnis, a            young doctor from Solapur, was a part of the medical team which went to China to help the              Chinese revolutionary army led by Mao-Zedong in their war against the Japanese. He laid              down his life after a dedicated 3-4 years operating non-stop on the front. He was honoured in          China and later immortalized by V Shantaram in his 1946 film “Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani” .          Now that Sino-Indian relations are on the upswing, we would like to reinforce that by sending          another delegation and that’s where you come in. We have done an extensive check-up on              your background and we feel that you would fit the bill.

I was quite happy to hear that; in fact quite relieved. When “J” was talking about an assignment for a nameless and faceless organization, the pictures that flashed across my mind were from the James Bond movies. I mean, designer Aston Martins, glitzy casinos I could cope with, even bikini-clad babes I could handle maybe with some external help; even a couple of martinis “shaken not stirred” could be managed; but 6.35 mm Beretta-418s or 7.65 mm Walther PPKs were a bit too much to handle at my age.

When “J” was telling me about the assignment, I was worried it might be in Libya or Nigeria to tackle ISIS or Boko Haram respectively but luckily it turned out to be Beijing with all the other accoutrements like a diplomatic passport etc; everything seemed to be perfect.

Finally “J” came to the end of interview and chirpily told me.

“J” : “So Kotnis it is all settled. I will get your new passport sent to you within 48 hours and you            can fly out over the week-end and join the Indian delegation with the PM in Beijing on                      Monday.”

I was in a total panic. Imagine rushing to take up some heavy duty assignment at such a short notice and  that too with a passport in the name of Mr Kotnis to China. The Chinese government has a complete dossier on all the Kotnises in the world, thanks to the standing Dr Kotnis still enjoys in China. I was once told by a friend that people who try to get into China under a false identity are strung upside down and subjected alternately to water-cannons firing ice-cold water and smoke generators spewing out smoke of red chilies. I was sure that I didn’t want to risk being subjected alternately to water-cannons firing icecold water and smoke generators spewing out smoke of red chilies, diplomatic passport or not. So I made a final desperate attempt to correct the gentleman.

Me : “J”, it is Potnis and not Kotnis. It is “P” as in “psychology” and not “K” as in “knowledge!” 

That was the best I could think of on the spur of the moment. There was a brief silence and then I heard a strange sound which I had never heard in my life and the receiver was banged down at the other end. Later analyzing the sound I had heard, it seemed to be an amalgam of a strangled gasp, a choked sob and a muttered oath featuring a private part of human anatomy. I haven’t heard again from “J” till date. Wonder why!!!


LazyBee aka Shirish Potnis
11th May 2015

Mere Dil ki Ghadi Karey Tick, Tick, Tick

Mere Dil ki Ghadi Karey Tick, Tick, Tick!

Most of us who grew up in the 70’s would remember this foot-tapping number by Lata and C.

Ramchandra from Albela with Bhagwan dada and Geeta Bali creating magic on the screen. Dil beating like a metronome is apparently the normal thing, but for a few years my dil was operating to a different beat or rather to no discernible regular beat. It would normally do a complex pattern like tick, tick,......, tick,....,tick, tick, tick,....,....,tick, etc skipping a beat here and couple of beats there. Of course if a PYT (Pretty Young Thing for those who are not in the know) were to be found somewhere on the horizon, the pattern would become even more irregular. You can imagine what my poor heart must have gone through with all the Madhubalas, Sharmilas and Zeenats, the on-screen ones and their look-alikes in real life, combining their wiles to assault my bechara dil. Such irregular behaviour, I learnt much later, is known as arrhythmia of heart. Apparently it strikes around 1 person in 1000. I was not particularly happy at being that one in thousand but I guess that is how nature rolls its dice.

I don’t really know whether I was born with this anomaly or this developed at a later stage and if it did the reason for such malfunction. It was discovered during start of a routine stress test about 16 years ago, however it was noticed that these abnormal (ectopic) beats disappeared at a higher level of workout and the pattern became regular. The doctors even got an angiography done to check that these abnormal beats were not a result of any blockages in the coronary arteries. Luckily the angio was clear with no discernible blockages. The general consensus was to leave the arrhythmia alone and watch if it changes over the years. The doctors initially diagnosed it being due to what is known as Left Branch Bundle Block (LBBB) in which there is a small phase difference between the electric signals passing across the left and right sides of the heart which leads to such arrhythmia.

So we watched it to see if the arrhythmia got any worse and worsen it did over the years. A couple of years ago I got a Holter Monitoring test done which is a sort of day-long ECG where one needs to wear a portable instrument on the body (in a pouch attached to a belt) while you carry on doing all the daily functions. Outcome of this test is much more representative of the heart functioning than an ECG, which as you would know provides only a small snap shot. This Holter test showed up that about 42% of my heart-beats were abnormal. This was still considered to be within acceptable limits.

In last quarter of 2014, however, the things seemed to be getting worse and I was getting a distinct

feeling of shortness of breath and extreme tiredness. This time the doctors were very clear that

something needs to be done. The pumping capacity of my heart had got affected and was hovering

around 45% as against the normal range of 55% – 70%. Over last 10-15 years, the medical science has developed more understanding of the phenomenon of arrhythmia and most importantly technology to treat that. It has now been established that in cases such as mine, the abnormal heart beats are generated by some spots on the heart wall (either inside wall or the outside wall). The doctors can now map the heart walls by inserting a catheter into the heart (just like in an angiography) and locate the points which are generating these abnormal beats and then proceed to zap them with radio-frequency waves. This technique is called Radio-Frequency Ablation and in developed countries it has now become a “routine” procedure like angiography and angioplasty.

I was in very safe hands with Dr Yash Lokhandwala , the best arrhythmia specialist in the city (or maybe country) to attend to the procedure and Dr Milind Gadkari as Cardiologist (from Pune and also my brother-in-law) to advise. The procedure was carried out in Holy Family Hospital in Bandra which has a state-of-the-art hybrid cathlab. Having gone thru an angiography once, I was fairly prepared for the procedure which is quite painless except for puncturing of the femoral artery and related trauma but RFA was something else which I had not factored in. As it happened Dr Yash discovered some 6 points in the heart which were singing their own tunes, more like a bunch of rowdy boys in a class bent upon creating chaos. They were silenced one after the other but one among them (must have been the gang leader) especially was refusing to keep quiet and I think Dr Yash almost gave up as he felt that I was getting more zapped than those truant points which he was directing all those RF waves at (which incidentally I was). So he called it a day and told us that not all but definitely a majority of problems would have got taken care of.

Of course all that RF energy pumped in had a few foreseen and a few unforeseen consequences. It took me a couple of weeks to be able to confidently venture out without feeling twinges due to some residual activity deep inside the heart. This was the foreseen part. The unforeseen effects were more spectacular. My heart was operating like a RF transmitter during this period. ISRO had to cancel their launch of PSLV satellite due to some unexplained radio frequency disturbance, NASA reported that the International Space Station (ISS) had to undertake emergency altitude correction due to one of the Russian satellites changing its course arbitrarily and heading directly towards it but the best part is one of alien space ships which was in the vicinity received this RF signal and (wrongly) concluded that earth had intelligent life on it and decided to return to their home planet Gliese 667 Cc.

In the 4 weeks after the procedure, I got a Thallium stress test done to check the heart functioning and another Holter test to check how effective the RF procedure had been. All of us including the

cardiologists were pleasantly surprised that arrhythmic beats had vanished almost entirely; irregular beats percentage had come down to less than 0.01%. Absolutely amazing. The Thallium test however indicated that the heart functioning may remain below normal and I will need to take care to ensure that the things remain at that level through a combination of diet, exercise and medication.

So now when I hear the Albela song, I know what it means to have a heart that is keeping time. It may not be as accurate as the Cesium -133 clocks that scientists swear by, but I guess this ticker of mine will keep ticking for the remaining couple of hundred years of my life.

LazyBee aka Shirish Potnis
25th April 2015

Of Courts, Mini-Stars and Cyber-Gabbars

Of Courts and Mini-Stars and Cyber-Gabbars

And for another week-end, a few stray thoughts and a few general observations and a few points of view (some of it my own work and some as reported by media):

Like as we speculated last week, our vote of confidence in Indian judiciary did turn out to be a bit premature. Amma got a reprieve which clears her way to occupy the throne once again rather than being just the “power behind throne of some non-entity.”  Some say this must have been a gift to Amma on the Mothers’ Day which was also celebrated last week. As a rule I don’t have anything against gifts to mothers but feel that if only we had the best interests of the Mother India close to our heart, things would have been much much different.  

Like I am happy to see that a few active citizens are questioning propriety of Salman Khan receiving  bail in such a hurry while on an average an under-trial has to wait for months before he can get a hearing even when he can raise the bail money. It is clear that the relief they pray for requires “salve” that comes at a very high price that you and me can not afford. 

Like Mumbai Indians are making a habit of springing up surprises every year and gate-crashing into the Qualifiers of IPL. Harry Houdini would have been proud of them. At least one good outcome of this is Shah Rukh Khan does not have to worry whether MCA will allow him to watch the Eliminator at Wankhede. Poor chap can safely concentrate on getting his roji-roti  and sign up a few contracts for multi-crore multi-starrers with Karan Johar.

Talking of stars, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is creating a mini-star in Southern France which will create the world’s first nuclear fusion reactor, the holy grail of nuclear science. The project will generate 10 times the energy it will consume employing the same thermo-nuclear reactions that take place inside a star like our Sun.  The project was launched in 1987 and is expected to be operational hopefully sometime in the next decade fulfilling Michio Kaku’s prophecy that fusion will be a reality by 2030. The project is sponsored jointly by EU, US, India, China, Korea and the Russian Federation. Glad to find India among the participants. I think whatever one may say about the caliber of our politicians, they are at least smart enough to listen to good sound advice from our scientist community and ensure that India collaborates on such important projects. The project is headed by a Frenchman, Bernard Bigot. This is one bigot I am willing to cheer and support all the way.

This technology will surely revolutionize the energy sector and change the geo-politic scenario permanently and rather drastically. The conflicts over oil and other energy sources will be a thing of past leaving the mankind free to concentrate on other things like, well, the coming water wars.

Technology is also opening other frontiers. Smart implantable devices which can regulate the functions of internal organs like the heart and the pancreas are already available and many more such devices are on testing boards. This threatens to give birth to lucrative new industries, “Personal Cyber Terrorism” and “Cyber Murder”. Imagine you getting a call from a member of some alphabet gang (D/E/F gang) and you hear him / her tell you “I have got access to your pacemaker and unless you transfer X million into my account in next two minutes.....” and proceed to demonstrate his control by stopping your heart for 10 seconds. Let me tell you, there is no better way to ensure that you comply with his / her instructions rather promptly.

On the other hand, if you want to get rid of your old wealthy uncle and get your hands on the money he has promised to leave you in his will, all you need to do is to call your friendly neighbourhood hacker  and give him the supari .  I am sure the 2025 remake of Sholay will no longer have dialogues like “Yeh Rampurwale kaunsee chakki ka aata khatey hai?”  or  “Kitney aadmi the Samba?” instead Gabbar will ask “ Kaunsa encryption kiya hai in Rampurwalone?” and “ Kitney firewall the Samba”?

LazyBee aka Shirish Potnis

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Of Crimes and Courts and Commons

Of Crimes and Courts and Commons

And for a Saturday after a long hibernation, a few stray thoughts and a few general observations and a few points of view (some of it my own work and some as reported by media):

• Like this was one week where the pendulum of fate swung one way and then the other as far as Salman Khan was concerned. A week in which we Indians celebrated our confidence in Indian judiciary only to wonder if we were too premature in our celebration. 
• Like although I am sure Justice Abhay Thipsay, brother of Chess Grandmaster Pravin Thipsay, must have decided that Salman Khan deserved bail on basis of sound legal principles, but would it amount to  “contempt of court” if one were to ask how many bail applications are pending in his court? And if there are, why the differential treatment in this case?
• Like is aam Janata within its rights to seek data about average number of days taken by higher courts to hear appeals by the defence against judgements of lower courts? Or is that “contempt of court”too?
• Like why an eye witness of the crime, who could have best shed light on whether Salman had had a few pegs that night at the Rain Bar and whether he was indeed driving the vehicle, was not called to testify and allowed to leave the country?
• Like it is a great shame that an honest individual like Constable Ravindra Patil couldn’t get any support from his bosses in the Police Department and was hounded out not only from the Police force but effectively out of this world. And why shouldn’t his death be termed a culpable homicide and investigated as one?
• Like why do the same Police top brass bemoan “political interference” when it suits them while they fail to protect their subordinate staff from carrying out their duties diligently? 
• Like why is it that right from recording FIRs, recording testimonies and investigating and preparing cases, enough loopholes are kept so that even what should be an “open and shut case”, appears more like a sieve which can never hold water?
• Like why someone like Salman who is being projected in media as a kind-hearted individual, who undertakes a lot of charity work, hasn’t even bothered to help out those killed and maimed by a vehicle he was travelling in? There could be a number of ways such succour could have been given to the victims without Salman coming in picture.
• Like is the “ghost” driver Ashok Singh, who suddenly materialized during the last act, going to get his comeuppance for, what you and me feel in our guts, is plain wilful perjury with an aim to mislead the court?
• Like we should appoint singer Abhijeet the Minister and Housing for Poor and give him an additional charge as the Minister for Animal Welfare. I am sure he will solve all the problems expeditiously and rather permanently.      
• Like to sum it up, is the charade going to continue for another 10 -12 years in High Court and God knows how many more in Supreme Court till all its relevance is completely lost.
• Like Brits too can sometimes throw up surprises. When everyone was hung up on the “hung parliament” theory, the Conservatives were handed a thumping majority in the House of Commons. Maybe it was the effect of “aabki bar Cameron Sarkar”. Doubt if anyone from Modi camp would have ever imagined that their slogan would set the Thames on fire.
• Like are electorates generally getting fed up of coalition politics and wouldn’t mind offering majority mandates to parties who promise (and deliver) good governance?
• Like the Indian diaspora seems to be slowly taking over the law-making machinery of host countries. Wonder what odds is Ladbrokes offering that a PIO would become a head of US or UK before 2200 AD?
• Like while Tories are celebrating their victory, Labour seems to have lost whatever traction it had; a clear case of Labour’s Love Lost (with due apologies to the bard). So while election results have been a music to David Cameron’s ear, Ed Millibandka to poora band baj gaya.

LazyBee aka Shirish Potnis

9^th May 2015

Hi from LazyBee TheFirst

Hi there! 

A few unlucky ones among you have been subjected to this torture before. This is especially true if you had been (un)fortunate enough to gain entry in B Tech course in IIT Bombay in 1971.  Periodically when the batch reunions have been announced, a certain “LazyBee” seems to wake up and starts buzzing around. Being lazy, this particular specimen hardly ever stings but just about manages to tickle and that too sometimes.

There is a very interesting anecdote which is a part of the bee-lore which has been passed down from hive to hive. One of the ancestors of this so called LazyBee had once bitten Rip Van Winkle when he was having his 20-year nap in a cave in New England and that has somehow introduced this “lazy gene” in the bee-line,  which induces long naps in a few of its descendants. Those afflicted with this gene seem to wake up randomly, buzz around for a while and then go into hibernation again. Thank God that this gene is a recessive one and not many of the bees you find around you are lazy. In fact in some of the bees, this gene seems to have been inverted and these bees are over-active all the time. You must have heard about an uncle of current LazyBee named BusyBee, who had somehow managed to escape the effects of this “lazy gene” (may his soul rest in eternal peace in Garden-Of-Honey) and gave us lots of reasons to smile.

Now with some global climate changes and increase in pollution etc many things seem to be changing. LazyBee seems to spend more time awake than in the past. So maybe, just maybe, you may hear the buzz a little more frequently (you never know with these LazyBees). 

LazyBee aka

Shirish Potnis