Given the many many hours I have spent organising and tagging my collection (manually at first and using a bulk tag editor later), I used to think I was intimately familiar with the ID3v2 format. But something got me thinking a while back, and when I finally crossed the threshold and was consumed enough by the thought to just shut up, wake up, and look up the standard, I was rather pleasantly surprised to see what a narrow window of the format all our media players and jukebox programs and bulk tag editors expose.

Indeed, in the interest of keeping things simple, most programs concern themselves with the obvious Track Number, Title, Album, Artist, and provide the standard interfaces to get to the more obscure, like Genre, Year, Album Art, Lyrics, Sampling Rate, Bitrate - stuff on the basis of which users seldom organise their music. I would have much preferred giving Rating and Play Count (that modern programs, taking a cue from iPod+iTunes, shove in my face by default) a miss. This is owing to a historic personal revulsion at the culture that overpersonalises, and then overquantifies personal popularity. It’s the reason I never use the My Documents folder or any of its derivatives, and the reason I categorically disable My Recent Documents. The much needed dropping of My in Windows Vista has made me only slightly friendlier, but I still don’t use them; and as if to preserve the zero sum, the introduction of ratings for all media files in Vista has made me swear off the details view altogether. But as usual, I digress. I must mention the Rating and Play Count here only because I discovered they are actually stored in the ID3 tag, and not separately in the program’s library structure the way iTunes stores its downloaded album art.

Moving on, the starting point for my thinking about all this was that though it suits me perfectly, a collection that can be organised and more importantly navigated only by artist, title and album, must be woefully inconvenient, especially to the vast majority of Indians who listen primarily to film music. Sure, Title and Album are fairly obvious. But how does one quickly select songs sung by Mohd. Rafi or Yesudas or composed by Salil Chaudhry or Ilaiyaraja or written by Majrooh Sultanpuri or Vairamuthu? I’ve so far only exposed the contention of playback singer, composer and lyricist for the Artist field. I’m sure people make their personal choices, often between playback singer and composer (let’s face it, lyricists are rather neglected in comparison), or otherwise crowd the Artist or Title field with as much information as they may want to be able to later search for (in the process, they seriously break the usefulness of sorting by either of these fields). But consider the kind of additional knowledge that participants of Antakshari-type shows may be expected to have of each song: the actors it was picturised on, the director of the film, the mood of the song (I know I’m taking this rather far). How could one include all such information in the ID3 tag?

Further, consider that those who listen to classical music may care for more than just the artist: In both Hindustani and Carnatic music, the raag(am) is absolutely key information. Taal(am) may matter to some listeners. Accompanying artists may matter to some others. Composer is especially important in Carnatic music, though subordinate to performing artist and barely a contender for the Artist field. How would the ID3 tag include all this information too?

Filled with these questions, I sought to find out how truly global the ID3 standard inherently was, or otherwise at least how extensible it was. I was pleased to find, as I had mentioned earlier, that it is a remarkably well thought out format, and is capable of storing a wealth of information. Many of the so called frames readily step up to cover some of the things I’ve raised here. But not all. And that fact alone does expose a distinct western bias in the specification of the standard, for many of the western Antakshari-equivalent trivia fields find a place in the format. However, considering that, like all good formats, it has its share of private or reserved fields for future use, I suspect it already is sufficiently capable of being global.

What that might take is identifying and standardising a mapping of (localised names of) fields of interest in each genre to frames declared or reserved in the ID3 standard. This would be so applications can decide which core frames to show by default for each genre, and by what name. Of course, since ID3v2, we’re no longer bound to the genres specified in ID3v1.1, which means we’re free to define our own. So that’s another piece of standardisation to get right!

I’m not out to provide complete answers just as yet, but I foresee I might pursue this at another time, perhaps by joining the ID3 developer group. For now, though, I want to share a link to the ID3 v2.3.0 Standard, and especially Section 4: Declared ID3v2 Frames.

Give this a good reading and join me in marvelling at how nearly complete it is - from accounting for covers and remixes to a rather comprehensive set of frames for people involved; from the live recorded western classical music-friendly separation of tags for Section, Title, and Subtitle or Description Refinement, all the way to audio level information, Playlist Delay and the various event timing codes.

Then think of some gaps that remain. I found it rather irritating, for instance, that the frame for Key, which our raag(am) could easily have piggybacked on, is restricted to 3 characters, as that is all it takes to specify it in western classical music. So we either define a new frame or come up with airport-codesque 3-letter abbreviations for all our known raag(am)s. You may notice that the BPM frame could well have lent itself to taal(am), except that it is a numerical string. The standard does not specify a string length limit but I presume the numericalness of the string must somehow be enforced, making this unsuitable for the purpose. As for the ambitious list of extra Antakshari-friendly fields for film music, I’m sure we can dig into the extensibility of the standard.

I think there is tremendous potential in the idea of extending the ID3 standard and developing the idea of genre pages along the lines of character code pages. Internationalisation efforts in the last decade or more have made the world a far more equal place. Music, being very nearly as diverse the world over as language, couldn’t be too far down in the laundry list now, could it?

I’ll waste no words bemoaning how little notice we take of all the design and engineering ingenuity that surrounds us every minute of every day, especially that which involves moving parts. Instead, I’ll make an example in my own life of the wonder that it may take no more than a hand assembled lock past its prime to unlock.

As an aside, I instinctively presumed this lock may have been made in Aligarh, UP. This is because in all the scattered memories I have of Sheel and Link padlocks from my childhood and Alba locks (very specifically!) in IITM, somewhere in the details of 7-lever, 6-lever and 5-lever is also the consistent appearance of the inscribed text, Aligarh (U.P.), parentheses and all. I just checked on the net, and yes, there is an unnatural concentration of lock-makers in Aligarh. Why, even the All India Lock Manufacturers Association is based there! Some other time, I’m going to research the history of that fact a bit. As for the actual door lock I’m speaking of, I have no way of telling if it was made in Aligarh or not. Maybe their expertise is only in padlocks, which, given their greater popularity in India, is enough reason to base the whole association there! Who’s to know?

The problem wasn’t with the lock itself, but with the bolt above it that’s supposed to spring into the hole in the door frame by itself when the door shuts, and retract when  the latch turns. That, of course, is simple enough, and it was no challenge to set that right. However,  when I opened the whole assembly, the lock mechanism caught my eye and I was rather surprised to see how differently it works from how I had imagined.

In moments when I had half-heartedly pondered the working of locks in the past, I arrived at some intuitive approximation to what I now more formally know are called pin and tumbler locks where pins line up on a shear line to allow the cam to turn. I also know now that I had not earlier accounted for the extra pin (or extra two, if there is a master key) that sits above (or below, and I shall get to that in a minute) each pin to prevent turning when there is no key or when there is a key that just lets all pins fall below (or above) the shear line or one that pushes up (or down) all pins over the shear line. It will help to see this howstuffworks page (and the rest in the series) to get an idea of what I’m talking about. Having seen this page, the difference between the orientation of locks in the US and India struck me, and I’m quick to add the parenthetical alternative now when I describe it. The howstuffworks page, understandably, assumes the key is inserted with the notches facing up, as in the US. What I’ve added in speaks for the locks in India.

The problem with those moments of pondering, of course, was that I allowed myself to be satisfied with one explanation and never thought again about the rich variety of locks we have. The lever based padlocks that are common in India are actually pretty different (as of course, are the keys) and the one inside my door lock was lever based as well. There doesn’t appear to be a howstuffworks page on these locks, so I urge everyone reading this to go off on the journey of discovery for themselves and join me in my realm of the micro-incrementally enlightened. I certainly have no intention of spoiling it for you.

With that near-spiritual awakening now behind me, I sought to learn as much about the different locks I have seen as I can - beginning with those most confounding combination locks that I have only seen for real in the US in locker rooms (and in movies and the like on safes). I’m embarrassed to say I had no clue, until now, how to even use those things, far less how they worked. I always thought they were like miniature egg timers. I never asked. It’s odd enough being the locker-room-cultural misfit that kept a towel on. I had no intention of adding ignorance about the locks to that!

How many of you remember the program Surabhi (made and co-hosted by Siddharth Kak) from many many years ago, telecast Sunday nights on Doordarshan? This was the program that made Renuka Shahane a household name, that was (along with Girish Karnad’s Turning Point) the paragon of wholesome educational Doordarshan programming that almost everyone has forgotten once existed. It was probably the first TV programme to have computer generated animation in the opening sequence (of a scene of a temple and a classical dancer which the camera panned and dollied happily about!). And it was the program that is single-handedly responsible for the introduction of the competition postcard, although the fad is itself more than dead now.

For those too young to know, there was a time TV programmes (starting with Surabhi in the early 90’s) had little quizzes or lucky draws, where the audience were supposed to snail-mail their entries on a postcard. This started to seriously hurt the postal service, which at the time sold yellow postcards at a heavily subsidised 15 paise each, primarily for the rural poor. To counter its abuse by people clearly rich enough to own a TV set, the blue 2-rupee competition postcard was introduced. All TV programmes were instructed to insist that entries be sent only on these blue postcards. Needless to say, there is now email and specially overcharged SMS serving the same purpose.

Back to Surabhi. Every week, at the end of the show, there was a question that related somehow to the features shown. The features themselves were usually on the arts or crafts or cultures of some little corner of India, and made for an excellent (like you wouldn’t believe) one hour. After the week’s question was asked, the postcards with correct answers to the previous week’s question were put in a huge pile on the floor and a few lucky winners would be drawn by the two hosts as well as by some kids who were brought on the show just for this purpose (and subjected to the usual What’s your name beta? Which class are you studying in? and the like). Most of the postcards were yellow, as I believe Surabhi had just about gone off air when the competition postcard was introduced. Some of the senders had been clever enough to decorate their postcards to catch the kids’ attention.

So much for that whole prologue. What I’m getting to is the one time there was no big pile. There was one episode in which the previous week’s question received precisely one correct answer. The question, relating, doubtless, to some ancient local craft, involved Siddharth Kak holding a fancy old handmade (and rather exquisite looking) lock and asking how it was supposed to be unlocked. Even in the absence of the explicit barring of so and so and their family and friends from participation, the entire nation had coughed up precisely one person who knew. I still remember the incredibly neat diagram that was on the back of the winning postcard. This was just the guy who knew how to unlock it. It scares me to think of the designer.

This was strangely appropriate, as I happen to personally regard cryptography and network security to be among the most significant mathematically grounded and intellectually stimulating fields of study in Computer Science. Evidently, then, security with moving parts is just as much the reserve of the brightest minds around.

At the end of it all I feel so very enriched by the collective ingenuity of civilisations of the world. I see the roots of our current non-moving-parts engineering wisdom in what they made with moving parts (and no less wisdom by any means) hundreds of years ago. I know this thing with locks is not a fascination that will die any time soon. Neither will it, I assure you, be subverted into non-constructive lock-picking!

It works! And it isn’t half bad!

For those who’ve been keeping track, this is the second thing I’ve changed about my website or blog on account of working at Microsoft. I don’t usually consider myself under any sort of moral compulsion to eat the dog food, drink the kool-aid, or just plain self-host in my personal life. But today, though I had earlier resisted the change even when I saw a rather compelling need to depart from managing my blog entirely from the browser, curiosity got the better of me, and here I finally am, embracing a product that I’m happy to say Microsoft got right.

If you’re wondering, the first time was when I migrated search within my website over to Windows Live Search. Other than the bonus of allowing me to search just my site, rather than the whole domain (consequently my brother’s site as well) as I was forced to with Google, I find it perfectly equivalent for the rather modest purpose I give it.

Windows Live Writer is the desktop blogging software that, to me, captures perfectly where Microsoft is today: straddling the comfort of its place on the desktop and the uncertainty of its place on the web. In beta, and rightly so, for that’s where we are, on the transition to a new balance.

I’ll say no more today, for I’m scarcely even in alpha myself, where finding a voice in the technical blogosphere is concerned, but having stuck my head out even this one time, I’m hoping I’ll find the inclination, or at least an obligation, to return.

Ever noticed the emerging New Urban Indian stereotype in the advertisements on national TV? Ever given thought to the names, surnames, settings, vernacular forms of addressing elders, or where applicable, the good old traditions this urban Indian still proudly embraces? How many of them even attempt to acknowledge the existence of the cultures of South India, unless in distasteful caricature? If you press me, I remember one - a Bru filter coffee ad many many years ago, whose choice was obvious given who drank all the coffee in India before globalism made it cool. But what’re the odds anyone else does?

It’s pointless to speak of Hindi films because, even if they are the most widely watched Indian films in India and the world, they are as inadequate a national medium as can be. In fact, they do a particularly terrible job of representing even the Hindi-speaking population of India. So in the paragraph or two that it takes to dismiss it, let me throw the dog a bone. How many mainstream movies with contemporary settings can you think of that, when they are not set in a fictitious village called Ramgarh or Sundar Bhanpur, are set in any city other than Bombay? In recent times, of course, there have been countless films set abroad, but I’m not going there. And there have been, much to my relief, a fair number set in Delhi too. But other than that - Lucknow? Patna? Bhopal? Take your pick. Practically none, in the many decades of the industry.

A lot of North Indians wonder why people in the south are such mind-numbingly insane fans of their favourite actors. I have always only told them one thing: all Hindi movies are set in Bombay, making them distant and inaccessible at a very fundamental level to the larger part of their audience. The South Indians, though, all have their local heroes, and identify a great deal more with them. Most Hindi films, on the other hand, glorify extremely rich Punjabis who live in Bombay or London but whose hearts throb for that little state’s five rivers and its green fields and the elderly mothers nestled therein. Does that difference alone explain away the insanity of the Rajnikanth or Chiranjeevi or Rajkumar fan? Well, perhaps not, but what the heck, I tried!

But I digress. This discussion began not being about film, but about TV advertisements, since they pretend to cater to a national audience. The most ready justification of course, is that the north is where a good deal of the market is. And that, almost entirely by itself, closes the argument as soon as it had begun. But I question the need to just accept that as it is. What follows is a partial statement of the problem.

This is mostly unspoken but there is tremendous friction between North and South Indians everywhere. I’ve seen it in college and at work. It’s avoidable, however, as it stems largely from ignorance. This is in fact a two-way problem, for South Indians are nearly as ignorant about the north as North Indians are about the south - a lot of South Indians think all Punjabis are Sikh, for instance; a lot of South Indians have unnecessary prejudices about what transactions it is or is not advisable to conduct with people from which North Indian state. I cheerfully absolve myself of any such ignorance and prejudice, however, and move on back to the argument. Indeed, this is a two-way problem, but I shall focus today on one side as I have seen it a lot more, and find it a good deal more worrying. Everyone in the south receives more than their fair share of exposure to the north through the so called national media and the national language, so that is clearly not the side I’m focusing on.

One commonly repeated rant is that North Indians consider all South Indians to be Madrasis. When they do realise that Madrasi is not a language, they correct themselves, say Tamil, and go on to as cheerfully ignore the other three states and languages as they did before. This is manifest equally in the distasteful caricatures of Tamilians that movies and TV series are loaded with as in misguided attempts by television networks to introduce Tamil programming or channels in order to “cater to the South Indian market.” Do all these reluctant south-appeasers lack the basic resources that tell them Telugu is the second most widely spoken language in India, or that it is the language in which most movies are made in India every year? Incidentally, my picking Telugu here has nothing to do with the fact that it’s my language - it just happens to lend itself to the facts in this case.

Claims that “all South Indians are called Madrasi” are more correctly dated circa 1980, when the Southern capitals were all sleepy little towns too far from Delhi and Bombay to be accounted for. That may indeed be excusable, as historically, the south has been rather removed from the action in India - from foreign invasions, from the full ferocity of the independence struggle (it is known that many among the west-looking South Indian intelligentsia quite preferred British rule), and from giving a damn about Pakistan and Kashmir. However, its artifacts still remain today, even when the same capitals are the face of the new Indian economy, and even when everyone knows about Chandrababu Naidu. You would think that change would translate to more exposure, more awareness, and with it more acceptance. Yet, I look around and see a lot of the same us-versus-them attitudes today.

A depressingly large number of North Indians who have relocated to the south (well, obviously, that’s where the new brand of action is these days) cannot name the 4 southern states or languages (That practically nobody can name all 7 north-eastern states is a story for another day). Neither do they even know the name of the language spoken in their host state. They still come down here with obstinately held prejudices such as “South Indians/Madrasis are rude. They don’t speak Hindi. You only get sambar and rice to eat.” Not even the enormous body of evidence wildly to the contrary, as one may find in Hyderabad, for instance (especially of the Hindi-speaking bit), is sufficient to undo that. They are still consumed by inherited notions about the food, the people and the places. Even when they mean to speak about one city, they generalise to the entire South, and compare it with their own corners of the North, which, somehow, in the reverse process for everyone in a 200 kilometre radius of the capital, is very conveniently New Delhi.

But the important thing to note is that the same people who compare the heck out of the South Indian cities feel no such obligation to obsessively compare and complain about any other cities in the north, even where they must knowingly accept significantly lower standards of life than in Delhi or Bombay or even Bangalore, Madras or Hyderabad. Even more puzzlingly, most desist entirely from acknowledging the positive differences, or for that matter, even seeing differences as differences rather than as failures at replicating what they believe is the national standard. Instead, they cling to their original ideas as infallible truths, preferring to disregard or distort evidence where it disagrees with them. But then, that is how it works - it wouldn’t be prejudice if it was flexible about revision. So it’s not the notions I care about eliminating, it is the absence of exposure that could dispel the prejudices which, if I should descend into discussing the evolutionary benefits of xenophobia, it is only in human nature to foster.

Back to the bigger point, now. I must reiterate, though, before I continue, that I fully acknowledge that this problem works both ways, but choose to focus on one side as South Indians more quietly adjust in the north than the other way around. South Indian inflexibility, where it exists, is seldom grounded in the deluded notion that their way is the standard way. How could it be? Anyway, really, moving on!

This kind of friction is not new to other parts of the world. I believe, however, that in some places, diversity has been more tactfully handled. I can only speak for America, of course, but frankly, I believe that it is really the only place in the world that is uniformly across its length and breadth (and not, unlike other countries, just in its single largest city) comparably plural to India. While in India the plurality is mostly linguistic, in America, it is mostly ethnic (especially as the attendant linguistic differences vanish within one generation). There are all sorts of us-versus-thems over there, and in fact, because of the racial differences, more visibly obvious ones at that. I must acknowledge that the southern United States do in a sense feel equally neglected in America’s national media (again, unless in caricature) as perhaps South Indians do. But that is beside the point.

I do believe, vacuous as the attempt might be, there is at least the impression of diversity in American advertisements. Sure, the largest part of the market is white American, but that does not stop them from working in the “token black guy” or the “token asian girl”. Incidentally, I quite disapprove of clubbing the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai and Filipino all together as Asians. Having said the defining boundaries in America are racial and not linguistic, I can argue that the East Asians get their representation, and the distinction of South East Asians gets a tad neglected. But that too, as was a microcultural difference between the whites of the northern and southern United States, is beside the point, and subordinate to the larger racial distinction that does get through.

So does this token representation ease racial tensions? Perhaps not. But I believe it does, in its own little way, create awareness and acceptance, while at the same time, at least partially appeasing the Asians and the African-Americans. For the record, I have in my time only seen one national-TV advertisement in the US featuring an Indian, and yes, it was a distasteful caricature (it was an incredibly asinine ad, even by American standards, for Dairy Queen, if I remember correctly).

Even direct marketing and internal publicity campaigns go that extra mile just to appear diverse. Even at Microsoft, an extremely diverse company in every sense of the word, it is joked that the posters are a lot more diverse than the company itself.

Even more briefly than I brought up Hindi films, I must mention that though the vast majority of Hollywood movies are set in New York City and LA and a larger majority of TV series are set in New York City (again, a yet larger majority of which are shot in front of a live audience in a sound stage in LA!), the others: Chicago, San Franciso, Washington DC, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, all have their occasional representation.

My idea, of course, was not as much to dwell on the details of how America does it. So I’ll return to India and suggest that a little diversity in our ads, given that they are supposed to depict the New Urban Indian, would not make them much the worse for reflecting at least some of the cosmopolitan truth that our cities are today made of. Will the whole North Indian market really collectively reject a product that dares offer some of that modern urban imagery to the South Indian to share, when the reality is that they share practically all other spaces in their urban lifestyle with them?

The Fevikwik ad that had the snooty westernised North Indian recreational angler with all his equipment beaten to 4 fish (remember onnu, rennu, moonu, naalu?) by a primitive Tamilian fisherman (but, for some reason, unless in my overenthusiasm to make a point I remember this completely wrong, depicted as the stereotypical Tamil Brahmin-type whose reason to catch fish totally escapes me!) with his fevikwik was widely hailed as brilliant. Sure, it was meant to be funny, and I wouldn’t take the depictions too seriously, but would a reversal of roles and stereotypes offend just because it no longer complied with accepted stereotypical humour? Who decides which way it is or isn’t ok to depict a North or South Indian? Even if our market really possesses the ability and maturity to accept variations on those unwritten rules, would the content creators in our media ever believe it?

The fact that they don’t should seem particularly tragic given how many South Indians there are to reckon with in the media in creative or editorial roles - be it advertising, the press or TV production. One must credit the youth/music channels with being a little forward in this regard. Back when MTV and Channel V were new in India and catered primarily to westernised youth, a considerably large number of their production staff were from the creative profession and many had southern connections. Not just behind-the-scenes, but among VJs, when native Hindi fluency was not a requirement as it seems to be today, South Indian representation was rather high. Since it was known that a proportionately larger audience for western music lived down south (a fact confirmed beyond doubt by the unfailing choice of all bands performing in India, albeit at the end of their careers, of Bangalore as the sole venue), the southern sensibility was anything but neglected.

Even as the two major western music channels gradually went the Hindi route, they remain, till date, the only channels still concerned about the south. One must exclusively credit Channel V with the introduction of the Malayalee into the national consciousness via Lola Kutty. Some love her and some (mostly Mallus) hate her for precisely the same reason, but for certain, the only reason she is a success is because she takes the stereotype of the Mallu (as was known only in the rest of the South before) and, through the same exaggeration earlier reserved for Tamilian spoofs, squeezes the last drop out of it. Would audiences be as fond of a different portrayal of the South? Is it the privilege of only the stereotypical Bengali to be scholarly and intellectual and communist and art-filmy?

Moving away from stereotypes and back to just the issue of representation, an interesting article by Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN-IBN (formerly of NDTV) confirms my suspicions about the reason behind (what I personally applaud as) a welcome change in programming to accommodate the south:

Think about it… more than 60 per cent of the English-speaking audience for television news channels is south of the Vindhyas (at least that’s what the television audience meter ratings tell us). Yet, more than 75 per cent of the news reporting on television is confined to the metros of Mumbai and Delhi according to a survey conducted by a research group. It’s a dichotomy that is embarrassing.

Not just CNN-IBN and NDTV but also India Today, The Week and Outlook (magically all simultaneously awakening to an equivalent statistic in readership) have their unimaginatively alliterated Simply Souths and Southern Spices or some such. While I welcome the initiative, I have just one bone to pick with it - these supplements are telecast or distributed only in the south, while the northern editions continue to carry the same north-centric focus. Awareness and acceptance will only result if the north also sits up and watches and reads along. How else are prejudices and jaundiced opinions to be corrected? How else are they to know that not all South Indians speak Tamil (not Madrasi), not all butcher the Hindi language in a horrendous Mehmood-esque accent, and not all of them wear lungis and have moustaches? How are they to know that South Indian states are more progressive in governance, more literate, have less crime and have better social indicators, especially where women are concerned? How is the balance that informed opinions create going to be achieved?

By inserting South Indianisms into the national consciousness, along with North-Eastisms, Biharisms, Oriyaisms, Gujjuisms, Ghatiisms, Bongisms, and every other -ism that it takes to make this wonderful large country. And by compelling you and me to watch. Provided, of course, you’re not overempowered by the veto of the remote.

Not long long ago nor far far away,
I remember it like it was here and yesterday.
November the first, nineteen eighty eight,
In the year of their lord, in an empty Begumpet.

The youngest of the litter was six weeks old,
The last one to go but the prettiest, I’m told.
As many weeks old as she was inches in height,
And as many grades deep an immaculate white.

A wet black nose and two lovely black eyes,
Two pink little ears heard her parents’ muffled cries.
Four little paws held her puzzled where she stood,
She’d run back to her mother, if only they would.

The servant boy reluctantly pushed her our way,
Powerless, she toddled, and first learnt to obey.
Four little paws settled down in Amma’s palm,
Eight adoring eyes she now saw meant no harm.

Laid out on a cloth that night, in her first ever bed,
Were some of my toys, though at first I had said,
They were mine and I wouldn’t hear the least of keeping them there,
Till Nanna said she was my sister, and they were hers too to share.

More effective persuasion I rarely since have heard,
And in protest I’ve rarely since even dreamed a single word,
As Maria became Silivas became Silvi and grew,
Out of cars and houses, and even points of view.

Seven times the quicker she grew but without age,
Without ever a litter of seven, or even one, in her image.
There was to be only one like her, gone seven times too soon,
But in my eyes that seven times outlived even the moon.

The memories are too numerous to recount to crippling rhyme,
So this is what I choose to be the single headline time.
The day a puppy sniffed her way into a family of four,
To the bottoms of our hearts and of the garden floor.

Evidently, our diplomatically immune friends up there were not going to let my trip be as immemorable as that.

Make no mistake, the interview went fine. The droves of locals were treated like crap. George W. Bush and his bunch of idiots hung from the walls. Tiny speakers amplified the fear and nervousness in the air as consular officers devoured their prey alive. All the usual sights and sounds and attitudes that the US Consulates in these parts of the world are known to be made of.

I noticed one of the consular officers was a sweet looking elderly white-haired ponytailed man I distinctly remember sitting at an adjacent table on my last trip to Amethyst a month ago (Anshumani Ruddra: If you’re reading this, maybe you remember this dude too!). Post-Thanksgiving, all the consular officers seemed a little cheerful and chatty. I imagined if I was assigned to his row, I’d just chat a bit, with his permission, as he finished up with my application and told me I was all set. Don’t mean to get too familiar but I remember seeing you at Amethyst a month back. Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving.

That wasn’t to be anyway. I was assigned another row and my interview was done about as soon as it had begun.

On my way out I saw an American employee who had earlier been ushering us into various queues (American, as opposed to the several multilingual locals who are also employed for the same job). Seemed nice and cheerful back then. He wouldn’t mind if I quickly asked him something that was on my mind. Would he?

“Excuse me,” I said. At the same time, a local security guard noticed I was attempting a conversation and pointed with his gun that I should mind my business and go on.

“Yes?” he turned around.

“Quick academic question.”

“A+!”

“I noticed those license plate numbers look American. How does that work?” I said, pointing to the rows of Consulate-owned cars. I had first noticed them on my way in. They had yellow plates, like taxis under the new colour scheme in India, but numbers in the US format, like 8BG 391 (as a fictitious example). They had no American state’s name on them, no silly sobriquets (The Show-Me State?! Come on!), no artwork. I wondered if they might have some special status, these cars. Must be registered by the US government (maybe as a 51st state that included consulates and embassies - who knows, maybe even CIA prisons! - everywhere) and perhaps also immune to Indian traffic laws. I had even seen similar license plates in Hyderabad - they appeared registered to the United Nations. So how did this really work, I thought. Maybe this guy would tell me. For all the information they shove in your face inside the consulate in the form of brochures on the state of Utah and the like, perhaps some holiday cheer had found its way to the outside and perhaps it would get a harmless little question answered.

Instead, a “You may leave now.” and five seconds later, I was outside and back in India.

Rightly so, I feel like an idiot. What was I thinking trying to chat? His job is to keep strictly to business. I cannot expect him to answer friendly questions off duty. And from where he was, I’m sure my question seemed a lot less harmless than it did to me. Of course, on American turf, he has the same right to see me and everyone else and any interest of ours, academic or otherwise, as a threat to security as he would have had back in the US. But I still think: Maybe I could have been answered less curtly, and yet with harm done to neither’s interests. I’m sure all the rudeness in the world is justifiable by some security concern or the other. But does it have to be that way to begin with?

I recently saw a very popular video on YouTube showing 2 minutes of traffic in Hyderabad, currently 2.5 million views and 3000 comments strong. In those comments I have seen enough hatred and racism to deplete what remains of the ozone layer with. Most disturbing was a series of comments by someone who claims he works for a US Consulate in India and has nothing but the deepest hatred and contempt for our nation, along with some sympathy, apparently, for the thousands of beggars and homeless people. A contempt and a sympathy he’s happy to both guard and share in the safety of his American premises. Could have been someone I saw today. Who’s to say?

Makes you wonder where the same at-least-superficial American hospitality and friendliness that throws a million spinal-cord-issued “Hi!”s and “How’s your day been?”s your way on the mainland and I presume Alaska and Hawaii (and I further presume even Costa Rica and Puerto Rico) vanishes when these self-righteous paranoid and superior pricks come over to set civilisation bars for who can and cannot enter their precious homeland.

I understand there’re more people aspiring to travel to the US than to any other country, and more from the Chennai Consulate (at least until the one in Hyderabad cuts its load by half next year!) than most others in the world. Many of them have difficulty following simple instructions spoken in an American accent. Some confuse left index finger and right in those moments of extreme tension. I understand it’s the job of this consulate to filter out a lot more chaff than elsewhere. But what I don’t understand is the goddamn high-handedness around the third world. A little niceness never hurt anyone did it? Not in their grocery stores and on their roads anyway. So why not over here too? They still have the power to not give us visas - a power they exercise in great measure. Why can’t they be pleasant about it?

Is the culture of a consulate supposed to be all that different from a regular US government office (which in turn, I have seen is not all that different from an Indian government office)? Agreed, with US embassies and consulates worldwide being targeted by terrorists, this area must be special and sensitive and fully deserving of the various security measures in place. But even in US airports, in spite of the unpleasantness of security checks, I have found officials by and large polite and courteous. For crying out loud, even Immigration officers are relatively chilled out. In short, on the homeland, where there is the greatest threat of all, the American disposition survives. Why then, does rudeness rule inside the Chennai consulate even after all security checks have convinced them we’re clean? I can think of no reason except that it is a US consulate in the third world and the employees here are possibly drunk on the power of holding the key to what our own people have come to regard a privilege as much as the employees guarding it themselves - to be able to enter the United States. We give them that reason to act high-handed. And we alone can take it away.

Surely, for goddamn certain, this would not have been the attitude in a US consulate in the developed world. Or in an Indian embassy in the US, if this was the guy asking the question. But why dwell over pointless realities? Especially ones that you could reverse?

I have been advised, and wisely, to admit to my own indiscretion in today’s incident. And I fully do. It was downright stupid of me, to the point that it excuses everyone else I point a finger at. But even more wisely, I have been advised to turn it into a constructive urge to work further towards that dream - of the day India will be the country everyone’s going to be fighting to enter. Not in my lifetime, but some day. And that day we will show our character by remaining nice and warm and welcoming. Even to those on the wrong side of the global inequality.

Until then, I will daydream, in a way that is only human and childish, about a retributive repeat-encounter. I won’t be forgetting this face for a long time. I really hope I run into him at Amethyst or some other similarly pretentious island for his ilk here in my second hometown. Let’s see him ask me to leave then. He may technically still live under the law of his own country, but he roasts under the sun that shines in mine.

Follow up: I read up on the net about diplomatic and consular immunity and this Wikipedia page is pretty comprehensive. Ironically, there is more than a passing mention of diplomatic and consular vehicles and the fact that they are indeed immune to local traffic laws, followed, for good measure, by a list of various infamous traffic violations that diplomats have or have not gotten away with! All the trouble I could have saved if I had read this first, or waited to read it later in any case!

On Tuesday, the 29th of August, I was at my desk at work: either really busy switching between desktops or just sipping hot chocolate or reading the news or my mail. The intricate interleaving of these possibilities in my typical day prevents me from being more certain. I found Amma had missed-called me on my cellphone in what would usually be a routine late afternoon call. When I called her back, she said there was a tiny kitten (the size of a little lizard in her words) crying incessantly just outside the house. Its mother was looking at it from a distance but never picking it up to join the rest of the litter. What were we to do?

Some consultation later, I told Amma to try and find where the litter was, and to sneak in the kitten when its mother wasn’t looking - apparently, cats cannot count. Of course, this would only work if we knew where the litter was in the first place, and for darn certain, cats can keep a secret. Plan B was to take the kitten in, keep it wrapped in something warm, and try to get it to drink out of cotton dipped in warm milk. And soon enough, I was told that had been arranged, though the kitten wasn’t drinking what it was offered.

A while later, armed with a printout of this document, I was on my way home. Neonatal kittens depend on their mother for everything - being too young to regulate their own body temperature, they need the warmth of her body to stay alive; and the nutrients and antibodies in her milk are extremely hard to come by anywhere else. Cow’s milk is an especially inadequate substitute. PeeWee was doomed from the word go. But I was not about to accept that yet.

We were having guests over for dinner that night, and though I was worried I’d be either distracted or misconstrued as rude, in hindsight, I’m glad PeeWee was determined enough and the guests understanding enough (being all extremely fond of animals themselves) that neither happened any more than it absolutely had to for only decency’s or duty’s sake.

PeeWee was wrapped in old clothes and placed in a transparent plastic bucket and at first it made me laugh how much effort it took just to find and unwrap her from among the mass of cloth. I had been waiting more than two hours just to get that first glimpse of her, and when I finally did, I knew nothing could have ever prepared me for it. I saw only a brown rat’s tail at first. The hair on her tail had clearly not yet grown enough for it to appear rounded like a cat’s tail, but instead it tapered like a rat’s.

I soon realised PeeWee was deep inside a sleeve and couldn’t just be unwrapped. She’d have to be pulled out. And her tiny retractable claws, indeed the only thing that was full-blown feline about her, clinging to the cloth made that difficult for me, and uncomfortable for her. She was now awake and crying, and it appeared to me some thread of the rag was still sticking to her. So I pulled at it and it only made her cry more. It then struck me I was trying to separate it at the wrong end! This was no thread - this was the disintegrating remains of her umbilical cord. So I pulled at the other end and disentangled it from the rag. A few seconds later, all of her was in my hand, for me to get a complete look.

Amma had clearly been exaggerating! She was no lizard. She was definitely the size of a mouse. Her head and snout were shaped exactly like a tiger’s, lacking the sharper features that domestic cats grow into. Her eyes were quite obviously still closed, and her tiny tiny (they were really tiny - each about the size of my little fingernail!) ears didn’t serve her any purpose just as yet. Her whiskers were practically non-existent at this time, and her meow was more a baby’s wail than a cat’s mew, though it took her the lung power of a lion’s roar to make the sound. Her fur was still matted from the dried placental liquid - which was probably all her mother left her with. And her lips and tongue were a pink to die for. As was the rest of her toothless mouth. The only features in her mouth were four projections that prematurely announced the canines that would slowly but steadily arrive there. For now, this was the most menacing she could look to any being relative to whose size PeeWee was indeed a lion! Relative to me of course, she was a curiously coloured brownish-orange and white mouse!

PeeWee was a little cold, and from checking that her skin didn’t spring back into shape when pinched, I could tell she was quite dehydrated. She was hardly interested in milk, though she occasionally chewed at the cotton ear bud dipped in milk that I offered her. I blew warm at her head to keep her warm, and held her to my heart. PeeWee was my baby, and my mission for tonight, till I could get her into the more qualified hands of the Blue Cross the next day. She stopped crying and snuggled in my closed fist, and I set her down while I gathered the selfishness for a meal and good company.

The crying began again soon after, and I was determined to feed her somehow. I remembered what the document said about feeding a kitten when it’s cold: it can make it slip into a coma. So I made arrangements that were distinctly more long term than the warmth my breath had to offer. Water was being boiled to be filled into a hot water bottle, which would then be wrapped in a towel and set beside her in the bucket - just like the document advised we emulate the warmth of the mother. I had a little milk warmed and fed it to her. A little later I even went to buy her a little glucose to mix in it. It was my only option to give her some energy. Luckily the shops hadn’t closed yet.

PeeWee was now warm and a little well-fed. The trick was not to make her suckle the ear bud itself, but to moisten her lips and tiny whiskers with it (even as she very strongly resisted it with those surprisingly powerful paws) so she’d lick it up. There even was a point when she was directly suckling my finger and I let the milk flow there in a trickle from above so she’d get some to drink. I remember the document said something that I found rather amusing, about burping the kitten after a feeding, but I hadn’t a clue how I would accomplish that, so I let it pass.

I knew the cycles PeeWee would go through during the rest of the night, as I set her bucket and remaining feeding paraphernalia down beside my bed, and turned down the fan and closed the window so she’d be warm. Every hour and a half or so, after she had fallen asleep in the warmth, she would be awake because it was no longer warm enough. At this time, I would unwrap one layer around the hot water bottle and feed her and set her back to sleep. Though she’d helplessly climb and burrow all around her heap of clothes inside looking for a teat, she would never find one. Every time she reached the surface and found fresh air, she’d burst into her wail again, and I’d feed her once more or dip her mouth directly in the bowl of milk, and set her back deep within her checkered little cloth she loved so much and watch her climb back out. After about 10 or 15 minutes, she would eventually stop burrowing and fall asleep. When the hot water bottle ran cold, I would go back to the stove to reheat it, and start the process again - two layers, one layer, reheat, and so on.

During the night, PeeWee’s water had to be reheated twice, which means she woke up about four times. Every time she cried it broke my heart. Here I was picking up a blind and deaf little thing and shoving some wet cotton into the only sensory window it had to its cruel deserting world. She resisted every single time, thrusting her head back and pushing whatever was in front of her with her paws. My only defence was to lower her mouth directly into the little bowl of milk-glucose solution, and soon it appears that tiny brain of hers began to even anticipate what that particular physical orientation entailed - when her head was lower than the rest of her body - and she vigorously pushed away what she thought (very accurately, I might add) was the rim of the bowl. Of course, she was no match for my cruelly good intentioned strength, and she would end up being dunked in the bowl nonetheless, and she would come out of it wincing like a baby who had just been force fed an uninteresting vegetable - stretching out all her paws and moving her head from side to side to escape the imaginary spoon that she knew was going to find her mouth anyway. The cutest little bubble would form around her mouth everytime she was lifted out of the milk, and one cuter little cough later, she’d lick up what was left around her mouth.

I was having strange dreams about PeeWee crying whenever I managed to catch an hour’s sleep while she did. The first time I needed to reheat her water, I had set an alarm, and so I woke her up. And she cried for so long that I decided I would not wake her up again unless she herself woke up. I was drifting in and out of my sleep, worried if PeeWee was still alive, and yet determined not to wake her up just to make sure, even when more than two hours had gone by without her waking up and crying. At around 5:00 am on Wednesday, 30th August, I was pleased to find that PeeWee had lived to see daylight, and just as I woke up, I saw that she too was fidgeting under her blanket and that she would soon be awake and mewing too. And indeed, in a few minutes, she was. I fed her myself one last time, and reheated her water and set her back in her bed and went back to sleep.

When I woke up in the morning, PeeWee was extremely comfortable and showed signs of being quite energetic. I left home for work with instructions for Amma to take care of her while I was away, and said I would call for the Blue Cross when I got to work. A few phone calls and phone number exchanges later, the Blue Cross arrived at home to pick up PeeWee. Amma had hurriedly taken a few photographs of her, though she had forgotten to use the macro mode for as close range as the shots were. They asked for a little cardboard box to take her in, and Amma also gave them the checkered cloth that PeeWee seemed to like so much. The Blue Cross, I had ascertained, had an incubator and some nutrients in stock to mix in her milk. So we felt quite happy for PeeWee. She’s a survivor, I thought to myself, and she will make it.

Later on Wednesday night, I was still reeling from the experience of the previous night. I could still feel a phantom PeeWee’s delicate little ribs slide through her skin over my fingers, and her paws and tail pushing against the palm of my hand. I missed her terribly and stared at the spot at the foot of my bed where her bucket had been. But I was sure she was being well taken care of. I thought we’d visit her over the weekend and take proper photos this time.

I called the Blue Cross on Thursday and Friday, and they said she was doing fine. They were giving her milk and calcium and keeping her warm. However, when I called on Saturday, there were unmistakable delaying tactics at play in answering my routine question. On my third call, the guy told me PeeWee had died, and gave the phone to the ward boy who had been taking care of her, to tell me any specifics I wanted to know. She was too young to live without her mother’s milk, and must have succumbed to some illness or infection or the other, and had died Friday night. I thanked them for trying their best to keep her alive even those few days. And I wept for my little PeeWee.

I’m not yet at the stage where I can see the good in all this. I can see a kitten with only a thermal sense, thrust into hands that her instinct had taught her to expect nothing from just as yet. And see a big gaping hole where there should be a reason for Nature usually doing this to one kitten in each litter. Could you imagine you were as primitive a life form as PeeWee, blind and deaf to even your own wail, programmed only to seek out warmth and milk but hour after hour, minute after minute, instead finding something else entirely foreign? Would you know the hand that fed or the breath that warmed? Would you love it or fear it? Would you even know something was amiss? If you lived through that, that would be some life experience. She could have been the toughest and wisest cat on the streets. But Nature had other plans.

For now I think of what I have learnt from this, and hope PeeWee can find meaning in teaching humanity, or one of its members in any case, a lesson or two. PeeWee was a life briefly in my care. She could have been human or a kitten or a bonobo monkey and it wouldn’t make a difference, except in terms of what chances I thought she had of surviving. In those moments that she was my responsibility, she was a life no different from the ones I collide with and cherish and enjoy and suffer everyday.

She was a life and had the value of a life on her. It may have all along been easy to say it, but I know now that all lives are equal. And the only thing that separates one from another in our imperfect human eyes is how much we choose to love it.

From nightsky-hooded face in cloud
Peered eyes unmoved to rainy tears
As echoed lands leafed and wooded loud
With a thunder that even lightning fears.

As stirrupped shoe spurred horseshoed hoof
To race winds out of whistling breath
And fumbling hand scaling sloping roof
Hung one foot further from certain death.

As shirking guard caught longer wink
With every quieter moonlit hour
And grew with every waking blink
The enemy troops in man-horse-power.

As gate-latch from the inside turned
To let the hordes of horsemen in
And smokelessly the outposts burned
With dreams cut short and trapped within.

As roused and into armours slipped
The king and all his thousand men
And swords were crossed and visors tipped
To the hope their eyes would meet again.

As feigned the lefts and struck the rights
To kill and maim; unshield and unsaddle
And clashed the minds and banged the mights
While rose to sky the cries of battle.

As fell with each a heroic thud
A hundred martyred defenders dead
And stained the earth the enemy blood
From every trophy enemy head.

As gate-latch from the inside turned
To let the riderless horses out
And heaps of vanquished bodies burned
Till headless ghosts were all about.

As washed and out of armours slipped
The king and his nine hundred men
And swords replaced; wineglasses tipped
For their eyes indeed had met again.

Then turned to rest the yawning night
And rang again the morning bell
A hundred times - for each lost to the fight
The day the fortress almost fell.

This morning I went out to get a haircut - to the same place I had mentioned in my now nearly 3-year old entry titled All for the Lack of a Bona Fide Sister for giving me “a haircut that took about one hour. It was more an operation, for the surgical range of scissors he used to trim my hair, a millimetre at a time, bringing back to it the proportions the IIT barber had ruthlessly robbed it of!” Today it was apparent that the new generation of barbers at this saloon values time just as little and precision just as much as the old. But that’s hardly relevant to (1). So we’ll skip over my haircut altogether.

After I was done, I got out onto the footpath, waiting to be picked up and driven back home. On a black Hero Honda standing still beside the curb in front of me, were a man and his two daughters. The two of them were perched in extreme comfort on the fuel tank, their legs just about reaching below it. The sight alone proved to me that the age of 4 is indeed the cutest of all - because it’s only a little older than 3, but with little school uniforms! The father was holding in one hand two plastic baskets, identical except for their colour, and each holding identical contents, again, in different colours where possible - a waterbottle, a packet of biscuits, a lunch box, and I’ll need to use my imagination for the rest, though I doubt it will come in very useful. The basket that was closer to me had a book label on it, which had only D. Lavanya and LKG filled in, leaving School, and obviously Subject, blank! With the other hand, he held on to the handlebar, and balanced the weight of the motorcycle and its one and two quarter riders using his legs.

I was watching how happy and fresh the little girls were, entirely untroubled by the noise and the heat of 10:30am Madras, and was smiling a hybrid of my silly life-is-beautiful and I-love-kids smiles. One of the girls then said something to her father, at which point he called out to his wife, who I didn’t notice had all along been in a shop behind me, and asked her to get a Mirinda or a Fanta as well. I turned around to see the mother, standing in front of the shop, already holding a bottle of the new Appy Fizz, and nodding agreeingly as she simultaneously started to ask the shopkeeper for it and fished out more money from her purse. It struck me that the sisters probably like establishing the difference in their identities through different colours as much as through different drinks, if at all using different colours was their idea to begin with.

The mother was herself all dressed up and ready for what I’m sure was the beginning of her work day. And in a few minutes she was back with a bottle of Maaza, explaining that they didn’t have either orange drink. The father said it’s all right and put the bottle inside one of the baskets. She then got onto the bike and off they went, sneaking into the flow of traffic at a moment when nobody else was coveting the space they occupied. I noticed one of the rear-view mirrors was missing from its socket, but not being missed much otherwise. All they seemed to have between their two little and two adult minds was the start of a new day, now that the smaller joys offered by their daily refreshment-choosing ritual were past. Not irritation at, or discomfort from, two-second bursts of accelerating and braking, but just an eagerness on all their faces for where those bursts would eventually lead them.

In the minutes that followed until I was picked up and driven back home, I saw several such families going by, all uncomplainingly huddled onto their two-wheelers, off to school and work and whatever other mundaneness their respective ages imposed on them; and all managing to be contagiously cheerful through it all. In hindsight, that time of day, 10:30am, appears odd for school to start, but my imagination once again fails me, and I don’t care to press it.

What today showed me was the incredible spirit of our middle-class. Now at the age of 23, I may be in a position where the traffic is only a minor inconvenience. But to all the people I saw today on their two-wheelers (consulting (1) reminds us there are probably more such in Madras than elsewhere in India), it is a very real hazard through which they must pass everyday. Twice.

I have never complained about the traffic after I returned to India. I have occasionally lost my temper for a second when some stupid kid on a motorbike cut me off at 60kmh and missed me by an inch. And occasionally, when that maniac had a pillion rider, I’ve gone plain hopping mad for a minute - for I can never forgive anyone who treats even the lives of someone they care enough to give a ride with the same recklessness that they treat their own. In either case, the worst thing I’ve ever escaped from is a scratch. To my car.

Here were families upon families, all so earnestly protected from every imaginable danger of traffic by the man with his hands on the handlebar. I wonder if the kids understood just how unlikely those same smiles would be on their faces if their family hadn’t succeeded as well at coming together and enjoying even a ritual commute. I wonder if they understood just how fortunate that made them.

Here’s just to letting D. Lavanya and her sister know that they are indeed that fortunate. That as a family they will grow through every happiness in the world. Today it is the happiness of a commute. Tomorrow it may be something else equally small, or something perhaps a little bigger. In either case, they will be happy. And if they get far enough to find this useful, I should suggest they some day take their parents to California to speed in the car pool lane.

This entry is an attempt to expedite the waking from the effect of that tranquiliser dart. And to serve the purpose described by any other such gratuitous metaphors that I could have, at another time, more effortlessly identified.

Three cities have been my home. Hyderabad has on its side the sheer bulk of time I spent in it growing up. Madras has on its side, well, no, not IIT, but as I more carefully ponder it, the miles I have driven on its roads. And Saint Louis has on its side something that’s starting to fade into a memory but included in its time some novelty, some growth, a little driving, and a lot of bandwidth. With my imminent return to Hyderabad and the growth and the novelty (offered by what will be my first job, in this case) and the miles and bandwidth that I’m certain to find awaiting me, I am sure its already unfair advantage will get even larger, and a good deal fairer. And perhaps seal its place in my mind as what I could easily call home without a doubt. If I didn’t know better.

However, after several years of dabbling in the rhetorical potential of the concept of home, and perhaps overusing it in my writing to the point of abuse and the whining exclusion of all else, I do know one thing, or at least suspect with less conviction than it takes to know - that we are all quite flexible about what we are willing to call home, if only to place the proverbial heart there and romanticise the idea of returning to it. I do know if any day I return, even briefly, to Saint Louis, or more likely, anywhere else in the United States, I shall find the image of the wind at Lambert airport (for example) blowing in my hair as deserving of a slow motion sequence in the movie of my life as that of the wind at Madras airport was a week back and that of the wind at Hyderabad airport will be in a couple of weeks. And let’s face it, slow motion is quite a silly cliche to inflict on anything. My point is only that they all equally deserve it.

And this must mean that there’s something more to this fullness of being alive than simply the joy of having returned home. Sure, it feels wonderfully familiar to drive a manual transmission on the left side of the road and to carry rupees in my wallet. It feels oddly amusing when I crib every single time about my receipts carrying all 16 digits of my card on them. And I shall eventually discover that paying taxes to the Indian government is overrated, but a matter of pride all the same.

But India doesn’t thrill me now just because it is home. The noise and bustle and contact of the people; and their sometimes less endearing reflection in the movement of traffic don’t put that smile on my face just because it is home. Maybe leaving the country only helps me recognise this when I now return, but there’s something fantastic about this time and this place and the opportunity to be here now and be a part of it. A rumble below the surface. An unstoppable force above. Greatness behind. Greatness ahead. And one heck of a nation all around. All this and something else. I only hope I can lay a thawed finger on it some time soon. And type fast enough with all the others.