Caricatures

Legal profession ( necessary evil )

It must have been a God intended accident ( to convey the truth ) that there is only minor difference between the spellings of ‘lawyer ‘ and ‘ liar ‘ and most Indians pronounce both the words in the same way. Similarly, it is to hoodwink the honest citizens that the saying ‘ lawyers are there to assist the court ‘ has been coined, when in actual fact it is the duty of the lawyer to his client to mislead and confuse the court as much as possible. They call a ten thousand word document as ‘ brief.’ They wear a most unsuited dress for Indian prickly weather, i.e., a long black coat and they address the Bench as ‘ Your Honour, ‘ both anachronisms they loathe to dispense with, contrary to their averments.

The really capable ones of their lot not only confuse the Bench but also the client. After hearing their espousal of the cases, their clients, who may be murderers, also start thinking in terms of their being innocent. Win or lose, their fee is assured. When they lose, they can’t honestly admit to their clients that they have done a really bad job. ‘ the judge has been bought,’ ‘ the judge is not





strong on legal points ‘ ‘ there is some influence at play, ‘ etc., are trotted out to give themselves a clean chit and then to assure the client they would say, ‘ but don’t worry. We will appeal.’

They all talk of reforming the system and yet they have not done anything about it. How can they. That would ultimately affect their income.

With the number of laws in the country continuously increasing, propensity of people going to court being on the ascendancy, this species has a bright future, though the same cannot be said about their clients.

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11. Medical profession ( apothecary, at a cost, curing one set of ills to create another set of ills )

Hippocratic Oath ( stating obligations and proper conduct of physicians, taken by those beginning medical practice ), duly framed, adorn the walls many a doctor to convince the patients about the sincerity and dedication of the doctor, just as the politicians have the photo of Gandhiji on the wall of the sitting room. The countenance of most of the apothecaries is often grim, giving no reassurance to the patient. Doctors are to give relief to patients from actual perceived notion of illness. For that a friendly smile, a warm approach and confidence building chit chat, essential ingredients, are expected from doctors. It is possible that doctors put on this mask so that the patient takes them seriously.






Doctors are generally wonderful chaps, so long as you don’t have to go to them for treatment. A cold which nature would cure in seven days, a doctor would cure in a week with medicines. Doctors are also the best illustrations of the contradictions in Indian psyche. Doctors say they want to cure illness and make people healthy. But if all become healthy there would be no jobs for doctors. But then God has been kind to this species. People eat, drink, live in such a way, that they are prone to some ailment or other frequently. Then there is the mystery of apple. ‘ An apple a day keeps the doctor away ‘ is the saying. Instead of contradicting the saying, doctors somehow managed to ensure that apple is not a favourite fruit of Indians. There is a bright future for the lads who opt for this profession, since the increase in the intake of junk foods, less exercise, less sleep, long hours of work, watching the Idiot Box for hours, etc., would ensure acceleration of the number of people with this or that ailment frequently requiring the help of doctors. The only downside is that the
proposal shelved so far of doctors doing a stint in villages may become a reality.

How come that Hippocratic ( in the oath mentioned in the beginning ) and hypocrisy sound similar.

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12. Housewife ( Balancing act? A trapeze artist or juggler is nowhere near a housewife )

Exaggeration? No. Consider the following:

· Household budget approved by the husband, after much discussion and hassle , where the prowess of house wife in exaggerating and underplaying nuances involved would be a lessen for lawyers, has been, according to the wife, stand still or limbo for ages whereas the prices of most of the house hold goods and services are perennially up and up. There is never a downward movement as in the case of stock market. The lord of the house says that according to sage from Sivaganga inflation has been up by only.2%. It is an uphill task to convince the lord and master that shopkeepers don’t function based on the yardstick of Government or the wisdom of the sage. And tomorrow when the inflation rate according to Government has gone down, shopkeepers are not going to reduce the prices. ‘ You demand more money for household expenses when inflation level is up but not prepared to reduce the budget when the opposite happens’ so says the hubby man. Now how to explain to him that shopkeepers don’t buy what government says, but we have to buy what we need irrespective o the price line.

· The junior, who is only 13, seems to grow each day, because his dresses become tight or short within six months of buying, requiring new purchases

· And damn the fashion in the dresses of girls. ‘ How can I wear this old dress, wails 15 year old daughter, ‘ when it is out of fashion,’ though the dress was bought only 6 months back.

· And the cell phone bills of both the kids are increasing continuously, though cell phone companies say that the rates are being brought down continuously. Further, restrain and rebuke to cut down cell phone calls never work with the kids these days, since they take the same as their fundamental right.

· The kids say that the in thing these days is to eat out once a fortnight with their cronies. And the house wife and hubby take shock therapy pills before looking at the restaurant bills the kids give.

· Turnover of the servants and their perennial demand for more money and less working hours are two problems which, aware of the gravity of the issues, the hubby guy leaves the wife to handle taking a loftier stand that ‘ you are better in dealing with such mundane maters.’

· All the house wives have at one time or other solicited help of hubbies ( or hubbies had offered such help ) to manage the kitchen for a day. However, the disastrous results from the same had made wives to effectively bar husbands from the kitchen. And this sane decision meant that if a servant does not turn up for a day or two, it is the house-wife who had to manage the kitchen.

· Then there are other chores / expenses the lord and master of the house disapproves or label as unnecessary, too costly, etc., The house lady’s mother coming and staying for a month or so , fall in this category.




· The wife has to perforce raise the compound wall or do something to mar the view to the neighbouring house, which means expenses, when a new female form with abundant flesh where required, starts living in the adjacent house. That this is done for marital bliss and hence the expense should be outside the budget is something no husband is prepared to agree.

· That kitty party for the upward mobile middle class cats is part of forward march of civilization, though a truism, does never penetrate the mulish head of the hubby and hence the reasonable expenses incurred in such parties are frowned upon.

· Keeping up with the Joneses by purchasing occasionally or frequently higher priced and newer electronic items on the ground that there is value for money, though abundantly evident, is an issue which the husband shrugs off as if pampering a wayward child.

· Shopping. It is part of the make up of the women. It is there in her psyche. It is universal. And how can one come back empty handed after shopping. That would be ridiculous. While the purchasing part is enjoyable, it is not so while doing the explanation for purchase to the hubby man. Whatever reasons, may not be logical, are adduced by women folk for the purchase, men have the annoying habit of giving the impression that they are not convinced. When the housewives want to control the expenses and for which sacrifice much, the least that the men folk can do is to accept biological need of females to buy something or other frequently.


· Request of children for help in doing home work is cleverly and neatly side stepped by the master saying that ‘ Mummy is good at these things.’ And that means the wives have to often miss the most interesting and gripping serial on TV on the peccadilloes of mother in law – daughter in law syndrome.

· The most worrying factor for wives these days is the slow but steady increasing level of demand for their time to attend to various chores that they are not finding enough time daily for decent gossiping, which is the most important nourishing factor both body and soul.

· The above is the story of the full time house wife. Then imagine the hassle of the working wives.


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13. Management professionals ( Self certified blue blooded human species )

With mushrooming of MBAs, it has become like the Hindu caste system. There are the Brahmins from the three top IIMs. Then there are Kshtriyas, Vaishyas and Sudras, the last coming out from all sorts of colleges, whose faculty consists of those lecturers or managers who could not make the grade in their careers.

Like the BA degree in earlier times, these days one can’t get a decent job higher than that of a clerk in an office unless this suffix is there. And managements of most of the badly managed




companies think that a few MBAs would turn the company around, when in fact abdication by the managements would atleast ensure that the companies would not sink. For such managements, with no hope of improving the bottom line or product quality, it is also a talking point with their biradari, i.e., we want to professionalise
and hence………..But the problem is that the Brahmin MBAs ask for starting salary of what Bush is getting with the indication that in five years time they hope to get the salary of CEO of Microsoft and in ten years time the post of Managing Director of the company. In most companies Heads of various Departments would not touch them with a barge pole. But they have to go by the wish of top management / owner. So they play every trick in the trade to see that these guys with a swollen heads are rejected at the interview or they quit a few months after joining. On the other side those Brahmins who are selected leave the companies at the earliest, noticing that the suited and booted higher managements / owners are running the companies as pan shops. The non Brahmin MBAs learn the tricks of the trade, the first step being what the seniors want to hear, followed by an understanding of the peccadilloes of the owners, the politics in the company and the art of survival. Most of them stay put in their jobs and merge with the crowd.

Positive side: Their market value for marriage is high. Negative side: IITians are slowly making in roads in their job markets. Universal trait: Masquerading their disdain towards other professionals.

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14.Doctorates, i.e., Phd. ( They think there is a halo around their head; however till now nobody has seen it )

There are three types of Doctorates, as below:

· Those who toil under a Professor in preparing the dissertation of a new sub-subject under a major subject or discipline. Professors, having faced unruly students ( or say, hooligans ) in the classes, look upon this as a god sent opportunity to take revenge on the person who is doing the dissertation for the harassment they had gone through with the students. The unfortunate person is asked to revise his dissertation at least a dozen times, if not more. There is another problem here. In these days with every other Ravi, Rajiv and Pradeep taking Doctorate on one subject or another, the disciple is asked to take up some new esoteric subject like ‘sexual mores of Maya civilization’ or ‘the reason why politician is honest,’ etc., It is a universally unwritten law or custom that a person with Phd. is not entrusted with any assignment that has even remote relevance to the subject on which he had taken the doctorate. Probably this would have originated on account of the fact that the person with Phd would have a professori approach to the subject rather than a practical one, which means he would make a mess of the assignment given to him. These guys, after a few rejections, never mention their subjects or word the same vaguely while meeting prospective employers.

· With such subjects taken up for Doctorate, the moment prospective employers know about the subject, indicate politely ‘ regret.’ Hence they all end up in Universities as



lecturers. But they wisely keep mum on the subject of their Phd, lest the unruly students would have another weapon to ridicule the lecturers. Those who get the Doctorate by studying a subject are insufferable the moment they open their mouths to describe the subject on which they got doctorate. What a wag said aptly describes the position: ‘ The ancient scholars studied for their own improvement. Modern scholars study to impress others.’

· The above species have a good marriage market but not job market.

· In the second type falls people, mainly businessmen, who want to have a Doctorate to show off among their biradiris. By suitably rewarding the Professor under whom they are supposed to prepare the dissertation, the Professor is asked to prepare the dissertation. Then they give some endowment to the University so that as a quid pro quo the University grants them Doctorates. The recipients flaunt this honour through their visiting cards and letter heads.

· The third type is Honorary Doctorate given to persons for their supposedly laudable services rendered to the nation ( though even close acquaintances of many of them would not be able to recollect what those laudable services are ). It should be noted that by this yardstick every two bit politician can manage to get an honorary doctorate. There is a vested interest in Universities in granting such honours. They expect quid pro quo from the recipients, meaning a sizeable financial grant from the recipient of the Doctorate to be spent for such worthwhile causes as renovating and replacing the house and the furniture respectively in the house of the Vice Chancellor or for the visit of Vice Chancellor to US of A to study the changes to be made in managing the University. Bestowing such honours also enhances the prestige of the University, i.e., if such honorary doctorate is conferred on, say, Bill Gates or Bin Laden.


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15.God men: ( Their existence is proof of the gullibility of human beings )

Trade marks: Flowing beard, long mane or perpetually shaved head, Hindu religious mark on the forehead, loose shirt and dhoti, preferably ochre coloured or white. Wooden or leather sandals. Since public these days accept their luxurious living, can be seen traveling in upper end car or staying in luxury hotels, etc., In short he should stand apart in a crowd and more so while flying.

Functioning style: Rudimentary knowledge of magic, ability to speak for hours without dozing off, not getting ruffled when difficult or awkward questions are posed, ability to quote from scriptures of own religion, mildly ridiculing customs and practices of other religions, never quoting approvingly other religions, neatly side tracking issues, sati, child marriage, caste system, etc., never criticizing cum-patriots, i.e., other god men of same religion, etc.,

To be shunned in public: Smoking, drinking, eating non-vegetarian food, speaking in loud voice, making lewd remarks, ogling at female specie, making disparaging comments about other religions or comrades of the religion to which the God man belongs.



Private life: Safely guarded secret, more so in respect of matters related to income and wealth.

Essential requirements: A few acolytes, both Indian and foreigner, and followers of money bags variety / politicians / cine stars. Rudimentary knowledge of own religion and scriptures. At the same time able to quote from religious stories. Only superficial understanding of other religions which in essence means absolute ignorance of other religions. Occasional traveling abroad is a must. Having followers abroad increases the aura in the domestic turf.

Nom de plume: A new name like Swami Bhoga varjithanda. ( While the Godman selects his own acronym, he never says so in the public. It is the job of disciples to propagate the name. It is sort of safety belt. If any snoopy journalist questions him on the same, the Godman can shrug it off indicating that name is not important and in any case it is the name given by his followers).

Demeanour: Poor and wretched are suffering on account of their karma. My giving money to them by way of relief is going against their karma. Mingle with wretched only when there is a photographer around.

Summing up: Because of the gullibility of human beings, in the recent times this specie has been proliferating. And gauging by the mood of the public, it is safe to assume that there is opening for more such men.

Caricature - Govt. Bureaucracy

Government ( elephant and five blind men syndrome )

From the time Romans started Government to manage the country to the present ( and probably future also ), nobody has been able to define adequately what Government is, though everybody knows what Government is. Government is power, babus, administering laws and rules, affect the lives of citizens in various ways, etc., In a nutshell it is an amorphous body which is supposed to look after the interests of citizens, though most citizens would question this hypothesis. There is one thing common with all governments – citizens everywhere, be it a Dane or Chinese or Indian, have an aversion to their government. The less contact between government and its populace, the more comfortable the latter are. Yet citizens realize that they have to have a government. So there is the perennial quandary for the citizens in deciding how much of government they should have. Yet there is another characteristic of government which is universal and in perpetual and that is the propensity for governments to become bigger and bigger, though all the time governments aver that they want to downsize government. Having spread the tentacles far and wide and inclination to spread it still wider, the frequent affirmations of governments to take steps to mind its business rather than that of citizens’ affairs, sound hollow. And hence citizens take this as a ritual rather than seriously.

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3. Bureaucracy (Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient )

· Bureaucrat’s lament: “ How did they ever get permission to build the world.’
· It is a poor bureaucrat who can’t stall a good idea until even its sponsor is relieved to see it dead and officially buried.
· The volume of paper expands to fill the available briefcases of bureaucrat.
· A bureaucrat’s idea of cleaning up his files is to make a copy of every paper before he destroys the original.
· Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when quo has lost its status.
· Spread the bureaucrats around the organization and everything works fine but put them in a heap and everything stinks. The point is we need bureaucracy, but only to a certain extent.
· The problem, with bureaucracy is that it can’t respond rapidly to change. Its motto is “ Ready, aim, aim, aim………..it just can’t pull the trigger.”
· Bureaucracy and light are poles apart. Light travels at the fastest speed and bureaucracy the opposite.
· Bureaucracy is based on a willingness either to pass the buck or to spend it.
· Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.

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Caricature - Businessmen

Businessmen ( A breed whose self perception and public perception of them are poles apart )

( Exceptions, i.e., those who manage business competently and with ethics, are exempted from this write up. It is about the run of the mill businessmen who abound this country ).

Traits

1. At a young age when they start business or are inducted to the business managed by their fathers, the first thing they discern or told by their fathers is that it is more important to learn the tricks of the trade rather than the trade itself.

2. They are par excellent copy cats and hence emulate the style of managing business of their peers / parents. And the style of managing the business is:

· Not to trust totally anybody working under them, though their demeanour will effectively camouflage this trait.
· Do not fully confide with people working under them.
· Aware of the fact that loyalty of employees continue to be there only till they get better offers.
· They give only that much information to employees which serves their purpose.
· Cross checking / spying on their employees and rivals will be part and parcel of running business.
· Put on openness and friendship should be the hall marks of their interface with rivals and competitors. At the same time they would be evasive on matters of competitive interest.
· They don’t mix up business and personal accounts. They quickly learn to ensure that both accounts are above suspicion of tax men. Ensure that as much as possible personal expenses are booked to the company, suitably camouflaging the action. They would have a good sounding on such matters from an old accounts guy, preferably not an employee of the company.
· Firmly believes that generation of money in number two account ( euphemistically referred to by the others as black money - a term they never use ) is absolutely vital and has to be taken as the birthright. Details of how much is being generated at specified periods, where it is parked, etc., are confined to the brain only and not to be shared with anybody including the wife and progenies, otherwise their demand level for cash would go up continuously. And nothing is put on papers. Countries other than Switzerland also park such money had enabled them to pick and choose where to hoard. They master at the earliest, this part of business .
· The charade of businessmen is that number two account has to be created to pay bribes to politicians and bureaucracy. That masquerade is necessary to put an appearance that they have to per force create such money. Actually such expenses are booked to the business and how this can be done is the elementary lessen all accountants learn.
· They would not like to be seen traveling in the same car for more than two years and three months. If this period exceeds they would be perceived by other businessmen as having not arrived.
· They make two or three trips abroad annually, ostensibly for business purposes, irrespective of the fact whether they spend time ogling at girls who have an aversion for draping them or other nocturnal activities. For the latter activity many keep an apartment abroad, though the explanation is that this for them to stay while abroad. Allowing politicians/bureaucrats and their kith and kin to use the apartment would be of immense help when seeking favours from them.
· Each one of them become disciple of one of the latest Gurus. However, they ensure that wild demands for cash of the Gurus are circumvented or booked as business expenses.
· To the extent possible expenses of self and family are booked as business expenses.
· They are adept in putting various masks of submissiveness and fulsome praise for politicians, admiration for bureaucrats, disdain for subordinates, equality with other businessmen, patriarch for family, etc.,

3..The businessmen watch with trepidation at the avalanche of economic reforms, particularly removal of licenses. It is the license Raj which propelled them to higher echelons of business ladder. However, they realize that to openly resist such reforms would get them bad name. To camouflage, the businessmen would leave no opportunity of welcoming the inexorable march on the reform front. At the same time they pray to God for some of the political parties which are inimical to such reforms, coming into power. And with their own biradiri they crib at what is taking place.

4. Some of the other hall marks of Indian businessmen:

· They shun reading anything other than related to business or politics. But then that is not the in thing. So they would have large almirahs in their sitting rooms of the houses ( and some even in their office rooms) containing a large number of books, unread, but dusted occasionally by the servants.
· By far they have no taste for fine arts. Yet they keep a tab on such activities, lest their ignorance becomes apparent in conversations with high and mighty in seminars and functions. The ‘fancy’ / patronage for arts is only of big names ( known / established names…..great value for conversation purposes ) and for page 3 of newspapers. Support to ‘ budding’/’aspiring’artists is a strict no, no.
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· Remain apolitical ( except for the morbid fear of communists ) - who knows which party will come into power in the future
· They remain all the time with minor apprehension of family members who have stake in the company or even progenies maneuvering to take over the company from them.
· They mask their unconcern for workers and consumers
· They invest as little money as possible from their own purse, managing the large chunk from public and financial institutions, while fully retaining management of the company.
· Ego centric, ritual oriented, workaholic, simple dress and simple food in house amidst opulence
· Full of conviction that they are wizards in all areas / disciplines of business
· Prefer to be known as businessmen rather than industrialists – a case for psychological study.
· Admiration for white skinned businessmen camouflaged by disdain towards them
· To this species money and business constitute everything.
· In family run enterprises, the younger generation invariably gets inducted as Marketing / Product Manager for that future ‘ quote’/para in a (paid/sponsored) biographical article which typically goes like ‘……..The fact that ‘this’ species gets a ‘boot up’ as the next Director on the Board is another matter.
· Attending an annual ‘ knowledge session’ on how to run ‘family run’ enterprises – generally by a top global consultancy – at an exotic locale is the other name for annual extended family get together.

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