On Banks and Bankers and Poop Jobs in the Wrong Place

Blog # 3
Sock From the Easy Chair

Now I am the official blog writer. Maybe I will get paid in that juicy cucumber, which I am denied these days. Things still sombre around the home front. The word bank and bankers are frequently spoken of , at times, followed by the 'b" word.

So I asked Maam what is this banker?. She says "they are people who run banks" ,

so I ask, what do they run it with? She says "other people's money, which is invested with the bank ".

I ask, is this undertaken gratuitously?, she say "no, there is a fee charged to the investor"

I ask, why did you call them the "b" word. She says, "they lost most of our money".

So I say why didn't you keep the money at home?. She says" can't do it because we will loose it to thieves" . I say, theft is punishable under the law, so the bankers will be punished. She says" baby you have a lot to learn, its not so simple, banks don't get punished they get bailed out because they have not broken any laws",

Now I am puzzled, so who gets punished in this case?. She says "the "investor", which means us".

But, Maam how can you say that, In India people attack and burn government and private property when something like this happens, so she says, "yes babe, only we are NRI's, we sort of let the family dog speak for us.

She is joking of course, may be , I hope. Not that I condone such action, I mean writing emails to Head of Customer Service in India, where is that getting us?.

I mean no disrespect, most humans are nice people. Only, why are governments bailing out the banks and not the people whose money was lost in the first place. I get punished if I do my business wrong and this certainly looks like one big poop job in the wrong place to me .

There was one banker who visited here this morning and Maam was most polite to him. These humans

But, I am really worried and I ask if there is enough money left to buy my chicken dinner tonight. Maam says there is and, she will tell me more about banks later.

Sometime, I wish Maam's brother was around. He would have some juicy insights into this whole situation of banks and bankers. Now, there was a man of caustic wit and an enviable je ne sais quoi. The wit, usually had Maam and him screaming from the roof tops, often at the end of a boozy evening. I would sit at their feet and wonder when we were going home. Sahib, always the diplomat at such events, would get us out of the house before it got to the name calling stage. There were times though when he acted too late . That meant we were not meeting again for about 6 months at least. The brother is gone now, we all miss him. I think Maam needs an evening like that again, to get her out of this gloom.

Gosh, there is another flu virus, they call it the swine flu and I read it has nothing to do with the poor pig. First they eat it and now they blame it. I am worried, during the SARS attack, it was rumored that all domestic pets would be put down. What if the panic strikes again? Humans are not stoic in adversity, they run amok looking for someone to blame. Maam says, coming on top of the financial disasters of the past few months, this will be catastrophic.

What a mess. I hinted in my last blog, that the First Dog may be running the planet . Want proof? . I was watching CNN the other day, and there were all these reporters behind a fence, while the adorable looking First Family frolicked with the First Dog. So where do you think the cameras were aimed at ? at the First Dog, but naturally ! Need more evidence, I think not
Time for a nap. Blogging is hard work .

Blog Entry No. 2
Sock from the Easy Chair

Hi Guys I am back. It has been a long time, but things happened and they sucked.

Business went downhill. The bankers stole most of our money and for a while there I stayed on my toes, worrying about my future. Which is safe, but dismal seeing as I have been put on a strict diet. Some vet advised Maam, I need to lose weight and she believed him. I want to know who do these humans think we are, I mean how do they know what is right for dogs anyway, when there are 20 opinions on what is unhealthy for humans!

Well, it seems ,the old couple have their heart in the right place . I am not a disposable, still with the way tempers were heating up, I was sure at least Sahib was on the list of things to do without .

Oh you want to know who Sahib is of course, that is Barry sir, the other half of this combine. A good, but eccentric friend of ours named Sunder Vaswani ( more about him later, what a cook, fed me the most scrumptious meals when he visited us), blessed him with this name and, it has stuck ever since. Particularly in moments of angst .

Sahib posted before I completed my blog entry. So here's to all of you humans who have suffered a setback, what's money after all , just bits of paper. I was watching CNN the other day, and heard the Americans are printing lots of $'s to bailout the banks who lost the $ notes in the first place, and people everywhere are hoping Mr. Obama will save their ass as well... Wonder who is running this planet anyway. I hope not the First Dog. he is cute, but does not look very intelligent to me.

Well, Maam is still out of it. Not yet ready to blog, since all her energies are directed at fighting the banks. Hope it's over soon so we can have some peace around here.

The family is ok. They are doing what families always do, some who talked before are not talking now and others who did not, are talking . These humans!

The cute young nephew was here recently. Unfortunatley I did not get a chance to plonk my wet derrier on him. Since we moved to the apartment, Maam has a box of wet wipes whenever I go. Grandma spent a few days with us as well and there was lots of talking back and forth. Seemed like a war zone. These humans!

And oh did I mention that I have to go on underpads laid out in the balcony and the floor gets washed out with dettol. God help me if I ever miss those white allotments. I want to know how many kids got toilet trained in 1 day . Certainly not those of the Gidwani family. I have feelings too and want to sniff where other dogs have been.

I am tired going to take a nap. Hope we go for a walk later, we do most days.

First blog entry from Asha

This is my first entry, I have promised Sock our dog an impromptu aside on this first blog, she has been our main observer these past many years, she has watched and listened curled up in her comfortable easy chair, in a sense Sock is our chronicler of events, our conscience and critic.
Why am I becoming a blogger? Who will read my blog? Anyone out there find this interesting let me know please so I can make the next entry .I am at a party and everyone is speaking, mouths moving ears tuned out, I watch the news, NDTV has set up a panel of a cross section of Mumbai's elite to offer an opinion/solution/critical analysis on terrorism, everyone is speaking no one listens, I can't hear sitting 6 feet away from the TV, there are too many voices and the message is lost. There is so much babble, the sound of the next attack if there is one, fingers crossed there will be no more, will be drowned out in these deafening human sounds. And what was Shashi Thooror doing, mainly silent, in the midst of this starry gathering. Please let us not silence such serious voices, they have something important to say and we need to hear it.

Sock from the Easy Chair

I am a sort of a white scruffy dog , so they tell me, every time I open my mouth to speak, I am ordered to shut up, so I am joining the blog brigade messaging from my easy chair. In return, I have agreed to fewer walks and snacks between meals. I have observed humans eat less often when they are working. I call my humans the Combine or mam and sir. There have been other dogs in this household, the golden Duchess and the black beauty Syra. They are both gone now to the great beyond.

How did I arrive here , ten years back I left home a puppy, to roam the world become a free spirit, nobody wanted me anyway because I was a mutt. Food was plentiful , this was before the financial meltdown, garbage dumpsters had more food than kitchens . Then suddenly, it was not so good , too many new people arrived in the neighbourhood, adults threw stones at me, young kids were merciless in their pursuit of causing me bodily harm. Finally, I was tired of it all , oftentimes the stones found their target. I was wounded, my stomach hurt, eyes felt strange and I yearned for a safe haven.

One day I saw this lady being led by a dog, a little fluffy golden thing wearing a frilly dress and even from a distance I could tell it was one well fed la di da dog. Instinctively, I felt this could be my human. I was uneasy for a moment, what if the lady makes me wear a dress and the dog in front of her was far too clean and naturally there would be visits to the vet before I was allowed into the family home, still anything was better then a dog's death on the streets of Sharjah . Apart from that, the human looked like a reasonable sort, so maybe, if the house had a dress code, I could occasionally agree to wear a discreet Tshirt.

So I stalked them and later followed them through the open gate of a villa. I figured a human who allows a dog in the lead , has to be a sucker for animal happiness. And I was right, the little golden fluff answering to the name of Duchess gave me an attitude, but I stuck around. As I sat some distance from a party in progress of several young people, amongst them a nephew, who like me had also left home but was sensibly lodged with the aunt, was contemplating a future union with one of the young ones. In a spirit of family solidarity, I barked him a warning, signaling it was not the right choice, but no one listens to me.

I later met the other half of the household, a nice looking British man with kind smiling eyes , who I understood from the gossipy youngsters to be junior to the woman. A toy boy I thought, what an interesting household. Subsequently, I discovered, he was less toy and more boy. But more of that later.

On the third day I was invited in, and there was this easy chair parked right near the front door. I jumped in and it has been mine ever since. From here I have observed many of the human dramas that have unfolded around me.

So why do I need to blog, well here's the thing, I am not a whiney dog, but the Combine does not always get it right either for me or themselves. It has been a good life so far, maybe a little too much of the baths, the vet and the deworming tablets I think and, having to distance myself from the garbage dumps. And I also want to know why mam being a lawyer and all , had not fought to get more rights for dogs, so landlords will not evict us from buildings, and the state could mandate that parents teach their children to respect all species. I mean if we are going to populate intergalactic space someday we need to learn to get along with other species. If we cannot accept non-humans who have been on this planet forever, it seems to me space would be a tricky venture . Mam gets hassled on the streets every time she walks me. I can defend her with a well aimed bite at an offending ankle but she says there are laws against such acts.
So may be all that money spent on trying to find aliens in space could go to Darfur or greening of the environment and learning to live with respect for the rights of all.

I know a lot of things, I watch the TV every day, The other day President elect Mr. Barack Obama called himself a mutt in front of maybe half a billion TV viewers across the globe. Mr. President-elect do you really know how mutts like me get treated by the human race, for one we are passed over for the pedigree types. Nobody wants to bring us home. So Mr. President- elect you might say a few nice things about us so people will listen and be rid of prejudice against mixed types, and maybe even outlaw words like mongrel.

Time for a nap now.