Delhi metro porn videos: How Big Brother is selling your privacy

Earlier this week, in a shocking disregard for the privacy of its commuters, more than 250 clips of couples getting intimate on the Delhi Metro were revealed to have been uploaded on international porn sites.

This footage which had videos ranging from a duration of two- to eight-minutes were being uploaded onto the websites since 2011.The incident has raised serious questions about the safety of information being gathered in the name of security and raised the prospect of a new threat: Leaking and misuse of surveillance data.

Privacy experts say that the incident of the videos landing up on porn sites only bolsters the case for a more stringent privacy law for India, without which there will be nothing to prevent the misuse of information gathered under surveillance, and culprits will remain unpunished.

The Delhi Metro video clips send out a message that our security can be breached easily without anyone knowing and at the whim of a stranger sitting on the other side of surveillance technology.

“The leakage of footage is a threat even from the natural security angle. If someone could leak these clips showing couples in compromising positions in the Delhi Metro, one can only imagine what kind of footage can be made available to cyber criminals and terrorists. Let this serve as a wake up call that India needs to do quite a lot in terms of beefing up its cyber security and also ensuring that unauthorized leakages don’t take place,” says Pavan Duggal, cyber security expert and supreme court advocate.

There is a whole new threat to increasingly becoming a watched society — where someone who is supposed to be the custodian of our security and privacy is the same person who violates it.

“Usually when privacy is infringed upon, it is so that security will be improved. But, here we have infringed on the privacy of individuals and the corresponding increase in security is not proportionate to the loss of that privacy,” Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Bangalore based Center for Internet and Society (CIS) told Firstpost.

Surveillance gone awry?

Usha Ramanathan, an independent law researcher adds that the Delhi Metro videos have more to do with the hazards of the pervasive use of technology than just privacy.

“The proliferation of surveillance tech without any understanding of why they are there and how much should be allowed is a problem. It is more an introduction of insecurity to our daily lives — we don’t understand the nature of surveillance and security,” she told Firstpost.

“There’s a thin line between surveillance and stalking. Merely using the word security does not equal real security,” she added.

Duggal says that “it is extremely problematic” that Big Brother is focused so entirely on watching us, even as he fails to watch his employees. With no checks and balances in place to ensure the security, authenticity, veracity and appropriate preservation of electronic information, incidents like the Delhi Metro videos will continue.

“Because putting a big brother machinery is one issue and ensuring there is no leakage is another. Unless there are adequate transparencies in the systems and strict procedures to ensure that misuse of data doesn’t take place, we will continue facing these problems,” Duggal said.

IT act is without teeth

“The government keeps reassuring us we do have a data protection section in the IT Act, Section 43A. But this so called data protection section does not cover internationally accepted privacy principles. It also does not regulate the actions of government entities in India. It only regulates private sector organizations. Most of 43A only talks of security of data and does not adequately cover under what circumstances data can be disclosed, ” Abraham said.

Duggal agrees with Abraham that India’s IT Act does nothing but “pay lip-service” to the notion of privacy.

“India has been relatively laid back in terms of cyber security. it is only now that they have come up with a national cyber security policy which is nothing but a coalition of policy statements minus any action plan,” Duggal said.

He argues that the IT act does justice to neither data security nor personal privacy.

“There are still some sections of IT act which offenders can be booked under — like section 67 which deals with online obscenity which is a bailable offense, punishable with 3 years imprisonment and Rs 5 lakhs fine. Offenders can also be booked under section 66A of the IT Act and section 66E. However, all of these offences are bailable, clearly not acting as a deterrence,” Duggal said.

“We need a very strong privacy law, which we don’t have,” said Abraham of CIS. “So, as of now, in the Indian context there’s nothing we can do about such incidents that occur. Till there is no law, the offenders would not have committed any offense.” And if the government puts in place a PRISM-like total surveillance system, we will have to worry about a lot more than just CCTV footage being sold to the highest bidder.

The eroded values of a voyeur society?

Issues of poor governance aside, experts say that Delhi Metro incident also reflects our own eroding values as a society.

“These are nothing but an indication of a decadent society unable to keep pace with sweeping changes that technology is bringing across. We have all emerged as people of double standards. We don’t want anything untoward for ourselves but we do not mind hitting other people below their belt,” Duggal says.

This, according to him, has also happened because we have leapfrogged from the PC to the mobile generation instantly — where people lack inherent net etiquette and the lack of self restraint further complicates the scenario.

“We forget that the Internet does not forget. It is a huge data dragon with infinite memory and whatever you put on it is going to be there for a long time,” Duggal says.

But Sunil Abraham is not so sure of whether we have become a culture with abraded values. He says that in the case of the Delhi Metro, it may be a case of too much power that has corrupted the offenders.

“I am uncertain about the average Indian not being respectful of the privacy of other citizens. The people who have leaked these clips are not average Indians, they are in a position of some power even if they are not senior officials,” Abraham says.

“They are sitting on so much public information that this can corrupt them,” he says.

“Surveillance cameras all over only reflects a society that does not trust its citizens to do the right thing — and that comes at a cost,” Abraham says.

This piece was written for Firstpost.com

Death. Be damned. Yes, I survived two landslides. Yay! And, Yay!

New Delhi: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. And if it's Mother Nature, be sure that her wrath is as twisted as the pathos of her loveliness.

In Uttarakhand, even as rescue operations continue, 20,000 people still await evacuation and unofficial sources tout the death toll to be as high as 10,000; the effects of nature's furor are still being felt in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and adjoining areas – by those who lost their dear ones, by those still awaiting relief and by those who survived it.

I am one from the last lot.

When I along with a couple of friends reached Kaza, a small town in Himachal Pradesh's Spiti Valley on June 15th, well on our last leg of a week-long drive through the state's picturesque landscape, we didn't anticipate any trouble. Kaza was our second last stop from where we were headed to Sangla valley and then to Shimla – from where we would head back to Delhi.

When we set off for Sangla in the afternoon it seemed like fair weather, but after a 30 minute drive through the mountains it began to rain and the sleepy village of Leo still about 50 kms away seemed like a good spot to stop for a hot cup of tea. However, when we stopped at Leo – a village which had just one stall selling tea – it was unusually crowed with tourist vehicles. Six of them excluding ours. And just as we were looking forward to some piping hot beverage, two drivers from the waiting tourist cars approached us looking concerned and began having an animated conversation with our driver, Ravi. In a few minutes Ravi was telling us that the drivers had warned him against going ahead as there were landslides occurring which could be fatal.

Now, I am a lifelong Bombay girl at heart and anyone who has lived in Mumbai long enough knows that come what may – hell or high water (in the city's case, incessant rains) we Mumbaikars chug along, walk to our workplace, stay in office if the need be – yet work. “What could happen after all – it was only a spell of rain,” I thought. And that wasn't going to deter our plans.

Encouraged by my friends – also born and raised in Mumbai – we decided not to pay heed to the drivers' warnings. Forgetting our desire for a hot cuppa, we sped ahead. As we approached our first landslide zone 15 mins after, we asked Ravi what the strategy to pass through the landslide would be. But by then it was too late, we were in the midst of it.

Our driver Ravi deftly manouvered the Tata Sumo transporting us, over the huge boulders strewn all over the narrow road, even as he pedalled the accelerator with all his might, dodging the falling earth. My friends and I shut our eyes for a few moments, even as the friend sitting next to me let out a loud scream in fear.

I was pissed annoyed at my friend even as we crossed hurdle one. “DO NOT indulge in backseat driving,” I told her, “You are distracting Ravi. Even if we aren't going to die, we will die because of your shreiks!”. I had barely finished admonishing her when we approached our second landslide.

Before i knew it, I was holding the driver's seat and yelling, “Drive slow!”

I did exactly the same thing my friend had done a few minutes earlier, even as our Tata Sumo swiveled and skid as it hopped like a bunny on wheels on the boulder-ridden road. Wide-eyed, I gulped and looked at my friends who had similar expressions. Gasping we all hit our heads to the top of the car before we came to a standstill. At an altitude of over 12,000 feet I had just experienced my first real fear of death, as I'm quite certain my friends did – with falling rocks on one side and nothing on the other.

Even as I caught my breath and closed my eyes in relief after realising we were still on solid ground I chided the driver. “Why didn't you drive slowly? What if we skid off the road into the valley?” I said.

“Madame, driving slowly would get us hit, so I had to hit speed instead,” he replied.

It was, indeed, a situation of away from the falling rocks and into the valley below.

By now, we were all shaken. But what we saw ahead of us as we sat in the stationery car catching our breaths, horrified us enough to decide to turn back and risk the earlier two landslide zones we had just crossed.

About 600 meters away we could see a stream of water gushing down the mountain with big boulders rushing down at an even quicker pace. It looked like a stream of boulders, instead of a stream of water.

Our mind was made up. We decided to turn around, brave the landslides we passed (which now seemed less dangerous than the river of boulders we saw ahead) and head back to Kaza.

Even as we pulled up and reversed several times on the narrow mountain road before we headed back, the three of us looked into the valley hoping we didn't land up there. The ride back was a mostly silent one – intermittently praying for a safe passage through the two landslides and pondering over our good fortune to have survived them.

We reached Kaza 3 hours later, after having realised how lucky we were to still be alive and also savouring that piping hot tea in the pouring rain at Leo on our way back. Life felt good. We were back in Kaza – a town which was relatively safer than those being flashed on national television – far from the torrential floods of ravaged Uttarakhand. That night we slept like babies.

Mother Nature had another surprise in store for us the next morning – this time a pleasant one. The treacherous mountains surrounding Kaza had disappeared. She had worked all night to draw thick curtains of snow across them, as if they didn't exist. As if she was gently erasing our memory of the landslides the previous day with every new drape of white fluff.

That Sunday was exceptional for more than just the unseasonal snow that heralded a beautiful June day. It was special because we came to realise that the three of us had indeed gotten a second life. As the day tottered on we were told that the road to Shimla – the same one we had taken the previous day to reach Sangla Valley – had been washed away. They were swallowed by Mother Nature with loud burps nonetheless – roads, bridges and anything that dared to confront her fury.

Five days on, we were finally on our way out of Kaza via the Kunzum and Rothang passes to Manali and then onwards to Delhi. But, those five days were not without our share of rescue carrots.

We must have packed our bags to leave at least three times in five days that week. Once being when we were woken by our hotel manager banging our door at 7 am informing us that rescue helicopters were expected and asking if we were interested in flying out on them. “Of course we are!” we said, promptly putting our names on the list. We jumped out of bed, dressed and packed in 10 minutes and then waited all day. Nothing and nobody arrived to fetch us. And at the end of the day we unpacked – resigning ourselves to stay indefinitely.

We did manage to get out of Kaza last Friday after the officials and workers of the Border Roads Organisation and the Indian Army helped clear glaciers that had formed enroute to Rohtang Pass – some of which were as high as 18 feet.

As we drove up and down the treacherous winding roads marvelling at both, Mother Nature's beauty and her brutality, we couldn't help but ponder over her nature. Over the calm yet daunting peace she offers.

The words of Henry Van Dyke the American poet and Essayist resonating in my mind: “Who can explain the secret pathos of Nature's loveliness? It is a touch of melancholy inherited from our mother Eve. It is an unconscious memory of the lost Paradise. It is the sense that even if we should find another Eden, we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly nor stay in it forever.”

Call it what one may. The bane of negligent and inconsiderate development, the curse of the Gods or apathy towards our environment. Our land – the likes of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh – will become a Paradise lost if we continue towards it our attitude of reckless abandon.

As lovely as Mother Nature may be, we must remember, she can be deadly.

P.S. Yes, This incident has finally prompted me to revive my blog (Yay!) Thank you all for being patient with my absence and still being loyal :) Keep reading and I hope I can keep writing here as frequently as I'd like to. If I don't -- egg me on :) 

Tales of the disappeared: The story of 12-year old Navaruna

New Delhi: When 12-year old Navaruna Chakravartty hugged her father goodnight and retired to bed on the night of 18 September last year, he didn’t know that he would not see his daughter again. That the months ahead would be spent in an agonising wait for a child, never knowing if she was dead or alive.

“She had just finished her exams and had put mehendi on her hands or she would have slept with us that night,” he says, second-guessing the details of that fateful 18 September, 2012 night when Navaruna Chakravartty, a class seven student of St Xavier’s School in Muzaffarpur in Bihar, went missing from her house on Jawaharlal Lal Road.

At around 5 am the next morning, Chakravartty and his wife went to the town’s police station to file a first information report (FIR) for the incident. The then Station Head Officer (SHO) of the Muzaffarpur Police Station, Jeetendra Prasad (who was to take over as investigation officer for the case later) filed the FIR and handed its investigation to Senior Inspector, Amit Kumar.

It marked the beginning of a nightmare of police obstruction, misdirection and intimidation.

“The police did not take it seriously at all – they didn’t get dogs to pick up tracks, they didn’t come and seal off the bedroom or issue alerts on the border. They did not even come and survey the room,” Chakravartty says, adding, “We didn’t touch anything in the room for at least 30 days after the incident, hoping that the police would come and want to survey it. But, nobody came.” The police finally visited the Chakravartty’s home on 22 October, more than a month after Navaruna’s disappearance.

Amit Kumar, the investigation officer assigned to the case, had been a police officer for only 2.5 years and recently joined the Muzaffarpur Police station. He handled the case in its initial stages for a little over a month. Kumar told Firstpost that he pursued the case from three angles: elopement, personal enmity and property dispute.

“The police called us to the station and told us it was a case of a love affair. We disputed it. This was despite interrogating and harassing my daughter’s two closest and best friends about it, Chakravartty told Firstpost, “My daughter was only 12. Three 12 mm thick window rods were bent from outside – and the police expect us to believe that my daughter would have had that done?”

The forensic team which visited the Chakravarttys for the first time on 4 November, too, was a farce, says Chakravartty: “They came and told us, ‘We have come only for formality’. They then took a pic of the pulled out rods and left.”

“My daughter always stood in the top 3 in class and she was very homely and studious. She used to study till 8.30 pm every night and she never went out much. How could the police have accused her of having disappeared in a case of a love affair?” Chakravartty said.

Chakravartty proved to be right. After months of interrogating family and friends, the police ruled out the love angle.

Navaruna’s father alleges that the Police have all along known where his daughter was being held – and by who. But, that, till date they haven’t taken any action because the culprits were rich and powerful.

“It became a routine for me to call the police station everyday to ask about the progress of my daughter’s case. On 13 October when I called the then Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Rajesh Kumar, he told me, ‘I promise you. I will recover your daughter very soon’,” the father said, adding, “He kept saying things like ‘I’ll give u a Navratra gift’, ‘I will give u a gift on Vijay Dashmi‘ – but my daughter never came back.

The local media, by then had started covering the case and the police expressed concern over it. They told Chakravartty not to tell spread word about the incident or to talk to the media, claiming that news coverage would endanger his child.

“On 28 October, when ADGP Gupteshwar Pandey visited us he told us ‘If you make noise, your daughter will be killed’,” Chakravartty said.

“They make us feel like we made a mistake by filing an FIR. Instead of finding the real culprits the police instead got the call records of relatives we regularly spoke to and went to their homes and threatened them. The police even went to Delhi and threatened our older daughter who is studying to be a chartered accountant and told her that if we made a scene about it Navaruna would die,” said Chakravartty.

Faced with police stonewalling, Chakravarttys got help from an unlikely source: students from Delhi University, among them final year Law student, Abhishek Ranjan who hails from a small town 40 kms away from Muzaffarpur, where Navaruna’s incident took place. He also spent close to four years in Muzaffarpur doing his graduation at the LS College between 2006 and 2010. On 20 October, soon after he heard of Navaruna’s case on Facebook, he and 19 others held a symbolic protest at DU’s North Campus against police inaction in the case. Encouraged by the response, they organised another protest at Jantar Mantar in Delhi through Facebook, which was attended by around 50 people.

On 5 November, former investigation officer of the case at the time, Amit Kumar, visited Delhi and met with students. In a conversation that Ranjan recorded on his mobile phone, a copy of which Firstpost has, Kumar said to Rajan: “I have nothing to do with what you do or don’t do. I am only come to make you understand that do only as much as is good (for you). If you do it (conduct protests), it will create pressure on us (police),” Kumar is heard telling Ranjan. “If there’s any problem or inconvenience we face, we will clip the wings of those flying high.”

On asked about the recording by Firstpost, Kumar said, “I didn’t say anything to the students or didn’t threaten them. I only asked them to cooperate with our investigations by not causing us trouble.”

On 27 November , Abhishek Ranjan Kumar, Aaditya Kumar, Rahul Maurya, Nikhil Kumar had filed a criminal writ petition and a PIL in the Supreme Court against the Union of India, Bihar government, the DGP, SSP, SHO and Amit Kumar among others. The petitioners prayed that the Supreme Court direct the respondents to a) produce Navaruna before the Court; b) to restore law and order in the State and c) to hand over the investigation of the present case to CBI among others.

On 7 January this year, the Supreme Court issued a notice to the Bihar Govt and Union of India asking them to reply to the petition within 6 weeks. The Bihar government’s reply only came on 12 April saying that the SSP has made full efforts for the search of Navaruna and also constituted a special team to find her, but, there has not been any relevant clues.

When asked about it by Firstpost, Muzaffarpur’s now Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Saurav Kumar said, “I can’t comment. I just joined the station and the case is anyway transferred to the CID. Only they can comment on the same.”

No comment, no trace, no justice. Navaruna has become a statistic, one of the 90,000 Indian children who disappear from their homes each year.

This piece was written for Firstpost.com

No honor or records in India's 'honor killings'

In the past ten odd years, Haryana has been known for its rapid modernism mainly through the development of its retail capital, Gurgaon. But, sprawling malls, innumerous call centers and flamboyant cars, do not necessarily make a state modern.

The spate of recent honor killings in Haryana, have been a grim reminder of its deeply entrenched feudal system, which exists discordantly alongside the glitz of corporate high rises and an often obscene show of wealth.

Last week, a brother in Sonepat was arrested for strangling his sister, who eloped with a boy she was in love with. A day later the boy committed suicide. On April 12, a couple was found dead in a field in Bhiwani. The deceased, Anita and Vijay, were residents of the same village, belonged to the same sub caste and were neighbors.

This despite a landmark judgment passed by a Haryana court, on March 30, sentencing five people to death and one person to life imprisonment for killing a couple who married against panchayat-dictated societal norms. Manoj and Babli, who hailed from the same village in Kaithal district, had married against the wish of the girl’s family. Soon after their marriage, the couple was kidnapped while they were traveling in a bus and then killed. Orthodox Indian village councils consider men and women from the same village and sub caste to be siblings.

Panchayats or village councils are a system of self-governance that has long been prevalent in many rural parts of India. They are usually made up of village elders who settle disputes and intervene between individuals and neighboring villages.

“Some panchayats in Haryana are 2,000 years old and more,” said Layak Kumar Dabas, director of Haryana’s crime records bureau. “There weren’t any police in the villages then, but there were the panchayats.”

Honor killings are rampant in states like Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, but officials say they go largely unnoticed and unreported.

Families of the victims usually accept the diktat of the panchayats who have for long been their system of justice. “This panchayat system of social administration has been so ingrained in their mindsets, that they think nothing of it when extreme judgements are passed, and take it as the last word,” said Mr. Layak.

Societal shame is another factor that holds them back from reporting cases of gross violation of their kin’s human rights. Mr. Layak says being labeled as a person known to those punished by the panchayat is disgrace enough for villagers to recoil and stay mum.

Secondly, there is no official and accurate way to record cases of honor killings in India because under Indian penal law, such incidences falls under the general category of murder.

“There is no separate section under the IPC for honor crimes and hence we do not keep specific records for it. They all come under general murder,” A. K. Varma, chief statistics officer at the National Crime Records Bureau in New Delhi said.

Mr. Layak, who has been with Haryana’s crime records bureau since the past 3 years, says the state saw around four reported cases of honor killings in 2008 and five in 2009, but that the numbers were not a reflection of the reality on ground. “The actual number of cases may be significantly higher, but societal shame, fear of isolation and discrimination discourage people from disputing the panchayat’s decisions,” he said. Accoring to him, most cases in Haryana are seen in the districts of Karnal, Jind, Bhiwani and Hisar.

The low reported incidence of honor killings and its generalization under murder, also makes it difficult for human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to track its prevalence.

Such organizations rely on media reports and other local non profits for information on its incidence, says Ramesh.Gopalakrishnan, part of Amnesty International’s South Asia team.

“I recoil in shame when I read the newspapers,” Home Minister P. Chidambaram said, in the Rajya Sabha last year. “The vilest crimes are committed in the name of defending the honor of the family or women and we should hang our heads in shame when such incidents take place in India in the 21st century.”

India is currently contemplating enacting a new legislation to deal with honor killings, after Attorney General G. E. Vahanvati responded in the affirmative to the home ministry’s query of whether or not such killings should be made a separate offence. No decision has been taken yet.

Till such time, the patriarchal panchayats will continue to wield their power on credulous villagers, stage protests against judgements that punish the perpetrators of honor killings and leave states like Haryana in flux – see sawing between its two paradoxical worlds of archaic and avant-garde.

An edited version of this piece appeared in The Wall Street Journal's India Real Time blog.

Thunderstorm, Tornado, Cyclone: What’s In a Name?

The Indian Meteorological Department is not exactly known for its reliability in providing accurate weather forecasts and it is no surprise that the department did not foresee the violent storm that hit Bihar, West Bengal and Assam late Tuesday night, claiming more than 120 lives.

Two days later, India’s weather officials are still unsure about what struck.

In April last year, the weather bureau had forecast a cheerful estimate of average rainfall at 96%. Instead, the country saw its worst drought in 40 years.

Tuesday, yet again, saw a miss in the meteorological department’s predictions. According to S. N. Roy, deputy director general of the Regional Meteorological Department in Kolkata, the forecast for April 12 and 13 was heavy rain and thundershowers.

As it turns out, the ‘thundershowers’ created more havoc than expected. In North Dinajpur district of West Bengal alone, more than 40 persons died and more than 50,000 houses were blown away.

In a press note yesterday, the weather department said what occurred was a “severe thunderstorm” which was “associated with a tornado”, even as press reports termed it a “cyclone”.

After on site investigations into the devastation, Kolkata’s regional weather branch termed it “twisting in nature” and a “tornado type” of storm, even though Mr. Roy said he could not confirm it.

B.P. Yadav, the Indian Meteorological Department’s spokesperson said, “It was a thunderstorm accompanied with squall (sudden and gusty wind), with possibility of an embedded tornado. There was no cyclone.”

Sadly, any talk of the plight of victims and the cause for inaccurate predictions were predictably washed away in this deluge of meteorological jargon.

West Bengal’s disaster management team was also not adequately or sufficiently fore warned about the impending storm. “We knew nothing. There was no definite information about a violent storm or a tornado,” Mortoza Hossain, minister-in-charge of the state’s disaster management cell said.

The extensive devastation in North Dinajpur meant that Mr. Hossain’s department had to rush a relief consignment of 50,000 tarpaulins, 200 metric tons of rice and more than 70,000 sets of clothes to the village, in addition to providing 1 million rupees as a contingency fund to the district magistrate.

Tuesday’s storm was the most violent one since last year’s Cyclone Aila, which claimed more that 140 people in eastern India and Bangladesh.

An edited version of this piece appeared in The Wall Street Journal's India Real Time blog.

Bolly in China…

I got my first invite to a desi party in China last weekend and I was obviously thilled! After a hiatus of more than three months, my hips were aching to do the thumkas, sway to jhankaar beats and do what I do best – be a crazy desi girl.

‘Beer, Bollywood and Curry...' said the invitation, and it was only natural for me to anticipate an overdose of melodramatic Bollygiri…But, it turned out that I was competing with the Hindi film, Saawariya, to be the only Bollywood export at the party! And I can proudly say – I whipped RK’s taut derriere into a nice froth!

The audience, comprising mainly of Argentineans and Australians didn’t seem too impressed with their introduction to Bollywood – a painstakingly slow and poor rendition of Fyodor Dostoevsky's White Nights. But, they did seem impressed that someone who didn’t look like she had anything to do with Bollywood, was the only person actually following the movie in its original language – all others were reading the subtitles (of which you cannot expect much in China!).

There were four Indians at the party, including myself. One was a Canadian Indian, another Malayasian Indian and yet another, Australian Indian – all of whom did not understand or speak Hindi. So, here I was, the Indian Chinese explaining to others what the dialogues meant!!!

To think of it, I actually whipped RK’s fanny into fresh cream. Had I drubbed it a little more, it would be fit for consumption on a sumptuous cake. And, all that without performing my desi girl antics!

All for a finger bowl...

There are several things I miss when I dine at Indian restaurants abroad. And, they have nothing to do with the food served.

I have made my peace with the fact that I may be eating at the best and most highly rated Zagat and Michelin restaurants, but the food will never taste as good as it does back home. This, I understand may be influenced by many factors, most of which are beyond the control of restaurant owners.

Hence, my next logical yardstick for judging the restaurant is how much at home it makes me feel. Sadly, the hospitality and experience at most Indian restaurants abroad -- especially in the U.S. -- have been way off mark.

It is natural for cuisines to be altered according to popular tastes of the country or region they are situated in, but some rituals of dining define the very personality of the culinary experience. My three essentials for Indian cuisine are as below -- they are neither cost intensive nor inconvenient, and yet they complete the experience of Indian dining for me.

1) A quarter plate of onion rings, sliced lemon and whole green chillies.
2) Water served in a steel or copper tumbler.
3) A finger bowl with one or two pieces of sliced lemon, at the end of the meal.

Like they say, things come at you when you least expect them. And in a country of just 20,000 Indians, as compared to nearly 3 million in the United States, I didn't expect the Indian cuisine scene to be any better.

However, I was pleasantly surprised a couple of weeks ago. And, Punjabi Restaurant in Beijing's Chaoyang Gongyuan, popularly known as Lucky Street,deserves a special mention. Not so much for its mediocre fare, as for its attempt to provide an authentic Indian dining experience.

Yes, it served us water in shiny copper tumblers and provided us fancily decorated hari mirch and kaanda. But most of all, it provided me with that elusive bowl of luke warm water with two freshly sliced pieces of fragrant lemon.

Me bellowing impolitely over the heads of at least eight other diners was well worth the effort. "Bhaiya!!! Finger bowl dijiye na..." I had yelled!

Now I felt like doing the jig. "Oye hoy! Balle balle (with both hands up and index fingers pointed)...!!!"

Punjabi made me feel at home in China!

Mere blog ki toh ban(ne)d baj gayee...

As many of you already know, my blog has been banned in China and I have not been able to post on it since more than a week now.

As of now, in true Indian style I am trying to do some 'setting' and looking for alternate solutions to it. But, till I find that permanent solution, I will be posting in proxy (i.e. I will have a friend of mine post for me).

So all my dear followers, please bear with me if I take a while to publish comments, reply or put up new posts. Also pardon any grammatical errors that may mistakenly get published on my blog. I will try and keep it as error-free as possible, but if the process of formatting introduces any errors, I apologise for it.

However, that is not to say that those errors must be ignored. If any of you see a problem, please bring it to my notice and I will try to rectify it as soon as I can. Thank you in anticipation.

For now, I don't know when my blog will be unblocked. I don't even know if it ever will. But, please be patient with me. I will try and put up at least one new post every week, but if I do not, it's probably something to do with the proxy me :)

Mere blog ki toh ban(ne)d baj gayee hai...par mein band ab tak baja rahi hoon...So fikar not and keep reading :)

Thanks for all your support and sorry for any inconvenience this whole exercise may cause.

Cheers!
The Yellow Indian :)