Wikileaks.... But where are the leaks?

There is a humourous quote in Telugu that goes “Like the fart of an elephant”. The context of the quote goes thus: There was a time when a village elder was struck by a thought that when an elephant, being colossal, passes air, the sound would be the loudest that had ever been heard; the phenomenon was something he wanted to observe. Word went round and the entire village felt justifiably curious about the sound of an elephant relieving itself of intestinal pressure. After conferring together for a while, the temple elephant was brought to the panchayat. After feeding it till it refused to eat, the villagers got around the elephant, holding their breath (literally and figuratively) for the glorious "breaking wind". The elephant grandly raised its tail and ..... “pssst”, it relieved its flatulence – a grand being whose turgidity releasing mechanism was as silent as a pin drop.

You may be wondering why I, an epitome of good graces, have brought up such a distasteful discussion – the Wikileaks episode draws to itself an imagery that is distinctly similar. Here we are, the peoples of all nations, waiting with a bated breath for muck behind all the grandiloquent statements to be exposed. Two lakh fifty thousand documents, we were told, a thousand years of everyday expose even if one document was released everyday. But what do you have – a measly 2000 documents later, the Wikileaks is sealed tighter than ever. Makes me wonder what kind of a deal went on in the background…

I always had a thing or two against Wikileaks. Don’t get me wrong, I loved them for their expose of Afgan and Iraq war, the video of brutal murder of a set of civilians and journos in Iraq had me rooting for Wikileaks. Those leaks made sense, they could be justified as fight for justice and against crimes perpetuated by an aggressive occupier. The latest round however had me wondering about the justification of the leak. The leaks didn’t serve any purpose, except for self aggrandizement of Wikileaks (and more specifically, Mr. Assange) and embarrassment of various world governments. There was no new information in the leaks; we already knew that diplomats were quasi spies and that honest evaluation of various actors in the world stage is not what is stated in official communiqués. So what did this batch of Wikileaks releases achieve?

I have another qualm, this one relating to the manner of release. Why is it that the releases have been done one document per day? Do not give me the reason that it takes that much time to make the documents comprehensible by the civil society, we all know that its an excuse. It somehow seemed that Wikileaks was out to con governments, and was using this strategy to determine the going price of the information. If that’s not the case, why don’t they release the entire set of documents now and leave it to the public to sift through the material? And the fact that the document release has stopped after the arrest and consequent release of Mr. Assange reinforces the suspicions.

And according to Mr. Assange, there is an internal committee within Wikileaks that determines what to release and what not to release. Questions galore here – Who constituted the committee? What is the jurisprudence and is its jurisprudence proven? What are the criteria based on which decisions are made? As far as I recollect, the documents are a property of the respective governments, Wikileaks being just an accidental receptacle of the documents. How did it acquire the right to filter them and act as a regulator of public information?

Democracy is as much hurt by brazen openness as it is by total rein. There ought to be some things kept under wraps for the common good of all. And I prefer the people who determine what should be revealed and what should be concealed be those who I elected, not some conceited geek with heaven alone knows how many social problems.

An Gastronomical Adventure

So I have come to consider myself a chef, a gourmet of sorts who is also an expert with pots and pans. To those of you who would want to challenge me on this, let me tell you that I have been leading a bachelor’s life for close to four years (duh, one reason to disbelieve you, I hear you say) away from home (but close to eateries you bet, I hear you muse) and most importantly, being meddlesome with the stove, dhals and vegetables (or uppu, pappu, chintapandu as they say in Telugu). Besides satiating my hunger, I have learnt to luxuriate my taste buds and once in a while, thrust the hitherto unidentified yet alluring tastes to my unsuspecting friends. Ok, luxuriate is too big a term; let’s say that I have learnt to at least quell the tongue’s misgivings. And of course, although no boors, all the friends who sample my dishes are bachelors and thus belong to a creed that is known for having been deprived of quality food for long periods of time (very select patrons, you see).

Anyways, this post isn’t about getting myself a place in The Taj kitchens; rest assured, you wouldn’t be subjected to list of my creations and an elucidation as to why I must be considered a culinary genius (you see, I don’t want to lose you, the lone reader of my blog), rather this post would throw some light on the path that I tread to quell the taste-bud rebellion, the big hits (rather few, I guess) and near misses (some of them, the misses, were by more than a mile) of my foray into the world of gastronomy.

My adventure with pot and pans, or more precisely baking powder and ovens, started in my 11th class. Prior to that, although I had been involved in the hostel kitchen to a small extent, I never got my hands dirtied, so to say. A small perspective before I proceed – the hostels that I had the privilege of staying in throughout my life were all run on the principle of self reliance; you had the students take care of the various aspects of the hostel management. Thus a set of boys took care of hostel maintenance, a few others of the audio-visual systems in the hostel, another set the stores etc. I had the privilege of working as a part of the hostel mess management group throughout my student career – that is from my 9th class through my graduation, post graduation and MBA. And the length of association sure gave me myriad opportunities to learn from personal experience, or in other words goof up big time.

My first major learning experience (I would prefer to view every blunder as a lesson) was in my 11th class. It all started on a bright morning maybe a week before Diwali. With half yearly exams done and being high on both energy and idleness quotients, our seniors decided that the time was apt to try out a recently acquired skill, that of baking a cake. It was the first time any of us were trying, the previous endevour by our super seniors resulting in chunks of charred maida, late night baking induced sleep being the culprit. Learning from the experience of the said super seniors, it was planned that we do the baking in the evening and serve the cake hot for dinner, after having rested the whole day. Things seemed fine and everything was going as clockwork. Measurement of quantities of stuff to be mixed together were done with scientific precision, every excess gram added being hotly debated. The final concoction was then poured into the baking trays and the baking started.

Those of you who have an idea of cake making process / have a background in science / have some imagination would be able to recognize the fact that cake gets its puffiness due to release of carbon-di-oxide by baking soda during the baking process. No single tray in the baking history would have got that much attention as the first tray that we baked that day; a set of six eager eyes waiting in anticipation. Minutes went by and there was no perceptible rise in the level of the cake being baked. After 40 minutes of tense pacing, we agreed that with the exception of turning to a charred block, all that could have happened to the tray of cake mix had happened.

Tray after tray and the story remained the same. End of 3 hrs and we had enough “cake” for 300 boys who would categorize it as anything but cake. Desperation kicked in and we decided that icing may make it a tad better. Imagine a sight of six guys covered in maida top to toe running around the streets in search of butter; shopkeepers would have concluded that we had got unhinged. A frantic session of beating the butter and icing sugar together ensued and we started icing the cake in the trays itself. Have you ever placed butter on a hot surface? Even if you haven’t, it wouldn’t need an IQ of 400 to realize that butter would melt. Yet there we were asking ourselves why the icing didn’t stay, why the cake didn’t rise, why the hell we ever thought of baking… The end of day and it was not just the brain (from the shock) and ears (that was some vocabulary that we encountered) that got numb, the feedback from long suffering friends made cushions a must for more than hour.

(The Gastronomical Sojourn during the 3 years of my under graduation would be in the next part)