Wrong again.

I have been doing things for the wrong reasons all my life.

Take travel, for instance.

I have never been a great traveler. I remember a ditty from my childhood that said something to the effect that travel made a person wise and well-rounded. I don’t think I quite believed it. Still, as a child, I travelled quite a bit and even made myself enjoy it. Or, more accurately, made myself believe that I enjoyed it. Somehow, around that time, I got hold of the notion that important people travelled a lot. And, that they did it mostly by air.

In my Clarion-McCann stint, as a senior writer and later as Creative Controller, I got to travel quite a bit on work and found colleagues envying me for it. This and the fact that a promotion as Creative Director with unlimited travel among other mouth-watering perks was dangled as a bait to prevent me from quitting Clarion-McCann further strengthened my belief in the equation “travel = important persona” and vice versa.

In my Everest days, both as Creative Chief and later Creative Consultant, I got to travel way too much and stay at the best of hotels and found myself to be the target of envy of colleagues.

Later, I flew twice to the US of A to visit Abhi and Ujwal and twice to Sri Lanka on work.

Somewhere along the way, though, I lost my zest for travelling and finally, late in life, came to terms with the fact that I was a lousy traveler. I didn’t really enjoy it. Never did. I did not have the stomach for it. Never had. I would rather stay put in South Bombay. I feel safe and out of harm’s reach in SoBo, something I may not feel in Soho.

Sometime in the future, I shall be travelling to the US. I’m not looking forward to it, I’m afraid.

Jessica Lall redux.

Light a candle in your window to show solidarity with the victims. We've heard this call before. Not just in Rang De Basanti but also in the aftermath of the acquittal by the Delhi District Court in the Jessica Lall murder trial. Lall, you'll recall, was a member of the Delhi High Society, a model and a celebrity barmaid on duty at Tamarind Court owned by socialite Bina Ramani. She did not belong to the hoi polloi. The uproar after the acquittal was triggered by the desire of the Delhi aristocracy to avenge one of its own. Who is the common man http://digbig.com/4xybn in urban India? RK Laxman has been following his exploits since 1961 in the pocket cartoon (You said it) on the front page of The Times of India. He has always drawn him and his wise-cracking wife to resemble denizens of the lower middle class stratum of Bombay. The couple was unlikely to ever wander into Wasabi, The Golden Dragon, Tiffin, The Sea Lounge, Kandahar, India Jones, Frangapani, Zodiac Grill and eateries of the fine dining persuasion. Apart from whether they could afford to eat in any one of them, I wonder if the otherwise affable Sardarjis who used to guard the entrance of The Taj and probably of The Trident and The Oberoi would have allowed them to walk in. They were probably more likely to be embroiled in the massacre at the CST Terminus. Or, be waiting for a Western Railway local train to arrive at one of the seven stations where bomb blasts took place on 11 July 2006. With 200 dead and over 700 injured - mostly from the hoi polloi, that one was a terrorist attack of no mean proportion. Despite the loss of human life being much higher than in the 26-29 November 2008 tragedy, there was at that time no braying for the blood of those in charge of the security of Mumbai and the safety of its citizens. Come 26 November 2008 with a frontal attack on the three aristocratic and supposedly secure SoBo http://digbig.com/4xybw bastions and sanctuaries, though, and there is suddenly much agitation. Blue blood has been spilled, after all. Enough is enough. SoBo elite's hubris is at stake, ladies and gentlemen, and must be avenged at all cost. http://digbig.com/4xyck. The unspoken ground rules of special privilege must be imposed.

J Lo, K Jo, SoHo, Soho, SoBo and other wonders.

They have a J Lo. So we must have a K Jo, bro. They have an acronymous SoHo in Manhattan and Soho (“Soho! There goes the fox!”) at the centre of the West End in London. So we must have a SoBo, not a SoMu in Mumbai that used to be Bombay. When ad agencies started to migrate from SoBo en masse to Lower Parel in the 90s and later, an ad guy had the unconscionable gall to suggest that it be elvated in nomenclature at least to Upper Worli. You know what I mean? Sheer audacity, brazen boldness wedded to impudent assurance and insolence. Total temerity. Cheek, nerve, effrontry. In short, shameless, insolent disregard for propriety or courtesy. It all springs in these instances from a "born (again?) in the USA" mindset. The snobbery of this world view (i.e., the framework of ideas and beliefs we use to interpret and interact with the world or, in other words, everyday reality) makes me want to puke. I remember reading somewhere what Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher who was also a Nazi, had to say on the subject. Although we live in a common (= shared) world, went his argument, the world surrounding us is differernt for each of us. We are thrown into the world, willy-nilly, and must come to terms with it as its inhabitants. So, I guess some of us need snobbery to deal with our dreary lives. Snobbery can have its uses, no doubt. At one point in my life, I used it to teach myself to appreciate Western Classical music. While reading Nick Hazelwood's Savage: The Life and Times of Jemmy Button http://digbig.com/4xwha, I was astonished at the snobbish behaviour of the eponymous Fuegian from the southermost tip of South America, the most hostile of habitats in the 16th Century. After his contact with the British and stay in Britain, he turned into the ultimate fop http://digbig.com/4xwgt, fastidious in his top hat and gloves and spotless waistcoat, preening in front of every mirror. This is the single most common identity disorder among most wannabes, I reckon. (P.S.: By the way, now Lower Parel has at least a High Street, thanks to Phoenix.)