Squinting At India From Down Under

1. Proud Filer

Of late, some Indian friends of mine have started applying a badge to their profile pictures that says "Proud Filer". This refers, of course, to the fact that they have filed their taxes. The badge shows that India's Income Tax department is trying to provide positive reinforcement for this desired behaviour. All good and wholesome stuff.

It's just a bit amusing to me. I'm sure people will call this snobbery on my part, but I see nothing to be proud about in doing what is expected and the norm. I have been filing taxes all my working life, both in India and in Australia, and I never thought it was something I should pat myself on the back for, with a badge on my profile pic and everything.

A typical profile pic with the badge of honour

In Australia, one is allowed to start working (part-time) after the age of 14 years and 9 months. (Until that arbitrarily defined age, I suppose it would be considered child labour and hence illegal.) My son started to work part-time at a library at around that age, and he filed his first tax return at the age of 15. Of course, since his earnings were well below the taxable threshold, he paid no tax that year. This continued until he got his first full-time job after graduation at the age of 23, at which point his income crossed the tax-free threshold and he began to pay income tax. But he had had to file his returns every year from the age of 15! It's an offence not to file a tax return if you've earned any income during the year. Whether your income crosses the tax-free threshold or not is beside the point.

I can understand that in a country with a low tax base and a low level of tax compliance, it's necessary to encourage the filing of taxes with a feel-good incentive like a badge. I suppose it's "one small step for an individual taxpayer, but a giant leap for the tax department and the economy".

What other expected behaviours can one reward with badges, I wonder.

"Proud Non-Litterer"
"Proud Follower of Road Rules"
"Proud Non-Payer of Bribes to Officials"

Apologies again for sounding like a snob. I'm still not able to get over my amusement at this.

2. Jobs for Kids

That reminds me of another interesting difference between parental attitudes in Australia and India. Kids in Australia are expected to start working part-time from the allowed age of 14 years and 9 months, both to earn their own pocket money and to gain valuable work experience. The most valued jobs are customer-facing ones, since such experience is highly useful in a service economy. You will see high-school and college kids working at supermarket checkout counters, as clothing shop assistants, waiters, etc. It is not looked down upon.

I don't know what the attitudes of middle-class India are like today towards children from educated families working at such service jobs, but I certainly remember what it was like in my youth.

In 1984, one of my IIT classmates had applied for a graduate course at a US university and had also applied for a teaching assistantship to help cover his expenses. I was present when he read out the letter he received from a professor at that university. The professor regretted that there were no paid assistantships available, but he promised to help my friend get a job driving the university bus. We all had a big laugh at this, and my friend emphasised the point, saying, "My dad will never let me go to the US if he knows I'm going to be driving a bus!"

Educated, middle-class Indians used to consider it beneath their dignity to do anything but a white-collar job. I certainly hope those attitudes have changed.

3. Dignity of Labour

And this in turn reminds me of another interesting difference in value systems I have seen between India and Australia, viz., the position of tradespeople. Plumbers, electricians, pavers, roof restorers, tree loppers and others are very highly paid in Australia, and these professions are no less respectable than corporate or academic jobs. Indeed, skilled tradespeople are among the highest income earners in the country.

To take one very stark example, plumbers are most often called in to deal with blocked toilet drains, and their job necessarily brings them into frequent contact with human faeces. In India, such a job would be considered to be the lowest of the low, and the existence of the caste system bears witness to this pervasive social attitude. In Australia, thankfully, there is no stigma at all attached to this trade. It's a truly egalitarian society.

If anything, the snobbery in Australia runs the other way. In India, students who secure admission to an educational institution "on merit", i.e., by scoring high marks in an entrance test, tend to look down on their classmates who have secured admission by paying "capitation fees" or through a "management quota". Scholastic ability ("merit") has legitimacy that fee-paying ability does not.

In Australia, I have heard from Indian friends (whose children gained admission to private schools on a scholarship) that they were disdained by their classmates who were paying full fees. In a complete inversion of social strata, the students who were able to pay full fees were the children of highly-paid tradespeople, whereas the children of my highly educated friends working in academia and mid-level corporate positions were constrained by economics to seek financial assistance through scholarships, which then made them the object of their classmates' contempt.

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These are some of the interesting differences I've seen between the societies of my native country and my adoptive one.

If you liked this, check out a related post, Thoughts On Culture, Friendship And Hospitality.

My Hopes For The World, Post 2020

It's the last day of 2020, a year many will be glad to see the back of. The last year has been associated with some of the most unpleasant memories, mainly because of the Covid-19 pandemic that disrupted normal life, impacted livelihoods, and -- not least, took many lives. For many families that lost loved ones or suffered economic hardship over the past year, the very sight of the number "2020" will forever retain a negative connotation.

The Tamil culture that I'm a part of has the astrological notion of the shani-dasai (period of Saturn), a phase of life that is associated with suffering, hardship, trials and tribulations. Importantly however, this period is believed to lead one to ultimate success by putting one through a test. Further, when the shani-dasai ends, Saturn is believed to leave one with a gift.

While I'm hardly superstitious, I like to take the positive from every example and allegory, and so this is what I wish will happen to the world once 2020 is but a memory.

The Way the World Works

I believe that we are on our way to the Leisure Society, but until we get there, work will continue to be a major part of our lives. Having said that, there is no reason why the nature of work should not make a clean break from the past.

I hope the culture of working from home forced by the pandemic has helped both employers and employees understand its benefits enough to want to retain this new culture. So much wasted time and effort has been eliminated from society these past few months. People haven't had to commute, and have saved at least a couple of hours every day. They could afford to get more sleep and spend more time with their families. So much energy has been saved and pollution avoided because of the virtual elimination of rush-hour traffic, especially its wasteful waits and crawling pace. For employers too, the opportunity to permanently save on commercial real estate would not have gone unnoticed. This also has knock-on effects. Employees can afford to move away from congested urban centres to more spacious homes in regional areas. The counter-magnets that urban planners have long been searching for have made their appearance at last.

We are 20 years into the 21st century. The world should not continue to work as though it is still in the 20th.

Some professions cannot operate remotely. Hairdressers, physiotherapists, care-givers to the elderly or the handicapped, all of these will have to continue working on site. But these professionals can also operate in local clusters, without unnecessary centralisation in CBDs.

Employers have to learn to embrace tools that give them the ability to set tasks and measure deliverables without having to physically watch over a roomful of employees like a strict schoolteacher.

The Public Health Landscape

I believe Covid-19 has permanently altered some aspects of public health. With the awareness that this is by no means the last pandemic we are going to see, the world has doubtless improved its ability to respond with alacrity to the next one. The admirable capability that East Asia as a whole has demonstrated this year (thanks to the experience of past regional outbreaks) will eventually be par for the course worldwide. Quarantining, social distancing norms, the habit of wearing facemasks, the infrastructure for contact tracing and alerting, all of these will become embedded in the hardware and software of society. The next pandemic will not take us by surprise the way this one has. We will take it in our stride, with little disruption to our daily lives.

Victory Over the Pathogen

Let me be even more ambitious in my predictions. I believe that the threshold of tolerance breached by this year's pandemic has finally forced humankind to stop seeing viral pathogens as merely a nuisance to be tolerated year after year. The flu vaccine of recent years has been a hit-and-miss approach with partial success against the ever-new strains of influenza that attacked every winter, but the tide has now decisively turned. I believe the forced research into the details of how viruses work will result in the the development of a super-vaccine, one that will end, once and for all, the threat of all viral diseases in humankind, including the flu and the common cold. In a few short years after 2020, we will not remember what a cold or the flu was like.

I think medical research in general has received a boost because of the urgency of the search for treatments for Covid-vulnerable people. I would not be surprised if cures for autoimmune diseases as well as other conditions classed as co-morbidities are also found in the very near future.

In short, while I agree with most people that 2020 has been a year like none other, I prefer to interpret that in a positive sense. I hope and believe that 2020 will mark a turning point in the fortunes of the world, because of the gift that Saturn is going to leave behind.

We are entering the future now. Cheers! 

Sad Puppy-Dog Eyes - Some Of My Favourite Bollywood Songs Featuring Sanjay Dutt

I lived and worked in Bombay (Mumbai) for 8 years between 1987 and 1995 (apart from a year and a half when I was in Kanpur). I didn't realise it then, but this was the very first time I experienced what may have been taken for granted by many others. For the first time, I heard Bollywood songs on a regular basis, and it was all around me - on the radio, on TV, from roadside loudspeakers, etc.

This had never happened to me before. During my childhood in Bangalore through the 70s, I mostly heard Kannada songs on the radio. During my IIT Madras days (1980-85), it was Tamil songs. I discovered Hindustani classical music during my stint at IIM Ahmedabad (1985-87), and that was what I played when I visited the institute's DJ club. The music that I consciously sought out and played during my teens was Western pop. So I had never previously experienced anything like the barrage of Hindi film songs that hit me when I moved to Bombay in 1987.

It's true what they say - the best music, by definition, is the one you grow up with. If I were asked about the "golden period" of Kannada film songs, I would name the 70s. Similarly, the early 80s were to me the "golden period" of Tamil film songs. It's not surprising that the "golden period" of Hindi film songs to me was the period from 1987 to 1995.

While I have many, many favourites from that time, I thought I'd focus on those that I later found were from movies starring Sanjay Dutt.

I know he's a controversial character, but I've always had a soft spot for him because of his sad puppy-dog eyes, and the many personal tragedies in his life.

And so, the songs:

1. 'Jeeye To Jeeye Kaise' from 'Saajan'

Saajan was a very silly movie, IMO. But many of the songs were good. This clip also captures the pathos of Dutt's character, who is a cripple.

"Lagta nahin dil kahin bin aapke"
(My heart is not at peace without you)

2. 'Mera Dil Bhi Kitna Paagal Hai' from 'Saajan'

In this clip, the most moving scene for me is when Dutt's character sees himself without his handicap.

"Par saamne jab tum aate ho, kuch bhi kehne se darta hai"
(But when you are before me, (my heart) is too scared to say anything)

3. 'Tumhe Apna Banane Ki Kasam' from 'Sadak'

I haven't seen this movie. I know the story, and it's too gritty for me. But the song was very touching.

"Meri nas nas mein tu banke lahu samayi hai, samayi hai"
(You have become the blood that flows in my veins)

4. 'Aur Is Dil Mein Kya Rakha Hai' from 'Imaandaar'

I haven't seen this movie either, but I like the song a lot.

"Cheerke dekhe dil mera to, tera hi naam likha rakha hai"
(Tear open my heart and see, it is your name that is written inside)

The Crisis Of Confidence Among The Competent - Inspirational Anecdotes From My Life

Over the course of my life, I have come across a few people whose breathtaking confidence has remained with me, and I always seek to draw inspiration from them. I believe I'm fairly competent at what I do, and I'm not a particularly diffident person either, but I know I could achieve a lot more if I had even greater confidence in myself.

According to the Ramayana, Hanuman was the only one of the vaanara army with the ability to jump across the ocean to Lanka. Yet he did not realise his own capability, and had to be strongly encouraged by his fellows before he could find it in himself to make the leap. The episode is a metaphor for the plight of the competent in every culture and in every age.

Here are some examples of people who impressed me enormously with their confidence.

1. "I will hit all ten, da"

When I was 18 and in the National Cadet Corps (NCC) in India, I attended a camp called the Vayu Sainik camp in Dodballapur (Karnataka). There were NCC units participating from all over India. Each unit sent 10 cadets to the camp. There were 5 units from Tamil Nadu. The IIT Madras unit I belonged to was called the "4 TN (Tech) Air Squadron".

There were many competitions during the 2 week camp, and one of them was skeet shooting. Competing cadets had to shoot 10 clay pigeons that were fired from a machine (or as many of them as they could).

An NCC Air Wing cadet skeet shooting

The evening before the competition, a cadet called Vasant from 2 TN Air Squadron came to visit us in our tent. He was the only cadet representing Tamil Nadu in this national event, so our unit was rooting for him to do well.

I remember asking Vasant if he was nervous before such a big and tough competition, and I'll never forget his answer.

"I will hit all ten, da!"

He wasn't faking his confidence either. i could tell from his general manner that he was relaxed and genuinely confident.

In the event, he only got 8 out of 10, but if I remember right, he did get one of the top 3 places in that competition.

8 out of 10 was pretty creditable of course, showing that his confidence in himself was not entirely misplaced. I've seen other people whose confidence in themselves wasn't at all matched by their ability, but Vasant was obviously not one of them.

I find his example inspiring because I believe that level of confidence can make a difference in the areas where one does have decent ability. Holding oneself back when one can actually do a great job would be a waste of potential.

2. "I have now reached the stage when I can work on any machine"

I had just started working at CMC Bombay in 1987. A senior of mine from IIT Madras, Suresh (nicknamed "paTTai" for the prominent horizontal stripes of vibhuti (ash) he used to wear on his forehead), had joined CMC a few years before me, and had become a respected expert on IBM mainframes.

Sometime in 1987 or 1988, Microsoft made history by advertising in Indian newspapers for US-based positions. Such an opportunity for Indian software professionals (to be directly recruited by a US-based company) had never arisen before, and the advertisement sent ripples of excitement throughout the Indian software industry.

I was working late at the office one day, and a bunch of us went to a restaurant for dinner. Pattai was with us that day, on a short visit from his base in CMC Calcutta. One of our colleagues, Rajeev Dhanavade, broached the topic of Microsoft's ad with furtive excitement, and said, "I wonder if any CMC people would have applied..."

Pattai spoke up, loudly and clearly as was his wont, "I've applied, ya, I've applied!"

"But your experience is in mainframes. Microsoft is in PCs and microprocessors..." Rajeev said, implicitly expressing his opinion that the job perhaps wasn't a good fit for Pattai's expertise.

Pattai drew himself straight up in his chair and said, "See, I have now reached the stage when I can work on any machine!"

Epilogue: Pattai got the job with Microsoft and relocated to Redmond.

I've also seen Pattai walk into the CMC Bombay computer centre as if he were the boss, demand of the operators to see what jobs were running on the mainframe, and then question the Divisional Manager (the top IT executive in the region) about them. I've seen the DM answering him apologetically.

Of course he was competent, but that level of confidence which enabled him to open any door and walk in as if he owned the place got him results above and beyond what mere competence would have. It's something that other competent people can learn from.

3. "If I get a letter from HR, I will think I must have got a promotion or an increment"

When I was working at the National Bank of Dubai, I once got an internal letter from the HR department. It turned out to be nothing very important, but the moment I got the letter and saw where it was from, I was filled with dread.

I turned to my colleague Swastika Shukla, who was seated at the desk to my right, and confessed to her that letters from HR always filled me with dread. "I always think I'm about to lose my job."

Swastika scoffed. "If I get a letter from HR, I will think I must have got a promotion or an increment," she said.

I believe her. She had a pretty unflappable attitude. On another occasion when she heard me being overly polite on the phone with a user who had called to complain about a problem with one of the applications I was responsible for, she asked me whom I was talking to. When I told her, she once again replied with contempt, "Users? You should shout at them!"

To this day, I struggle to have that calm attitude of entitlement, and often use Swastika's statements to put myself in a stronger frame of mind.

4. "I'm a B.Com.!"

This didn't happen to me but to my wife Sashi. Sashi is highly qualified in her field. In addition to Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Commerce, she is also a Chartered Accountant. The Indian CA exam is notoriously hard to pass, and only about 3% of the candidates qualify in any given year. (Subsequently, Sashi also passed the Australian CPA exam after migrating to Australia.)

When Sashi joined me in Dubai in mid 1995, she responded to a local job ad for the position of an accountant. When she was seated in the lobby waiting for her turn to be called into the interview room, she struck up a conversation with another Indian girl who had applied for the same job.

Feeling a bit nervous about the job, Sashi asked the other girl if she felt confident about being able to do whatever was listed in the job description. The girl's reply to Sashi was a classic, and something we laugh over to this day.

"Of course! I'm a B.Com.!"

I tease Sashi whenever she expresses diffidence about any new assignment at work, "You're only a CA. Now, if only you'd been a B.Com., you could easily have done it."

As it happened, Sashi got a much better job at Schlumberger a bit later, so we never did find out if the other girl got that job that she was so confident about. I'm sure she did.

Confidence has nothing to do with qualifications. The most brilliant and well-qualified people can feel terribly diffident, and those with barely enough qualifications can be supremely confident.

These are the people I remember every now and again. They inspire me and fill me with awe.

Book Review - "Smoke And Mirrors - An Experience Of China" By Pallavi Aiyar

I just finished reading "Smoke and Mirrors" by Pallavi Aiyar (daughter of veteran Indian economist and journalist Swaminathan S Aiyar). This book can best be described as an Indian's experiences in China, and is unique and noteworthy for that reason.

This is the scanned cover of my copy of the book, along with the bookmark that I used when reading it. The bookmark is one that I picked up in the extremely picturesque city of Su Zhou when I visited China in 2018.

The author's experiences relate to the period from 2002 to 2007, so it is already out of date in some ways. Yet there are parts that remain strongly relevant.

Pallavi Aiyar covers many important topics and events, such as everyday life in the traditional dwellings ("hutong"s) in the city, the rapid pace of change in the entire country, the place and role of religion, the situation in Tibet, the preparation for the Beijing Olympics, what happened during the SARS pandemic, aspects of China's becoming the manufacturing hub of the world, India-China relationships at the political and personal levels, and more.

The last chapter "Squaring a Circle and Coming Full Circle" was the most insightful.

1. Aiyar asks herself a question and answers it. "If I could choose, would I rather be born Indian or Chinese?" She says that if she were able to ensure being born even moderately well-off, she would probably plump for India over China, because "money allowed you to exist happily enough despite the constant failure of government to deliver services". On the other hand, if she were to be born poor, she would take her chances in China, where despite lacking a vote, "the likelihood of being fed, clothed and housed was considerably higher."

2. She makes an interesting comparison between the Indian and Chinese views of political legitimacy. In her view, the Communist Party of China (CPC) derives its legitimacy from delivering growth. In India, a government derives its legitimacy simply from having been voted in. This legitimacy in many ways absolves Indian governments from the necessity of performing. The CPC can afford no such luxury.

3. She makes a refreshing departure from the commonly held view of many experts in the West (and in India) about the future of China. The commonly held view is that the current political setup in China is unsustainable, and that the country will either have to democratise or suffer a popular revolution and break up. She disagrees with this conventional view and believes that the government and CPC can continue to manage these contradictions into the indefinite future. From my limited understanding of China, I believe she's right. Non-Chinese analysts are victims of wishful thinking.

She makes a general point about how it's important to be open to the unfamiliar. What was alien and uncomfortable to her when she first arrived in China became soothing and familiar before very long. She uses her landlord, the avuncular Mr Wu, as a concrete example of what China meant to her. "In short, when I thought about leaving Beijing, it was his image: a 60-year-old retired railway official, atop a noisy moped, that brought a persistent little lump to the throat."

Some important developments have occurred after the period covered by this book.

One, Aiyar often betrays a superior attitude that she comes from a democracy, but since 2014, the freedom of Indians to criticise their government has undergone a perceptible chill, and the independence of Indian institutions has markedly degraded. The contrast between India and China has thus become starker and less favourable to India. Neither country is now particularly free, but only one has delivered a consistently higher standard of living to its people.

Two, the autogolpe (self coup) mounted by Xi Jinping to sweep aside the traditional two term limit on Chinese presidents, does negatively impact China's reputation for "whole-process democracy". Elections to local bodies, a meritocratic progression up the political ranks, a responsiveness to people's needs and demands, and strict two-term limits on top lreadership, were all necessary to provide a credible alternative to the chaotic electoral circuses that conventional democracies exhibit. While it's understandable that China may not want to change horses midstream when under threat by the US, the narrative of "whole-process democracy" has taken a blow with Xi Jinping's third term.

Three, the Doklam and Galwan border incidents have caused India-China relations to plummet once more after years of gradual improvement. The US is also happily wading into this dispute, hoping to use India against the Chinese threat to its hegemony. Will India fall victim to Western "divide-and-rule" tactics once more? Only time will tell.

A Different Kind Of Cricket Tragic

I believe it was Australian PM John Howard who popularised the term "cricket tragic" when he described himself that way. It refers to someone hopelessly obsessed with the game.

I'm the opposite kind of cricket tragic. I know next to nothing about the game, and never follow it. I barely know the rules of cricket. Of course, I can't help being familiar with some of the names, especially if they appear in the non-sporting sections of the news (Azharuddin, Hansie Cronje, Harbhajan Singh and Shane Warne come to mind). I'm otherwise blissfully oblivious to events in the cricketing universe.

Let me narrate a story.

In the year 2000, when the dot-com boom was still raging, I was tempted to leave a steady, cushy job at EDS to join a startup called Reply2, also based in Sydney. This was a company with a call centre, which was building an additional layer of Internet-based services (web and email) to augment their traditional customer contact capability.

Sometime before the launch, the startup's management organised a party with cocktails and canapes for potential investors whom they were trying to woo. The employees (we were just a handful) were requested to mingle with the guests, make polite conversation and help them feel welcome.

I found myself standing next to a young man who said he worked for Macquarie Bank, one of the potential investors. As we talked, he mentioned that he'd just returned from India where he'd played in a cricket match. I assumed he was trying to find common ground with me because I looked Indian and he thought I must therefore be a cricket fan. I continued to talk about random things, and he again mentioned a time when he had been to India earlier to play an exhibition match. This happened a third time, and I was beginning to wonder if he did anything else, and how he managed to get any work done at the bank.

It was soon time to circulate again, and he introduced himself by name before we moved on to other conversation groups.

"Stuart MacGill."

The name meant nothing to me, so I reciprocated by telling him my name.

Shortly afterwards, one of my colleagues came over to me.

"I see you've been talking to Stuart MacGill."

"Yes. Do you know him?" I asked.

He looked at me like I was crazy.

"Don't you know Stuart MacGill? He's an Australian cricketer. He's played in India many times."

The penny then dropped, and I kicked myself.

My colleague went on.

"I'm more thrilled that I got to talk to..." he gestured towards another man standing nearby.

That day in the year 2000 was the first time I heard the name Dean Jones.

Yesterday, when the obituaries started coming in, was the second.

Stuart MacGill (left) and Dean Jones (right). I'm helpfully pointing out who's who for the benefit of others like myself.

My Favourite Cry-Along Movie

[Spoiler alert]

One of my FB groups challenged the male members to write about when they have cried. In the interests of striking a blow against toxic masculinity, here's my confession.

As a rule, I don't watch tear-jerkers. I can't handle them. My favourite genres are science fiction, superhero, rom-com and comedy.

But there's one movie I keep going back to every once in a while when I'm by myself, and no one can see me dabbing at my eyes with a tissue. This is the Bollywood movie 'Dil Hai Tumhara' (My Heart is Yours). In the words of the little girl in 'Cheeni Kum', this movie is not "sad-sad", it's "happy-sad". There are some extremely touching scenes in it that I love to go back and watch over and over, and it's impossible to stay dry-eyed.

For those who don't know the story, Sarita (played by Rekha) is a married woman with a daughter. Her husband secretly has a mistress and a (younger) daughter through her. The husband and the other woman die in a car accident, but before he dies, the husband makes Sarita promise to bring up his daughter along with their own. Sarita does so, but can never bring herself to show love to the other woman's daughter. This continues right into the adulthood of the two girls, the elder girl Nimmi (Nirmala) played by Mahima Chaudhry and the younger adoptive one Shalu (Shalini) played by Preity Zinta. All that Shalu wants is the love of her mother, but she never gets it.

In spite of the mother's coldness to her adoptive daughter, the elder girl is very loving towards her sister, and this is reciprocated. The scenes between the two sisters are very touching. Towards the end, the mother also realises her adoptive daughter's worth and completely softens towards her.

The romantic parts of the movie involving Arjun Ramphal are quite silly and not moving at all. It's the scenes between the sisters, and between the adoptive mother and daughter, that always get me.

Mahima Chaudhry (right) is an absolute sweetheart as the loving elder sister

These scenes do something to me:

1. The backstory with the background song "kabhi hasna hai, kabhi rona hai; jeevan sukh dukh ka sangam hai" (One must sometimes laugh and sometimes cry; life is a mix of happiness and sadness) shows how the two girls were brought up differently by Sarita, and how the elder one makes up for the lack of love shown by the mother.

9:20 to 13:00

2. How the sisters seem to fight but are very close.

20:00 to 23:40

3. An extended scene with lots of drama. Sarita believes Shalu is trying to steal Dev (Arjun Ramphal) from *her* daughter Nimmi. She reveals that Shalu is not her daughter, and accuses her of trying to do to Nimmi what Shalu's mother had done to her. But Nimmi remains loyal to Shalu, and is even willing to give up Dev for her. Shalu in turn decides to sacrifice her love for the sake of her sister's happiness, and pretends that she loves someone else (Sameer, played by Jimmy Shergill).

It's interesting that the man in the triangle is treated as an inanimate object in this movie ("You marry him. No, you marry him!")

2:05:17 to 2:14:10

4. My favourite scene, where Shalu goes to Dev's father played by Alok Nath. She gets him to agree that Dev and Nimmi's wedding will go ahead in spite of the soon-to-be-public scandal of her own "illegitimate" birth. Sarita overhears the conversation and realises that Shalu has been loyal to both herself and Nimmi. They are reconciled.

[Aside: Alok Nath was exposed as a creep during the #MeToo movement in 2018, and his appearance in this movie was one of the usual benign "nice daddy" roles with which he had everyone fooled for years].

One of Preity Zinta's most powerful performances

The moment Sarita realises how unfairly she has judged her adoptive daughter all these years

All's well between the women in the family, and there's only one wrinkle left to sort out - which sister gets the inanimate object?

2:32:25 to 2:42:35

And this post wouldn't be complete without the song 'Dil Laga Liya':

(Creating this blog post was very pleasurable, and only cost me a couple of more tissues when watching those clips.)