I still can’t get over it – I got a haircut in NYC for 12 bucks and it came off pretty well. So this is why people move to the boroughs. Hmmm.

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The NYC transit workers strike went on for barely three days but in those three days it was brought home to all of us how much we depend on this city’s public transportation. Traffic was gridlocked, people were stranded, tempers ran high and a couple of very promising squabbles broke out here on Chowk itself.

The strike dominated the news cycles and for once everybody cared – in NYC at least. People who usually don’t watch the news, tuned in to see what the latest developments were and to gauge for themselves whether they would have to hail a cab into work.

I didn’t have places I needed to be – I usually work from home and all that I need to do can be done on the phone or through email so I was fine although its amazing how many things I wanted to do when I realized that I could no longer move easily about. I wanted to go into the city, go shopping, see a movie… all things that I didn’t have time for as I neared deadlines on several projects but the urge was strong. Weird, huh? Human psychology I mean.

But even if I didn’t have to travel much, I still tuned in… this was a hell of a story after all.

What I found was disturbing. The mayor’s office was the dominant source of information on the strike and it was doing its best to put the Scrooge spin on the union. “The Strike that Stole Christmas” said one tv station. I understand that the mayor’s office would be the one to go to for info on things such as where to go and what to do and how much it was going to cost you when you did, but there were some outrageously partisan reports on the site and in the media that said that the union was being unreasonable. They completely blanked out the parts about the workers working without a contract for years, about how this was the state of affairs for far more city employees than the transit workers and how a lot of the people who were angry at the strike were also very angry at the city for not doing enough.

I guess NYC and especially Manhattan is so awash in money that one forgets that there are a lot more poor people or bare living wage families in this town. Mixed in with the Matthew Brodericks and Sarah Jessica Parkers are the millions who can only watch from a distance. I’m not saying the rich don’t deserve to live in the city – how hypocritical that would be coming from a woman who lives largely on her inheritance. But there are people out there who understand what the transit workers are up against. And their sympathies are with them.

According to most polls, public sympathy is pretty evenly divided. A lot of people believe that the MTA and its workers behaved equally badly. And I have to wonder, if the mayor;s office wasn’t doing such a big snow job on the issue, would it have skewed more in favor of the workers?

But in a city made up of so many privately employed people, its hard to imagine that everybody would be in favor of the strike. There are tons of people out there who think the workers are being unreasonable – a number of them on this site. That is being discussed vigorously elsewhere but I must say that if a private company went for three years without renewing or upgrading contracts and asked its workers to work for them out a sense of loyalty [patriotism] then that would be a company without workers very soon. As city employees and transit workers, these are people who can’t just walk out, although others in their situation such as teachers have been quitting left and right. Is it so impossible for everyone to imagine what these workers might be experiencing this Christmas?

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When J told me about the upcoming strike a few weeks ago, we were in the middle of discussing India. And when she told me about the union and the law against striking, I blurted out,

“But can they do that? I mean, isn’t it a basic right or something?”

That was the Indian in me talking, specifically the Malayalee inured to the frequent hartals and bandhs called by this party or that party [it’s a myth that only the Commies use these means of protest – every single party including the Congress and the BJP use them].

I wouldn’t wish that state of affairs on anybody. You have live through those deadly boring days with their random acts of violence to understand just how stupid those things are. And I know that unionization, especially in Kerala and WBengal, are throttling business. I come from a business family and I grew up listening to the bitter complaints directed towards unions just as I watched Amitabh Bachchan fight for the rights of workers in unions on screen. It was an odd demarcation – in the theatre you were happy when the unions struck work and you were always rooting for them or rather the hero was going up against unscrupulous big business but at home your uncles would come and bitch about what the unions were doing to their profit margins.

I have also seen how unions can shoot themselves in the foot. Right on National Highway 47 is an old dilapidated building – at one time it was a busy place, the thriving factory of Apollo Tyres. The unions went to work and wouldn’t reach a compromise. The scuttlebutt was that the owner had rubbed some guy in some party which controlled the union [maybe it was the Communists, I don’t know coz like the strikes, there are multiple political parties involved in the unions as well] and so they were out to get him. End result? The factory shut down and the people were without a job.

This in a state where more and more young people are committing suicide, depressed because they have an education and they would like to find work but there is no work to be found because everybody is scared to work in a commie state. If they don’t kill themselves, then they join this or that party because that is the only way they can tell themselves that they matter and then become a part of the vicious cycle. The ones that consider themselves lucky are the ones that go abroad, often as electricians or road side workers, to toil in the heat of Arabia to make enough money to send home to their parents.

Out in the countryside are mansions built from the sweat of young men who’ve worked in the relentless sun of the Middle East, often suffering indignities of the kind that no one should have to endure. And at times when I see them from my air conditioned car as I drive away from the airport in Dubai or Bahrain or some place like that, its hard not to feel angry.

Anger at a state that is so involved in filling the pockets of its politicians that fellow citizens have to live subhuman lives in order to exist. I feel angry when I walk down the street of my hometown and see the beggars from across the border in Tamil Nadu and someone laughs and says to me, “For them, this is their Dubai.”

Is that what we all come down to? Beggars looking for their own Dubai.

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It is because I feel this way that I cannot just react to the NYC strike. My history with unionization is bound up in India. And I carry India with me wherever I go because that is who I am and so I have to be careful in not letting it color my perceptions of what I see in other lands.

As I sat in the café and tried to explain all this to J, she just looked at me. “Well, it’s a little different here,” she said.

Exactly.

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A very Merry Christmas to you all. And if you’re offended by that, you’re a dope. :D