To insta or not

 4^th August 2024

There used to be two popular children books when I was a kid – Nandan and Champak. I preferred Champak as Nandan would just have stories and lessons thereupon. I have always been a poor reader…till date. Champak had this jokes section called ‘dekho hans na dena’. But, I would laugh….and be proud that the publishers didn’t even get to know I laughed. As a kid, that was my moral victory when they had specifically asked me not to. I reckon a lot of my optimism in life has come from this constant moral victory I achieved. Kids are literal. I remained literal. I can’t read in between the lines. In fact, even this phrase doesn’t make sense – why do people even try to do that when there’s nothing written in between the lines. People don’t even read the lines properly, so why to be so ambitious to attempt to read in between.

I have been working out since few months. There was a fad at one time to do 10,000 steps as your daily healthy goal. I would try but fail every time. I would even put my phone in someone else’s bag or pocket to gain step count but it will still come short of even 3,000. Now it’s like a ‘cakewalk’ to achieve 10,000 steps. I can do that perhaps for my entire neighbourhood, I am sure my neighbour Richard will appreciate as he injured his leg. I don’t know why they use ‘cakewalk’ for calling something simple. If someone is walking on a cake I’d presume it would get very messy. And which cake – birthday cake, pancake, cow dung cake?! With all the clean up involved, it should rather be used for a difficult job.

Last week I was sick with viral so I was resting in bed and listening to some comic acts. The inspiration I got is that there should rather be a new challenge. A challenge to complete your day in no more than 50 steps. No kidding, but I am sure most ultra urban Indian people would easily achieve that. Last month visiting family back home, I asked my mom that dad is getting so weak, has bhaiya started to bring milk from the shops?

In my brother’s world, the household chores, buying any grocery or any house work for that matter has always been a mythological stuff. He refuses to believe that these tasks are part of basic survival skills required in a civilised human society. He thinks everything somehow happens by magic and people around him have no role to play. The other magical thing was he offered to drop me to the airport. I have done numerous trips back to airport in last 15 years but this was the first time ever he gave this offer. I straight away imagined that my brother is the Godfather and this is that offer I can’t refuse. And I didn’t. Anyways I digress.

So my mother brags that no one has to go to the shop now, the shopwala just hangs the milk on the front gate every morning. She continues that sabjiwala, fruit wala, they all come to the doorstep as well. Wow, this was the last basic life skill this family had to apply and they have killed that opportunity as well. I wonder what tasks a household in India has to do! There’s kaamwaali for all the cleaning, dusting, dishes, clothes, making bed etc. There’s cook to make all the food. There’s kudewala to collect all the garbage. There’s maali for the gardens, pots and plants. And now no more shop-run to buy anything, all at the doorstep! Talking about maali - no we don’t call them phoolwala. They are the ones you rush to buy the flower bouquet when you couldn’t give much thought on what gift to buy, and coz there are many like you, the recipient of the gift can’t remember who gave which flowers. Some enterprising kids would take the rose bouquet and start playing ‘ringa ringa roses’, and even till the adult hood we never get corrected that it actually is ‘ring around the roses’. Fun fact: The career line of phoolwala was started because once upon a time when dinosaurs ruled the world, one idiot salesman forgot to buy gift for his girlfriend’s birthday and then rushed to his garden and collected some flowers, put a thread around it and here you go – bob is your uncle. He did such a tremendous job at selling her the idea and that why getting her the ubiquitous fragrance that will last only for a temporary period till they reach home is far more precious than a gold heart shaped locket. However, the protagonist of this story is not that idiot salesman boyfriend but the marwari businessman who was standing by, listened to everything and converted this into a business opportunity.  So that’s how this new career line of phoolwala was started.

To be honest, my household in India still does some trips to the shop for certain things (not my brother, though). But when I talk to friends and people of my age bracket in India, they have reached nirvana from the worldly cycle of house chores. There was no single task that the phone couldn’t do for them. And when you add Alexa on top of that, you don’t even need to trouble your fingers. I asked someone that won’t you get old very soon from this sedentary lifestyle, and the response I get is ‘there’s always photoshop’! No wonder India is a land of software powerhouse immersed in a parallel social media life. And here I am, grinding myself through workout, diet control and the retinol to achieve the same result.

Taking no more than 50 steps will be easily achievable by ultra urban Indians. Given all their household chores, shopping and food is already taken care of, all they need to do is number 1 and number 2. Apparently these are universally acceptable numbers for your daily business. Unless you have a prostate problem, let’s account for 4 toilet trips with 5 steps each way, that’s your 40 steps. As a side note, funny how taboo the word prostate was for some Americans. Once I wrote an article for Stern business school’s newsletter with a word prostate in it. The editor removed that word and made some dumbed down version of her own. We were the students who were supposedly destined to be the next CxOs or investment bankers on wall street but couldn’t handle the word prostate. Coming back to maths, this still leaves the extra enthusiastic souls with 10 more steps in a day who have had an extra dose of adrak-wali chai made by bhaiya ji.

This reminds me that how common the word ‘bhaiya ji’ has become in India, especially among the south Delhi, south Mumbai famed people. The word bhaiya although literally used to define relationship with your brother has been historically used to add to a name to give respect to another person. Bhaiya in most hindi speaking states, bhai in Gujarat eg dheerubhai ambani, paaji in Punjabi, dada in Bengal etc and similarly we have behen (Mayavati behen), didi (Mamta didi), ben (Kokila ben) etc. for the females. ‘Ji’ is another word of respect, and we similarly have ‘garu’ or ‘thaliava’ in south India, or  ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ in English. There are other such words like shri, shriman, shrimati, mr, mrs etc. Over a period of time, bhaiya has become so ubiquitous and pervasive across India that people will call any random person as bhaiya whom they believe to be financially, culturally, racially or generally inferior to you. It could be used to say ‘excuse me’ but with respect. This also eliminates the need to know or remember the name of that other person and still sound respectful, while in reality you may or may not. Essentially ‘bhaiya’ has become the name of the entire Indian population of ‘have nots’. Interestingly, my dear ultra urban Indian population started believing that ‘bhaiya’ actually is a name and we need to add the word ‘ji’ to it to make it respectful, and that’s the genesis of the word ‘bhaiya ji’. It is actually quiet funny when you break it down and ponder – you are basically calling someone ‘sir sir’ or ‘ji ji’. It’s not funny for us in India though. In fact, we have gone one step further. At the cost of offending some people, the founder of Art of living foundation and a well known spiritual leader is known by the name ‘Shri Shri Ravi Shankar”. They have got one step further and blatantly gave themselves two respectful words right at the start of their name. What’s a better way to formalise the sentiments behind ‘bhaiya ji’ with the audacity of our spiritual leader’s shri square.

So the people are getting more and more tech savvy but less and less familiar with the basics. That said, India have always had two faces with much polarisation between rich and poor, haves and have nots, touchables and untouchables, English speaking and non-english speaking, educationally qualified and not, north and south, golden Indian era and remnants of colonisation. The new one emerging is the technology savvy and non tech savvy. I am convinced that I fall under the latter. I reckon I was quite progressive when I moved out of India in 2007 but my primitive second home in Australia has kept me out of bounds with the technology and gave me pots and pans, broom, mop, hoe, shovel, rake, water hose et al. I am since just working to hone my basic survival skills required in the civilised human society without any tech support. Within these years, India leaped and zoomed past me in the realm of technology. 

Talking about technology, I was recently introduced by a friend to this app called Instagram. I won’t take her name to avoid any confrontation and further humiliation. But Yashika tells me that if you don’t know what reels are then you are literally ‘outdated’. As I said before, I am still literal so I understood it exactly the way it was said. Although me being me and not wanting to be seen as a pushover, I tried to get out of it by asking, ‘why can’t you do the same thing in facebook?” “It’s old-fashioned”, I get a logic-free, terminal response. I didn’t want to appear to be ‘outdated’ and ‘old-fashioned’ so I opened the account.

Reels is the buzzword of Insta. It took me time to get my mind around that it’s not the same ‘reels’ that my Grade 7 photography teacher Johny used to call the photographic camera films. By the way, Johny was his nickname and I never got to know what his real name was. I just couldn’t call him ‘bhaiya ji’ though. I wonder why the creators would evolve the vocabulary that’s known to all as they bring a new technology. If that’s their key differentiation factor, then my faith is already shaky in the core creativity that they are selling. 

Professor Amit Sachdeva was my micro economics teacher during my first year in Delhi University. I used to like him – perhaps the only teacher whose classes I attended in all three years without attendance pressure. His very first day and he asked the entire class, “what’s the proper way of saying ‘movies’”. No one could answer. I reckon we were all just bunch of late teen nerds with single track mind who could only see course books and the exam paper. If the question was to solve square root of 329 with power of 6 divided by log of 128 with sigma reaching to e multiplied by the enthusiasm of showing the entire class your mathematical powers, then I am sure some Bansal in our class would have shouted out loud in less than 30 seconds. And with a bonus graph of sensitivity analysis. Prof Sachdeva says, “it’s motion pictures, because it’s a collection of moving pictures”. I learnt something new. The other thing he said was his two favourite books were ‘The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand’ and ‘Les Miserables by Victor Hugo’. By sheer respect, I did read ‘The Fountainhead’ later in my life which was the thickest book I ever read and will ever read. Luckily, they made a motion picture on ‘Les Miserables’.

Motion pictures evolved into movies. When internet and social media arrived, movies evolved into clips. Clips essentially meant that you won’t have to go through full trauma of watching a motion picture if the original editor has not done a good enough job, the social media editors will clip or cut the motion picture right to the point what you should be watching. No foreplay required. I wonder why the actual motion picture editors wouldn’t do the same thing if that’s what the target audience ever wanted to see. A case in point is the popularity of the Titanic clip where Leonardo DiCaprio is painting Kate Winslet that youngsters watched again and again seemingly mistaking Leonardo DiCaprio for Leonardo Da Vinci. James Cameron could have filled the entire three hours with that clip on repeat mode and still have got the same or perhaps even better rating.

When facebook arrived, it was arrogant enough to use the plain vanilla version – ‘video’. YouTube branded it with ‘YouTube Video’ and later introduced ‘shorts’ to perhaps compete with the insta reels’ popularity.

Insta gave it the nomenclature ‘reels’. Reels achieved the breakthrough as they catered to the low attention span of ultra urban Indians or Gen Z millennials, they would like to call themselves. You will also find your chachiji, mamiji, mausiji, buaji, jijaji, fufaji, dubai wali auntiji etc etc. but don’t get fooled by that demographic, who are just there due to FOMO and heaps of disposable time – what’s better way to avoid being a social outcast. Reels hit the chord with that pretentious Indian population who is apparently ever busy and the only time they can afford to take out is to watch short reels. Someone clearly forgot to do the maths that the number of reels you watch is a key multiplier to arrive at the total hours you spend on insta.  I heard that the smartest trick devil ever played was to make people believe that he doesn’t exist. The insta trick appears to be smarter!

Recently I learned about a feature in insta called ‘story’. Apparently it has nothing to do with the stories as people know but you just add a picture and call it a story! The audacity of insta is that they make it available only for 24 hours, which is nothing different then mere a post but the expectation is that people run towards watching that due to the scarcity of its lifetime. Perhaps Aaj Tak flashes a breaking news for everytime someone puts up a Story. The concept is something like a meteor shower that everyone puts an alarm to watch at night, while the ever beautiful googolplex stars in the milkyway and beyond are available on an everyday basis. Oh sorry, I never meant to compare the insta posts with the stars, but you get the gist!

My take on insta is that you spend hours and hours and hours in watching ridiculously small motion pictures, created by some random people and they would finish even before you would get the hang of the topic, jam your feet into it or try to have a hearty laugh. They have no continuity, there’s rarely any message or knowledge enhancement and there’s no loyalty, still there’s always hope that all this effort on Instagram will make sense in the end. By the time there’s not even an end (because there’s never one), you have burnt hours off your precious life in the world’s utmost crappy concept sold to the people who generated extra time by reducing their 10,000 steps to just 50! 

Here are some stats – Half of Indian population is on whatsapp and one out of four is on Instagram. Both apps award top position to India in the world. Talking about stats and pole positions, last I checked we had 3 bronze in Paris, thanks to that one Haryana female and that other shooter we never heard the name of. I’d love to know how active they both are on social media. There’s nothing wrong with socialisation but the jury is still out on whatever happened to the human touch. What baffles me is that in a Country where every 4^th person is still below poverty line, the other 3 are sitting on their comfy cushion like thing (bed or couch, most likely in a horizontal position) and either moving their thumbs quickly enough to type a text that beats the speed of vocal chords or just flicking up their thumb looking for that next reel that can release their dopamine. Perhaps the Indian population control department, if that exists, can use the stats in their marketing campaign. If you don’t stop after 2 kids (read: hum do hamaare do), in a best case scenario, the 3^rd kid will be living below poverty line, and it will go worse when you go to the 4^th kid who would definitely be an insta freak. 

 As an innocent first timer, I got sucked into this during my vulnerable state of viral infection. When I looked at the time after my first intense Instagram session, these were the words that came out of my mouth “Holy shit!” I reckon this phrase was pre coined centuries ago in anticipation that one day instagram would be invented and this would be the most befitting phrase to describe it. It's holy for the people who spend hours and hours on it, while in reality they are just proving that their life is shit.  

Finally, if you were patient enough to read through this epic literary effort of mine, it’s just one thing I’d like you to take away – “Instagram app is a total waste of time, I suggest it’s time you get a life!”

 

Indian Aroma - Cerule's insights into India

Indian Aroma - Cerule's insights into India

Gandhi's Seven Deadly Social Sins

Wealth without Work
Pleasure without Conscience
Science without Humanity
Knowledge without Character
Politics without Principle
Commerce without Morality
Worship without Sacrifice

The Ideal Gift

Picking a gift for a girl is a tricky thing. The ideal gift achieves a delicate balance between cliché and commitment, thoughtfulness and humour. I have been asked by a friend of mine to get her a gift from ‘down under’...and I am in a soup since then!

Let me illustrate my point. If your gift is too fancy, she could (read WILL) assume you're getting serious. An expensive present is almost as big a deal as a big rock on a ring. On the other hand, if it's too frivolous, she might assume you don't care at all. There is this whole cynical 'we're too good for this gift’ school of thought, extremely popular.

Well…what the gift should be? And then there's the cardinal question of originality. What do you get someone where everyone's rushing to get candy? If it’s a chocolate, then the girl goes like this…ohhh noo…yet another chocolate pack!! There is no originality. Somehow everyone from a foreign land would get few packs of chocolates. It used to be easy in earlier days when chocolates were still considered original. Not anymore! I know the gals who would otherwise die for chocolates but would not accept this as a gift if you are coming from abroad. They’ll eat the chocolates and say, “Okay, so, where’s my gift?” I wonder if chocolates were just a foreplay!!

The greeting card stores have jumped on virtually every idea, added sugar syrup, and marketed it for an exorbitant price. If you have thought of skipping chocolates and are going for a greeting card instead, believe me, you were better off not reading my blog. Greeting cards are worse!! The thumb rule is if you have to think about what gift to buy for this gal, greeting cards were never a good idea to start with. No, don’t ask why. No, don’t even think again! You would know that you have to buy a greeting card when you have to buy a greeting card.

It's very hard to come up with something interesting, and yet not go over the top. I was going through a website for gift suggestions and this is what I found. This Year's Tip: Don't even think Swarovski. That's just so 2001!! This is the problem with the websites or any other media on gift suggestions; they would always tell you what not to buy but never tell you what to buy. This makes things harder for you coz everyone has read it. Now, even your gal knows what’s so 2001!!

You must take care that anything you buy should not have designs of sports, gadgets, motor cycles, cars, nude gals, animals, violence….makes it too masculine. A couple of jabs at the pink (never go red) hearts are fine, but any more would make her think - is he just overcompensating? Or is he too cheap to take me out? Recall those ‘dil-shape waale balloon’ from our bollywood flick - Dil Chahta Hai.

Flowers? Hah. How cornball can you get? Roses are a strict no-no, say the skeptics, but 24 of the long-stemmed will have most of them swooning. It's the biggest cliché in the book, though, so be careful who you try it on. You must know that each colour has a different meaning, so don’t just go ahead with your favourite color. Think twice before you go with Red. Must you go with flowers, try my personal favourite Orchids. There is not much knowledge about Orchids yet in the female community. This is always the best strategy to go with a solution which client (herein, your girl) has least information about. You always have a leverage to change your solution as per your girl’s reaction.

Garments?? You can’t buy that unless she is your gf, getting the right size is a big factor. Even if she is your gf, buying a garment is always a risky business. If you get the right size it doesn’t lead you anywhere, but if you get even an inch here and there, you are definitely on your way to the nearest exit. Then there is this whole range of associated problems – color, design, style, fabric, brand etc etc. Before you go for garment shopping, I’ll advise that not buying a gift is always an option. I may sound cheap to you now, but we’ll talk once you start your perfect garment hunt.

A book? As a gift to a girl? Really, could you be any less romantic?
A movie? She's a girl, dude. DVDs are not her thing.
Music? Like what, Guns n Roses? And don't go anywhere near Jagjit Singh.
PC games or board games? I think it’s the last time she would talk to you after getting this gift. Imagine gifting Snakes and Ladders, haha…or your childhood favourite Monopoly!!
X-box or Playstation? Not even if she is blind.

Did I say the ideal gift achieves a delicate balance between cliche and commitment, thoughtfulness and humour?? ….which basically means there is nothing called an ideal gift!!

See my point. Suggestions?

GFC in India…are you kidding??

Last time I went to a nationalized bank in India was for an Audit assignment with PwC. They didn’t show me any paper for how the loan comes in and to where it is disbursed. I spent twice of the time I was supposed to spend in that assignment and still came home empty handed. The only solace was the same treatment encountered by my colleagues in other branches. Needless to say, we lost the assignment! I still wonder who would have been able to complete an audit assignment with a client like them. I was still content with my life. At least there wasn’t any fear of going to the same atmosphere again!

Unless of course in the summer of 2009, during my long enough trip in India, when my dad got so much used to me sitting and not doing anything at home, that he finally decided to give me some work. It all started when I offered to pick up Aryan (my nephew) from school ‘coz frankly I didn’t have anything better to do.
“Dad, can I go and pick up Aryan from School, it’s his birthday today so it would be exciting to pick him directly from the School (instead of the Bus Stop)”, I asked.
“What’s the point? You will do up-down instead he can come by School Bus itself as he does daily. It’ll be just waste of time and energy”, he encountered.
When all he wanted to say is, why do you want to waste money on petrol when we are already paying for his school bus? My dad is quick on putting money value to everything.
He continued, “If you’ve time, why don’t you go to the OBC (Oriental Bank of Commerce – another nationalized bank) and deposit the Service Tax.”
Well, that’s the primary reason why we never offer to do anything voluntarily in our house. Any stance on that will reveal that you have extra time and you are up for some work which wouldn’t have even existed at the first place.

This time it was Service Tax. Service tax is a tax payable by you if you are deemed to perform a service. For example, if you are a lawyer preparing a notice, an accountant filing a return, or a doctor giving a paracetamol, you have performed a service and must pay a tax for having done so. The government is not liable to pay service tax. This must be for the simple reason that the government doesn’t provide any service: electricity, water, primary education, basic health care, roads etc. And guess, that's all the more reason for the rest of us, who do provide some sort of service or the other, to make good the deficit.

However, this is easier said than done. So, here I was with the herculean task of facing a nationalized bank again in my life ‘coz, perhaps, only nationalized banks would accept your service tax. I approached one of my friends, who is an accountant, to help out. Alright, even I am an accountant by profession, but I feel that I should give others some chance to practically experience what they learnt through the books. He sent one of his staffers to a Gurgaon branch of OBC.
“Are you the service tax payer?” asked Aunty ji sitting on the other side of the table.
The staff guy admitted he wasn't; that he was paying it on behalf of a Client Sir. Aha, said Aunty ji, as if detecting a fundamental flaw in this argument.
“Client Sir has to come in person to pay his service tax”, demands Aunty ji. The staff guy explained that this would be difficult as Client Sir lives not in Gurgaon but in Delhi.
“DELHI??” said Aunty ji, making it sound like it is separated by the English Channel which can’t be crossed until a channel tunnel is built between the two places. “If Client Sir lives in Delhi (read: on that side of the English Channel), his service tax has to be paid there, and only there.”
“OK”, said the staff guy, “so give back Client Sir's cheque so that it can be deposited in Delhi.”
“Sorry, but the cheque which we cannot accept has already been accepted; here's an OBC bank draft instead”, said Aunty ji.

My dad had already asked me twice about the deposit of the service tax. Somehow, these things never skip my Dad’s mind even for one day. And he makes it a point to check every day he remembers it. Once, I accidentally told him that I have yet to get my graduation degree certificate from the University, and he constantly nagged me for two months until I took a leave from office and went to collect it. So, I couldn’t have afforded more delays and decided to go myself this time. The first Delhi OBC I went to didn't do service tax, or drafts, or something. The second one didn’t do something, or drafts, or service tax. Someone at the third OBC had heard a rumour that there was another OBC near Connaught Place which might do these things. So I went there. A collapsible gate with a narrow squeeze space greeted me. It could be due to the security reasons, I reasoned. Inside was a yelling, screaming riot.
“Bhai saab, why is there so much crowd? Is there a Bank run?” I asked.
“No, we are trying to put our service tax money in”, explained a kind rioter.
There were 14 counters. The first 13 were deserted. Behind the 14th sat a Sheila Dikshit lookalike, with her knitting kit placed conspicuously on her table, at whom the rioters waved cheques and bank drafts. Sheila ji ignored them all. After a while, she took out her tiffin and began to eat lunch. Aloo-Parantha and gobhi-mattar. I gave up, phoned my friend, who said he'd get his staff guy to pay the tax the next day. Which he did. Maybe he caught up Sheila ji in a gap between the gobhi-mattar and dessert.

Ohh, all this while I forgot to connect the title of this post to the story narrated. So, here’s the paragraph for that. After Global Financial Crises (GFC) had hit the world’s economy like a pandemic, a statement was issued by our finance minister that our nationalised banks are very safe unlike all those American and European banks and they’re not going to go belly up. The primary reason for GFC was the sub-prime lending. Our FM was confident that Indian economy is insulated from those global issues. To me, this statement was funny. I then thought that the poor chap is saying this only coz he is in the midst of a GFC, with global recession and a liquidity crunch like no one has seen since the Great Depression; and passing this statement is the only thing he can do with the available resources. The exercise proved to me that I was wrong. Our nationalised banks are as safe as an unopenable safe ever: far from giving away your money to sub-prime borrowers, they won't even let you put your money in!!

You should be whatever you wanna be. You should have a life to stop wherever you want and start whenever you like. You should meet people who have different point of view. You should see things you've never seen before and feel things you've never felt before. You should live a life you are proud of. And if you find you are not, you should have the strength to start all over again!

Bangalore Airport!

I stopped by Bangalore last month while I was coming from Australia to India. I went there to meet my good old school friend, Gaurav aka Ganja aka Bobo. He did show me around the place exceedingly well (whatever there is in the city) but he faltered to gauge the distance of Bangalore’s new airport. I barely managed to reach in time, which has nothing to do with my past track record. What makes things impossibly achievable this time is the location of the airport: it is far from Bangalore. No one seems to know just how far from Bangalore the Bangalore airport is. But everyone agrees that it is very far. Maybe it is even very, very far.

The million dollar question is: Exactly how much ahead of check-in time should one depart the city to reach the airport, bearing in mind the inevitability of the traffic jams that have become synonym to Bangalore? Some are of the opinion that a simple rule-of-thumb formula gives you a fairly good approximation of the journey time: shorter the time you have in hand, farther the airport is. Mathematically, multiply your flight number by the square root of your anxiety, to the power number of persons travelling with you, divided by the time you have in hand and you'll get a rough idea, in hours and minutes, of the time it'll take you to reach the airport. Some disagree, pointing out that watches are inadequate instruments with which to try and calculate journey time to the airport, which is best computed through the use of a calendar. For instance, if the flight that you are proposing to take is on Tuesday, you should go to the airport on Sunday, unless the numbers comprising the date of that day add up to the inauspicious number 7, in which case you'd best consult your personal astrologer, or an airline timetable, whichever is closer to hand. Needless to say, that’s personal astrologer. We still need to invent something called airline timetable in India.

The distance of the new Bangalore airport from Bangalore city raises questions of a philosophical nature as well. Getting there represents the how part of the question; the why part (as in 'Why it is where it is') gives rise to a different debate. According to critics, the location of the airport was chosen with a view to property speculation. Going by this logic, the airport was sited as far off from the city as possible so that insiders could buy up all the land between the city and the airport at dirt-cheap rates and then sit back and watch the prices soar. The closer the airport was to the city, the less the connecting land between the two, and the lesser the booty.

I disagree with the above explanation. It fails to see the real reason for the location of Bangalore airport, which is to revolutionize the entire concept of airports, and of flying. What is an airport? A place which facilitates flying. And what happens when people fly? They leave a carbon footprint, which gets Al Gore so furious that he starts flying all over the place telling people not to fly and thereby leaving an even bigger carbon footprint in his efforts. Placing airports as far from cities as possible not only deters people from flying but also makes for shorter flights between airports. The new Bangalore airport, for example, is halfway to Delhi. Now if Delhi airport were similarly to shift halfway to Bangalore, depending upon when they get their sense correct, Delhi and Bangalore would have an airport within a distance that can be covered through land. Or, they might as well have one airport. Similarly, other cities could follow suit so that the whole country will eventually have just one airport (should be located in the centre of India - Nagpur) which people travel over land to and from, thus get away with flying, and carbon footprinting, altogether. And we will have disinvented the Wright brothers.

Multitasking

I am in the middle of my vacations in India. I was little scared to reach home. Somehow, I was worried that this time my parents would definitely tie the knot. And then all their expectations of my returning back to India for good. I was preparing myself for a big drama during these vacations while I was reaching Delhi at a slow pace, perhaps deliberate slow pace, stopping by in Perth, Singapore and Bangalore! Quite an eventful journey. But, there was nothing big back home at Delhi. The very first day I made it clear that I’ll be going back to Aussie land after few weeks. Point immediately accepted. I was wondering where did all the parental love go! Not that I wanted the parental love to win, but sometimes you don’t want the fights to end so soon.

I reckon you can never say a definite no to parents for wedding bells but it’s best handled through procrastination. I didn’t have to learn it the hard way. Guess my experience with my parents was handy here. I am not under big pressure anymore. Everything went as per the plans. I am so happy. However, we are never satisfied with what we have. A week of drama and I suddenly find myself in a deep lull. There is nothing exciting left. Only limited tasks one does during holidays. I don’t like doing limited tasks. I am more of a multi tasker. In fact, most Indians are multi-taskers. Why do I say that? Ever looked at 10-armed Indian deity (what do you think they have all those extra limbs for?).

Indians are the ultimate multitaskers. Anywhere else in the world, people when they go to watch a movie will do just that: watch a movie. Not so Indian moviegoers, who want to get full paisa vasool. There they are, while the movie's going on they'll take the opportunity to call half-dozen of their closest pals on their cellphone, discuss dinner arrangements with Auntyji in the next seat (Mattar-paneer, or gobi-aloo?), and get Tinku to share his popcorns with Tinky and hold hands of their Priyatama during romantic songs. And all that's in an ordinary, common movie ticket. Think of how much more multitasking Indian moviegoers can do in Gold Class, with all that extra space.

It's not just at the movies that Indians show themselves to be master multitaskers. Watch the Indian driver on the road. There he is, slanted at an angle from the steering wheel, which he negotiates with his left elbow, right elbow sticking out of the window, cellphone jammed between shoulder and ear; cigarette in one hand, gutka packet in the other; left foot tapping up and down to a bhangra rap version of the Gayatri Mantra on music player; while he checks out the girl behind the wheels of the other Maruti, and tells his male companion in the passenger seat, Arre, yaar, isko dekh!

At home, the Indian is no less of a multitasker. There she is, spread on the sofa in the living room, TV blaring a saas-bahu soap, playing Antakshri with Pinky and Pinku, even as she supervises their maths homework which they are doing between Antakshri turns, yelling out to the maid in the kitchen not to put too much tarka in the daal, it gives Nani-ma acidity, while she exchanges the latest piece of gossip over mobile with the occupant of the adjoining flat spread on her sofa in her living room.

We are creating uproar for all those racist attacks on the Indians who are driving taxis and working in seven elevens in Australia. Give them a multitasking job. And then watch the difference!

Nostalgic …??

I officially graduated yesterday (May 23rd 2009) from an MBA program. The graduation ceremony was grand. I was wearing regalia in the same manner as I used to see in movies when I was kid. Unfortunately, we haven’t copied this stuff yet from Oxford history in Delhi University unlike US and Australian universities. So this was my first time. All firsts are memorable. Somehow, the ends always remind you of beginnings. Even though you progress in time, you always feel that the days were sunnier and brighter back in those times. Those were the days, everyone recalls with a similar amusement, irrespective of the time horizon they are talking about. I am having the same feeling today. Am I feeling nostalgic?? Or, is it just the effect of the scientific fact that Sun is getting older.

Nostalgia is pictured very precisely in a shampoo commercial or in the new improved Dove commercial. Nostalgia has always been a landscape of longing where the sun is sunnier, the blue sky bluer, the breeze breezier and most importantly the prices less pricier. You can figure out a person's age by the prices that the person remembers. The rule of thumb is that the lower the prices, the older the person.

Coke at one rupee a bottle? You think that was cheap? Then obviously you weren't around when Coke was four annas. Yes, that's right, just four annas a bottle!! What? Who's Anna? Oh my god, you young people, you know nothing about the old times. Anna as in 16 annas made a rupee; an anna was a coin, not a Russian girl's name. The best smuggled cigarettes, from America and England, were two rupees for a pack of 20. And you could smoke when and where you liked, including in movie theatres, without busybody health ministers slapping fines on you.

Salaries? You got a job with a starting salary of 300 a month, you were doing fine. There was this young guy, everyone used to point him out. He used to earn a thousand a month. Yeah, a thousand. Most eligible bachelor around, with half the moms in the community wanting to become his mom-in-law. It was said the rate he was going it wouldn't surprise anyone if he didn't end up with a bank account in lakhs (one followed by five zeros) by the time he retired. Yup, a cool lakh. What'd you think of that? If I go by my memory, I remember in this famous Bollywood movie – Maine Pyar Kiya – the hero was supposed to earn two thousand rupees a month to be able to get the girl’s hand. Dollar? What’s that? Oh, you have been to America???? “My uncles’ son’s friend’s dad’s sister-in law “stays” there and I went three years ago to visit them”, someone would boastfully claim.

Like all commercials, this shampoo commercial had to end to create a definition of Nostalgia. The delicate past of soft light and softer prices suddenly seemed to get swallowed up in the shining glare of the present reality. The price tags for almost every product were fast approaching the prices of a Louis Vuitton bag, jumping up every minute like a taxi meter with a nervous tic. Overnight the billions became the new millions. Salaries were no longer calculated in so many hundreds or thousands a month; they were computed on the basis of millions per annum, Diwali bonus extra. A centrally located two-bedroom flat? To buy? Forget it, unless your uncle was Lakshmi Mittal, or Ambanis. And don't ask for change, not even for five bucks, which was now the cost of the smallest bottle of Coke.

Fast forward to today and the world has changed. Thanks to the global economic downturn, nostalgia soon might not be what it used to be. And then, like a balloon pumped up with too much gas, the boom went bust. Recession promises to reverse the definition of nostalgia: the past seen as the realm of not small but huge prices. Already, the millions have become the new billions. You talk about property, commodity, salaries – everywhere. 20,000-plus Mumbai Sensex - was it only a year ago? It seems like another age altogether. No one talks about the price of Coke anymore; they just drink home-made lime-water to save the money.

And who knows? If the recession persists, an elderly father might recall with fondness how as a fresh MBA way back then were offered their first job at a six-figure package. Gees, that's fantastic, Dad but tell me: what's a job? might ask his 27-year-old son.

Same Same...but Different!!

It’s a different world. Two weeks after coming back from China, I'm still speaking English without any prepositions and articles. I reckon I’ll hate noodles for some months now. I don’t give a disgusting look now to see people eating anything that crawls (snakes, lizards, cockroaches!!). But I am slightly jealous. No matter what anyone tells you about the latest microchip invented by Intel — size does matter. Let's stop fooling ourselves — as of now, the Chinese Dragon is bigger, better and smarter than the Indian Tiger. I’m sure that must be the motivation behind my purchase of a Chinese shirt with big dragon embroidery over it. Shanghai doesn’t look like a city of an emerging economy but a developed country.

China will stop at nothing to prove a point to the watching world after Beijing Olympics 2008 and a run up to Shanghai World Expo 2010. And we won't need fortune cookies to tell us what China has in mind outside the sports arena. Simply put: China is all set to dominate the world. The new aggressive mood is most evident in Shanghai, which is bursting with frenzied construction activities that literally takes one's breath away — a thick pollution haze hangs over the city, but nobody minds. It's all for a good cause. In a meeting with Austrade officer, he showed us the two pictures of Shanghai, 25 years apart. We could only imagine how the entire forests must have been razed to change the color of the city from green to multi-color. There is now everything from stadiums, hotels, pools, bridges, underpasses, super-luxury hotels with not a beggar in sight. The priciest designer brands from US and Europe have set up their shops and can't keep up with the demand. If anybody is complaining, you certainly don't hear it. Yes, the counterfeit markets have been moved out of the city centre, but we certainly don’t care the location. Young girls dance fearlessly in the infamous KTVs wearing T-shirts that declare: 'Let's go out tonight and get laid'. The cops look the other way.

In fact, that is a Chinese specialty. Everybody is trained to look the other way. Locals insist the massacre at Tiananmen Square never happened. It's all a part of Western propaganda. I took a cab at a busy crossing to go to my hotel. I sat in the car and asked him to drop me at Motel 168. No answer. I tried repeating the name of the place without any other English words so that he may comprehend better. He would not utter a word and just sit silently in his driver’s seat. Must mention, his face looking the other way. He is eating an apple; least bothered about what is going through me or what would I do now. It took me literally 10 minutes of continuous shouting – “Does anyone know English?” - on that busy Shanghai street to get his taxi moving. I never went out of my hotel without my destinations written in Chinese characters on a piece of paper.

As my Chinese flat mates tell me, since there is zero access to the real world and a tightly controlled media that stresses on personal sacrifice, discipline, progress, the young don't know they're supposed to be rebellious and raise their voices like their counterparts everywhere else in the free world. Chairman Mao is still worshipped. I didn’t get the chance to see but my flat mates tell me that his body is still preserved and available for public viewing in Beijing. Despite that, one is pleasantly surprised to see familiar symbols of ostentation as Prada and Gucci billboards compete with Nicole Kidman wearing a luxury watch. Sure, China is bizarre and contradictory. While cynical expats laugh at cultural absurdities, young Chinese go about their slightly ambivalent existence in a state of denial. A German lady I met who teaches English in Beijing said, "Nobody wants to confront the truth. The young don't want to deal with communism... there is much confusion about values."

But in the Olympics 2008, Dragon has proved to the world that scale equals power. Do Indians need to worry? My Chinese takeaway from the trip: ‘Let's face it. We can't march to Beijing and they can't march to Delhi.’ Confucius should agree!