workinprogress

Merchant of Manhattan

2011-02-19T04:59:00.000-08:00

Caught Al Pacino and his Shylock act in the play- the merchant of venice in Broadway the other day. Cost me quite a packet - $180 to be precise, and I did'nt enjoy the play a bit.
Firstly, the seats at Broadhurst theatre on the 42nd at Broadway were pretty small, and added to the heavy set jackets and overcoats everyone was wearing in snowy New York, it made for very uncomfortable viewing.
Secondly, my seat at one corner didnt give the best of views, the elderly couple sitting next to me were jittery due to something in their seats and the young couple sitting in front of me ,though pretty engrossed in the play, had a packet or two of chips which made cracklimg noise just as Narissa was about to say something that would draw the applause of the crowd.
Thridly, Pacino was shorter than I imagined, his Shylock's delivery of dialogue wasnt impressive either. Antonio was better & smarter, I thought.
Fourthly, Shakespeare at 10pm is tough on any day, but when you have to manage a big event the next day, its even tougher. While seeing the Phantom of the Opera in London a few years back, i had dozed off a few times- due to the sheer darkness of its sets and due to teh late hours spent working on that day. A 50 pound ticket experience spent napping. With the MErchant, while teh sets were imagnative, its the verbosity of Shakespeare that got to me. After dozing off a few times, walked out of theatre half hour before the play ended into the chill New York night and to super Italian pizza.
Finally , $180 left a big hole in my pocket - it was what I was paying for Hilton for a night.
Pacino got me into the theatre, Shakespeare managed to get me out.

A new style of play

2011-01-25T00:38:00.001-08:00

The reason I dont like Barcelona's style of play is its boringness.
Under manager Pep Guardiola, the team has become quite invincible- 18/20 wins in La Liga, GF 122, GA 21 ( a record both ways) for a 38 match season. So why is success in this case boring?
Its the way they play.
The team is full of steady(they have 80% match attendance) creative, short players- (most under 5'8 -tallest being Villa) who keep passing the ball between themselves (70-75% possession in most matches), tiring out the opposition and using the awesome quartret of Messi, Carles Puyol, Gerard Pique and David Villa to score.
My team Chelsea normally has 50-55% possession (balanced team, athletic and talented) and a good winning record, Inter had 45% possession and won Champions league last year.
This also is something Arsenal practices- while it does make for some beautiful football, so much science also drains the fun from the beautiful game.
Get creative, Barca.

Escape!

2011-01-24T03:02:00.000-08:00

Nietzsche's Nihilistic philosophy is classically summarized by the statement- everything has eternal recurrance, since time is infinite and matter finite, everything will repeat itself. This implies that general human life is purposeless and mans actions have no inherent meaning. A meaninglessness endorsed by existential philosopher Camus in his essay, Myth of Sisyphus.
In contrast, there's a lighter, happier theme in 'Escape' centered works, one of which I have just finished reading- John Updike's Rabbit, Run. Escape to find meaning in ones live , existence and purpose. Escape to a better, more joyous state of being.
This theme has recurred in many books- Somerset Maugham's brilliant book, Moon and the sixpence( where bored stock broker Charles Strickand becomes an artist) ; Eat, Pray, Love - a recent blockbuster about the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, herself running away from a divorce thru Italy, India and Indonesia; Year of the Hare- Arto Passilinia's classic tale of Vatanan running into the forest with the hare and moving away from his drab city life.
A few movies have run the similar theme- Revolutionary road - with the Titanic lead pair of Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet fighting to keep their boring marriage alive dreaming of escape all the time, but not being able to achieve it; A Good Year achieved escape - again a dreary and incredibly busy stock broker, breaks away to work on his uncles wineyard to discover the joys of country life. Russel Crowe is the unlikely hero, but does a commendable job, nevertheless.
Rabbit, Run ranks way above quiet a few of these as a good escape novel- simply because it dwells in escape and its consequences- by covering over four decades of the life of Rabbit- Harry Angstrom, who grows (or doesn't) from being a great basketball star to a dull householder and makes multiple attempts to escape his own life, even as he becomes rich (his Toyota dealership booms in the 1980s) and finally falls to ill health. Written every ten years, Updike managed to reflect on some of the key developments in American polity- from the launch on the moon to vietnam war to the end of communism- possible sheerly due to the span of the novel's progress.
This theme of leading multiple lives in search of purpose- a sort of escape from present circumstances makes very engaging reading.
In non-fiction, escape in the form of Jim Rogers beautiful travel books written with a decade between them 'Investment Biker' and 'Adventure capitalist' or even P. J.O.Rourke's Eat the Rich were highly engaging.
An escape experience, be it a movie or a book, leaves you satisfied that there is meaning in life and that all you have to do is to attempt it.
Getting back to Nietzsche, escape is also a recurring philosophy manifesting itself in different ways and forms.
After all, wasn't it the king Siddhartha- the Buddha, who found enlightenment after walking away from his wife, kids and family?
Is escape, then, the route out of meaninglessless?

Spring forth in 2011?

2010-12-26T21:50:00.000-08:00

2010 ends this weekend.
Guess it's time to draw up lists of resolutions, pull out reviews of books read, movies seen, progress made, lessons learnt, draw up a mini statement of monies made, blown, left and due, remember places traveled and generally summarize the year for posterity.
2009 was a static year. Nothing happened, it just passed by.
2010 has the makings of a change year- an year with the weight of a decade on its back- seems like a turn around a block, resulting in a complete change in the view.
Another decade is over. From jumping aimlessly into my 30s in 2000 to cautiously planning for the 40s in 2010, it has been a transformational decade. TIME magazine calls it the Decade from Hell; Business Today calls it India's Best Decade. Maybe thats the worldview. When I began the 30s, we were half a trillion $ economy. Today, ten years down we are a trillion and half!
But personally, the decade has reduced my hair, increase my pulse rate, made me a conformist from a confrontist, converted me from a functionalist to a generalist and a tougher negotiator.
To summarize what has changed, transformed- needs more pause, more reflection and more thinking and more projecting into the future. Maybe till 2020.
Whats my view of myself in 2020?
Empty Nest. Entrepreneur. Dollar Multi-Millionaire. Author. Professor. Traveler.
These are six possibilities, not in any order.
But, before all of these possibilities looms a 12 month certainity- 2011.
Should I plan one step towards each of these goals in 2011? Maybe.
Back to 2010. All in all, an year that marks the beginning of a period of considerable progress with some initial milestones achieved. Read very few books this year, but bettered the average in December - having been laid low by flu, have managed to finish in fiction-Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love (great 2/3rd- Rome and Indonesia); Sunetra Choudhury's Braking News ( a missed opportunity to produce a masterpiece); John Updike's Rabbit, Run (cant believe it is about life in the 50's) and begun to read the much discussed- 'the girl with the dragon tattoo'. It's also been an year of travel compared to last year- globe trotted to US, France, Hong Kong - mostly places I have been to earlier. Did see many many movies this year, culminating in the launch of a movie channel! Did a small and refreshing education flip course- spent a few days at the ISB-Kelloggs discussing strategy and lectured students visiting from Kelloggs on Indian media. Also gained a definitive couple of kilos as I tipped the 115kg mark. This is one milestone I am not happy about, since unlike my earlier weight gains, this one comes with stress, not cheery prosperity. Could 2010 also be the springboard to greater adventure?

2011, here I come.

No goals at the moment. Just plain anticipation of an interesting year.

European cliffhangers

2010-06-25T02:43:00.000-07:00

First, it was the volcano. That just refused to let flights move.
Then came the financial meltdown, Britain which had felt tremors as early as 2008, followed by Belgium, a Greek Tragedy- a collapse of its currency, followed by Spain and a dramatic fall of the Euro from 70 rupees to 55 rupees in under 12 months!
Then the change in political landscape- as slowly conservative preservationsists come back to power in England, Poland and Germany.
Finally, its manifestation on the soccer field.
This FIFA world cup has seen Italy(reigning defending champions), France( winners in the previous cup), Greece, Denmark already falling off. Spain and England struggling to get to the round of 16. Germany and Portugal just about getting there.
Guess the State of country's mind is the State of the country's game.

Soccer & us

2010-06-25T02:05:00.000-07:00

The TRP ratings report this wednesday flashed the incredible climb of the TV channel ESPN's viewership from 3 GRP's in the 15-34, AB, C&S, HSM 1mn+ markets to 50 GRP's and then to 117GRP's over the two weeks of FIFA world cup.
I wondered why.
We dont play soccer, we dont like physical sport, we dont like team games, so why is India watching this world cup?
We have been a spectator sport country. We like to watch ( explains our obsession with TV), we like to talk( explains our poor written history records and oral tradition), we dont like sharing credits (explains why we excel mostly at individual sport- tennis, badminton, chess, archery, wrestling or golf) and we like individual skill over collective force( explains why we like cricket which is reliant more on skill - batting, bowling, wicketkeeping).
I think sport to sport, cricket consumes the least amount of calories. Soccer is pulsating, physical extreme sport. Just like rugby or basketball. In soccer, you cant win without teamwork. You need to have people engaged in intensive co-ordinated ball-play to score.
We like the soap opera feel of cricket, you never know what the next player will bring to the game, we like the wristiness of a shot, the slowness of the game( 5 ridiculous days), we like the fact that it creates heroes who can be worshipped, we like the intense discussions around a sport very few countries play. We also like it because maybe it is still the only game where we manage to win.
Maybe what has changed is that as a nation turns capitalist, you learn the power of collective force. The unifying factor has been the pressing opportunity to create wealth for itself, the impending limited period demographic dividend. Which forces the US to build relationships with us. We also begin to get a first world view of the everything as we migrate from defunct and low-leverage groups like SAARC and NAM to BRIC and maybe, G20 and further to a seat in the UNSC with veto powers. For a country that abstained from voting on most issues due to its NAM policy, we have come a long way.
So, we begin to view first world sports. Then, maybe we will play. Health is a big discussion in any meeting. The increasing number of marathon runners will soon make it the worlds largest marathon.
Soccer is here.
Baseball, Basketball and Rugby will follow.
Individual skill will have yielded to collective force.

Insurance is subject matter.of this solicitation

2010-06-10T23:06:00.000-07:00

'Hello?'
'Sir, Pramod calling from Reliance capital, wanted to discuss future planning'
'See, with the insurance policies I have already bought, I am already worth more dead than alive. Now, how much more should I insure?'
'Sir?'
'Do you guys want me dead or what? I am insured for more than my salary now! Do you want to kill me with these daily phone calls?'
Click!
'Hello,Hello...'

'Hello'
'Sir, Calling from ICICI prudential...'
'Yes,Yes,aah,aah,...more,..more...aah, aah, yes, yes....aah, yum, aah,aah,, oooh,...,yes,yes,more....more...'
click!
'Hello,hello....'

'Hello'
'Sir, main Max new york se bol raha hoon. Kya aap insurance mein interested hain?'
'Mein ek khoon karne wala hoon. Chalo, uska 1 cr ka policy nikalte hain. Uske marne ke baad, dono half-half share karenge!
click!
'Hello,hello...'

'Hello?'
'Sir, am calling from Religare finance. Wanted an appointment to discuss financial planning'
'Thoda paani dena?
'Sir?'
'Paani deona'
'Sir?'
'Paani deona, pyaas laga hai'
Click
'Hello,Hello..'

Hello?'
'Sir, calling from Tata AIG'
'Yes, what can I do for you?'
'We want to meet you for financial planning'
'Sure, when'
'Sir, what about friday?
'Ok, how much money will you give me?
'Sir?'
'Are you meeting me to give me money?'
'No, we want to do financial planning"
'you will give me money, right. Then we will plan what to do with it'
'No, sir. We don't give money'
'So, whats there to plan. I have no money'
'Sir, we can help you make money'
'You are giving me a job?
click
'Hello,hello...'

'Hello?'
'Sir, calling from Bajaj capital'
'Which branch?'
'Mumbai, sir?'
'Which branch in Mumbai?'
'Andheri'
'Oh, I work in the Bandra branch. How are you?'
'Nice to know'
'How many policies did you sell last month?
click!
Hello,hello..'

'Hello'
'Sir, calling from Aegon religare'
'I know, I am you President- M&A, based in Delhi. How did my number get into your database?
'Sorry, sir, We were just given these numbers'
'Who gave you these numbers?
'Our company?'
'What's your number?'
Click!
'Hello,hello..'

'Hello?'

'Sir, Nitin from Birla sun life insurance..'

'Great, just the guy I was looking for! See, my name is Ajmal K and I have been given the death penalty, what do you think will be my premium?'

Click!

'Hello,hello...'

'Hello?'
'Sir, this is Anjali calling from Canara Robeco..'
'You have a nice voice, why dont you call me later in the night, Anjali?'
'Sir?'
'Why dont you call me later in the night? We can talk at leisure?'
'Sir?'
'Are you calling from Mumbai?
Click!
'Hello, Hello..'

'Hello?
'Sir, Calling from reliance capital..would you be...
'
Hello, hello, sir, sir, are you there....?
'
'Hello?'

'Hello?'
Click!

Hello?'
Sir, Arjun from Tata capital, Can we speak to mr nc?
'Just killed him. Bloody fat fellow. lots of blood came out. Have his cell phone. Is there some way I can get his money?'
click!
'Hello,Hello..'

Tech lives.

2010-02-25T22:08:00.000-08:00

It's amazing how technology makes every other experience transient and itself redundant in quick cycles.
A bigflix subscription for movies kept me enthralled for months on end last year, but with digital cable and its 8 english movie channels and 12 hindi movie channels, I have been forced to keep the bigflix order book dormant and avoid responding to all their reminders.
Take my iphone, for instance. It has made a whole host of devices quite redundant. The iphone apps are making everything else unnecessary- check this- it's already a video camera, has my stock portfolio, facebook, news videos, atlas, global weather finder, scientific calculator, fav gaming device- sudoku, chess,checkers and pacman, live tv, ipod, quick notepad, money manager, birthday reminder and has all my mailboxes and contact lists.
That's not all, what it has also done is turned business models upside down.
Microsoft doesn't care for the hardware, just makes the software and leaves many vendors fighting each other for customers., while it just sits around making proprietary software.
Apple turned the model around, it makes the basic hardware- focussing on designing an intuitive product - say an iphone or ipod or ipad and lets everyone make software for it. So over a 100,000 app companies have mushroomed around it. That's why it is iconic.
From CRT to LCD to Plasma to LED, we have transitioned in 3-4 remarkable years.
To design is to be on top of teh value chain.
Everything else can be sub-contracted and take shape by itself.
Now take blogging. With facebook, and then with twitter, blogging is been made old-fashioned before you can say b!
Thoughts have to fit 140 character word limits.
Technology has turned time transient.

Marine Drive in 1998

2009-12-16T23:15:00.000-08:00

I was more funkier twenty years back. Denim, white belt, badge and Gladwellish hair !

2009

2009-12-16T22:50:00.000-08:00

How does one describe 2009?

Amongst the newsmakers- Andhra stood out. Starting the year with the massive Satyam scam, it staged an upset by winning the IPL in SA, from being a team written off last season, then the summer saw it being ravaged by floods washing away towns, the landslide victory of the congress was overshadowed with the dramatic death of its CM and then out of the blue the state almost split into two bringing many other forgotten statehood aspirations to the fore.

Amongst the TIME magazines best books of 2009 - fiction & non-fiction, this year I managed to read none, though I read a lot many non-fiction works this year.

I turned 40 this year. Like they say life begins at 40. Maybe I need to re-invent myself. Take up marathon running for instance. Maybe I will get younger. Maybe I should give in to wanderlust and try to backpack Europe next summer as I have been dreaming the last couple of years? Maybe I should burn midnight oil and finish my novel ? Salsa ? Maybe. Read 25 books? Maybe.

All in all, I think 2009 was a 'paused' sort of year - the year with the lull before the storm.

2010, I reckon, will be the year of action.

Valuelessness

2009-10-19T23:08:00.000-07:00

I think the parallel process of denigration of values following the transition to capitalism has slowly begun. Myth and fiction are being inter-twined creating a new confused Indianess.
There is a serial on Ravana, extolling his virtues as a king, not 'demon' king. Ramayana has been re-serialized in a 4-book form and presented as fiction. The video games on Ramayana have you fight demons with the bow and arrow acting as Ram and there is a new movie in the works which presents Mahabarata from Draupadi's point of view ! Saw a management book on case studies recently that carried a line- who will you choose- Krishna or his army?
Last weekend , I finished reading Ozamu Tezaku's 8 volume graphic novel 'Buddha' . The illustrations are quite stunning and the story moves quite rapidly - the journey of Buddha's birth to enlightenment is detailed even though it is classified as a work of fiction.
The book is, however, full of nudity, expletives,racism, profanity and violence.
How is a 10 year old kid to read it ? And what is he to retain from it? Whose version of mythology is it? Does being classsified as fiction give it the license to distort and represent old myths ? Fictionalizing myth further will dilute the Indian value context and leave behind confused meanings.
And in 10 years, what will be left of the original Indian Mythology?

You ain't seen nothin yet !

2009-10-09T04:10:00.000-07:00

Here's what Yogi Berra means
A snapshot of numbers and growth of various products and services over the last 10 years:
Product/service: 1999 nos: 2009 nos: % growth
ATMs : 1100 :40000 :3636%
Air passengers(mn):12:54:450%
Coffee shops:9:1200:13333%
DTH(mn):0:16
Internet users(mn):1.5:55:3667%
Mobile users(mn)1.2:449.3:37442%
Multiplexes:1:900:90000%
PC's in India(mn):1:7.6:760%
Desktops(mn):1:5.4:540%
Laptops ('000):23:2200:9565%
FM Radio stations:0:280
TV channels:75:426:568%

Phenomenal.
Here's a list of new cars launched in India in 2009:
i20, Spark, Jazz, Ritz, Astar, Linea, Punto, Merc E class, Audi A6, Passat, zetta,Fortuner, Estilo, Zylo, Altis, Altis sport, Rangerover, Road liner, Jaguar, Landrover, Nissan, Nano, Beetle ( coming in Nov), Golf, Tuareg, Polo( coming in Dec) !
India has suddenly turned to become a market for global brands now that most other markets are deep in the red with no consumer demand.

The best is yet to come.

What next for Balika Vadhu viewers ?

2009-10-07T22:18:00.000-07:00

Television has changed significantly over the last couple of years.
Maybe it reflects the changing demographic structure of society or maybe it is leading the change. Time was when rural audiences were the core viewing group, as there was one uniform India - licenced, protected, uncompetitive and poor- and the need was to reflect their reality. Then came 1991. India became free again and tasted capitalistic independence -with abundance, choice and wealth. Print added color and skin, Television added slickness , svelteness and instantness, Radio added the music and the internet re-defined urban. The Aspirational housewifes dreams found satisfaction in the well-decked bahus and saas'es with the scandals and affairs reflecting capitalistic values again- choice, competitiveness and infidelity - to brands and men. Over the years, another adaptive format of capitalism- competitiveness and identity- in the form of reality shows emerged in all formats of talent- laughter, singing, dancing, dating, fighting, driving, or just staying together - competing to win.
India was definitely split - into two , three or maybe four India's - the rural , the emerging, the developed and the evolved. The mass at the bottom remained rural but the pace of growth of 1991 had now caught up with them and they had access to cable- so wanted to identify with that content - Colors, followed by Zee, Star and everyone paved the way for such new rural social-issue oriented programming.
Every other day, there is a new car being launched costing anything from 80 lakhs to 5 cr. There are watches costing 0ver a lakh, bags worth many lakhs, shirts and trouser brands costing 50,000 rupees available at showrooms. And at the other end, there is a sachet for every product priced at Re.1 to create newer market segments that can migrate upwards to buying the pack.
A kid born today has atleast 20 channels he can spend his childhood in front of and then he will maybe migrate away from the medium by the time he is 12-13 and get onto the internet and maybe migrate to the mobile by 17-18.
What medium will he consume when he is twenty?
Its unlikely to be television as it is today, for sure.

Fine city -Singapore !

2009-09-23T04:54:00.000-07:00

Singapore looks like a nursery.
Everything is monitored and everyone is well dressed. Noone breaks any rules and cleanliness is the way of the world.
The country is rightfully positioned as a world city and is truly integrated into the global economy. Many ads for basic products like housing and shopping use expat models. Food is truly multi-cultural. Having faced tough choices about food in most of South East Asia- HongKong, Kaula Lumpur, Macau, Bangkok and China , Singapore was a breeze- basic edible fare with vegetables was available everywhere- including in the Jurong bird park and Sentosa island. The good Orchard hotel which hosted us( cost quite a packet though) had an Indian menu everyday.
Patches of Singapore look like Chennai - Little India for sure with its zillions of tamilians and the ananda bhavans and banana leaf restaurants ; while some parts reflected the city's multi-ethnicity - Chinatown with white-as-paper chinese people and the consistent smell of fish oil and Arab street with its Malayasian Muslims.
The city cheekily advertises itself as a fine city- full of fines - fines for smoking, traffic, spitting, importing chewing gum to get people in line. The best control for rush hour is to fine the drivers - there is a 30% surcharge for peak hour traffic and a 50% surcharge on taxi fares on weekends.
At 41 rupees to a singapore dollar, it is expensive as taxes account for 5-10% of the rate. A bottle of water is 8 bucks and any cab ride spills into hundreds. The city-country is also trying hard to catch up with Malaysia and HongKong to get tourists with investments in resort city etc. The 120 page Strait Times also chronicled the post-recession problems of Singaporeans, the issues with expats and the aspirations of the local population. The stock market was rebounding and was in good shape while the bank interest rates stayed close to the 1% mark.
The other intersting thing was the continual re-development - each building had been torn down every couple of years to make way for a more smarter,slicker building keeping the city chic 24X7.
With only a 700 sq km area and a population of 27 million, geographically, its only a patch on Mumbai, forget matching to India's size.
Like the taxi driver driving us to Jurong on Ayer Raja Expressway said, you can finish Singapore in 4 days, but even in 4 years, you will only know so little of India.
How true !

On business - 3

2009-07-28T04:32:00.000-07:00

Democratization has set in for good.
There was a time in the 1960s and 1970s when IAS was the coveted job to do. Then came Engineering and Medicine that ruled the roost for very many years. Till one day in mid-1991, PVN Rao liberalized the country. Management and Chartered Accountancy suddenly became the rage.
Today, eighteen years later, anything is ok - fashion design, culinery courses, acting , interior design, real estate , NGO and charities are all considered at par. Water management , Civil engineering, Nanotechnology and Petroleum engineering are as coveted as Computer technology. A Dentist is as coveted as a Neurosurgeon.
'Business' was looked down upon and the middle class dream ended with a service and retirement pension. A pawn broker was looked down with contempt. Now, credit card and mortgage firms pay the highest salaries.The economy has shifted from being agrarian and industrial to knowledge driven. And one cold afternoon late last year, Jet Airways tried to retrench 1900 people, resulting in a huge stir, political protests, an apology from the chairman and a re-instatement of the people . A month later, as the world came crashing down financially, Jet quietly removed over a thousand of its employees without a protest. Hire and Fire is now an accepted part of Indian corporate world for good, settling the Union issue once and for all.
Accountability has also reached high standards. You need to tread the straight and the narrow - with judicial and media activism, its difficult to fool all the people all the time anymore.
And while its cool to be an entrepreneur in the knowledge economy, there's now a level playing field for first gen entrepreneurs.
Heave Ho !

On business - 2

2009-07-28T04:07:00.000-07:00

The entreprenuer differs from the manager in only one aspect - risk apetite. This reflects directly on the rewards. An entreprenuer gambles big and makes it big, but a manager trades his skills for smaller, safer returns. The entrepreneur manages his external environment and needs skills to negotiate his way in the world , the manager manages his people and so focuses on operational efficiency.
Can a manager make a transition to entrepreneur ? While they are necessarily cut from different cloth ,some managers migrate to become entrepreurs and some even behave as entrepreneurs in their role with a high degree of ownership and responsibility which is occasionally traded for some stake in the firm.

The US is a great example of how an entire society is built on entrepreneural skills. Punjabis and Gujaratis adapted quickly into that environment and blended their entrepreneural skills with Jews, Britishers, East Europeans etc. South Indians waited for Y2K and leapt into the couldron with many IT ideas for outfits of all sizes, sweeping away the BPO business and SAP implementation worldwide. As the internet came into its own, a new generation of entrepreneurs was born.
The tech world also needs extensive collaboration - IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, HP and Google all need each other to survive. Unlike the rest of the industries, IT has high inter-dependence. Everyone is a cog in the wheel. Entrepreneurship comes easily in this space, you need to find a small niche, seek small funds, get guys with stars in their eyes on board with equity, build your product, find the wheel that needs your cog, get valued, sell-out and exit with your millions. Orace, for instance, has bought 52 companies in the last 24 months.
Most other businesses - TV sets, Cellphones, Cars,Films, Burgers, Garments - need you to market your product and find consumers. The tech world doesn't need you to find consumers, it only needs you to find the nearest complimentary product and then together you can tango ! e.g. The iphone has spurred over 6500 apps, each of whom on revenue share can roll in the moolah. The app makers focus on the open source code of the phone and create zillions of games etc. that people will download for a fee. A revenue share worked with the phone maker can fund your lifetime of travel.

The trick is in finding the idea.

On business.

2009-07-01T02:54:00.000-07:00

How is it that some people can create enormous businesses generating large scale employment and creating a lot of wealth in the process, while a large majority are destined to plough the till and seek salvation by becoming Sisyphuses ?
Maybe its in the genes. All of working humanity can arguably be divided into four parts - workers, managers, entrepreneurs and geniuses or talent. Talent creates the idea, entrepreneurs convert it into reality, managers run the ops and workers run the processes. The wheels of business churn to produce so as the rest of the world to consume - be it knowledge or goods or services.
Since these layers are a pyramid, there are very few entrepreneurs and fewer geniuses or talent, but a whole lot of workers at the base.
Workers slog to create EBIDTA while the entrepreneur laps up the PAT. Innumarable CxOs create inumerable balance sheets and stare at quaterly humungous profits, but none thinks of the possibility of creating that value for oneself. Some take the leap from one classification to the next- from manager to entrepreneur and maybe genius. Infosys is an example- Nandan and Murty have climbed the complete ladder. If Nandan cracks the national ID project, he is absolute bankable 'talent'. Sreedharan after the Delhi Metro has orders from the world over including Pakistan. Jobs, Buffet, Gates, Tata are gifted. But so are Subramaniam of Subhiksha, Majumdar of Symbiosis, Parekh of HDFC - they are among the many who have built businesses from scratch.
Now, if hard work, perseverance and some luck turns a worker into a manager, what helps make the transition from manager to entrepreneur?
And then to genius ?

All quiet on the western front

2009-05-18T22:09:00.000-07:00

Just finished reading Erich Maria Remarque's 'All quiet on the western front'. Quite an engrossing war novel. Its the story of a nineteen year old german boy, Paul Baumer, fighting in the World War I for a cause he doesn't know or understand is quite intense. Erich participated in the War himself , was hospitalized and lost his mother during that time, so the story is pretty much modelled around his own deep-rooted feelings on the purposelessness of war and the toll it takes on the people who participate in it. He gives away the lopsided nature of the war when refers to the fighting French, British and American soldiers as being inferior to german soldiers but having better rations, weaponry and tanks. In a way, the book is quite similar to Joseph Hellers Catch-22, except that Yossarian accepted the futility of the war and wanted to escape,feining ill health and madness while Baumer doesn't protest, he accepts his duty as a soldier and comes back to the front lines & trenches to do as commanded. Maybe because Yossarian was older. Remarque constantly reflects on the wretchedness and inhumanity of war and how soldiers are plain statistics in a war. Im Westen nichts Neues - nothing new on the western front. Dying German soldiers, the killing of British or French is part of the rigor of war-nothing new. How a war leads to a slow loss of interest in life ,increasing uncertanity of what's to happen when one return to normal work- almost dreading the thought emerges as stark reality through the key characters. Even as the one Baumer adores Stanislaus Katchinsky or Kat , who is so full of joie-de-vivre finally meets a bloody end, Baumer lives on unsure.
The book was banned in Germany and when Remarque wrote a sequel The road back about what would have happened if the soldier survives a war and returns to normal life, both his books were burnt. The movie versions ( 1930 and 1979) did better - both winning oscars for best picture.
Terrific book.

Archers in town

2009-05-16T03:39:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Archer,

It was great meeting you at landmark the other day. Must confess that I have read many of your books and at one point, I owned over ten of them.

Have been wondering about quite a number of things about your writing-

a. It is quite evident that none of your books have been made as movies but have only made it to TV versions and adaptions. Do your plots not lend themselves to the movie format or is your asking price too high?

b. Is it true that in order to fight the advent of movies and TV, one tends to write more action centric novels and not character novels that you are good at. At the turn of the last century, there were many great books written -with long elaborate character sketches and a long winding scripts -all of which we bundle together as classics. The world war finished all that style of writing and gave birth to 'cold-war' writing with thrillers from - alistair maclean, forsyth, tom clancy, ian fleming, sheldon etc. focussed on the cold war and espionage. You have avoided all this and focused on drama. Are you afraid of action?

c. Everyone has a specialised in a certain form of fiction - Michael Chricton - science fiction; Grisham - legal, Tom clancy - cold war, Steven king - horror; each has had many movie version successes as action lends itself well to movies. You have stayed focussed on drama, relatiosnhips and middle class aspirations- more TV stuff than movies material.

With Paths of glory being a real life story and your next book being a re-writing of Kane and Abel- maybe you have finally run out of stories. In fact, the last 4 of your books are real life- including your prison diaries. In response to a query on your favourite books, you had said that 'The Count of Monte Christo'( I have always thought your favourite own book 'Not a penny more,not a penny less' was actually inspired from Dumas's novel ) and All quiet on the western front ( you happily signed this one for me) were your best and amongst your own books ,your wife liked 'As the Crow flies'. My favourite is 'First amongst equals'- liked everything about it from the title to the way the story pans out and the way it ends.

Hope to have a book of my own for you to sign when I meet you next time.

cheers
naveen

p.s. You are very right when you say that while we could accept coincidences in real life, we quite dislike them in stories.

What a win !

2009-05-16T03:13:00.000-07:00

They say the PM will be the first to do a Nehru encore- do a two term in the parliament.Here's what I think worked for this govt. in teh elections-

1. This election was a formality - the govt. had handled and won in the past year many battles with the opposition so winning this war was a formality. The trust vote; the nuclear deal; the immediate political action after 26/11 - the PC move to Home, the instant CM change in Mah., the pursuit of Pakistan; the immediate action after Satyam- the enquiry, new board, the sale;the stock market management from letting it crash to 7500 and recover to 12000 and even the thorny Jagdish Tytler affair on the eve of elections- all of this in just the last year was a testinomy of a solid working govt.

2. Agendas : The BJP didn't puruse any agenda- they didn't chase the job-loss story, the fiscal deficit, the rising prices, the Satyam scam and just repeated the temple agenda as their leaders fought. The country had moved on. The left lost after three generations of ruling Bengal- they couldn't save the Nano jobs and prevented the nuclear deal which everyone thought was good for the country.

3. Leaders - I think Rahul Gandhi symbolizes youth and his entry has led to many many young people joining congress in leadership positions, BJP has none. Modi and Jaitley couldn't reconcile the rest of the leaders. Pramod Mahajan was missed. Not changing Vsundhrara raje scindhia cost them Rajastahan. Lalu ran out of funny one-liners while Nitish attempts to build roads like Hema Mailni's cheeks were rewarded. The PM is an economist, intelligent and clean guy.

4. Work on ground - Rahul worked in the hinterland for the last 2 odd years , making inroads into Mayavati turf, Mamata eroded the left with her victory on Nano, YSR freed hospitals from corporates and gave them to the poor, Karunanidhi delivered 60 lac TVs as promised, Shiela Dixit is awesome - running Delhi like a company and Shashi Tharoor is a cool guy - he walked across and cleared his posters in trivananthapuram. Sonia turned out to be a great leader, selflessly holding the fort together.

The next 5 years will rock.

Sensex at 25000 is my biggest bet.

Now what?

2009-05-08T02:08:00.000-07:00

Arun: Hey, listen. Somethings happening to me.
Mohit: What?
Arun: In the last 4-5 weeks, I have met over 5-6 people from my past.
Mohit: You attended an alumni meet or something?
Arun: No, no. These are people from my distant past- my first boss of over 20 years ago, my class benchmate of over 30 years, my school friend after over 15 years and two collegue after over a dozen years.
Mohit: Wow! Must have been fun.
Arun: Thats the point. I didn't find it too much fun to connect.
Mohit: Why?
Arun: It foxed me, so I thought about it for a long time over last weekend. It seems to me now that the issue is over-familiarity. I had already sort of met them. With a linkedin profile peek , flikr photograph albums, facebook conversations , messanger chats, youtube videos, blogged thoughts and the texted twitter 24X7 shadowing, I knew what they had done every minute in the many many years that had passed between when I met them last and now. So when I met them it looked like I had met them last week !
Mohit: Ha
Arun : This is the age of extreme and instant familiarity. Imagine meeting the girl who sat on the same bench as you 30 years back and have nothing to say. Just because for the last 6 months you have exchanged so much information that you were almost on the same bench all along!
Mohit: You are so right.
Arun :The other day I met my first boss of 20 years back and we discussed things we could do together. There was no mention of the 20 years because that was what we discussed over the last 3 months !
Arun : Wonder how our relationships will be defined in the years to come with so much personal information hanging out in public, so furiously, so often.

Zoozoos for Bozos

2009-05-08T01:52:00.000-07:00

The current Idea , Lead India and Tata Tea advt campaigns are wonderfully effective.
The fact that they were launched many months ahead of the elections means that they had the time to grow in peoples minds in an non-intrusive way. If they had been launched now, it would have been a normal campaign - communicate brand values by utilizing a current subject making it topical and create resistance in the minds of consumers.
Great marketing - good timing, great execution and packaging.

The Vodafone campaign is the most clutter breaking one I have seen in recent times. The Zoozoos are a rage - think of it - the communities of 26/11 , elections & cricket franchisees, all mostly in teh 25000 to 30000 range on facebook and youtube are half of the zoozoo community , around 65000. That too created with an under 25 days of exposure. For a brand to have lived many lives, it is only expected. Look at brand values of Orange (great recall even now- built on theatre and beethovan concerts) changing to Hutch ( re-built on the pug, innnovation- 10buck pack etc. and many many retail tie-ups) and then to Vodafone ( re-built on the pug+girl story last year , customer service, VAS and now zoozoos ) and yet retaining and growing customers keeping the core premium positioning intact.
Amazing !

Dated breath and a Demi-God

2009-04-21T02:08:00.000-07:00

If Chelsea win in the FA cup finals (and I am praying it will ) and Premier league, Gus Hiddink will turn Demi-God . Not since Jose Mourinho has Chelsea fought like such a cohesive team. The two terrific back-to-back performances, against Liverpool in the league and against Arsenal in the FA cup semis is already making other teams wary. The Liverpool match will rank maybe as one of the finest high-stakes matches palyed by Chelsea. With the see-saw resulting in a 4-4 draw, it was quite a setback for Liverpool. Arsenal began with a lead and went down 2-1 in match with a record attendance ( over 88000 people ) at the Wembley making it an all blue finals in May.
Drogba is in outstanding form just in time - as the Champions league semi-final with Barcelona , the Barclays premier league match with Arsenal and the final with Everton come up over the next couple of weeks.
This new-found Chelsean ability to resurrect themselves from downunder, to react to the goal scored by winning is stuff of legends. The pressure of the scored goal binds the team into some sort of a vengeful fighting machine, bringing out the best in them, and amid great drama and suspence, they score towards the dying moments of the game, so much so that one now assumes it will happen each time.
This team is not for the faint-hearted !

Socha hai - the answers.

2009-04-20T03:52:00.000-07:00

Answers to the Javed- Farhan Akhtars song from Rock on.
Aasman hai neela kyon? – This is due to dispersion of light, technically called Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths ( red, yellow, orange) pass straight through however, the shorter wavelengths ( blue) are absorbed by the gas molecules and then radiated in different directions. This scattered blue light is what makes aasman neela .
Paani geela geela kyon? – Simple principles of adhesion, cohesion and surface tension apply here.Water’s molecular structure makes it good at forming hydrogen bonds and bipolar bonds with other materials. That's why it's so good at adhesion (sticking to things). Liquids like water, alcohol and kerosene have less surface tension and low viscosity so they wet the skin, leaving a thin viscous residue on the surface. ON the other hand liquids like Mercury with high surface tension don’t wet .
Gol kyon hai zameen? – The circular shape is due to the gravitational pull of the earth. It pulls all nature towards its core resulting in a shape that is circular.
Silk mein hai narmi kyon? – Silk is manufactured from the nest of silkworm,which is made up of liquid secreted by silkworm,It is not fibre like cotton so is much softer.
Aag mein garmi kyon? – Fire creates an exothermic chemical reaction that agitates & excites the molecules in an object. This agitated motion of these molecules creates heat. The more they move around the more heat they give off. This heat is transferred through the air and can be felt by us through radiation.
Do aur do paanch kyun nahin? – This is defined by the numeric system – sum of two even numbers is an even number. Now, don’t ask 6 kyon nahin !
Ped ho gaye kam kyon? – Afforestation – trees meet many human needs – paper, rubber, furniture, transport. Also leading to global warming – Al Gore’s fav subject.
Teen hai ye mausam kyon? – Rotation around the suns orbit creates varying intensity from the Sun leading to 3 seasons. In some parts of the country , theres no rain so its more like summer all year round !
Chaand do kyon nahin? – There are two moons ! Earth has two moons; the first one is the one we all know called 'chaand ' the second is 'Cruithne' a 3 mile lump of rock that takes 770 years to cycle its orbit. A collision between our planet and another body created a debris which got caught in our gravity and formed the moon.
Duniya mein hai jung kyon? – This is metaphysical – quite beyond physics. Tribal survival instincts lead to war and will continue to do so. Some parts of the world are still evolving – defining new reasons for fights and redrawing boundaries.
Behta laal rang kyon? – Corollary to the above. Jung leads to laal rang. Purely physical.
Sarhadein hai kyon har kahin? – Purpose keeps vitality, differences create eliminiation of options and Darvinian theory leads to survival of the fittest.
Behti kyon hai har nadee? – All matter flows from high to low till even – rivers originate from the high mountains and hills and flow into oceans
Hoti kya hai roshni? – Millions of tones of Hydrogen is converted into helium every minute in the Sun creating immense heat & light. In the night, the Reflected light from moon gives the ‘roshini’
Dost kyon hai rooth te? – Transactional Analysis in play here. The three stages of Parent – Adult – Child create many permutations of behaviour, one of them is an emotional blackmail. In negotiations when you don’t want to argue logically, you assume a child state and ‘rootho’ , creating a temporary artificial advantage.
Taare kyon hai toot te? –Keep in mind that shooting stars really aren't stars at all. They are debris from space buring up entering earths atmosphere
Badalon mein bijli hai kyon ? During a storm, a build up of electrons in the upper layers of the clouds causes Lightening. These electrons are attracted towards the positive potential of the earth, but air’s stiff resistance doesn’t allow the electricity to pass through easily. When a huge potential has been accumulated, the electricity forces its way through the air molecules. This causes a lot of friction and hence releases a tremendous amount of heat energy causing thunder. Lightning usually strikes the highest point and the most positively charged area. This is becuz lightning looks for the easiest way out of air.
Sanaata sunaee nahin deta – newtons first law- matter remains in motion till external force acts. Sound is created by movement of air molecules. If molecules are static, so sound is ultrasonic and one can’t hear it.
Aur hawaein dikhayee nahin deteen – air made up of various transparent - gases Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon, Carbon Dioxide, Neon, Helium, Methane, Krypton, Hydrogen and Xenon
socha hai… ye tumne kya kabhi? socha hai… ki hai yeh kya sabhi?socha hai… socha nahi toh socho abhi
socha hai… kya kabhi… hota hai ye kyon?

Noone knows a thing

2009-04-06T03:41:00.000-07:00

The sensex has crossed 10500, an unexpected 25% jump from where it was just two weeks ago.
All analysts and brokers predicted the bear market rally ( from sensex at 7600 in Oct to 8800 in Mar ) reversal at any moment and predicted newer lows in the next 2 weeks ( maybe 5000, one analyst told me ) . That was last week.
The same analysts are predicting the current rallys peak now ( maybe 12500, another broker tells me today)!
"Bear market rallies aren't uncommon,' had said a global guru two weeks back ,' but having thus far and no further. "
"What we are seeing is only domestic investor action, the FIIs are only net sellers. Over 11000cr has been invested by indian institutional investors and the market is flat - indicating that its the FII money that moves the Indian markets. And considering the latest US industry data, it seems quite some time coming", said a TV presenter last tuesday
"I am selling all emerging markets. Maybe second half is when I will come back" said another investment guru at the end of last weeks markets summary
"Downgrade", said a rating agency of a couple of stocks
"Sensex at 5000 in the near term", said an analyst
"Sell at next rally"
"Buy at lows"
I wanted to hold Reliance, my broker said sell- I sold at 1500. It's 1700 today. Just five days after I sold .
I wanted to buy more of L&T at 565 two weeks back. 'The way it is chasing Satyam, it will go to 300' said an insurance head. I didn't buy. It's 770 today.
I wanted to buy ICICI at 305 in the same week. 'This is a stock with amazing NPAs. Everyone' s dumping it.' Sure enough, next three days ICICI hit 275. Today its at 374.
I bought Satyam at 46. When it hit 38 last week, I buzzed my broker wanting to buy treble the stock quantity and lower my average buy price. 'No way, money down the drain', he said', wait till it gets directions'. Talk of directions, in 2 sessions, it has hit 46. With my intuitive averaging out buy, I would have been +3 bucks on the stock.
Tata group is in Rs. 1 trillion debt, thats 90% of the groups turnover. Sell all Tata. Today, eight trading days later, all its stocks are up 15%. Debt be dammed.
Noone knows a thing.
Today, all analysts are saying just the opposite of what they said two weeks ago - all is hunky dory, life has changed, everyone has got jobs , G20 summit was great, Paulson's done the bailout trick, madoffs in jail , elections far away.
Here's a prediction from Barclay capitals aired this afternoon - 'this bull run will last the next three quarters of 09'
I am not buying !

Will the Internet be the 'Last Man Standing' in 2025?

2009-04-01T23:48:00.000-07:00

A richer, depleted and younger planet will only access a quick , precisely targetted and cost&time-effective medium. The Guardian is already online, having stopped its print edition yesterday. The internet is the largest medium in the Uk already. Music downloads on mobile is 5 times the music industry in india today.Video content being 'searched' will be a bigger market than broadcast. Movie downloads on broadband will be bigger than multiplex collections. Content production will change dramatically to adopt to the net's needs.

So in 15 years, will the internet be the only medium left - offering massive choice , comfort and affordability ?

Comics - no relief !

2009-03-17T01:40:00.001-07:00

Wanting to buy the graphic novel on the never-ending war in Lebanon, ' Waltz with Bashir', I rummaged my mouse through amazon.com to discover some good things about online buying and some nasty truths about graphic novels.
Book buying on the net has come a long way since I bought my first book on rediff in 1998. The book 'Kotler on Marketing' was delivered from Shankars in Bangalore with a nice pyramidal bookmark . It was a no-frills experience- some discount, a 3-day delivery promise and no status-of-order check. Have since bought many more books - the experience is better now except that there's no discount and delivery takes 15-20 days but you can track the order on the cell phone. Would rather have the discount and 3 day delivery without the SOD check. Better than rediff is the buying experience on Amazon, one for its reviews- and two for the near-brick&mortar-purchase experience. The best is its trademarked feature 'Look Inside' which actually opens the books pages for a sneak peek at the index, prologue, first chapters and epilogue for a quick browse before buying. A bookstore experience, but without the 'butt-brush' factor. Albiris, on the other hand, is a store with terrific choice- the same book is available in hardcover to paperback , signed copies to pre-owned to first editions at varying price points. Sometimes the first quoted price is a 10th of the last copy. Becasue whats the point of buying online if you can't get the browse experience and the discount ?
Now to Waltz with Bashir.
Why are the graphic novels as expensive as they are.
The DVD of '300' - based on the spartan-persian war can be had at Rs.400 , the book is Rs.500 but its graphic novel is twice that at Rs.950. Try Agatha Christie's novels - most cost close to Rs.300 today while the graphic novels cost Rs.650 upwards. This is one mystery even she wouldn't be able to solve!
I grew up on comics - ( no ipod, playstation , gameboys , computers ,multiplexes , DVD players and cellphones in those days. A weekly movie meant a trek to the open-air movie theatre in the army unit with a dress code- tie, shoes and full sleeve shirts !) So my companions were comics - Amar chitra kathas, indrajal and diamond comics, commandos ,tintin and asterix alongwith the daily newspaper episodes of Tarzan, Woody Allen ,Bo peep, Calvin , Garfield , Mutt&Jeff , Bringing up father and later the Mad magazines of which I have a huge set. The most expensive amongst the lot were Herge's Tintin and Asterix at near Rs.75, quite reasonable even almost 5 times the price of an ACK then .Even the graphic novels of David Copperfield or Three Musketeers were quite easy on the wallet. IN the pricing hierarchy, their book-versions were always much more expensive.
Things have been turned on their head.
Suddenly, a graphic novel is the most expensive version of the story. An animated movie like Persepolis or Waltz with Bashir has DVD versions at Rs.400 but graphic novel versions are 25% more expensive. My experience with print tells me it costs probably much lesser to make a comic than a book.
Is it the target groups propensity to buy, then? An Asterix costs under Rs.700 now, so assuming people are ready to spend that much for a comic, shouldn't a graphic 'novel' cost more?
Is that why it sits smugly in that high price range?
Some graphic novels are too shallow- no plot, too many characters, some erratic strokes and colors and an unfinished agenda- prompting a sequel ! Scam absolutely, if there was one.
Finally,is it that the audience seeks multiple experiences around the same story? So, will Harry Potter book and movie versions follow with a graphic novel version ? Now that the Potter theme park is launching in December this year.
Is the reader of the book , the viewer of the movie and the player of the game the same ?
And will he pay another 1000 bucks for the graphic novel ?
Maybe .
Can't figure why.

Borrowed Fame

2009-03-16T01:44:00.001-07:00

Last week I had finished reading Tom Sharpe's The Great Pursuit about a guy lending his name to a book by an anonymous author who didn't want to attach his name to his book. With dry Sharpe humor, it turned out to be an intellectual plot peppered with some dramatic action between London & New York, as the 'pseudo writer' becomes famous and carves out a 'fictitious' life of his own, extracting revenge in the bargain.
The 1951 movie, 'The Front' ,which I watched yesterday, had Woody Allen playing a cashier at a restaurant, masquerading as a writer , when he actually was a 'front' for a set of blacklisted 'communist' authors. He sees this as his escape from the drudgery of the cash register, but this is the cold war '50's and the FBI is hot on trial of any communist whiff. The relationship formed with a beautiful TV production manager, as a result of the weekly 'scripts' he is providing, form the rest of the interesting story till an abrupt ending leaves you thinking about the need to be truthful !
Quite a set of coincidental stories of pretentious authors and consequences of 'borrowed fame' to swallow in the Ides of March!

Car and TV fights

2009-03-13T01:31:00.000-07:00

Two very interesting pieces caught my attention in the latest issue of Businessworld and bought back memories of having participated in those battles and return with similar lessons. The first dealt with the fight between LG and Samsung and the second between Toyota and Honda. Coming 6-7 months into the slowdown,both make quite fascinating reading. The last time I drove down the Greater Noida highway to the LG factory, it was mid-summer of 2006. Across various divisions, we made audacious presentations to take the season by radioactive storm. LG turned it down as they were changing tack, the new CEO Shun was seeking to re-position LG from being a mass-market leader to a mass-premium player ( a new segment most companies in boom-time India had created to chase both volume and value - to keep the mass and attempt the premium or viceversa - to whip the cream and drink the milk at the same time). Samsung in the meantime was attempting the reverse. I remember that after my Samsung presentation, I was told that the dealer budgets had now increased from 0.5% to 2.5% of the 4% allocated to advertising and promotion, signifying a shift in strategy to tactical incentivisation. Of course, we managed to attack the regional offices for our share of monies, but the strategic shift stayed in my mind for some time. I thought highly about Korean flexibility. Sony and Phillips in contrast weren't as nimble- sticking to steady premium-technology positioning for years. Both never attempted a price cut or looked at the mass markets.

It seems today, as the article says, that the positioning shifts attempted by LG and Samsung have not yielded the desired results. LG has skidded off its leadership plank and given way to Videocon while Samsung has slipped further. The trade, which was used to LG's agression suddenly needed to look at a new mass player and it helped that Videocon was around to fill the gap. Probably LG's Kims' move to Videocon helped too. Samsungs' consumers were also left confused - as is the wont of any premium brand when it goes mass. The slowdown was a final nail.

The drive to Toyota on the Mysore road is great and the sight of thousands of cars parked in the plant at Bidadi is exhilarating. Have only seen the Maruti, Gurgaon and the Daewoo,Noida plants, so in incomparison this looked much larger. We had to leave our cell-phones at the out-gate and walk the distance to the factory office. IN times of google maps and satellite pics, I thought it was a little archaic. Inside the plant, I saw Japanese excellence at work and learnt the truth about their brillance. The incredibly achieved brand swap of Qualis-Innova is a marketing case study. Toyota doesn't introduce a new model till its existing model has outgrown its profit and volume targets. So, its in it for the long haul. I thought this was a good strategy. After all, where was the hurry ?But the last three years have proved it wrong, or so it seems.

According to the piece alarmingly titled ' On the wrong track',it seems it is losing the battle in India. The Camry costs 21 lacs in India and only 10 lacs in the US. For an economy thats 15 times our size, how do they manage to buy the same car at less than half the price? Assembled locally with a similar 44% imported content, the Accord at 17 lacs is only 7 lacs more expensive than in the US . The 4 lac price differential is hurting volumes. The Corolla Altis, the new car launched phasing out the version I have, is priced above the Honda Civic (and should be!) but the absence of a car in the C segment to compete with the City and one to compete with the CRV are doing Toyota's slow expansion philisophy no good. The plan to launch an A seg car in 2011 will also put Toyota much behind in the race, considering Skoda launched one last year,GM two years back, Mercedes (a beauty at 55 lacs! ) and Honda is intending to do it next yr.

As GM contemplates bankruptcy, as Ford shares drop below $1, and as internationally, Toyota expects its first operating loss in 70 years, inspite of being so very conservative, it will be interesting how, like my team Chelsea, it makes a comeback.

Scarcely English

2009-03-10T03:15:00.001-07:00

Dharmendra's character, a simple car driver in the movie 'Chalte Chalte, attempting to master the english language was aghast at the phonetical challenges some english words presented - 'to', 'do' and 'go' !

Why is the English language short of words ? Short so as to be forced to have different meanings in different contexts. Or sometimes have different words for similar objects and activities ?

e.g. The word 'Lie' can mean many things including as various forms of speech e.g. verb and adjective and can take on different meanings in context. While 'truth' means only one thing in all contexts.

Similarly, 'drive' is physical, metaphysical and philosophical - and a verb or noun all in different contexts. ( I can walk english, talk english and speak english said Amitabh -summarizing pretty much how english can be used)

You 'drive' a car, 'drive' someone out of the house, summon inner 'drive' , 'drive negative thoughts away' , park your car in the 'drive' or even go for a 'drive'. Finally, a screwdriver and a car-driver perform absolutely different functions !

Why do except and accept have to sound the same? Or dairy and diary resonate similarly?

Or why is awesome quite full of praise and aweful devoid of awe?

And why is it cowdung and bullshit?

Secondly, what's with the silent alphabets? i.e. why is the 'p' necessary in pneumonia and why are 'k' and 'w' unnecessary in know?

Leadership lessons from Soccer: Scolari's failures

2009-03-10T03:09:00.000-07:00

Pete Gill's article on why Scolari didn't deliver in the seven months he managed Chelsea makes for great reading. From a hero in Brazils 2002 world cup win to the villian in Chelseas premier league performances...

Pete Gill: Luiz Felipe Scolari was sacked after just seven months at Chelsea, F365 considers the reasons it went wrong for him so spectacularly and so quickly at Stamford Bridge...

Signing A Two-Year Contract
Questions about the wisdom of Scolari"s appointment were raised the moment it was announced he had put pen to paper on a two-year deal. Not only did the short-term undertaking suggest that his roots in London would be loose, but it also cast considerable doubt on whether he would - or could - provide the long-term outlook that many felt Chelsea desperately required after two years of gradual regression and their side relatively elderly compared to their closest rivals.

The brevity of that contract may have also served as his death warrant: While the sackings of Jose Mourinho and Avram Grant from their long-term deals cost Chelsea tens of millions in compensation, dismissing Scolari will have been comparatively cheap.

Did He Lose The Dressing Room?
According to Sky Sports News, the Chelsea players were "unhappy" with both Scolari"s tactics - specifically the refusal to use a 4-4-2 formation - and his "antiquated" training methods, while the BBC has reported that Roman Abramovich appeared at the training ground to "canvass the opinion of the senior players" last week. If true, then there is only one conclusion to draw from the axe falling this Monday.

Losing The Fans
Scolari"s substitutions became a weekly source of irritation to the Chelsea supporters, culminating in chants of "You don"t know what you"re doing" during Saturday"s dismal draw with Hull. That reaction may well have spooked the club"s hierarchy into believing that wielding the axe would be both an appropriate and popular measure; don"t forget that Jose Mourinho was ousted in the wake of less than 25,000 fans attending a Champions League qualifier 24 hours previously.

Failing To Adapt To Being A Club Manager Again
After so long as an international manager, did Scolari appreciate the different - and heightenend - demands that a return to club management would make? John Hollins, the former Chelsea boss, believes not. "Every day is very, very busy and I have to say I don"t think there was enough in there from him to carry it through."

There"s an interesting - if unverified - anecdote to endorse the suspicion. After the game with Middlesbrough, when it now appears that only a couple of late goals saved him from instant dismissal, Scolari failed to appear in front of the press. Why? According to reports, he had actually left the ground even before the final whistle to collect his son from St Pancras station.

Good parenting, to be sure, but hardly the sort of dedication to the job that Chelsea might have felt they were entitled to receive in return for his handsome remuneration.

Failing To Win Any Big Matches
Early February is an unusual time for managerial upheaval, but Chelsea"s record against fellow members of the Big Four this season - Played 5, Drawn 1, Lost 4 - didn"t just spell doom for their title tilt but also suggested that redemption in the Champions League wouldn"t be forthcoming either.

Chelsea"s statement that "In order to maintain a challenge for the trophies we are still competing for we felt the only option was to make the change now" reads as the club concluding they had nothing to lose - and plenty to gain - in acting so decisively ahead of the CL"s resumption in two weeks" time.

The Absence Of Plan B
Scolari took the Chelsea job after almost ten years out of club management and it showed. Once the flaw of his favoured formation, which used both full-backs to provide all the width, was exposed, Scolari seemed to run out of ideas.

Perhaps he was right to believe that Nicolas Anelka and Didier Drogba were incompatible but Scolari"s reluctance to try something different must have been a factor in the club believing he wasn"t capable of arresting "a deterioration at a key time of the season".

Failing To Speak The Lingo
Given the close relationship between communication and management, it was a puzzle from Scolari"s first garbled press conference that Chelsea had appointed a man who could barely make himself understood in the Premier League"s native tongue. If those press conferences were any guide, Chelsea"s players must have been the most confused in the country.

Failing To Inspire
The statement released by Chelsea suggests that the club had simply lost confidence and belief in Scolari. No wonder. There was simply no facet of his tenure that either inspired or convinced.

Performances, both individually and collectively declined, and the impression of a club going backwards was allowed to fester. Since the late summer, Chelsea have ceased to appear a happy unit and Scolari"s handling of Didier Drogba - which alienated rather than motivated - was a test of management that he failed.

Failing To Entertain
There is no arguing with results and Scolari would still be Chelsea manager if they were top of the league. Nonetheless, it is telling that Chelsea cited a decline in "performances" as well as results in their explanation for his ousting.

While it was never confirmed in public, the general impression last summer was that Avram Grant had been sacked because he failed to inspire an attacking brand of football. After a bright start, the entertainment provided by Scolari"s Chelsea deteriorated to the lowest level seen during the Abramovich era.

Losing Steve Clarke
Clarke"s departure wasn"t a headline act in September but it has become steadily clear ever since - both in terms of the defensive solidity he has organised at West Ham and the decline at Chelsea - that he was in fact an integral factor in the club"s recent success.

Building Around The Wrong Players
One of Scolari"s most prominent statements in the summer was that he would get the best out of Florent Malouda, making it sound like a simple procedure that only required the Frenchman to operate from his best position. So much for that theory. If anything, Malouda"s performances have declined this season from awful to the sort of thing you sometimes find at the bottom of your shoes. Worse, Scolari"s faith in the non-performing winger meant that he opted against buying any alternatives in the summer. Was this a factor in the club eventually pulling out of the Robinho chase?

It wasn"t until the final day of the January transfer window that width was acquired in the form of loan signing Ricardo Quaresma - by which time it was already far too late.

Building Around The Wrong Players, Part Two
While Deco was brilliant in his first few games this season, Barcelona"s ready acquiescence in offloading the midfielder was a clue to the slump that followed thereafter. The 31-year-old simply does not possess the legs to star over a campaign and, having built the side around him and hired no alternative, Deco"s sharp decline spelled doom for Scolari"s Chelsea.

But In His Defence...
Arguably the greatest trick Jose Mourinho pulled off at Chelsea was getting out when the going was still good and he retained a near god-like status amongst the fans.

Scolari, by contrast, arrived at Stamford Bridge just as Roman Abramovich was shutting his chequebook and an ageing Chelsea side, haunted by the trauma of Moscow, was beginning to decline.

The bottom line, however, must be that he played his hand appallingly.

Vote?

2009-03-02T23:24:00.000-08:00

As the world largest democracy goes to the polls, I am faced with my quadrennial quandry - to vote or not to?

Mumbai has now been delimited into 6 parts each of roughly 15-16 lac voters, making it a 90lac voting constituency. Bandra is the biggest with 16.90 lac voters ( I thought Andheri might be the biggest what with the 50 odd lac people staying there, but the mere 15.5 lac registered voter base makes it smaller, so too with Dadar , which alongiwith Chembur is smaller than Bandra) Why does so much of Bandra vote? Is it the literacy? Is it the slums around the airport and Dharavi? Is it just need to belong? Is it love for the city?

I think we need a Chief Minister of Mumbai, separate from Maharastra. The key task is to make this a world city in some timeframe with absolute focus on infrastructure, efficiency and law enforcement. Without the worry about famine, monsoons and infrastructure in the rest of the state - just like Delhi manages itself with a CM.

Does my vote count? Last elections saw Govinda winning Mumbai-north by just 20,000 votes. Some constituencies split 50:50. ( Florida is famous) So each vote does count.

Is the right guy standing? With a 40% turnout, 36lac people would have voted last time. If all were regular voters, the same guy and the same government would come to power.

Whats the electoral theme? Noone's got one this time around.( India shining bombed last time, so no theme is better than a mis-understood or mis-interpreted one) Reforms being irreversible, each successive govt can lay claim to it and improve it delta.

Will I vote? I must, but crossing the registration hurdle is key.

Clearly, Manmohanics has got us this far.

My virtual vote goes to him.

Wigan's way gone

2009-03-02T22:38:00.000-08:00

Four in a row!

Not counting the one Hiddink didn't really oversee as coach, its a hat-trick of wins for him taking Chelsea back right upto #2 in the EPL league with 55 points, 7 behind MU's 62. Though tied with Liverpool they have 1 more match win than them( 16 vs 15)

The first half sizzled with John Terry's scissor kick , the highest number of goals scored by a defender now belong to him, gave Chelsea control but Wigan wrestled the control back with some good footwork and an 84th minute goal.

Then Lampard got into a revenge masterpiece - a header into the net - bravo!

They can complain about being 'pushed' for ever, ( the video is clear) but as Lampard said later, he didnt know if it could be a foul'.

Super soccer, nevertheless.

An ecstatic Abramovich couldn't hide his glee.

Me too.

Now why was Scolari not able to deliver while Guus seemingly can?

Needs some study. Leadership mystery #1.

Any goal in extra-time is special. More so if the combination thats to deliver delivers - what better than a double header by Ballack-Lampard - surely is a leagues tickets worth of play.

Reclaim your life

2009-02-26T01:29:00.000-08:00

This ad is awesome.

Taking off from its earlier positioning of Tata Safari 4X4, make your own road, this Safari Dicor reclaim your life version is brilliant.

I like the way the ad opens, and moves to its climax soaking in powerful natural images of New Zealand.

If you look back on your life - What would you remember? The corner office ? The corporate powerplays ? The VIP Lounge?

If ever there was an ad that created a compelling reason to buy a product, this one would come pretty close.

Now why does the Sunil Shetty - Ford Endeavour print ad look strikingly similar?

Eternal return

2009-02-23T23:00:00.000-08:00

The current financial crisis reminds me of Friedrich Nietzsche's theory of eternal return. According to the theory matter is finite and time is infinite so everything repeats itself as only so many things can be created from matter but there is much more time. Everything has happened before and will continue to recur ad infinitumm. So as the Dow hits a 11 year low, it has hit a 11 year low i.e. repeated something that has happened before! The Mumbai attacks were labelled India's 9/11 i.e. it had happened before. Satyam is India's Enron. PwC reflects the sunk Arthur Andersen.

Shakespeare passed off 'eternal return' lightly - the more things change, the more they remain the same while the phrase ' those who forget history are condemned to repeat it' camouflages eternal return as if it were a prophecy. Milan Kundera's novel Unbearable Lightness of Being attempted an inversion of the philosophy- a married man having an affair was just that - another affair- more of the same but since everyone lives only once, his actions have very little significance on the universe - so lightness was not having to worry about eternal return, that somewhere else this will be repeated. The Hindu philosophy of Karma as a reward for actions of past life and the Egyptian philosophy of After life as something one can look forward to after death also interpret Eternal return in different ways.

Recession 2008 resonates with Depression 1929 . Lehman bros is the new Solomon Bros, the huge investment bank that sunk in 1980s.

As FDI and world turns to India , it could be the next superpower - just as it was before hundreds of years of colonial rule ravaged it into insignificance. Nandan Nilekani, in a recent panel discussion, said that we are about to reap a demographic dividend that can catapult us to the top of the world league of nations.

So whats new?

What a slumdog win means

2009-02-23T01:56:00.000-08:00

Winning 8 Oscars has put Slumdog Millionaire in the annals of movie history as a remarkable story of passion, hope and survival.

Very funnily, as Delhi figures prominently in many of our recent local releases, Mumbai seems to have redefined itself and moved onto the world stage. From Rab ne bana di jodi, Oye Lucky-Lucky Oye , Chandi Chowk to China , Delhi-6 to Dev-D, movies in the last 2-3 months had got in a distinctive Chandni Chowk and Pahargunj flavor. Mumbai's crumbling infrastructure, abject poverty and instant fame trapped in film by Boyle and certified by the Oscars, has in a sense freezed Mumbai into a city the world will watch for, if not a world city.

Maybe, being a world city is the next step as real capital moves in, scripts of movies begin to be based here and hollywood studios open offices here.

In a FICCI frames discussion recently, Pritish Nandy, put up the question on 'Whats indian cinema' up for debate. Is it bengali, tamil , telugu or hindi ? Are the sensibilities of regional languages different from hindi? Does a bengali understand tamil emotions, if there is something called a tamil emotion that is?

I think just as we understand a polish drama called ' My name is Justine' , we cry with Rose on the Titanic raft as Jack drowns or want Erin Bronkovich to win, the world will want to see our culture wrapped in our emotion. And Slumdog has done just that. Jill Gwen, the hoplessly excited Fox searchlight executive on the panel emphatically conteded that the movie could connect with any audience - in a sense of universal appeal.

She's right. I mean if one were to substitute all characters with Chinese or Brazilian ones it would still make for a compelling tale. Though the story is an Indian original, Vikas Swarups canvas was pretty universal. Rags to riches is after all a very universal story- a universal desire and therefore has a post-linguistic, post-cultural appeal.

What this win surely means that Rehman deservingly is a global composer now, Indianness is the next big thing and maybe many more movie houses will land on our doorstep with scripts that will use us to tell another universal tale.

Jai Ho !

Beginners Luck?

2009-02-15T22:59:00.000-08:00

What a match it turned out to be.

Quite a spectacular turnaround for a team that by the 70th minute was facing sure elimination in the FA cup, down 1-0 to uninspiring competition , with the coach having been sacked at the end of the last match, the captain being suspended for the match. This was the pits. In the 71st minute, it was attempting the 14th Lampard corner, having not been able to convert any of the 13 earlier compared to just 4 that Watford had managed against them . A pathetic show of a lack of finishing, if ever there was. A minute back, as the interim coach, Ray Wilkins, stared in horror, Watford sub Tamas Priskin had run through Drogba deep into Chelseas' defence and beat Cech to score a one bouce goal as Ashley Cole chased hopelessly.

My heart sank. Here was a great team having absolute possession of the ball, complete control of the game and all odds in its favor going down in a match they must absolutely win. Facing an elimination from the FA cup, Chelsea were up against a resolute Watford for a place in the last 8.

Catching the match on Max,I had decided to give my team some company. Should I just attack the remote and hit the bed or bear the 20-min agony?

Stand by your team, I said to myself.

Wishfully, the next 20-min were spectacular.

Nicholas Anelka scored an audacious scissor goal a couple of minutes later, followed by another brilliant one-bouce header into the net past hapless Loach.

Chelsea then wasted their 17th corner. Drogba wasnt in his element and it showed. He missed, didnt convert many chances and was a little short of the ball on quite a few occasions. He teamed up with Anelka for the second goal to sort of make up for things. Mancienne quite passionately showcased his debut with some great tackles, but convert even he couldnt. Ballack had energy but both his headers found no net.

Abramovich looked so much like a simple businessman, without passion, as he saw Anelka's goals. At one point, I saw him rubbing his hands with a dry childlike smile - was it with glee or was it to keep the chill winter breeze away? Was there a lesson there? Does passion always translate into results. Who was a bigger hero at the end of the IPL - Shah Rukh or Shane Warne? Who delivered ? As if on cue, Guus Hiddink, the huge Dutchman, sitting next to him watching the team he just inherited from Scolari , didn't quite exhibit any passion on the hits and misses either.

A dangerous attempt almost got Watford an equalizer in the 87th minute.

Within the next minute, Stoch and Kalou charged down the left to create the pass for Anelka to score his hat-trick with a super 15-yard kick. Anelka's shots were redeeming; and a definite lesson in finishing.

Maybe the Priskin goal was a wake-up call for the team to spring to finishing some of its brilliant counter-attacks.

Or maybe it was just Hiddinks beginners luck?

Whatever it was, it surely made my night.

The free-doom media

2009-02-11T02:37:00.000-08:00

What makes the internet work or doesn't work? I mean besides oodles of venture capital , business ideas on back of envelopes, why after 10 years , this brilliant medium still has no revenues in the bank?
I have oft wondered why I have 5 free email accounts when I run up a 6500 buck monthly fee conversing on my phone, why I read newspapers free on the net , why I can access wikipedia without spending the 29,000 bucks I spent buying the Britannica, why I can search on google for free, why I play chess with a russian grandmaster on yahoo! for free when a 4 week, twice a day chess classes cost me 5000 bucks, why noone charges me for cracking sudokus on zapak when each book of a 100 sudokus cost me 200 bucks, why I can see maps without buying an atlas, why I can now read books or watch movies for free when a movie costs me over a 1000 rupees to see in a multiplex. Why does cable cost me 400 a month but liveTV on the net is free?
Why am in linkedin for free ? Why am I getting to see albums for free? Why am I blogging for free ? Why the hell is youtube free? Webpages are free and software is now free too! Didn't they sue good old Bill for protecting his source code and running a monopoly?
If advertising is the answer, I haven't clicked on any banner. Nothing relevant flashed for me to get enticed. Except googles links maybe- sometimes they are extremely relevant, but most times you can avoid them.
Who is making the money and how? Who runs this big free world ? Who pays for the cost of servers, bandwidth and expensive fibre optic connectivity below the oceans?
Shouldn't the service provider - the ISP ( quite a forgotten word in these days of broadband)- get a revenue share for my monthly internet access . Much like it happens in the real telecom world - every piece of content is revenue-shared between the telecom company and the content creator. This model has turned 'song downloads' into an industry bigger than the entire private FM industry today.
Some have hit the revenue model - because they serve a tangible need - books , movie tickets, concerts, travel , marriages , jobs - but the ones that provide referral information or the ones that help stay in touch - essentially serve it free. And that is truly baffling, considering the real cost of communicating or finding information.
Surely there should be a cost for everything online. Maybe like a subscription fee based model -which works very well for say daily stock tips by poweryourtrade.com or movies by bigflix.com which gives me 30 movies to watch a month for a couple of hundred rupees.
Some services use the net to save money- a bank can operate with a much smaller outfit as it saves on precious real estate. An electricity company or a telecom company can provide great customer service by enabling payment online. Some supplement offline products - you get some awesome help on the apple sites - my iphone and ipod are serviced online for free , but all additional music and features are paid for.
The other side of the internet revenue model - advertising- has also been run to the ground. By getting themselves into a cost-per-click mode of payments, they have sold themselves as the most accountable medium, resulting in abysymal revenues and a lot of bleeding businesses.
Maybe they should look at revenues share there too - if they are able to generate a good number of enquiries, they should sell the enquiries for a fee or charge a share of the overall revenue accrual.
It will be proven of the net as it has been of every other media, that what is free, has no value. ( except free hugs, maybe !)
The net is undoubtedly the medium of the future.
It should just believe itself more so.

Heroes take a fall

2009-02-11T00:27:00.000-08:00

During my engineering days , Nortel networks was like one hugely coveted company to work for. Quite a few water-cooler-conversations were abuzz with the IT giants' products and performance. Last week, the $11bn technology powerhouse filed for bankruptcy. Nortel is suddenly a Great Place To Work no more.
The last 5-6 months have shattered many a myths of superheros. They ain't what they used to be. Are superheros turning human ? Superman's latest sequel showed him drowning, deprived of his powers, only to be rescued by a skinny woman . Spiderman spends months in anguish at the loss of his sting. At one point in the latest version, he falls dramatically hurting himself and spending some time in a tattered costume. Batman loses his battle with a brilliant joker( Heath)in his latest fight, needing help from the cops (which is a first for Batman).Alex, the great king of the jungle in Madagascar is reduced to a wimp, singing and dancing like a pansy in its sequel. They surely don't make Superheroes like they used to anymore.
Star TV taught Indian media broadcasting and Ekta Kapoor taught Star audience management. From creating huge weekly audience share-pies to introducing the concept of the character-less fiction ( anyone could play Mihir or Tulsi, anyone slept with anyone ), Ekta ruled the world of bored housewives. Every serial began with a 'K' and re-defined marketing principles for a whole host of programming practitioners. The longest romance in TV history lasted almost 10 years before the biggest of the shows were killed towards the end of last year. Yesterday, Star axed all the rest of the 'K' shows. 'K' doesn't work anymore.
Whats the next alphabet? 'C'?
Satyam created many entrepreneural dreams with its purchase of Indiainfoline for 500cr , setting the pace for the indian internet revolution. Listing subsequently on the Nasdaq, creating a 50,000 people competitor to Infosys and TCS, Satyam was Ramalinga Raju's outstanding contribution to the world of IT. Little did one know what that vision was built of till a confession letter in early Jan bared all.
Pricewaterhouse Coopers, a revered consulting and audit firm bit the dust and with it the world of financial practices has come into a terrible spotlight. Caught like a rabbit in high-beam headlights.
Every management institute has coveted the Day1 placement with Lehman. Bear Sterns and AIG have been halts in rapid career progression. In a classic reversal of capitalism, investment banking has ceased to be a destination anymore. Finance, itself, has been pushed back to its place on consumer doorsteps.
Michael Phelps reign has been much shorter - 8 brilliant golds in October and a ban in january on drug charges. Instant superhero turning instant history.
Finally, Louis Phillipe Scolari, my great brazilian hero, came with impeccable credentials to coach my favourite team,Chelsea, only to be sacked yesterday after numerous failures in the game including lack of respect for players , not turning up on time, resting Drogba when unnecessary and not spending enough time training.
In a sense then 2008 redefined superstardom, probably bringing realism back in fashion.

Shifting-Hyphens

2009-02-05T01:21:00.000-08:00

One of the favorite passtimes in college was to link people together in order to create some excitement amidst academic boredom. Creating a new story and a discussion point to the casual conversations of say, Arun and Amrita, would add spice and keep it alive as a referral point. A Hypen would then summarily complete the picture : Arun-Amrita.
Diplomats, esp the foreign policy types, similarly used the Hyphen to lump issues and countries for easy reference and some excitement. Middle-East, South-East , Franco-German , Indo-Pak slowly entered Oxford as legitimate words. As the worlds most powerful country, US created all the frames of reference. Sitting in India imagine having to call Dubai - Middle East !
The Hypen - a residue of non-chalant US foreign policy now seems to be in danger of falling off the pages of Oxford. At the turn of the century, with the help of some source code, we moved from being the corner store and taxi-driving types to the absolute top of the consulting value chain, and a couple of 9% growth years later, began to challenge the Hyphens place.
We have now brilliantly shifted the hyphens between Indo-Pak to Indo-China in business and politics, Indo-Pak to Indo-Australia in cricket and Indo-Pak to Indo-US in the media business. Then from being categorised into a non-unit called NAM ( basically an excuse for not-voting on any UN resolution on any issue for fear of taking sides) or a non-starter like SAARC( basically an excuse for knowing what the f%$# our neighbours were upto), we forced the creation of a new acronym of hope called BRIC.
Just as years ago, Japan and China broke away from the South-East by creating powerful economies and a created another larger new region called South Asia ( quite funny if you think about it) , India will now decide who it wants to be on the other side of the hyphen.
That's surely a good, great feeling !

Depression - the sequel

2009-01-27T05:22:00.000-08:00

Paul Krugman's latest version of his book The Return of Depression Economics makes for terrific reading . That he won the nobel prize for economics last year shows out in the form of his clear thinking about the reasons why depressions happen and how they lead to prolonged recessions .
He has masterfully de-jargoned the crisis making it a good read .
Despite all his explanations , I think the basic reasons for a recession are much simpler .
All that marketing as a science is focussed on doing is converting wants into needs. And creating more and more wants and converting more and more of them into needs. Till one day your infinitely bloated 'wants' make you a slave of the ambitious and equally 'wanting' financial system.
Let me illustrate this with an example .
Let's say - a basic need is to have a house in Mumbai .
You have two options - buy or rent ( classic dilemna - no McKinsey needed )
If you rent , you pay a certain amount every month , live in Mumbai till you have made your moolah and catch the flight home in some years. All seems to be fine . Math says you will spend 50,ooo bucks a month over 20 years i.e. 1.2 cr . With some inflation , say 1.5 cr. Simple landlord-tenant relationship and life chugs along.
Now , every Tom, D & Harry around you will seem to be making a killing with a real estate investment , every bank conversation will funnel into a investment strategy discussion on why not a house , every neighbour will quit his lease and buy , every builder will entice with EMI , every broker will show you an offer you can't refuse and every year your landlord will breathe down an annual 15% increase . The collective pressure will convert your 'want' of a house into a 'need' for a house .
You fall for it .
Suddenly , the economy surges around you - as you have now activated the capitalist machinery - a broker earns commission , an advocate registration doc fees , a carpenter and interior designer attack the house with Jacquar , marble and teak, new furniture and furnishings clean out whats left in the bank , a bank executive creates a loan dossier and wins his incentive , an insurance agent creates a policy premium , a gardener ( in Mumbai ?, you kidding!) , the municipal commissioner turns up with his annual tax bill , the society needs maintanence payments , and you need to pay a chartered accountant to calculate your tax liability , pay a lawyer to read the fine print of tenacy documents and a broker to manage the property. Not to mention paying some of the builders employees wages, to the building construction industry and to the transport business .Wow and whew !
Let's get back to the math .
At a 12.5% annual interest ( most banks currently ) for a 1 cr house ( a measly 800 sqft 2 bed place ) will lighten your account by 1.25 lac a month or 3 cr over 20 years , not taking into account the cheerfully sucking economic predators , detailed above , surrounding you.
All this converting wants into needs business takes into account a perennial growth in ones income so the propensity to keep paying smaller and smaller EMI's is factored .
Many such wants spin the capitalist wheel till there's huge amount of job creation , money exchanging and overall gain . Trouble is when consumtion stops .
If you can't be convinced , this wheel stops. And when money supply stops - like when the music stops in a game of musical chairs - someone has to dance in the centre of the circle.
If you imagine a country as big as ours or as big as the US creating 24X7 wants , surely somethings gotta give somewhere . Either in depleted energy or in stressful health or in absurd levels of greed before prices will keep rising ( inflation ) till its impossible to convert a 'need' anymore. Leading to empty stores of 'wants' noone can afford or wants to buy .
And isn't that a recession ?

Slumdog wows

2009-01-22T21:46:00.000-08:00

Saw slumdog millionaire last night and loved it .

Now I can't understand those who say this shows India's grotesque underbelly when we have lot of great things to show - including a state of the art suspension bridge over the bandra-worli sea space and probably the plans for the worlds tallest building . They couldn't be more wrong.

Only suffering , strife , struggle makes for a great plot . Every single piece of literary fiction whether it camouflaged as humor , paraded as parody or depicted as a tragedy has 'suffering' at its core . There can be no story worthwhile without suffering . Go back to Shakespeare , Milton , Updike , Heller , Dickens , Eliot , Kafka or even Wodehouse , who makes it light and bearable - 'suffering' is the essence of a story . For the magic of any story is the change in its key character between the beginning and end of the plot - an emotional growth , a fulfilment , a redemption . How can a story achieve that if the protagonist starts and ends without any change in his character and personality - status quo is no story! The characters that stay etched in your mind are the ones that had the greatest change in their state of being - Nazneen in Brick Lane , David Copperfield , Nicholas Nickleby , Howard Roack in Fountainhead ,Yossarian in Catch 22, D'Artegnan in Three musketeers , Ali in Kite runner , or Jemal in Slumdog .

Think of the another example closer to real life - Dhirubhai Ambanis' is a great story , Lakshmi mittal , Amitabh , Kishore Biyani , Sunil Mittal , Azim Premji ,Rahul Bajaj , Barack Obama , Nelson Mandela , Gandhi are all great stories - each one of them is of immense fortitude , searing ambition, enormous sacrifices and remakable achievement against all odds . Anil Ambani , Aditya Mittal , Abhishek , Sanjeev Bajaj or Rahul Gandhi can never be the stuff of legends since they start with billions and build empires further - its not a growth of character , just an delta extention of the inheritance thats been handed out to them .

Where is the 'pain' , its endurance and the emotional growth that makes it compelling for the world to participate ?

Irony - 2

2009-01-19T21:06:00.000-08:00

Slumdog millionaire officially is now hugely successful - the rags to riches story of a slum boy who becomes a millionaire reflects in the rags to riches fate of the movie itself . Legend has it that the movie was to release in a DVD-only format , but as its tagline goes - born to lose , destined to win - it was finally released with over 600 prints and has grossed $42.5 mn ( Rs.205 cr ) as of 19th jan , a week before its Indian premiere , promising more moolah to the Fox studios.
Somewhere else , another generational rags to riches story plays out in a downright-deprived-to-absolutely-powerful sort of manner - Barack Obama becomes the first occupant of the white house ( Might as well change its name now to Presidents house or One,Washington).
A couple of years back , Shilpa Shetty got caught in a racist battle between her and Jade Goody on an episode of Big Brother . Jade called her 'brown' and it sparked a huge row in the UK for the then PM Tony Blair . Guess who succeeded Blair as the next PM - Gordon 'Brown' !
Irony again that the biggest fraud in Indian corporate history had to be called 'Satyam'.

Chutnefying english

2009-01-16T01:17:00.000-08:00

Spent the last weekend attending an interesting seminar organized by MICA , on the birth of Hinglish and death of English - aptly called 'Chutnefying English' .

Purists and practitioners were at loggerheads trying to take sides while trying to sound very meaningful . Mahesh Bhatt very uncharacteristically read out two full pages of a thesis on how statistically now more people speak hinglish than english ( pulling a 350 mn number out of his hat ) and how earlier in films it was only villians and comedians who spoke hinglish but now it has degenerated hindi itself . Mehmoods' lines 'Bahaar ki chokri kitna advance hai' or the song 'mera joota hai japani , patloon inglistani' were the earliest hinglish renditions and most villians were 'Peter ' , 'Mona' or 'Michael' - taking off on colonial times . Its only when Bhatt took off in extempore citing his rich experiences as a filmmaker that the debate gained heat . He wondered why we learnt 'Jack and Jill ' or 'Little Miss Muffet' when there was a huge repository of urdu and hindi literature and why kids don't like parents who still don't know english . His point being 'mother tongue ' helped one connect to ones own self - something he repeated ad nauseam.

Rupert Snell , the Hindi and Braj teacher from the University of Texas , Austin was terrific . He hilariously introduced Bhatt , kept the sunday audience in splits with his chaste hindi and tackled with dry humor all the muck people slung at 'oh those brits'. Shannon Finch , the gritty anthropology student ( while protesting vehemently on why Gurcharan Das didn't give her the time he committed ) gave an interesting insight on why people repeat sentences in hindi and english for effect - a phenomenon she called Bilingual Repitition with some very good examples - recorded from students she gave recorders to capture their usage -

A teacher instructing a class followed the ask 'Kitab khol deejiye' with 'Please open your books' . In a random conversation , ' Aadha saal khatam ho gaya' was followed by 'Half the year is gone' by a student . And how what she called code switching - mixing multilingual words - added to empathic stress . To illustrate she played out a recording from her research : Suddenly , we were talking about India aur achanak usne subject change kar diya .( 'Suddenly' and 'achanak' being similar words with the hindi version adding to dramatic effect )

Also , as an example of code switching used to define which language the sentence came from she used an example ( sentences below ) - it seems that while the first sentence below has more english words than hindi , its still a hindi sentence while the second with fewer english words is an english sentence .

Daddy ki blue shirt table par hai

Film rajaas ki duniya is not worth ek single rupaiah

Someone also amplified boringly the science of mixing hindi verbs and english nouns and adjectives - gherao-ed , manao-ed , maska-fying etc. The other aspect of this debate was the commerce behind it all . The need to connect , felt Prasoon Joshi was far more important that the need to maintain purity . e.g Pepsi's Yeh Dil Maange More reflected youthfulness , aggression as in 'maange' , a movement away from the scarcity era with 'more' and Coke rebounded with 'Life Ho To Aisi ' another hinglish line . A movie like 'Jab we met ' also went on to rake in huge moolah due to its refreshing take on youthful romance . Another young bloke studied spanish usage in the US to conclude that there is nothing like Spanlish as purists rule that lingo - so much so that even TV broadcasters prefer pure spanish speakers without a word of english embedded in it .

Here's my take on the Hinglish affair - language is a means of communication . So it is sub-servient to a need - the need to communicate . It can't be a master - you need to learn it and speak in its pure form . Shakespeare added 30000 words to the english then , now new age technology has added many more words to it - did we have words like googled , flickrd , wifi , podcast , itune , wikipedia , second life , smsed ,email - so who is to say that Hindi can't add words of its own . If it helps millions reach out to others - a little twist , some nichod will maybe help english survive .

Code-mixing and bilingual repitition ki aisi ki taisi ,

Chill maro , mat karo bheja fry , piyo thoda cold lassi .

Kya english aur kya hindi , thoda punjabi mein jod do sindhi ,

Bani jo bhasha tod-marod , oose complete karo dictionary oxford !

Satyam Jayete?

2009-01-08T02:32:00.000-08:00

Satyam has gone belly up .

Its according to which channel one is seeing or which business paper one reads - anywhere from a 5000cr to a 7000 cr scam . Ramalinga Raju has confessed to the massive accounting fraud , sinking his stock by 80% and the stock market by 750 points , putting pressure on the world markets on corp governance and probably liquifyeing PwC - all in one day.

Just in the morning multibillionaire Adolf Merckle , one of Germanys wealthiest men , owner of Heidelberg cement among other firms jumped in front of a running train not able to handle mounting debt.

Raju chose to confess instead . It was like riding a tiger , not knowing how to get off without being eaten - said RR in his letter .

Greed is good , said Gordon Gekko , Michael Douglas's character in Wall Street .

Not so sure.

Outliers !

2009-01-07T22:02:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading 'the Outliers' , the latest from bad-haired behavioral scientist Malcolm Gladwell . His second book 'Blink' didn't quite impress me for its premise was ridiculous , while his debut book 'Tipping point' dissapointed in its examples . So what made me buy his third book ?

Having worked now for just under 20 years , am desperately seeking some mid-aged mantras / quick-fixes for the next 20 - what should be the ends and what should be the means ? How much wealth does one need ? How high should one aspire for ? As means , is it entrepreneurship , is it going to be higher up the company management ladders or is it going to be further studies followed by some more racing with the rats or just hang up boots , shave your head , buy a 350cc bike and travel the world - blow all you have to start again in some years ?
Perhaps the sub-title of the book - 'the story of success' - caught my imagination and hope of finding some answers prompting hard earned 400 bucks to be thrown at it , just as a new year broke.

Outliers are people who are those who 'unbelong' - are different from the rest for any variety of reasons. Gladwell divides the book into two parts - 'opportunity' and 'legacy' with the proposition that the opportunity and legacy are the reasons why some people enjoy tremendous success and most don't . In a wild premise, he states that the timing of birth makes all the difference between having opportunities or landing a legacy and therefore all talent is overrated , its all luck ,luck and more luck . For instance , those born around 1955 have benefitted from the mid-1970's software boom - steve jobs , bill gates , larry ollison , eric shmidt etc. , those born in 1830's benefitted from the 1860's boom in railroad , oil and gas boom ( jd rockfeller etc. ) . Stating legacy as an ingredient for success , he analyses the growth of the jews in the US . The Jewish immigrants came as garment workers ( sophisticated work integrated with mainline America) , Italians came as construction workers , Irish as domestic help and Mexicans as farm labourers , thereby creating an immigrant hierarcy in the US with the jews at the top . The second generation jews all got into law , medicine , engineering , wall street ( solomon , lehman m goldman sachs ) and ran all the newspapers . So a Jew with parents who worked as garment labor in 1930s would have studied law or engineering and would be automated to be successful today !
Similarly , he argues why koreans max in air crashes - they obey authority in their culture and therefore can't negotiate or converse effectively with culturally rough ( considered normal in cities like new york )air traffic controllers around the world.
Leaving legacy aside , I thought of applying the 'opportunity' corollary to the Indian context and in 10 year blocks to see if the theorem holds.

If one rewinds back to 1995 , here's all the jobs a guy out of college could do then - heavy engineering , FMCG , durables , government , armed services , PSU banks and newspapers - mostly low paying , low on skill and mass in nature .

Fast forward to 2005 , here's what he could consider - Insurance ,BPO ,Telecom , Infrastructure , IT , Banks , Mutual Funds , Stocks , Financial services ,Events ,Media - TV , Radio , Advertising ,Hospitality, Automobiles - each of these industries had just 1 player in 1995 and has close to 20-25 players in 2005! All highly productive , high paying and high on skill and money.

Let me now forecast what the opportunity landscape might look like in 2015 for a guy looking for a job - NGOs , Travel , Health , Education , Private equity , Management Consulting, Retail , Logistics , Transport , Security ( arms , ammunition , guards - keeping away the have nots will be an industry ) , Services- legal , Films and Leisure( yatchs , suites , choppers et al) . Extremely evolved and unsteadily high paying .

So here's Malcolm Gladwells big point ( adapted by me to the Indian context ) - those who are born around the mid-1970s in India will have the greatest chance of making it big as they will be around their 30s in 2005 , making the most use of the opportunites - and riding away into the sunset with a billion or two in the boot of their 4000 cc BMW parked in their 8 bedroom bungalow in South Mumbai !

So how about being born at the right time , next time ?
Eh !

Nomadic pause

2008-12-23T21:00:00.000-08:00

This is a landmark leap year , in a sense that I just realized that I havent leapt this year !
With the end of 2008 , Mumbai becomes the place where I have spent a record steady four and half years . Here's how the record came to be broken :

1969 : Born in Military Hospital , Pune
1970-71:( 2 yrs ) Mhow ( Military HQ Of War ) , Madhyapradesh
1972-75:( 3 yrs ) Srinagar , J&K
1975-78:(3 yrs ) Gwalior , Madhya Pradesh
1978-80:( 2 yrs ) Tezpur , Assam
1981-84: ( 3 yrs ) Ambala Cantt , Haryana
1985-87: ( 2 yrs ) Pune , Maharastra
1987-91: ( 4 yrs ) Nanded / Nagpur , Maharastra
1991-92: ( 1.5 yrs ) Chennai , Tamil Nadu
1992-93: ( 1 yr ) Bangalore & Hubli , Karnataka
1994 : ( 1/2 yr ) Mysore , Karnataka
1994: ( 1 yr )Coimbatore & Madurai , Tamil Nadu
1995: ( 1/2 yr ) Ahmedabad , Gujarat
1995 : ( 1/2 yr ) Goa
1996: ( 1/4 yr ) Hyderabad , Andhra Pradesh
1996-2000: ( 4 yrs )Pune , Maharastra
2000-2001: ( 1.5 yrs )Gurgaon , Delhi
2001-2003: ( 3 yrs ) Pune
2004( Apr )-2008 ( Dec ): ( 4.5 yrs ) Mumbai

A sure nomadic pause if it lasts into 2009 , else a new record for long stays .
Mumbai is rapidly growing on me , as I grow rapidly in Mumbai .
Hope and pray the pause is permanent .

My 2008 lists

2008-12-22T03:50:00.000-08:00

A quick list of people and things in the year gone by and how they affected me :

Events : The Wall Street Collapse , the doubts on free market economy and the mindless surge of oil prices to $160 a barrel and back swung the sensex from 22000 to 7500 taking with them more than a million of my hard earned rupees . My leessees of my houses , mostly software blokes , also evacuated citing job losses , leaving behind no rental income for me . Making it quite an unforgettable year of fiscal losses .

People : Barack Obama ( he's the man ) won a hard-fought heavily publicised election battle redeeming my faith in audacious hope , beautiful Sarah Palin( she's something - can't figure out what ) gave me quite a few laughs in a trying year and Ratan Tata's battles with Corus , Jaguar , Singur , Nano and Taj showed me how mettle matters while Lalit Modi with his awesome marketing converted me single-handedly into a cricket fan . Alan Greenspan who wrote an Age of turbulence before the Age of trubulence gave me an insight into how he created the mess that was to come after his quitting . Imran Khan , the new kid on the bollywood block was refreshing and his second movie , Kidnap , was just so . Daniel Craig endeared and so did joker Heath Ledger , just before he died . Adiga stole my plot and won the booker , but am not complaining .

Movies : The Dark Knight and Casino Royale earn my accolades while Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na turned me into a hopeless romantic again .

Books : Monica Ali's Brick Lane and Shaw's Pygmalion set me thinking , Maughams autobiographical Of Human Bondage's 700 pages mirrored my life too and the Audacity of Hope enlightened me . ( Is that all the fiction I read this year ? ) . Read a bunch of books on television journalism - Crazy like a Fox finally told me what was right and left , how embedded journalism has changed the world and how CNN lost the plot to Fox news , Hugh Miles's Al Jazeera stunningly clarified my views on the Arab media scene , Nalin Mehta's India on Television was boringly historical , Bonnie Andersens cryptic NewsFlash was CNNs story and McGowan's Coloring the News provided worthwhile perspective on print news journalism , probably also indicating reasons why Obama could have won , the pacy thriller Television Disrupted threw me deep into the technicalities of broadcasting and Dilip Awasthi's The Special Correspondent gave me insights on the tactics of news gathering . Bought most from Rediff.com , except Newsflash which was from Amazon.com

Adventures : The Sky jump - worlds highest - Macau ( my legs still tingle when I visualise the final few seconds before I jumped ) made me believe more in myself while the Cruise on the Nile fulfilled me with wonder on the largest river in the world .

Moves : Radio to TV ( theatre of the mind to mindless theatre ! ) Saw news happen - terrorists at the taj , US elections ,Indian olympic victories upclose from newsroom .

Gadgets :The iPhone has changed my life - snaps , maps , mails , youtube , blogs , itunes , surfing the web and of course , taking the calls couldn't have been more brilliant . A new record score of 36000 in my macman stands - could be breaking it anyday.

Architecture : The Bangalore and Hyderabad airports are terrificly visitable - at the airports , feels like Hongkong in there . The Pyramids - were a true wonder - so was the Bibliotheque at Alexandria - sheer engineering brilliance . The Bandra-Worli sea link is turning out to be one too .

Sports : The sensational IPL matches dragged me into stadiums in Mumbai ( DY Patil ) and Delhi ( Ferozeshah Kotla ) as I fell in love with the abbreviated version of the game . But a hard-earned crystal cup after many years brought me back to my first love - soccer .

2009 , here I come .

The Hunter and the Farmer

2008-12-18T23:51:00.000-08:00

The Hunter and the Farmer

Airtel recently announced their reaching the 75 million subscriber mark . Reliance and Vodafone had hit the 50 million cellphone mark some time back . Idea will reach it maybe a year or two later and Tata might take even longer . What is significant about these numbers is that Idea was the first cellphone operator amongst them all and is yet to reach even the 50 mn mark while Reliance was the last to begin operations . . So why is one operator so slow and one sprinting away to glory ?
ICICI has crossed the marketcap of India’s largest bank , SBI . ICICI’s market cap is just under 85000 cr ( had crossed Rs.1 trillion when its stock hit Rs.950 ) , with SBI at 65000 cr and the robust HDFC at 35000 cr . With much higher NPAs, ICICI bank is aggressively straddling all spaces in the financial basket and moving to overtake SBI in overall sales soon . Its stock gotten hammered , punished for mistimed moved in the US markets , yet it carries on .What makes a bank like ICICI so strong ?
Infosys makes more press than TCS . Isn’t TCS’s $4bn revenues similar to Infosys’s US$ 4 bn revenues ? Here’s the difference , TCS was established in 1968 , while Infosys was created almost 15 years later with a $250 corpus . TCS rewrote none of the rules of IT game . When Indians became expensive manpower , Infosys went to China and got work done cheaper . It listed on the NASDAQ . As the dollar strengthens , Infosys rewrites its strategies every week . It has targeted attrition and won that battle too . Its annual reports begins by calling people its assets . So why does Infosys make so much press ?
Why does the Times of India increase its rates by 40% in an inflationary year or a Dainik Bhaskar launch editions rapidly while the Hindu reduces cover price as competition enters the city ? The Times launches an additional newspaper to combat a competitors entry . It changes advertising pricing , dictates editorial policy differently , kills the subscription business to thrive and trounce competitors . Its count of innovations is legendary . Why is there no no.2 newspaper around for miles .
How did UTV movies break into the top 10 distribution companies in revenues in the US in under 3 years or how does Adlabs buyout over 300 theatres in the US in under a year ?
SO why do some companies grow at an abysymally low rate even in a super-charged economy and why do some others grow at a rapid clip , consuming all available venture capital and human resources ? Why do some companies continue to languish inspite of enormous opportunities around while some others with seemingly sketchy business plans create need and want in the process of sprinting away on the sensex ? Why do some managers who join a new company do very well but some who join quit immediately citing cultural differences ?
The difference in these companies is genetic in nature . Lets examine the difference in operating style of both types of companies . One set of companies operate as hunters . They have no idea what is the next business idea or where the next years growth is going to come from . They aggressively seek out ideas for growth and move rapidly in that direction . They borrow capital on the run , set up businesses , expand , buy out competitors and hit new peaks of market capitalization . Like hunters , they have no idea which forest to hunt in , which animal they are likely to confront and what tools are going to come handy . They could go hungry over days and feast for the next few . The other set of companies operate as farmers . Farmers seek predictability – they get up at the same time every morning to toil on the land with their cattlefolk , sow the seeds , wait for the monsoons and rejoice when the crop yields what it is meant to yield . They have set systems – the time to wake up , the time to herd cattle , the time to return from fields , the time to eat is all defined and any upsetting of schedule results in under-performance .
Hunter managers don’t care much for systems , and stay extremely focused on results . They deliver higher than expected results , but can fail dramatically too . And they will be the cause of failure , but they will find the next big company to work for and move on. Some hunter workers grow to become hunter managers and hunter leaders , increasing their maturity of aggression and their ability to create control in chaos and unpredictability . Farmers are less likely to take risks and operate within a web of systems and processes . Many hunting firms evolve to become farming companies with a myriad of systems , but the genetic coding makes its appearance once in a while as they attempt a hostile takeover or start a new businesses absolutely unconnected with their core strength.
As Reliance Industries gets into Retail , one sees remarkable aggression be it in its acquisition of talent , land , alliances , consumers or capital .
Hunting firms focus on results , Farming firms on procedure . Ever wonder why Infosys puts its sales figures on page 13 of its annual report while TCS talks revenues on page 32 ? Its in the genes .
When mergers fail , it is most likely that a hunting company has acquired a farming firm or a farming company picked up a stake in a hunting firm . AOL Time Warner alliance collapsed as the hunting instincts of an AOL and a Warner Bros. conflicted with the farming culture of Time . Similarly , when people quit , examine the DNA of the person who quit and the genetic coding of the company he left behind and you find the hunter vs farmer fight playing out .
There is nothing wrong in being a hunter or a farmer . Great hunters and Great farmers have both had their places in the history books . Realization of where one stands makes the difference .
Look yourself in the mirror every morning .
Who do you see - A hunter or a farmer ?
And where are you dressed up to go - To the forest or to the farm ?

Ignorance is progress

2008-12-18T22:34:00.000-08:00

Ram : ( Adjusting the belt he couldn't see below his tummy ) Ignorance is progress .Absolute ignorance is rapid progress . Whatdyasay ?
Shyam : ( ridding the collar button of its anchor and loosening his tie ) Preposterous . Ridiculous . All progress is built on knowledge and learning .
The taxi turned onto Tulsi pipe road , the connect to Bandra from Parel .
Ram : Not quite so . Think about it . If Columbus knew he wouldn't reach America , would he start at all ? If Alexander knew he would get malaria , would he move a muscle ? They haden't read history , seen Magellan maps , studied Flemings theories on pencilin or listened to leadership speeches on battle preparation or read Homers the Illiad or Odyssey . That lack of information spurred progress , led to discoveries of a new continent , new methods of warfare and birth of new civilizations - America and Greece .
Shyam : The drivers for such quests were different . It was an individual need not societal so you can't sweep society into the generalization .
Ram : The ability to take a risk leads to progress . The word 'Risk' implies less knowledge , for if all was known wheres the risk ? Look at what happened yesterday . The ex-Nasdaq head Bernad Madoff has run a $50 bn scam . How did he manage to do it ? Wasn't an Enron collapse the start of a lot of regulation and governance ? Who forgot to implement ? Who pays the price . Harshad Mehta did a massive bull run sabotage - mind you , he paid back 550 cr over 5 days to various banks . One man . Then heavy duty regulations came in , there was a bear hug on the markets . Seven years later another broker - another scam - Ketan Parekh . Again more regulations . Five years later - Telgi - 50000 cr gone . The stamp scam was 100x Harshad , but measure the $ 1 trillion economy against a bankrupt govt in 1991 and it's the same size .
The car crossed the small flyover that spared one from the Dadar flith below . Traffic was dense and three km stretch took over three quarters of an hour .
Ram ( looking out of the half-rolled down window cursorily ) : Throughout history , its the same example . Napolean attacked Russia in winter in the early 18th century and paid a massive price - defeat , demoralization and end of french dominance . A century later , Hitler attempts the same - loses his ground to Russia in a winter attack and loses the war . Yet another example - Soloman bros , the great investment banking firm in the late 80's filed for bankruptcy after years as the largest bond trader in the world and brought the US economy down quite a few notches . Today Lehman , Bear Sterns , Merryl Lynch are doing the same . If they had learnt , the world would have been different . But in the process , millions have been made rich , millions have lived a life , enjoyed homes , fulfilled aspirations . And millions have forgotten again . More money is being pushed into the system , to force people to pull our their credit cards again , to leverage assets to buy another house they don't need , to think of a car they can never afford and help another million somewhere in the chain make real wealth .
The taxi slowed down further for the next kilometer or two .
Ignorance , my friend , is real progress .
Ram : Remember the old line from the movie Anadi - ' Sikandar ne Porus se ki thi ladai , to mai kya karoon ' ?
Shyam : Sure
Ram : Thats a guy who would make progress , not bogged down by historical facts or improbalities . Think of this . We have had a good and maybe slower journey today because we didn't have a clue on traffic on tulsi pipe . Had we known , we would have taken a train . And maybe lived the same mundane sleepwalking life , we live everyday . Maybe not seen the new malls , the new highrises on tulsi pipe , the new wealth being created , the new showrooms . That's probably what the Mumbai grind does , the train travel , the lack of information , the mundaneness , the selfishness , the acceptance , the realisations sort of keep your head down , so you can take in this harsh city and yet not break down . Till one day , the tide turns , and Shyam mark my words , the tide does turn - thereafter , you take on this city - richer , enriched , wealthier and content .
Shyam : Maybe . Now that you set me thinking....

A tear, a little fear and some passion

2008-11-25T22:58:00.001-08:00

Of the many movies I saw over the last three weeks , four stood out as outstanding . Casablanca , Enemy at the gates , The scent of a woman and No country for old men . Each of these made me want to see it again , made me pause to ponder and reflect on life . Each tugged at my heart in a very compelling and different way .

Casablanca is an outstanding love story . Desire , pathos and love are depicted sensitively and the few memorable lines from the movie - Play it sam ; We'll always have Paris ; Its the beginning of a beautiful friendship ; Frankly my dear , I give a damn - have been etched in cinema folklore over many years . Humphrey Bogart is terrific as the chain-smoking , rustic lover while beautiful and confused Ingrid Bergman wanting the good life , looks quite stunning . Quite a few hindi movies have explored this loved and lost theme , but I guess they take the ' suffer or sacrifice ' route rather than etch out a character as strong and self-consuming as Bogart . The black and white movie uses shadows and light quite effectively . Absolutely a nine on ten .

Enemy at the gates was one of the movies I saw amongst many war movies together - The longest day , The windtalkers , Platoon , The thin red line , Dirty dozen , Black Hawk Down and The battle for britain . But EATG stood out as gripping and brilliant . There are probably fewer movies with the crucial Russian - German war as a backdrop so it makes it additionally interesting to see a part of this history . Ed Harris and Jude Law's singular conflict interspersed with lovely Rachel Weiss and cunning Ralph Fiennes turned out to be quite a gripping tale . Told only from the point of the sniper Jude Law , it grips you from the first scene to the last . A small scene of german Ed Harris being stripped off his rank for failing to nab Jude is moving , but it generates no sympathy for his character . The love making scene in the bunker amidst many sleeping soldiers is shot very well . You want them to make love and be together inspite of the impossibilities , so there is an sense of fulfillment when the scene comes on .The whiteness of her skin in the filthy green and dirt background with passionate love-making , makes it quite an endearing moment . Jude Law is brilliant and gets the audience on his side from the first scene . A nine on ten .

Al Pacino is Al Pacino . His blind colonel act in The scent of a woman is starkly memorable for being intense and moving . Fun movie to watch , especially the plot of wanting to spend a weekend in NewYork pursuing his unfinished dreams - driving a ferrari , meeting his estranged brothers family , doing the tango , living in the most expensive suite in the most expensive hotel in New York before blowing his brains out . Liked the tango scene the best . Surely an eight on ten .

Saw Coen bros No country for old men twice . I mean the DVD guy didn't pick it up so got an extra day . What a thriller . Had'nt heard of the spanish actor Zavier Barden before this movie . His potrayal of Anton , the hellish guy obsessed with getting his money back was quite stunning . The intriguing part of the movie is that while there is a chase - the sheriff ( Tommy Lee Jones ) is after Zavier , the killer , who is after Josh who has picked up the drug-deal-gone-awry millions of dollars - none of the three meet each other in the movie . They get close , cross each other and get within a breath but don't meet . The texan countryside is awesome and shows how tough it is to be a cop in that terrain . The guns are deadly and each killing is credibly different . You really want Josh to run with the money - guess thats the connect with the key character . There are some unnecessary conversations , though , that distract you as you try and connect the story with those conversations , including the one that the movie ends with . But the chase itself is gripping and polishes off the killings as character defining , so none of them looks gory or out of place . It won 4 deserving oscars . An eight on ten definitely.

Money down the tube

2008-11-21T03:36:00.000-08:00

The Sensex is at a 3 yr low . The world markets are in turmoil and minute by minute as the ticker spills blood , my money is sinking into the Arabian sea . Not ordinary money , but dollops of cash - am a million and half rupees down as I go to press . Yet , everyday as I watch CNBC , I have a smile on my lips and some hope in hell .
It's the women on CNBC . Must say it is probably the best collection of faces , second only to some parts of Bollywood . One look at beautiful Tanvir Gill and your day has begun well . She is probably the face of CNBC . Eyes , Hair , Lips , Face , skin - she's a 10 . And as she explains the wiping off of zillions of marketcap everyday , she gets more and more appealing . No sorrow in her eyes , yet shes pathos personified . Who the heck cares about a couple of million here or there as long as she's there to explain it all off to a sub-prime or a p-note .
A close second is Sonia Shenoy , a freshly minted face - she's just gotten onto the newsroom . Anchoring a session called After the bell , she's one bombshell . Her hair falls seductively as she is quite stunningly attractive .
Mornings belong to Mitali Mukherjee . Mitali is lovely , bright , full of sunshine and very very beautiful . And human . Can't concentrate on the opening bell tips that she ends up giving as her beauty is quite distracting . The sort of woman you take home to mom . Very coy and very enduring .
Menaka Doshi is the fiesty afternoon anchor . Wonder what she would look like if she were tanned , for she has just about the right features to carry off any color on her skin .
Shireen Bhan , the executive editor is another sexy woman . She smiles most of the time and since she does not do a regular sit-down news reading show , one can enjoy her overall personality . She's good looking and carries herself well . Her Young Turks programme with many a successful businessmen is one of my favs . Very vivacious and garrulous , she surely has many an interesting entrepreneural tale . Rebecca , her US counterpart is another stunner . As she shouts out the Dow Jones spectacular falls , smiling all the time , you miss the irony of it all .
Anuradha Sen Gupta , Lata Venkatesh and Manisha Gupta are the real hard workers covering advertising , banking and commodities . Real women with solid knowledge and interacting with big-time CEOs and business leaders , they are made of sterner stuff .
And to add to honesty and innocence is Swati Khandelwal , one of the last of this batallion of the women of CNBC . A chripy , sweet little young thing with a slight tan covers patchy news and mid-caps with rigor .
May their tribe increase .

The $50mn business

2008-11-19T22:11:00.000-08:00

How the heck does a country so poor as Somalia manage to create a highly profitable new industry ?
Using its only strategic advantage - location. Its place in the Cape of Horn helps it target all sorts of ships passing through the area . Last reported they have managed a $50mn profit by holding up over 45 ships including a Japanese cargo ship , a Thai fishing vessel , a Chinese super-sized cargo ship , a Saudi oil tanker and a Russian ship full of nuclear powered tanks .
The modus operandi is pretty simple - small 10-15 member fishing boats surround ships and take them hostage .The US naval commander in the area commends the efforts of these pirates while Indian media is giving it good coverage .
I remembered the movie 'Black hawk dawn ' on the covert CIA operation to take a Somalian warlord hostage starring Mr 'deadpan' Eric Bana . Piracy on high seas is probably just another way for the warlords in this poorest of poor countries to fund its forever war with neighbour Ethiopia .
In these days when most companies are pleading with their governments to bail them out , here's an outstanding example of a bunch of guys who have decided to fund themselves .
Damn poverty .

Don't Book This Tiger

2008-11-19T02:07:00.000-08:00

As sheer count , this is my fiftieth post over the last three years . In celebration , I thought I will write about writing . Here's what I think of Aravind Adiga's Man booker prize winning novel - The White Tiger .

At one level , its pretty close to the story I have been wanting to write , but on another level it doesn't quite turn out that way . It is , however , one of the very few bookers I have managed to finish cover to cover ( Funnily , of the famous booker of booker winner , Midnights Children ( 1981) , I haven't gotten beyond pg 25 ! ). And even so , of the few bookers that I have managed to complete , it lacks a soul . In story , it pales in comparison to Monica Ali's Brick Lane ( 2003 nominee - a terrific read , one of my favourite bookers - a pity it lost to Vernon ) . In plot , The White Tiger pales in comparison to Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient (1992 ) . In language , it pales in comparison to DBC pierre's crass and inventive Vernon God Little (2003 ) . In canvas , it surely lags Yan Martel's beautifully crafted The life of Pi ( 2002 ) and in imagination , Ben Okri's Famished road is far far brilliant (1991 ) .

But it has won the Booker . And as they say nothing succeeds like success . Here's why I think it won the Booker . It is a timed political statement on India's current pursuit of capitalism in deference of its socialistic roots - panning the failing concepts of inclusive growth and constantly peckered cautious optimism . Its a dark tale told with immense brevity . It is probably the first booker that you can speed read . There are no literary pretensions . There are no take aways . People who look at India as a sprinting economy dangerously challenging the world and staking its place in the world will love it for the pithy , stark poverty-filled images of 'Darkness' as sketched by Adiga . The plot is threadbare and too simplistic for credulence . It just can't be true .

A rickshaw-puller killing his owner for the seven lakh rupees and turning entrepreneur with a new identity is not new . Its certainly stuff of many a hindi movie , just the timing makes it very contemporary . The metaphors of 'Darkness' and 'Light' or his despcription of sex as 'dipping my beak' also don't elevate ( pun intended ) the book in any manner .

Avoid the book . Read a older , brillant and well written 'Brick Lane' instead .

Mu-Barack !

2008-11-06T04:32:00.000-08:00

Obama has done it .

Remarkably and brilliantly , he has managed to first outsmart Hillary and then McCain . And like I wrote the last time round , he is a new 'emotion' . Here are some lessons I learnt from him - just watching him , his speeches , his poise and temperament and from reading his book ' Audacity of Hope' .

1. Hope Audaciously - a first time senator , black , muslim middle name , earning less than his wife , an unpaid education loan , two fathers , two mothers , 3 countries of origin , not getting a ticket to the National Democratic convention in Y2K , young and inexperienced . Can a guy like this have a hope in hell of becoming teh most powerful man on earth ?

2. Develop yourself - a Harvard law degree with a teaching assignment , a fantastic oratorial skill , a desire to win ( basketball especially ) , energetic and a spankling clean reputation .How long can you keep a good man down ?

3. Be Smart - the world has changed since the last election . Orkut , Facebook , 3G and Youtube have emerged out of the blue . Demographic sand has shifted . Terror , Fear and Hate are new buzzwords . Fox is the channel to watch . Its a post-american world . Traditional republican belts have been just that - traditional . How about focussing battle on those states and distracting the enemy by making him spend more time at home ?And why would you not have a TV campaign surrounded by a lot of internet , make appearances in Europe and Iraq and hire someone with contrasting and complimentary skills as your VP ? How about a Music video with 60 celebrities on 'Yes , We can ' that gets 11 mn viewers ? How about roping in facebook founder 'Chris Huges ' as an advisor ? How about organizing 4000 parties across the country called ' Unite for Change ' for Hillary voters to convert to Obama after she withdrew ? How about a tactical site called Fightthesmears.com to take care of the attacks by competition ? How about a customised site 'MyBarackObama.com ? How about a contest to collect $1 mn in 1 minute called AnObamaMinute.com in NewYork ? How about sms'es for polling booth addresses ? How about ads on online gaming sites ? How about a widget for the iphone ? And telecalling in spanish ?

4. Go mass : enrol non-voters to widen base and swing support , get money in smaller donations ( $5 to $10 ) and create the biggest war chest in history . How about loaning your competitor ( Hillary ) some money to pay her dues from your war chest ? And making a republican call himself 'broke' due to the amount of money he has .

5. Persist : Heroism is just hanging in for 1 min longer . Just hanging in there gave Obama newer ground to take the battle to - the economic meltdown , the choice of Sarah and the death of his white grandmom one day before polling .

Look what he amassed on the way to victory - $640 mn in funds , 3.1 mn contributors , 100 mn pageviews on Youtube videos , 5 mn volunteers , 2.2 mn fans on facebook , 800,000 on Myspace , 1mn page views on campaign website , 33000 followers on twitters . And despite Hillary getting the largest fundraisers behind her Obama mobilized a larger fund bank from 3 mn people .

He's one hell of a guy . May God bless him . May he run another term .

Pappu , put on your dancing shoes

2008-10-15T00:08:00.000-07:00

The Indian Value system has surely changed and how .

The most moving dialogue in the blockbuster 'Deewar' - 'Mere paas Maa hai' quite defined the value system for very many years . Gaadi , naukar , bangla , bank balance vs a 2-penny job , a uniform and Maa . The movies' cult status forever etched in peoples mind the spiritual vs the material battle and pronounced the definitive answer - it had to be 'Maa' over everything else .

That was in 1975 .

Three and a half decades later , values seem to have been redefined by a breezy new yuppy movie with newcomers called 'Jaane Tu ' .

Pappu is blue eyed , fair , wears Gucci , Rado , drives a Bmw , strings the guitar , can travel where he wants , can buy what he wants and has an MBA but - he can't dance !

A new battle of 'material and stuck-up ' vs the ' free ' .

Have and have-nots redefined .

This is perhaps a new age value - 'cool'-ness .
To chill , to relax , to fall in love .

Like the 'protagonist ' enjoying his life and its absolute mundanity .

A saturday well spent

2008-10-14T01:27:00.000-07:00

I played the best soccer match of my life a couple of weekends ago .

My first every sporting encounter had ended in two things - a discovery of a passion for soccer and a medal . The silver medal came in my seventh standard in school in Ambala Cantt Haryana . Our captain was a burly haryanvi called Pal from the tenth standard and the team drawn from different classes of the Raman House . Pal was tall , hefty and strong . He was an able captain and everyone listened to him without questions . His sheer size gave him absolute authority and that he was a good player helped immesely . We fought hard and lost the final to a better team . I began the matches as an extra - a last minute inclusion because I enrolled quite late .I played in some matches . I still remember running a lot in the finals .

We won and I still have the medal .

Of the rest of matches in school , the most I remember was the unforgettable match in Southern Command school in Pune . Our team lost to a team six years younger . Our team of twelfth science was a motley crowd of unfit spectacled boys fighting for honour against a team of sixth graders . A self-goal , an inability to decide who should be captain , no ball control and overall sloppiness led us to a humiliating 3-0 loss .

Another Pune match stands out as remarkable - the one where we bunch of radio guys beat a software team from Onward tech on the Race Course ground 8-0 exactly as I had planned and predicted . The one played ten years ago in rains on the Shivaji preparatory military school ground was great too . But in most of these games , I would run hard , shout hard and push people hard .

That's why the Mumbai match was very different and special .

Our captain , who operates the TV studio production system , barely spoke in most matches , but was always available when a ball was passed his way to deftly weave through competition and pass it back closer to the post . We substituted every ten minutes and since the game was played in half a full soccer ground , it left us all with good energies to contribute effectively . Sixteen teams fought for a place in the final . The matches were organized such that all of them finished in a day . We played our first match at ten in the morning and won 1-0 . We then won round after round , defeating teams of varying calibre and capped it all with a closely fought 3-2 win in penalties in the finals . The opposing Private treaties team had this wafer-thin maverick Parsi footballer , Daryl , who won my immense admiration for his singularly spectacular footwork .

The crystal soccer cup proudly sits on my office shelf .

To my list of learnings on how to win a soccer match , including teamwork , ball-passing , leadership ,possession , covering the opponent and attacking from the word go , I have now added one more : Have a couple of Goans in the team . With three of our seven players being Goan -Dylan Pereirra , James Rodrigues and Salvador - each exhibiting tremendous ball control and following our strategy to a T , it was impossible to lose .These guys played soccer for a living and having them around makes winning a lot easier .

It took four days for my muscles to recover fully , but every minute that drizzling saturday was worth it .

The US economy is a train wreck

2008-10-13T04:51:00.000-07:00

Landed on ... totallylookslike.com . Quite cool . My political hero Fidel Castro does have a striking resemblance to Daniel Day Lewis . There's Salman Rushdie with his fatwas looking eyes wide open like Stanley Kubrik . Noone will deny that Khomeini is not Bond after he has managed to keep US from attacking Iran for years while his 8-year war rival Saddam Hussein perished .And rockers have always looked like hounds .

Of all , probably the US economy one is the most closer to the truth .

Judo anyone ?

2008-10-13T03:40:00.000-07:00

Russian President Putin just released a how-to video on judo .
Years back around the time of the 2000 Olympics , The Times of India ran a cover page headline with his photograph flooring another judoka with a powerfilled side-kick . That same front page had an article at the bottom of the page with Atal Bihari Vajpayee requesting the UN general assembly if he could sit and deliver his speech as he had severe knee pain .
And I had written in a letter to an editor the next day asking readers to guess which country amongst the two - Russia or India would win more medals in the forthcoming Olympics .
Jatha Raja , tatha praja !
Today , years later , as an unprecedented economic crisis faces the two countries both running rapidly towards capitalism like never before , Manmohan Singh has been fighting furiously . He's been dropping the CRR daily , increasing liquidity ,getting Chidambaram to front the press twice a day and pushing the US to get his pound of nuclear flesh . The fight is directed more towards the domestic markets than to any fundamental structural changes that can have any consequences in the futrue . The new Russian prime minister meanwhile got his armed forces to move into Arctic circle and lay claim on the Oil sources there , ensuring a robust domestic supply and a say in world politic for years to come .
Oh ! These russians .
Around two weeks back , a Norweigan ship with an Indian crew was hijacked by pirates around the coast of Somalia . The Indian crew on board is living in constant fear of losing its lives . The wife of the captured Indian captain has been appealing to the Indian govt to do something and we are dithering on who to approach and what to do . At around the same time a Russian ship got hijacked by Somalian pirates in the same waters .
Guess what Putin does ?
He's speedily sent a warship to surround their pirated ship in an attempt to tire and blow the Somalian pirates out . Ransom be dammed . The pirates attempted to dock the ship to take away the precious cargo - 33 Russian T-72 tanks , but the Russians aptly thwarted that attempt . They also enlisted help of neighbourhood US warships to surround the Somalians and starve them .
As the battle wages in the high seas , one just wonders why we aren't an active race .
Be it sport , economics or pirates , adjectives like 'Incredible ' , ' Emerging ' work well with India , but verbs like ' attacking ' , ' controlling ' don't .
Judo lessons , anyone ?

Why l Jumped .

2008-09-15T23:17:00.001-07:00

I jumped the world's highest skyjump of 233 metres , from the 61st floor of the Macau tower last week .
And have lived to tell a tale .
Why did I jump ?

Firstly , so I have lifelong bragging rights .
Secondly ,I think its just one of the 100 things to do before you die .
Thirdly , it was part of testing myself constantly - having just about mustered courage for a large ferris wheel ride or the safe as a walk in the park 'london eye ' , a couple of years back I moved into thrill & adventure sports .I first tried parasailing . On the secluded platform in the middle of the sea near Coral Islands in Pattayya , tied to a high-speed boat I let myself be pulled into the sky and then watched the world go by as I circumnavigated the boat for a full ten minutes before being got down . My heart pounded and how . High up in the sky I wondered why I was doing it too . The Coral Islands looked like a spec and the wind flapped the chute vigorously . I lived .

I swam around the coral reef in the Islands - an amazing feel . The spectacular colour added to my joy , except the painful thorn-like jibes that the coral left on my palms . I googled it to find later that Corals are live and the jibes were algae skin ecdyzing !

Next up , a high-speed tube ride attached to a boat was wild in itself and holding onto the thin handles on the tube for your life was a sheer adrenalin surge . The ride lasted all of twenty minutes but seemed like a lifetime . The guy on the aquascooter pulled the four of us across waters at such a high speed that on one of the turns I contemplated letting go . I held on just to test myself . Endure , bugger , endure ; I kept telling myself .

My first free fall was the ' space shot ' in Genting Highlands , the steep fall down in the belted-up chair car with a magnificient view of the mountainside made it an exhilarating experience like no other . A couple of smaller roller coaster rides was the most I was willing to do - not trusting my heart too much .I mean I was sure it will stop for half a sec but it not starting again was my fear . The very next year I did the large and huge roller coaster and the sleeper-twister in Genting Highlands , topping it with a blind roller coaster in Disneyland , Hong Kong . In pitch dark with bats and other scary animation hitting you , it was quite scary .
A bungee jump was the logical next step .
I chickened out of the Bungee at Macau when I realized that the max weight was 115 kilos and I was 114.5 kilos - just about there .My weight surprised myself . I am 108 kilos on the ground and I thought I would be lighter ( Isn't gravity lesser in atmosphere ? Isn't everyone lighter on the moon ? Wondering why the heck I have to gain weight 233 metres above the ground ?) I opted for the sky jump - the world's highest sky jump - instead . I performed the jump to my own surprise .Am now sure that the Bungee jump is also possible to do . So bungee jumping , flying a microlite , paragliding and parajumping will be next .
This jump will remain special . The view of Macau from the 61st floor of Macau Tower is dazzling . As you look down , fear grips you and your bloods races through your veins . For a fraction of a second , your life flashes by - things that you ave done , things that you haven't . It is an amazing feel . The priceless experience of pounding adrenalin at 233 metres can't be substituted for anything else .
The certificate given by the AJHackett company says that I have earned the right to ask the world -'Do you have what it takes ?'
And as the Tees sold by them say - ' why live on the edge when you can jump ?'

No teams please , we are Indian.

2008-08-28T05:41:00.000-07:00

Okay , so the Olympics are over . What's the big deal ? The big deal is India ending them with rank 50 out of 55 countries and with three medals. Right ? No !

The big deal is that we are still an individual nation . We win individual medals . This country of a billion and half can't work together . We are a nation of individuals and will stay that way . As spectators , we get collective consciousness raised to remarkable levels . As participants , we want our victory for ourselves . Vijendra Singh , Abhinav Bindra and Sushil Kumar won their medals on the basis of their individual skill and strength without the system and without anyone hogging their moment under the sun . That's want we want as a country . Like crabs in the well known story we can't co-create , we can't co-celebrate . Every achievement is and has to be individual . Vishwanathan Anand , Anju Bobby George , Sania , Leander , Geet Sethi , Fereira , Padukone and zillions of others . Athletics , archery , wrestling , badminton , golf , snooker , chess anything will do , except Soccer , basketball , relays . No teams please , we are Indian .

That brings me to Cricket . Even cricket is such a game that I hated from the bottom of my heart till IPL came along but that's another story .

I hated cricket because of its soap opera system - individual players turning up at regular intervals , the length of the engagement needed ( five days for one format of the game ! ) , the one-man show culture , the inability to create a result in many games , the static-ness of the game ( you move muscles very little for half of the game ) , the non-contactedness of the sport ( soccer is contact sport at its best ) and the match fixing rackets ( at some point I wasn't sure whether to believe what I saw ) . It remains a very individual game , with glory for a few . Soccer is sheer tenacity , teamwork and leadership on display . A game that consumes less time than a hindi movie yet gives you absolute pleasure . No teamwork , no victory .( Just won a soccer cup last weekend - love the game )

Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati can't get themselves to play together for even a tournament . Guess the Olympic Association should focus on creating champions for individual sport and forget about hockey and the rest .

Ever heard of a co-authored Indian book ? Keep looking . Ek Myaan , Do Talwar ? No way .

We are Indian . No teams please .

A new emotion

2008-08-28T04:52:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama is an emotion . A new kind of emotion .

When I bought his book 'the audacity of hope' last year , he had just stepped into the race to be the next president of America . An amazing race this time for sure - the first woman , a sixty year old war veteran from a war Americans want to forget - Vietnam and an african american with a middle name 'Hussain ' and a surname that rhymes with their biggest enemy . Obama has just about repaid his education loan for Harvard Law school studies while media discovered his ancestral home in Africa and a broke half-brother in London .

He is the American Dream and as he said earlier , no black son or daughter will now be able to complain to their ma and pa of missed opportunities, discrimination and unfair competition .Following the election has been a great pleasure - his speeches , his ability to turn crowds on , inspire an new generation , mobilize enormous amount of monies for his campaigns and even to visit Iraq and Germany to build his foreign policy credentials are surely stuff of folklore . Black Boxer Cassius Clay gave up after winning the Olympic Boxing gold , throwing the medal into the Hudson river and becoming Mohammed Ali . Will Smith has managed to reach the pinnacle of the entertainment business with his efforts as a musician ( winning grammy's ) , TV sitcom actor and movie star . But Barack Obama is not on the fringes of society . He is the new society . As President Of America , he presides on a new world order - a post American world order .

Finally , years and years of slavery will be remembered and maybe banished from memory forever . And Martin Luther King will turn in his grave with a smile . Not since Alex Haley's roots has there been a tale of such a lot of toil , perseverence and revere . Remarkable achievement against Unsurmountable odds .

From hereon , whether he wins or loses , Obama will be a new emotion .

For now let's call it 'audacious hope '!

Upside Down

2008-07-02T00:21:00.000-07:00

As I sit to do a mid-year review , I realize that the world has turned upside down .
Last year this time , oil was $70 a barrel , ( happened as I was in Dubai ) , yesterday it touched $140 and talks that it will hit $190 are doing rounds . Speculators have moved from equity to commodity to oil . Stocks hit 21500 in Jan this year and trade at 12700 today , taking with them loads of my hard-earned cash too ! Real estate has hit ridiculous levels - a 3bed house at 5 cr ! A tent on a piece of land will be good enough soon . Cauliflower hit 45 bucks a kilo last week. Do consumers switch to Daal ? Recession coupled with inflation in the US has people scurrying to Walmart ! And Spain defeated Germany to pick up the Euro 2008 title ! Name one spanish player and I will buy you a ticket on Virgin Inter-Galactic flight to the Moon ! Business class in most airlines is emptying , denying me interesting company . Gingerly ,the government has increased petrol prices by 4 bucks - if they increase by 15 , each tomato will be 25 bucks !
My 2008 resolutions have all bitten mid-year dust - am 4 kilos more than when I joined the Gold Gym last year - losing 25 kilos is a great pipe dream yet , have lost 57% of my share portfolio instead of making 25 lacs and have read just 5 books in half year , making the resolution to read 20 tougher .
But like Scarlett says in Gone With The Wind , ' Tomorrow is another day , things will turn out better . I will find a way .'
Will I ?

22 in 07

2008-05-31T23:02:00.000-07:00

(written on 31st Dec 07 , edited & published today )

This resolution is done and how !
Had vowed not to buy a single book in 07 and to read atleast 20 .
Whew ! it’s the 31st and am through with 22 !
And the only 2 books I bought this year were in Dubai ( P J O Rourke’s Eat the Rich ) and Hong Kong ( John Man’s Genghis Khan ) , not in India !
While I chose the books to read off my shelf randomly , there was an urge to read the ones that I had on my mind for quite some time to read . The final ‘read’ list had only 5 fiction titles and 17 non-fiction , of which 9 were on business and economics , 4 on history , 2 on sports ,1 each on sales , media and movies .

Here’s a mini review of all the 22 , not necessarily in the order that I read them in .

George Blainey’s A very short history of the World was a refreshingly fun 450 page history lesson . Tracing the epic journey of humankind over the last four million years from when the very first people left Africa to settle the globe upto the present day , it condenses the grand human adventure into a short gripping and endlessly thought-provoking narrative .

One of the first inferences George draws is called the Paradox of isolation . The worlds greatest financial powers , US and Japan have benefited greatly from the fact that there has been no invasion possible on them due to the vast seas that separated them from other countries . They also were reluctant participants in the wars fought in Europe which has seen many bloody wars over years over its lands and seas .
The second inference is the Role of Religion . Jesus Christ was a jew who invented Christianity which went onto to overcome Judaism as the largest religion in the world . Religion has resulted in many many wars and even today , it is the single largest source of wars in many countries .Mohammad was a skilled general who waged wars on Mecca , Damascus and Jerusalem and captured them to begin the Muslim rule for the next 1100 years . Buddhism was India’s only export to China . The Hindu religion did not make a significant impact .While religion was meant to unify , it has only divided the world more and more .
The third was a sort of Shifting sands of Civilization . From Egyptian to Indus to Roman to Greek to Chinese to Islamic and finally the American discovery. Each civilization played its role in pushing the frontiers of science , abetting natural discovery , feuding over religion and in the end consuming itself . Each was at its helm a powerful empire with great emperors and seemingly invincible . And each was at its nadir , crushed by its own glory . One larger than life ruler took the entire civilization to its greatest heights and the absence of a successor created a significant gap so as to finish the value , culture and ethos of the very society . The Greeks for instance were so engaged in vigorous internal quarrels and fights that they invented fierce competitive sports . The Olympics were created with the intent to give vent to the desire to win at any cost . The other great element of democracy – Oratory , was invented in Greece too . Everything was debated in greek society and open-air assemblies where powerful orators swayed crowds became the norm . Had they directed these energies to the outside world like Alexander had , Greece would have survived . Even the Romans had exceptionally talented generals ,soldiers , admirals and sailors . Romans improved on Greeks who were masters of the fights by seas , by mastering the art of making roads fast – thereby extending wars to far off places breathlessly . The Roman bridge is a work of art even today .
Finally as Britain started colonizing the world , France would engage with it in many bitter wars over years and between them , they would rule the world and influence the civilizations for over 500 years .
And as the world wars erupted in early twentieth century , over how much land each country should own , Britain and France needed more and more capital and the US stepped in to finance the war efforts in exchange for the ‘badge’ of global policemen which it is retains till today .

Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy traces the history of the world analytically in the last 4-5 centuries . It stays away from history i.e. what happened but very critically examines the ‘power play’ between world leaders during the major diplomatic tussles in World history to illustrate why things happened . He examines critically the American foundations of Democracy and the debates that have strengthened it over years .
The world wars have been dissected brilliantly – the Versailles humiliation of Germany , the lagging behind of Germany in world conquests & colonization , and its deliberate attempt at world domination through wars is examined through the meetings and diplomatic intrigue between Churchill , Stalin and Roosevelt on the one hand and Hitler , Mussolini and Stalin on the other . Religion curiously interplayed diplomacy at critical junctures in history . Hitler , an Austrian by birth began a world war by walking over territories Germany had to surrender as part of the Versailles treaty and taking over Austria . Benjamin Disraeli , a Jew , was British Prime minister in the intermittent period of the war . World Diplomacy evolved from Austria’s Concert of Europe under Matternich to French Raisond’etat under Cardinal Richelieu to British concept of Splendid Isolation and later Balance of Power by William of Orange , the German concepts of Realpolitik under Bismark and later Weltpolitik ( global politics ) under Hitler . He traces brilliantly the evolution from Monarchies in 1800s to Republics in 1900s.

Along with Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman , would rate Diplomacy amongst the best books to refresh History from . Don’t die a ‘Beirut ‘ death is deeply entrenched in my mind as a remarkable description of life in half-christian – half-muslim Lebanon , forever on the brink of war . This one book is the best description of why the Middle east is what it is . Friedman attributes three key reasons for Middle East conflicts – Tribalism , resulting in high survival instincts as everyone acts as a wolf in the desert ; Authoritarism , with power concentrated in a single authority , coming in two forms – gentle as with King Hussain of Jordan or brutal as with Assad of Syria and finally ,the creation of nation-states by the west in polygon shaped countries to meet oil needs of the west . In fact , in Lebanon many rural tribes have changed their names to plural to look larger than they are .Beirut , as Friedman says has no truth , only versions . Israel has developed a remarkable scientific temper to control the religious chaos around it . Surrounded by Egypt , Syria and Jordan it is a constant epicenter of conflict .
The book opened my eyes to a portrayal of Yasser Arafat that I didn’t know . Arafat to me was the voracious speaker at NAM summits representing the Arab cause in the Arab Israel conflict . Friedman potrays him as a puppet – used both by the Arab world and the west to meet their own selfish needs leaving him as a leader without a worthy cause . Arafat made West Beirut his base and using the media there created the image of a cause by launching periodic attacks on the Israeli territories .
Friedman distinguishes between the four types of jews - Zionists who speak Hebrew , are religious and visit the synagogue comprise 30% and are represented by the torch , Yiddish speaking Herdim jews comprise 15% , secular jews who worship the Torah and eat steak make up 50% and Messianic Jews who reside in the West Bank are the balance 5% .
This is a must read for anyone wanting to understand the middle east . Friedman has since moved on writing about what he missed while he was sucked up into middle east politics – the world is flat , an outstanding treatise on the new globalized world .

Two liberating books , if I can call them that were Jim Rogers - Adventure Capitalist and P.J.O.Rourke’s - Eat the Rich . While Jim Rogers traveled the world to invest in various economies and profit from them , Rourke’s need was simpler ;- he started with wanting to know why some countries are rich and some poor . He took a two year sabbatical to visit six countries, three rich and three poor to study what makes them so. Jim Rogers commentary on world affairs makes for interesting read as he describes the population problems in Europe and Australia , Chinese work ethic ( there are more capitalsists in communist China than in Capitalist America he says ) , African depths of mis-governance and poverty even as they are commodity rich , Ghana’s slave factories , Mozambique’s extreme poverty and Tanzania’s tourism potential , the division of Africa into white ( south ) and black Africa .
Rourke begins his journey by trying to attribute reasons for richness or poverty ; thereby eliminating brains ( Hollywood with no brains is filthy rich while chess crazed Russia is miserly poor ) , education ( american students know what a condom is but don’t know 9X7 , natural resources ( Africa has more than all the rest of the world while rich Scandinavia is frozen most of the year ) , civilization ( Egyptian is in shambles and America doesn’t have much to talk about ) , government ( for millions of years mankind had no government ) , hard work ( well , the rich play golf ! ) and technology ( middle-east has the most complex technology in the form of weapons ) . He concludes that while love , death and money are three most important concerns for humanity , money is the least understood with people shying away from even trying to understand it
“Being Saudi ‘ for instance is a cool thing in Saudi Arabia as they build their country through working partnerships arrangements with people of Asian origin who come to do business but need to alliance with local sheikhs .
Rourke’s book is more organized – as he travels through Wall street ( good capitalism ) to Albania ( bad capitalism ) and through good socialism ( Sweden ) to bad ( cuba ) to bad reforms ( Russia ) to mismanaging resources ( Tanzania ) to overmanaging ( Hong Kong ) and finally potential ( Shanghai ) .. Rourke’s final conclusion on what works is the ethos of capitalism ; Hard work , education , responsibility , property rights , rule of law and democracy . A remarkable book .
The Adventure Capitalist is similarly a good read about his travels across the world in a custom-built Mercedes with his companion . It’s freedom in a true sense and have begun to fantasize about one such trip myself .

The next two books were Edward Luce’s In Spite of the Gods and Amartya Sens The Argumentative Indian , both turning out to be absolutely mediocre fare . After having read Gurcharan Das’s India Unbound a couple of years back , both these books were superficial and drab . Edward Luce’s book draws from both the other books so much that I could identify identical paragraphs ! He questions India’s dream of being on the verge of superpower status by contrasting the unequal development as 750 million of 1.1 billion people continue to live in 680000 villages with no roads , schools , healthcare or even electricity while a percentage of people manage to splurge on yatches and expensive real estate . Combined with the spectre of unemployability without any social security , India’s growth could be stymed . Contrasting Indian and Chinese growth ; he argues that while China developed first with agricultural reform ,then by moving into low cost manufacturing and climbing up the value chain to break into services , India started with services and has pretty much neglected the other two . Also , he distinguishes between India’s capital intensive growth which generates less jobs to labour intensive growth like in China’s which creates large scale employment and India’s large investments in higher education while China’s primary . His observations on corruption , bureaucracy , judiciary , reservations and the sychophancy are staid and commonplace . I realized in retrospect that a lot of Luce’s book is drawn from Amartya Sens work . Sen’s for instance argues that there is no growth without pangs . China solved its pangs ( illiteracy , health , land reforms , social equality) before it got into manufacturing and growth . India has jumped the ‘pangs’ bit and is growing with IT and services .

Micheal Lewis Liars Poker about the stock market and life of a bond trader in Solomon brothers made for a very interesting read . It almost mirrors our corporate life . Lewis takes potshots at definitions and culture - A professional is someone who can speak clearly , sit stiffly , shake firmly , sip iced tea neatly and while negotiating for a bond trading job , never never to mention money , but to talk about challenges in the job . He details life on the trading floor in the heady mid-80s when Solomon brothers was the most powerful and profitable merchant bank right through to its collapse when markets moved from bonds to equities . As life moved between the two markets London and New York , Lewis traces the rapid evolution and sudden debacle . As the market crashes this year in the US with its sub-prime crisis taking with it CEO’s of financial conglomerates and crashing Bear Sterns from a $120 stock to a $10 stock in 5 days , it is pure déjà vu .

New York Times Detroit based reporters Micheline Maynard’s The End of Detroit is an in-depth scathing attack on the myopic American automobile industry . As American markets evolved from hatchbacks to trucks and SUVs the big three American car makers focused on the new markets as hordes of clinical Jap auto companies rode into American markets and drove away with customers and global dominance . From 9 on 10 cars being made in 1960’s to 4 on 10 in the early 2000’s , Detroit has crumbled from its heydays as mecca of the auto business . She also points out that all the foreign invaders came in with clear positioning - BMW was luxury , while Hyundai was bargain – and knowing who their likely consumer was instead of being all things to all people . Toyota americanized itself over years to get to a $10 billion in 2003 more than the combined profits of the Detroit companies for 3 years till 2003 . And Honda had a distinct style of looking at the market one customer at a time and therby not launching a single car without having thousands of customers waiting for it at dealerships . Detroit , she argues was wedded to ineffective marketing gimmicks like rebates and zero percent financing , failed to meet customers real needs – reliability , latest technology and great design at reasonable cost .The American auto market eventually got segmented into small cars dominated by Japanese , mid-size shared by Koreans and Japs , luxury by Germans and Japs ,Minivans by Japs , SUVs by Americans and Japs and Trucks by Americans . Years ago I had read Alfred Sloans My years with general motors , which described the vision as ‘ a car for every purse and purpose ‘ thereby defining GM as a multi-product car company with a little product for everyone . Unlike GM , most of foreign companies never made industrial size their prority , but introduced profitable models . Putting together many interviews , anecdotes and stories she shreds the auto industry threadbare . While she ends the book with a simplistic five point manifesto ,which is easier said than done .

Paco Underhills Why we Buy and Howard Stevens Selling the Wheel on Buying and Selling were interesting takes on well, buying and selling . Selling the Wheel elobarates the 4 phases of sales as Closer , Wizard , Relationship builder , Captain and Crew . If I trace my own life it is pretty much evolved the same way . Closer is someone who sells and closes when need establishment is not so clear and one or two meetings are enough to close . Wizard is when one sells using technical knowledge to probably a group of buyer s. Relationship builers sell in complex environments and Captain and crew is when there are multiple levels of engagement and marketing needs play a vital role . A great book and an easy read, it is quite a page turner . Underhill on the other hand examines the role retail environment plays in encouraging or discouraging shopping by introducing many new terms – conversion rates ( number of walk-ins converted to buyers ) , butt brush factors (being jostled when shopping ) , tactile buyers , endcaps ( display of merchandise at the end of every aisle ) , chevroning ( placing shelves and racks at an angle so more is visible to a shopper ) , hand-allotment ( how many goods can a consumer carry and which hand for what ) , visual anticipation ( gap between entrance and product to build anticipation ) , power display ( a large stock showcased such that it slows the shopper down ) , waiting time ( for billing and trial rooms ) , interception rate ( percentage of customers who have some contact with employee ), density check ( snapshot of stores population ) , shallow loop ( a quick grab near the entrance – flowers , diary etc.) and open sell ( where all products are kept so as to encourage sampling ) . Lot of general gyan timed just as Indian retail takes off .

Alex Fergussons biography Managing my Life on how he moved from an engineering apprenticeship in toolmaking to playing soccer to be the manager of Manchester United . Sure enough Manchester United has accumulated success upon success culminating in the unique treble in 1999 wherein he won the premiership title , the FA cup and the European cup in 11 incredible days . This May they went on to win the Barclays Championship beating my fav Chelsea . One of the most important things I learnt from this book was the fact that all training is repetitive . The concept of ‘something new this time pls’ is a myth . Good coaching relies on repetition . He also belies the tactics myth – more than tactics , it is teamwork the individual brilliance morphing into team spirit is the way to victory . As he ranks no.2 in the premiership this year , surely a lot of these have stood in his good stead .

A completely different book was Pundits from Pakistan , by rahul bhattacharya on the Indian tour of Pakistan in 2003-04 . It was the first official tour after the Kargil war between the two countries and I thought the book would be fun . The problem with reading a book whose ending you know is expectation management . Slow in parts , it was better to have just followed the tour in the papers . Non-fiction by Indian authors anyway is anathema to me , am skeptical about touching them but this was different . How bad can be a cricket commerntary ? As Orwell had described sports – war minus the shooting – India –pak matches have always been the same . Intermittently , he explores the factors that add to excellence in performance in Pakistan cricket . For instance , Pakistan has been able to generate so many fast bowlers as generically , they are of good height and built , their diet makes for speed plus aggressive body language and their constant practice with the tennis ball – throwing a lighter ball builders better muscles . Having great bowling legends also helps - Imran , Wasim , Wakar and Shoaib . Most practice with an insulation tape wraped around the ball to help swing it right has resulted in the fast bowlers making a mark with efficacy . In India on the other hand due to weather , diet etc, , batting became more popular – Gavaskar, Tendulkar , Pataudi or even Sehwag .

The quartet of fiction – Hari Kunzru’s Impressionist , Joseph Hellers classic Catch 22 , Harry Potters Philosophers stone and Half blood prince , and Haroun and the sea of stories by Salman Rushdie were different in their canvas and literary treatment . I loved the premise of Rushdie’s Haroun ; its characters , their verbal interplay and possibilities was great , but I think he could have climaxed differently . The country Alifbay for instance is ‘Alphabet’ , the Dull lake , Gup and Chup , Khattam-Shud meaning finished is the Prince of Silence and Foe of speech and Haroun and Rashid named after the legendary Caliph of Baghdad Haroun-al-rashid . The premise that Rashid , the Shah of Blah , the Ocean of Notions suddenly runs out of stories by losing his gift of the Gab and his son Haroun seeks to return his gift . He encounters a mad bus driver Butt and a water genie Iff and travels through the magical cities of Gup ( where it is always light ) and Shup ( where it is always dark ) and wherever the story gets stuck , there’s P2C2E ; process too complicated to explain ! Rushdie at its best . Will read this again and again .
IN the Impressionist , Pran Nath the startling white boy is regarded as noble till his true parentage is revealed and then starts his search for identity in a world that has no place for him . Not the sort of book I will read again .
To properly enjoy the pre-booked Harry Potter JK Rowlings Half Blood Prince , had to read her first book Philosophers Stone . The book is an outstanding journey into another magical imaginative world with the Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry , Quiddich games and Dumbledores etc. A brilliant new world of make believe was needed to substitute the Alices in Wonderland and Enid Blytons .And JKRowling has managed to do just that .
Catch 22 is a classic . A war novel , it takes satire to a new level and traces the life of Yossarian , a soldier not wanting to fly any more missions .

The Disney War by James Stewart and Shah Rukh Khan and the seductive world of Indian cinema made up my entertainment and media reads this year .
The Disney war traces the evolution of the company since Micheal Eisner joined the firm in the late eighties to now . On how the company evolved from being a TV company to movies , merchandising and parks to the eventual formation of Buena Vista entertainment with Walt Disney pictures for animated movies like Lion King , Touchstone pictures for adult fare like Splash , Pirates of the Caribbean and Sixth Sense Hollywood picture for action fare like Pearl Harbour & armegeddon and acquiring studios like Miramax with movies like Pulp fiction , gangs of new york , Chicago , the hours and Steve Jobs Pixar with Finding Nemo , Cars , Toy Story and Incredibles . Disney’s strategy was to create Imagineers who would use creative imagination . A great read in corporate board management .
The best part of SRK’s biography was the comparisons with AB . The difference between Amitabh’s Vijay and SRK’s Raj . DDLJ buried Angry Young Vijay and brought to the fore Raj ; who wasn’t anti-establishment , he was a yuppie who worked the system to get results . He was an articulate global Indian who was equally at ease in a nightclub in Paris or in a village in Punjab . Raj was trendy and traditional and depending on the situation he could be progressive or conservative . He played by the rules or tweaked them when necessary . And unlike Vijay , Raj was not larger that life . He was scripted as ‘life’. The herogiri was gone . It was an age to be chilled out . Dramatic dialogue – was an essential part of Vijay’s heroic personae . One can still quote Amitabhs great dialogues from Sholay and Deewar . but Raj spoke in normal everyday language , he wasn’t overtly macho , he would starve with Simran when she would do karva chauth . He is sensitive , vulnerable and not afraid to cry . But has the strength and guile to outwit more chauvinistic men . Unlike earlier films Baazigar and Darr , Aditya asked SRK to take of his mask – no stammering , wounds or ultra-violence resulting in a new Raj . Vijay was working class , seething and sometimes brutal but Amitabh was cultured and sophisticated . SRK and Raj were the same ; every girls fantasy lover , every sisters brother and every mothers son . Raj represnted post liberalization 1990s India . Moral , not necessarily pious .
And after Hritik’s Kaho Na pyar hai spectacle Shah Rukh’s Raj had to find new meaning . Karan JOhar helped him morph into Rahul , the modern chic young upgraded dude in Kuch kuch hota hai and Dil to paagal hai .

Finally , Good to great by Jim Collins about why some companies make the leap and others don’t , begins with the line ‘Good is the enemy of Great ‘ .Good to great leaders are a paradoxically blend of personal humility and professional will . They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton and Caesar . These leaders first got the right people on the bus , wrong people off the bus , right people in the right seats –and then figured where to drive the bus. They confront the brutal facts and yet never lose faith – the stockdale paradox – maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end regardless of difficulties AND at the same time have the courage and displine to confront the most brutal facts of your business .A culture of discipline and adaption of technology and expecting results to come through a relentless push rather than one miracle moment . He defines the hedgehog concept ; while foxes pursue many ends at the same time and see the world in all its complexity , they are scattered and diffused moving on in many levels while hedgehogs reduces everything to a basic pursuit or idea . The way to choose the idea is either to decide what one is passionate about , what one can be best in the world at and what drives the economic engine ( profit per customer etc. ) resulting in a Big Hairy Audacious Goal .

Train to China

2008-05-28T01:32:00.000-07:00

Hong Kong is an interesting place . Its got to do with the strange mix of history and culture as it has been a british colony till 10 years back when it was handed over to China so it retains most of its britishness . Like Londoners in any weather , they are dressed perfectly everyday . The skyline also reflects the engineering learnings from London with the metro , waterways and taxi systems .
Walking through the lanes of Tsim Shat Tsui is amazing . The cleanliness never ceases to appeal . The long escalator that takes one down from Victoria heights to downtown through the streets of residences and restaurants is an interesting concept . The sound and light show on the islands harbour is great too . Disneyland is built on an island an hours drive from teh city and has its own share of chills and thrills . After having read Eisners Disney war , it was quite an experience . That the Chinese are hard working people can be made out from their gait - brisk and fast .
As you take the train to China , the world changes dramatically . For one , the immigration form in HongKong airport does has a tick box for 'media' in profession of traveler , but in China immigration their is no such column . I was carrying the South China Morning Post's Hong Kong edition to catch up on the Benazir assasination the day before . My travel agent pounced on me and pulled the paper away saying its illegal to read foreign newspapers . Next , as we walked from the Hong Kong side of the station to the Shenzen side in China , it was the general untidyness of the place they hit us - looked just like Mumbai . The bins were overflowing , the windows were broken , people dressed shabbily and walls had graffiti . Well , with over 2 billion people , thats' the best you can manage , I guess .
But , as you walk into windows of the world - that great park they have created that has all the important landmarks from all over the world in one park , you are absolutely amazed at the Chinese obsession with the art of 'copying' ! The Taj Mahal looks more magnificient here than in Agra , so do the Eiffel Tower and Niagara Falls .The couple frolicking in the bloated balloon on the waters in the park was another interesting innovation .
'We have been noones colony , so we have great pride ' said Christy , my guide , smiling her cheery smile .
But , food was an issue everywhere - bland and non-spicy .
The best Chinese food you get is in Mainland China in Mumbai !

Get shorty !

2008-05-28T01:10:00.000-07:00

Whats common to Louis Gestner , Napoleon , Hitler , Amir Khan , Naresh Goyal , PV Narasimha rao , Nicholas Sarkhozy , Sachin Tendulkar , Ricky Ponting , Rani Mukherjee , Salman Khan and Sunil Gavaskar ?
They are all short guys who have made it big in life .
So what makes short guys tick ?
I think its the tenacity of purpose , it's the need to prove themselves and the desire to go the extra distance that makes them work . Each of them goes the extra mile when many give up so that they create the success they need so badly . Because for the rest of the world , looking good itself is a reward , being tall , handsome and good looking in itself gives it a sense of accomplishment and then to further actualize they need to create a newer 'need' - need for recognition , need for money or power that will then drive them to greater heights . But for the shorties, being short itself is the beginning .
Naresh Goyal has pulled out an airline out of the blue while the goodlooking blokes like Pervez Damania abandoned their plans mid-day for the good life . Sarkhozy sweats hard to make the French toil harder for their bread and pull his country from dangers of global recession .
Hitler and Napoleon created havoc across countries with their exploits , driven by their own inner desire to actualize and prove a point . Again , beyond a point how much land does a man need ? Look at Boris Yelstin and Michael Gorbachev - handsome guys both , created new revolutionary political concepts but gave it up before implementing any of the Glasnost and Perestroika they talked about .
PVN Rao stood like a dwarf amongst world leaders wherever he went , but created the most sustained economic revolution that india has ever seen lasting as of today a full 18 years . Ponting , Tendulkar and Gavaskar were great at their craft and took the game to the next level with sheer grit and tenacity .
Even in the Army , during the NDA and IMA periods , it is the tall and lanky guys who get most of the plum assignments and get to dance the most beautiful girls during parties , but its the shorter officer who works his way upto the Chief of Army Staff position by agreeing for all the dirty assignments , winning people in the trenches with empathy , driving himself to the hilt and walking away with the final glory .
See a short guy around ?
Keep an eye on him . He could go places .
Better still , be like him and you will go too .

Two young kings !

2008-05-27T05:40:00.000-07:00

Nine amazing days in Egypt introduced to this wonder of the world called Egyptian history . It wasn't so much the pyramids , but the entire experience of sailing on the Nile for four days , the zipping through Greek and ROman history in Alexandria , the ceaseless haggling over antiques , the hunt for cleopatra's bust , the felucca ride to Banana island , the saharan climate with miles and miles of desert and the lovely overnight train ride from Cairo to Aswan and then back from Luxor to Cairo .
The Egyptians have done an outstanding part of packaging their history and also knocking out that part of Greco-Roman history that does nto suit them . The absence of Chinese fakes all over the curios and antiques shops is the real wonder of the world .
The blueness of the mediterranean sea is rivalled by the blueness ( yeah, right - 'blue'ness ) of the red sea .The two kings that have created Egptian history are Tutankhamen and Alexander ( my fav king al them all ) . King Tutankhamen was king when he was 8 and died when he was 18 , while Alexander died at 32 . They pretty much had half the world under them by the time they died .
The Luxor and Karnak temples were eye-popping.
The most exhilarating thing of it all was getting clicked next to the bust of Alexander near the bibliotheque alexandrina on the corniche at Alexandria !
Enchanted enough to do a trail through Saharan Egypt someday .

Irony

2007-06-16T22:31:00.000-07:00

A harmless figure of speech pointing to incongruity of action and results that Irony is , it has some stark illustrations in real life .

Christopher Reeve , the tall handsome actor , played ‘Superman’ in many a movie and its sequels becoming famous as Clark Kent , the superhuman do-gooder ,while ridding the world of many of its tyrants , terrorists and megalomaniacs . Reeve , the Superman , as fate would have it , was dealt a severe blow when in an equestrian competition , his horse pulled him down breaking his spinal cord for life . The resultant paralysis confined him for many years to a wheel chair . Isn't it just plain irony that it had to happen to 'Superman' – whose massive fan following of awe-struck movie-goers gave his producers superhuman returns at the box office for years . The 'man of steel' died early , at the age of 52 , serving probably as a warning , that , man is after all mortal .

The world has long endured the ridiculousness of the slavery system even after it was officially abolished by Abraham Lincoln centuries ago . Here was an entire civilization of people from an continent considered ‘dark’ , pre-historic and primitive . Michael Jackson has tried hard to run away from his colour by cosmetic surgeries , Cassius Clay threw his Olympic gold medial into the Hudson river and converted to Islam on being called a ‘black nigger ‘ after having won the World Boxing Olympic gold medal for the US . The latest episode of Big brother boots out a contestant who calls another a ‘nigger’ . Alex Haley’s autobiographical book ‘roots ‘ traces the history of Blacks over centuries as an oppressed clan , operating on the fringes of society , fighting for acceptance . So the most ironical achievement of it all is the fact that the most premium , upper-class , uber-cool and super-richest sport of them all , Golf , is dominated by a black - Tiger Woods !

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto , became the 8th Prime minister of Pakistan after having been the president for 2 years . A keen lawyer , he had earned his spurs under the military dictatorship of Gen Ayub Khan , who India had defeated in the 1971 indo-pak war . After having won landslide vistories in Pakistani elections , he claimed his prime ministerial berth for a second term . But that was not to be . Gen Zia-Ul-Haq , his chief of army staff , de-recognised his government , arrested him in the middle of the night and threw him into jail .Despite international condemnation , Zia made sure the popular Bhutto was hanged . Zia-ul-Haq then re-interpreted Islam to favour the military , unleased a wave of terror into India , encouraged the influx of refuges from Afghanistan into Pakistan siding the US in the proxy war with the Soviets in Afghanistan . His helping the Afghani Mujhahideen fight the Russians ensured Pakistan would become a permanent US ally . He created a larger than life image for himself . I distinctly remember watching the Asian games hockey match between India and Pakistan in 1982 that he came to attend . Pakistan defeat India 8-0 in that match . The goalkeeper Negi was psyched that Zia was in the stadium and gave in to all the attacks from their side . Such was his demeanor . Ironically , for all his power , he had the worst death a political leader can have . He was blown into bits mid-air in an aircraft crash . Not a piece of his body was found . He couldn’t even be given a leader’s farewell like his slain adversary Bhutto had got .

The US was formed on the basis of everything the England did not stand for . The traffic was reverse , cars were all right hand drives , the shakespearean spellings were dropped – colour became color etc, the dress sense are informal , jews were accepted with open arms , excellence was encouraged and any form of dynastic rule was discouraged . Yet , ironically it is heading for a dynastic rule – eight years of Bush senior were followed by eight years of Clinton , followed by eight years of Bush junior and probably eight years of Hillary Clinton now . Dynasty !

Michail Gorbachev , the first post-communism President of the USSR , had faced a very tough childhood under Stalin when his grandfather was arrested for hoarding grain in their farm . Passports were regulated , so he did not have one for many years and he had not visited any other country . He became the President after Konstantin Chernenko died in 1985 . His lifetime in Russian politics was dedicated to building a stronger USSR , aimed at achieving twice the per capita income of the US . He was the first party leader who was born after the revolution and the youngest general secretary of the communist party . He used his visionary concepts of ‘Uskoreniya’ –acceleration of economic development , ‘glasnost’ – openness , ‘perestrioka’ – restructuring of the economy to build a new powerful Soviet Union . He started the concept of free speech in Russia , looked west for inspiration , traveled and interacted with world leaders to expand his vision . Yet ironically , the very foundation of his vision saw the absolute reverse effect – the Soviet Union dis-integrated dramatically and broke into its various sub-nations and creation of many new countries with independent heads of state and policies . In just five years , he had dissolved what had taken seventy years to build , he lost control , his deputy Boris Yelstin openly confronted him , leading to absolute anarchy and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics splintered into many many different countries . Hs stood for re-election as President , but won 0.05% of the votes . And he is back to what he was doing earlier – lecturing in universities around the world . A man who started something so huge that it consumed him and his entire country , becoming larger than he had ever envisioned .

Olof Palme , Sweden’s President for 18 years , created a great country whose principles of social democracy resulted in enormous prosperity . Sweden has produced a strong economy creating many multinational brands like Saab , Ikea , Ericsson and it has the longest life expentancies in the world , lowest employment , inflation , infant mortality , national debt and cost of living . Sweden has also the lowest instances of crime in the world . Ironically , Olof Palme , who built a crime free Sweden , and was generally without bodyguards was shot dead as he was walking back from a movie with his wife . He was the first and only ever person to be ever assasinated in Sweden . The incident had a deep impact on me and I remember thinking about it for many many days . Ah ! the ways of irony .

Amitabh Bachchan , was rejected by All India Radio when he went for an audition to do a program on radio many years back . Today , most movie-goers love his deep baritone and more than half of radio commercials imitate his voice . Alexander , the great , conquered half the world with his famed conquests , but died of a mosquito bite in Babylon .

Bobby McFaren , sang the song ‘Don’t Worry , Be Happy ‘ which was featured in the 1998 Tom Cruise movie ‘Cocktail’ and to date is one of my personal favourite numbers . It was the no1 US pop hit and won the Grammy for The Song of the year 1988 . Lots of rumors floated a year later that Bobby McFaren had committed suicide . That he didn't was true , but the rumors spread like wildfire suggesting that he had attempted to kill himself .

That would have been the ultimate irony .

Marhaba Dubai U/C

2007-05-28T00:22:00.000-07:00

They don’t stamp your passport in Israel . Because the Arab Middle-East does not permit you into any of their countries if you have been to Jewish Israel . Drawn from over hundreds of years of battle for homelands , jihads and fatwas , this strange law has come as a by-product of the Arab-Israeli conflicts that take place every single day since Israel has been created in 1945 . The Israelis , not wanting to play spoilsport , stamp the Visa on a piece of paper which you clip onto one of the passport sheets . Throwing this clipped-on sheet away as you exit Israel leaves no trace of your Israel visit . The Arabian middle east then welcomes you with open arms .

As the Emirates plane began its descent , the landscape that met the eye was just miles and miles of desert , giving the earth a very plain unimaginative feel , quite contrary to what Dubai actually turned out to be. ‘Welcome to Dusty Dubai ,’ the captain announced ,as we landed onto the hazy afternoon weather around the airport .

The whale-shaped airport building is like a primer to the architecturally splendidly built Dubai . There is an effort to look different and stand out by investing in the façade by all the buildings. It is a small city , but it makes a very good impression .In the middle of the desert they have created , probably , the most remarkable Arabian city ever .
David , ,the cabbie who came to pick me up , was sweating profusely , having waited for me outside the airport for a good half hour . ‘Its 44 degrees today ’ he said pointing to the dial on the dashboard.
I had felt the immense heat on my face as we had jumped into the car .
‘Is this the hottest ?’
‘No , it crosses 50degrees on some days . And the government declares a holiday on those days ’
We sped out of the beautiful airport building onto roads full of , what looked like , zillions of cars .
‘Dubai has just about 1.2 mn people .’, said David, introducing me to the city as we drove to the office . On the wrong side of 50 years , he is a well-informed Malayalee who has spent over half his life in Dubai . Listening to a Malayalam radio channel in the car , he resisted my request to change to a Hindi radio station , as he was in the middle of listening to news live from Kerala . Soon as the news finished , he tuned into 101.5 FM Dubai’s #1 Hindi station , playing the new ‘Cheeni Kum’ number .
Just 1.2 mn people !
To put that in perspective , there are just as many people only in Bandra , the suburb of the 20mn+ Mumbai city , which I call home .

The starkling thing about Dubai is that it is a city under construction . And as I met different kinds of people in different professions , I realized that it will probably stay that way till 2010 , when all of it will come to a head and Dubai will be the final destination for every office goer , worker , tourist or potential immigrant .
Mohammad Ali , a son-of-the-soil arab , is a first citizen amongst the 1.2 million people who inhabit this desert paradise , sixty percent of whom are immigrants from India . Rest are Arabs from other parts of the middle east and around 2-3 percent are westerners, who are here for business , Bush and his politics be dammed .
Ali is funding a part of the contruction frenzy in Dubai . He has a young European woman manning his front office and several Indian managers at senior positions .
‘All investments .All investmenst . Inshaallah , Dubai will be the world’s destination in 2010’,he says projecting into the air an expansive stroke as if to indicate the world .
Ambitious , surely .
‘70% of the world’s cranes are in Dubai ‘ said Satish , the marketing head of a local construction company , which is offering a private jet to people who offer to buy properties in its project Damac .
‘Can’t be true ‘
‘It is . In fact , Mahammed Alhabhai is building Dubailand – a US $70bn city within a city over a 3 billion square feet area with the worlds largest mall , sports city , , snowdome , the city of Arabia and the universal studios amusement park complete with Jurassic era dinosaurs et al . That one project itself has over 300 cranes all over the place and he is expecting to finish it next year ’
Asia Asia ,’added Satish , ‘will be the world’s largest hotel complex created by the Bawadi hospitality project in Dubai . And Tiger woods is building the world’s largest golf course here ’
I don’t know about the 70% , but the sheer amount of construction seen here is remarkable .
Yet , the city is very clean . Speeding on the Sheikh Zahed road , which connects Dubai airport to Abu Dhabi non-stop without traffic signals and snarls , one wonders about the ambitions of these filthy rich sheikhs sitting on oil reserves for the next 200 years and ploughing money into outlandish projects . The streets are littered with the swankiest cars – Aston martins , Mercs , Lamborginis , BMWs , Toyotas , Hondas ,Landcruisers – speeding away effortlessly – this could pass for any city in the US .
In the afternoon , we met Assad , a Syrian head of a Emaar , the Dubai state-owned construction company which is building the Burj Dubai ,which looks like a glass syringe , standing tall at over 800 metres ( beating Taipei towers 508 metre landmark ). Burj is Arabic for Tower.
‘The first rule when building the world’s tallest tower is to keep its height a secret , else someone else will beat you to being the tallest ‘said Assad .
I laughed , assuring him that to public knowledge , no such construction was taking place anywhere in the world .
‘The International Finance Tower in Hongkong is only 415 metres tall and the Shanghai World trade centre is 500 metres tall , no other building is taller than them right now. You have a 300 metre lead !’ , I said laughing
‘ Inshaallah . It is rising a floor every 2 days .’
‘That’s some speed , Ten storey projects in Mumbai take 3 years ! Where do you get the labour from ?’
‘ Lot of Indian workers are working there .’
‘Is it expensive to own a house here ?’
‘A 2-bed apartment on 75th floor of the Burj Dubai costs $1.5mn . But there a projects where a flat can cost around 150,000 to 600,000 dirhams .’
‘That’s not much ‘,I said . ‘My house in Mumbai is , well , 2.5 mn dirhams , 4 times as expensive ! ‘
‘Mumbai is expensive city . That’s why you should buy here ‘
Ah ! I see the logic pretty clearly . Dubai is two and a half hours from Mumbai , less than the time it takes to go to Kolkatta . The city gives a first world feeling at the price of a local ticket ! And with the construction keeping its pace , this will rival Singapore soon.
‘2010 is the year . It will be a landmark year as all the billion square feet on construction gets over and the city will be architecturally the most brilliant in the world ‘, Assad reiterted
‘But what is the source of the money to buy all properties here ?’
‘ Dubai is the financial hub of this country . It is a huge trading centre .People living here don’t buy properties here , it is an investment hub for people from all over the world ’
‘ Is there a manufacturing base ?
‘No, nothing is manufactured here due to the tax laws . You can’t own anything , 51% has to be owned by the government . There is a free zone created where things are beginning to get manufactured , but , you see , there is great political instability in the region . American companies don’t want to own anything here and show it in their books of accounts . Owning an asset in the gulf is worthless according to them . Iran is forty minutes from here . Tomorrow , they bomb Iran and a missile lands in Dubai , this dream is over , my friend ’ , Assad said gesturing furiously .
What a thought .
‘The new French president , Mr Sarkozy’s is a Jew and he could be close to Israel and therefore create create discord . Chirac was a friend ’,Assad said about the new political development after French election results .
Jacques Chirac was vehemently against the Israeli government as they competed for arms suppy into the gulf region . If Sarkozy leans to Israel , the Arab states will have an enemy at their gates .
‘ Life sure looks complex , Assad . This is just another world ‘

Sari Bou Karroum is an easy going Lebanese who , just as a lot of other Lebanese, is part of the advertising fraternity in Dubai . The biggest skillsets they bring to the table is the ability to speak Arabic and think well . Also they could easily pass off as Europeans with their great skin colour , a matter of great regard for Arabs . It gives them pride and therefore are not the easiest of people to deal with , unlike the Iraqis .
Sari is the Lebanese media supervisor of the firm Global Media Works ,Gmw.
‘I have heard of Bmw, now I know Gmw !’said me , wanting to break some ice.
Sari broke into easy laughter . The office at the Al Thuraya Towers overlooked the under-construction Palm Jumeira and the world , which is the map of the world being built in the sea , created out of reclaimed land . It would have many houses , offices , resorts and parks and bridges connecting the continents . A new definition of the world .
Man, what money can do !
‘So how are things back home ?’ , I asked him . Lebanon had just had a series of bombings by the Government in the internal areas of Beirut , apparently to weed out the terrorist group that was threatening not to rest till all of its Christian citizens had evacuated the country . The Lebanese government didn’t quite like the idea and threatened to bomb till the terrorist group didn’t leave Lebanon and an air of serious conflict erupted with many deaths .
‘Fortunately, the bombings are not near my home . Some miles away ‘said Sari , non-chalantly .
‘It’s a pity , that these things happen ‘ I said
‘For years ’, he said before jumping to shop-talk.
Zulfikar was another Lebanese head of international media buying at OMD , one of the largest advertising agencies in the region . He was very similar to Sari in his need for lots of data , SEC profiles and logical reasoning of the opportunity to look at India as a market .
Emad Al Enizy , on the other hand , the laid-back Iraqi is a great guy to talk to . He is all heart , as one can make out in the first ten minutes of conversation , even if it all hinges on work .Reddish in colour with a deep baritone , he is tough-looking without intent . Emad connected well as he shared life issues with us . His immediate need is to complete his education he felt , having had to stop it mid-way.
‘India , I want to study there’he said
‘Any college in mind ?’ I asked in earnest
‘No,no. I enroll for the course online . They send me books ,I appear exams online.’
‘An open university , you mean ?’
‘Yes,yes. I like Indian teachers ‘
‘Really’
‘Yes, in Baghdad , lot of my teachers were Indian . We understand very well from them . They are good teachers .’
‘ Interesting ’
‘I want to do degree in arts . In todays age , need to have education , Don’t know what kind of jobs are there and where one has to work ‘
‘Yeah ,lot of people study in India . I stayed once with a Palestinian army major who was studying marine science in Goa’
Palestine is close to everyone’s heart this part of the world . Their homelessness and general Israeli dominance of the region cuts a cord and gets the Arabs closer .
Emad had a tired look in his eyes , unlike the bright sharp look of lots-of-bombing-back-home -Sari or Zulfikar . Sari would have been younger , probably by a good five years .
But the one thing they all had in common was hope and optimism , inspite of being subjected to political , mental and physical tortune over years .

I stopped by at a corner store to pick up some water .
‘1.5 dirhams ‘, said the malayalee owner of the store
Thats quite normal , translating to about 16 rupees . But , a small comparison stumps you - Petrol costs only 1 dirham per litre .
Marhaba Dubai – petrol is cheaper than water here !

One can say that the middle east’s claim to fame is the control of more than 40% of the world’s oil reserves . The price of oil has surged from just under $20 a barrel in 2002 to over $70 a barrel last week , catalyzing a burst of very rapid growth in the region . The US has been trying to therefore destabilize this region so as not to let them rule the oil pricing with their sway over OPEC . The Gulf Cooperation Council –GCC , is set to emerge as a parallel powerful body with all the middle east countries not wanting to get influenced unduly by the western hegemony . And seeing the spirited growth of India and China , the arab states are using renewed control over oil prices to redefine prosperity in the region , attempting to end their past fluctuating fortunes .With a huge demand from India and China and other emerging market countries , there could be a trillion dollar windfall awaiting the Gulf and the economy could grow by leaps and bounds .
Oil has also defined fame ,friendships and fortune in this region . Iran has fought Iraq . Iraq has run over Kuwait . Lebanon has bombed Syria . America has friends in Saudi Arabia .
Religion has defined the rest of life . Israel and its Jews have fought every Arab around them – Syrians , Lebanese , Jordanians , Egyptians , Saudi Arabians and Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization for years . While UAE and Saudi Arabia have put oil to good use in increasing prosperity for people , Iran , on the other hand , as the fourth largest oil producer in the world is struggling to grow . It severely lacks oil refining capabilities making it a simple exporter of crude . Its seven million cars consume the same amount of oil as the 35million cars on UK roads due to the primitive engines of fuel-inefficient locally made Peykans . This India-China demand opportunity staring at Iran must have made America look at creating a fresh disruption in the region . With Iraq out of the way , Lebanon facing internal strife , probably Iran is their next target .
Dubai has oil for the next 40 years , but its economy isn’t dependent any longer on the fortunes of oil trade . That has been very smartly maneouvred by its ruling family of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Makhtoum , to be least dependent on Oil , instead creating a new structure of growth using the auto , finance , construction and tourism sectors . And making it un-islamic , it has attracted people from all over .
Hopefully , neither oil nor religion will show its ugly face in Dubai .

I saw the Ski Dubai yesterday . It’s just what money can do , in the middle of 45 degree heat , these guys have created a minus 15 degree experience .It is freezing cold inside , you need to wear extremely warm clothing , gloves else you could get frostbite , caps , mufflers as if you are in Swiss Alps . It has cable cars , ski-able slopes that stretch right to the top at a 60 degree incline and coniferous forest covered with dense snow all around !
Aslam , the Pakistani taxi driver , one of the many pak drivers here , who drove me back to the hotel was an easy conversationalist. With Hindi songs from the newest movie blaring from the radio sprinkled with conversations with Preity Zinta , it could be just another day in good ‘ol Mumbai.
We hit 160 on the speedometer on Sheikh Zayed road , the official speedlimit for this 8-lane highway that connected Dubai airport to Abu Dhabi non-stop without a signal in between . The average speed in Mumbai is , well , on a good day , 15 kmph .
‘How many years have you been here ?’ I asked
‘Fifteen years ‘
‘You have family ‘
“Yes ‘
‘Kids’
‘Yes , one ‘
‘You like it here ?’
‘It’s a Good city . Cleaner than any city in Pakistan . no dogs , no beggars ’.
No crows , if I may add , coming from the crow capital of India.
‘I agree ’, I added enthusiastically ,‘And just an hour and half away from home for you from Islamabad , maybe ’
‘Yes ‘
As we sped through the highway crossing one of the largest malls in Dubai called the Mall of the Emirates , I saw the sheer height of skyscrapers here . Many 80-100 storey building dotted the landscape . Photographing them was irresistible .
‘Money is good ?‘
‘You make much more money that you can ever make back home .
‘Good for you. But do you think Benazir will be back in power ?’
‘No way. ‘ he said pointing to a huge white building , most buildings in Dubai are white ,
yeh Benazir ka hai . Ab who wapas nahin jayaga ‘ Pakistanis , I have realized , speak Hindi in a deliberate sort of way , using masculine for everything . They just sacked their foreign minister for huggin her eighty year old paragliding instructor after a jump.
‘Musharaff nahin jayega ‘ he concluded on his country’s political quagmire .
‘But aren’t you secondary citizens here ?’I asked him getting him back to the conv.
‘There is lot of respect for people here. The police is very strict . You can be jailed for the slightest crime . Justice is swift . No sheikh can say a bad word to me , I can complain and he will be behind bars ’
‘That’s a good feeling ’
‘If you commit a crime , you are instantly deported to your mulk . Women are safe here too, there is no crime here ’
The city is , I guess , wants to be un-Islamic as much as it can . There is a temple , a church , there are burial grounds for each religion , dress code is liberal .
The other day at the disc Touch , in Sheraton where I was staying , women were wearing close to nothing as they swayed away to rock music .Backless tops tied together by simple strings over short denim skirts is in no way Islamic . PDA was all around . Even muslim women don’t wear their black dark robes all the time . Shakira and Mariah Carey do concerts here . Alcohol , absolutely against Islamic law , is served in restaurants and even on the official airline , Emirates . . The city helps immigrants feel at home with its democraticity .
It is truly the land of the free.

The Desert safari was exciting , just as Christine , the ever grinning philipino travel agent executive had said . The Toyota landcruiser negotiated the soft dunes around the Oman border very well and with burly Pakistani Mohsin at the wheels , the monster gave us a great feel of miles of desert sand . The huge brown desert almost looked like a nude curvaceous woman as we drove up and down its contours . Four of us , two Turkish women , one american and me enjoyed the thrills of sand-dune driving .
Mohsin’s cellphone rang . I was amazed .
On top of one of the highest mounds , we could still catch the Etisalat signal .There are places in Mumbai where the signal is weak and here in the middle of miles and miles of desert with 44degree temperature on the dial , you can pick who you want to speak to and go ahead .
The two turkish women with us didn’t know a word of English and it was no fun communicating with them . One of them , wife of an engineer in Dubai for a conference was constantly referring to the Turkish-English dictionary for translation , killing all the excitement of knowing anything from these people of the Ottoman empire .
She did a small attempt at comparing skin colours though . I was the darkest , she was reddish with a tan that made her look very young and her companion stark white , the Paki was fair and the american was fairly white . She had a funny name too , but she looked in body frame pretty similar to someone beautiful I knew very well in college .
We exchanged snaps of our familes on our cell phones as we sat on cushions on the floor . The American didn’t have any snaps to share .
‘No family . No job . Just three strangers for company . ‘ he said , feeling out of place . Earrings on both his ears looked strange and his candidness was amazing.
Michigan , where he came from had seen severe depression and he was out of a job for some time now ,making odds meet by selling spectacles and glasses . So he took up his friends offer to come and see the middle east . From the part of the world he comes from , action had moved on , clearly to India and China .
Later at the camp, we were treated to the belly dancer’s performance . Didn’t like it as much as beautiful Brazilian Veronica’s back home in Pune .

Mohsin had earlier driven us through the Kings palace , the path to which was outlined with peacocks in full splendour . Just as one aimed to capture a peacock in the frame , a beautiful deer speeds across the road .
‘There are rabbits around too’, said Mohsin ‘And if you enter the palace , there are live tigers inside ‘
‘Real ?’
‘Real and alive .but they don’t harm you .’
‘The sheikh has over fifty cooks , one for each type of cuisine from each part of the world. And he has many wives . But we can’t talk about them , you know .
‘This , Peter , is royalty ’, I said ‘ Wealth , Women and Wine !’
Peter , the unassuming American from now-downtrodden Michigan , nodded .
‘Oil , Women and Sherbet , appropriately ’, I corrected myself
The two women nodded as if they understood what I was talking about .

Sheikh Naveen Jahanpanah would like to have Lebanese chicken with a dash of
Japanese sushi served with Russian strogonoff for lunch today . And do arrange for two of your best Turkish belly dancers to serve him his lunch with delectable Arabian roohafza date drink .He has decided not to go for sales calls today .
Aaaaah !

Saw the new movie , ‘Shootout at Lokhandwala ’,an alleged takeoff on underworld hitman Maya Dolas who was shot in an encounter years back in Mumbai, at the Grand Cinema at the imposing Hyatt complex .Apparantly , this is where don Dawood married his daughter off to Javed Miandad’s son .
The theatre was crowded with Indians . With an equal number of Indian , particularly Hindi , Malayalam movies and English movies everyday, the place mirrors multiplexes back home during a show .
Unlike a lot of other countries , there are Indians on all sides of the economy in Dubai . The Indian who sells at shop counters works for an Indian owner , and sells his products to Indian customers on the other side . Chances that the manufacturer is an Indian could be high too . The American economy is now throwing up many Indian heads of companies at firms like Vodafone , Pepsi , Citibank , but in Dubai they are heads of a huge number of businesses .They just only don’t run corner stores here .
With a local edition of the Malayala Manorama newspaper , 4 Hindi radio stations , 2 Malayalam stations giving news about Kerala every hour , local TV feeds of Sony , Star , Zee and Malayala Manorama , central schools , temples and movie premiers with film stars regularly , the 8 lac Indians here surely don’t miss home .

My hunt for an Apple ipod took me to the interiors of Deira . Friday is Dubai’s Sunday so nothing opens till 4 pm . So I caught Pirates of the Carribean in the afternoon and plunged into the streets of Deira lining the Makhtoum bridge and Al Gharir city malls .
Stopping by at the Jumbo electronics store looked like a good idea .
A huge apple shaped display with ipods hanging all over greeted customers at the entrance . The famed Dubai duty free street furniture just outside the shop was probably deliberately planned to be there .
‘Is it really cheap at the duty free ?’ I asked the bihari attendant at the counter straight.
‘Dekhiye , sasta toh hai . But no worldwide warrantee will be given ‘
‘How much will this ipod cost there ?’
‘For 2 Gb with 500 songs , our price is 599 dirhams , you could get it there at about 550 dirhams ‘
A bad shopper that I am , he confused the hell out of me . In New York , the Apple store on 5th avenue was selling this at $200 two years back, I remember . That’s 8200 rupees as per current dollar rate of 41 bucks to a dollar and here 550 dirhams is about 6000 rupees , cheaper than the Indian rate of 7500 rupees even today .
‘ Where is it made ?’
‘Apple policy , made in China , designed in California ‘
‘Made in China ?’
‘Assembled in China . Can’t manufacture in Japan anymore . Costs are very high’
‘I saw the full page ad in Khaleej Times on the riot in the new shop Sharafa in the mall of the emirates . They are selling at 550 dirhams with a free charger costing 50 dirhams . Do you have a similar offer ?’
‘We are launching an offer next week . But I don’t know details yet ‘, said he honestly .
Duty Free would have it cheaper , it was evident now. Since 550 dirhams was the lowest a retailer could go and Jumbo was matching the price .
‘599 dirhams ‘ , said a terse phillipino woman at the counter of Dubai Duty Free Electronics shoppe .
I dropped the idea again.

The Khaleej Times blaring headline today reported of the largest assembly of 9 warships holding drills off the coast of Iran through theStraits of Hormuz , a narrow channel in international waters and a major artery for he global oil shipments , with nearly 40% of global oil passing through these straits .
Iran vehemently denied having full nuclear capabilities in a press conference early in the morning today . But the warships have stealthily moved in in the night already .

Life in amazing under-construction Dubai goes on , utterly ignoring the political heat around it .

Formula One!

2006-10-12T03:55:00.000-07:00

It’s been quite many years since I consumed movies like a glutton – once in college when it was a night of six back-to-back porn movies with the seventeen rogues in my hostel and once as an over-achieving sales manager watching a movie a day for twenty one days in the small town of Hubli , after having achieved my revenue targets with 30 days to spare.

This time , over the last two weekends , I binged on six new movies in town with a vengeance , four of them in succession . I have now realized that there’s a lot of formula-format in most movies that adhere to the rules of great screenplay , resulting in a sense of satisfaction as one leaves the theatre .

The typical great-movie-screenplay formula is :

Setting - Introduction of characters - Dramatic Event (Conflict 1 )- Reactions & Interplay of characters - Dramatic event (Conflict 2) - Resolution - Climax .

Here are the reviews , with the realization that great movies stick to the format , no matter what the plot –

Dor : The most riveting movie of them all . A movie that began slowly but gathered tension and momentum as it went along , making us cringe in our seats and shed a tear or two is about this woman who’s husband has been accused of the murder in an Arab state and is sentenced to death . His death penalty can only be waivered if she can get a pardon letter signed from the widow of the murdered man .
A Great plot , it adheres to the typical format of a movie screenplay which goes something like this :

Setting : 2 settings actually – a hilly Shimla & a dusty Jodhpur
Introduction of characters: 2 women- the will-be-widow & the gritty-pardon-seeker
Dramatic Event –Conflict 1 : The accidental death of husband 1
Reactions & Interplay of characters : The search for the widow ;meetings ;interplay
Dramatic event - Conflict 2 : The refusal to pardon
Resolution : Push factors – Father-in-Law wanting to trade her off for the house ;
Climax : Signing of the pardon letter ; emotive station scene & widow’s freedom

Exactly the same format was adopted by another great movie Khosla Ka Ghosla that dealt with the travails of a middle-class household wanting to move to a new bungalow which is to be bought and constructed with hard earned life-time savings .And how land-grabbers and brokers play kill-joy , tugging at the heart strings of guys in the audience who can relate and don’t want this to happen to them . The movie is quite brisk and covers its large canvas of the plot and characterization pretty quickly. Towards the very end there is some moments of gripping tension as one fears for the schemed plot going awry , but there’s a huge sigh of relief as the story moves on as planned leaving behind a good vibe . The format is , however , just as Syd Field said , except for the accommodation of more conflicts to highlight the many characters . Someone actually outlined the maximum number of characters for a good screenplay to be 3 , with 2 being preferred since each new criteria adds another aspect of communication and complicates the plot further . This movie manages to rise above the complexity of 7 important characters , and gives way to laughter at various turns in the plot .

Setting : A middle class family wanting a new house
Introduction of characters: one son going to US ,one son useless ; one girlfriend with separated parents ; a greedy land-grabber ( thrilling Bomen Irani ) , a harassed grandfather , a poor theatre company owner , the visa agent
Dramatic Event –Conflict 1 : The purchase of a plot of land
Reactions & Interplay of characters : Excitement , planning the structure
Dramatic event - Conflict 2 : The land grabber takes over the land
Reations & Interplay of characters : Panic , the prodigal son wanting to stay back
Dramatic Event –Conflict 3 : The plot hatched to get cheat the land-grabber
Resolution : The execution of the hatched plot – suspense – the hired labours
Climax : The sweet taste of Revenge .

Surprise , Surprise . A nice feel-good movie You , Me & Dupree which had Matt Dhillon , Michael Douglas , Kate Hudson & Owen Wilson doing some great roles , also followed the great-screenplay format to a tee ! The thematic was based on someone who is not cut out for a regular job , but who is a do-gooder with a great heart who believes that one should live a great life – job or no job . It creates a new concept of ‘ness ‘ – a verb which added to ones name defines the person as unique in this world . As if follows the challenges of a good guy getting married into a rich family and his stresses , one can’t but recount similar occurrences as one struggles up the corporate ladder .
The Formula is back in action .

Setting : A marriage of a man into a millionaire household
Introduction of characters: the millionaire father , the beautiful bride , the groom and his best friend of twenty five years
Dramatic Event –Conflict 1 : The friend has no place to go so comes to stay
Reactions & Interplay of characters : Husband being suppressed by FIL , surname , project , work hours , promotion & demotion
Dramatic event - Conflict 2 : The realization that the jobless-but-with-a-big-heart-friend has won over the wife & FIL
Reations & Interplay of characters : The harassed husband vs wife vs great childhood friend vs Pop-in-law ; friend highlights the loss of ‘ness’ in his buddy .
Dramatic Event –Conflict 3 : Friend leaves home
Resolution : The clarification of mis-understandings – pardon by FIL
Climax : Friend starts an academy on ‘Not losing ones ‘ness’ ‘.

The biggest disappointment was United 93. United 93 is the story of the 4th plane in the 9/11 bombings planned by Osama Bin Laden that couldn’t reach its target – White House , as its passengers revolted against the highjack and crashlanded the plane in the plains of Pennsylvannia , twenty minutes from its target . While the movie did manage to whip up appropriate tension at the right time , it could’nt resolve the tension appropriately and left a feeling of having seen a documentary at the end of the day . There was no emotional interplay , no names of characters , no action except in the dying minutes and killed a could have been tragic movie . Imagine Titanic without Jack& Rose and their chemistry not as a backdrop but as an in-your-face romance larger than life portrayals of values , relationships , love and freedom and then the tragedy with its magnitude . A documentary not worth watching . That’s what United 93 lives up to be .

Krishna was a good animated attempt at looking at young Krishna’s childhood , his antics and his achievements in mathura .Animation in India is still to reach the heights achieved by Disney though one hears that part of Toy Story and Narnia was done in a lab in Bangalore .The animation is pretty crude , the story is jerky , but the attempt is sincere .

Woh Lamhe , the unauthorized biography of Parveen babi was disturbing and pretty depressing though the characterization and portrayal was done very intensely by both Shiney Ahuja and Kangana Ranaut . It was a story , had all the elements of great screenplay , but since it was showing the story of a great yesteryears actress driven to schizophrenia by the fragile insecure relationships of the movie business , it couldn’t have been a happy movie .

Setting : The house of a movie actress
Introduction of characters: The aspiring director , the famous movie star with her boyfriend
Reactions & Interplay of characters : The treatment of the actress by the two men ,her search for meaning , the date-rape, resorting to alcoholic relief
Dramatic Event –Conflict 1 : The schizophrenic effect on the actress
Reactions & Interplay of characters : The director’s love – kidnapping –caring
Dramatic event - Conflict 2 : The suicide attempt
Resolution : The Director at the hospital
Climax : Death , Remorse
And it was good that I saw You,Me and Dupree just after I saw Woh Lamhe as the great humor and comic timing of Owen Wilson and Michael Douglas managed to wipe out the strong negativeness of Woh Lamhe .

A quick reflection on all historical great movies further confirms the One formula-different plots theory of movie-making . Most stories are different from plots , but there's a formula lurking somewhere for them , I guess .

Pluto 1930-2006

2006-08-31T04:24:00.000-07:00

It's been a strange month .

We lost Pluto , our 9th planet .

Probably , in our lives , it will be one of the biggest losses .Imagine losing a planet ! There it was , quietly tucked away in the universe , merrily ruling a sun-signs , inspiring cartoon characters and giving hope that one-day man might land on it to discover new life and poof !, it's left eight planets all by themselves in the universe .

The terse CBS/AP news report read out its dramatic redesignation ' Pluto, beloved by some as a cosmic underdog but scorned by astronomers who considered it too dinky and distant, was unceremoniously stripped of its status as a planet Thursday. '

The International Astronomical Union, dramatically reversing course just a week after floating the idea of reaffirming Pluto's planethood and adding three new planets to Earth's neighborhood, downgraded the ninth rock from the sun in historic new galactic guidelines. “Pluto is smaller than our moon, not of planetary size,” astronomer Sir Patrick Moore told CBS Evening News interim anchor Bob Schieffer. “If we call Pluto a planet, there are others: Xena, Verona, Terran, Ceres — the list is endless. In fact, that makes no sense at all.”

“Science is an evolving subject and always will be.” Powerful new telescopes, experts said, are changing the way they size up the mysteries of the solar system and beyond.

Pluto, a planet since 1930, got the boot because it didn't meet the new rules, which say a planet not only must orbit the sun and be large enough to assume a nearly round shape, but must “clear the neighborhood around its orbit.” That disqualifies Pluto, whose oblong orbit overlaps Neptune's, downsizing the solar system to eight planets from the traditional nine. Astronomers have labored without a universal definition of a planet since well before the time of Copernicus, who proved that the Earth revolves around the sun.

“It's disappointing in a way, and confusing,” said Patricia Tombaugh, the 93-year-old widow of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh. “I don't know just how you handle it. It kind of sounds like I just lost my job,” she said from Las Cruces, N.M. “But I understand science is not something that just sits there. It goes on. Clyde finally said before he died, 'It's there. Whatever it is. It is there.”

' The decision by the IAU, the official arbiter of heavenly objects, restricts membership in the elite cosmic club to the eight classical planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

One man's meat is another man's poison . While astronomers have knocked out Pluto , astrologers are stuck !! Scorpions don't have a ruling planet !
Here's a definition of Pluto - it is associated with spiritual changes, development, and political power. A person under the strong influence of this planet will experience many different upheavals in their life, such as rebirths (transformations and regenerations of both the spirit and the mind). It exerts much force in bringing about changes and plays a key role in identifying spiritual lessons during a lifetime.

It seems a lot of it has been suddenly applied to Pluto itself !

Plutos energies are intense and when unleashed it can actually change your entire life, for good or evil, so much so that the person seems caught up in a whirlwind until the phase passes and leaves a complete set of new ideas, ideals, or morals instilled in the very core of their being. It also has a purifying energy that allows one to rise to higher levels of awareness. Before this rise can come about one must consciously seek to eliminate anything that would hinder them. Sometimes Plutos energies are perceived as destructive but they are, rather, a reflection of energy being returned to itself; this effect has often been associated with the subversive elements of society and with the underground.

Due to the slow orbital journey ( Pluto takes 278 days to orbit the sun ) it is seen as a generational influence, as with most of the outer planets, its natal house position has a much greater meaning. Its influence is neither mild or subtle, it destroys the old and builds the new.

Consumed by its own definition , Pluto is suddenly not a planet. But as I look around , noone seems to be bothered about it .

Bye Pluto .

1970.1982.1994.2006

2006-07-04T15:34:00.000-07:00

Just can’t resist writing this at 3 am on 5th Morning minutes after the match has ended .

It's will now stand forever that every twelve years Italy makes it to the soccer world cup finals . The jinx can now only hope to be broken four years later.

The packed stadium at Dortmund had over a 75000 people watching the match between Italy and Germany , the first semi-final .And I watched it in the soccer capital of India , Kolkatta , though the temper is subdued as they mourn the demise of the Brazilians from the cup .

German songs reverberated till the 90 minutes of full time ,expecting the first german goal the very next minute only to be thwarted by a great Italian teamwork .
German songs reverberated even stronger 4 minutes of injury extra time
The game breaks for the extra time .
The first fifteen minutes see two great Italian attempts which find the bars of the German goal and give the goalie Lehman gasping relief .
German songs reach a real crescendo . the DJ at the Park in Kolkatta ups the volume.

119th minute : Goal no.1 : Fullback Fabio Grosso , with penalty shotouts looming in two minutes , curled around a great left foot drive into the goal corner sending the crowd into stunned silence .

Absolute silence for the last 2 minutes .
German counterattack , a long Podolski kick , blunted by Italina keeper Buffon

122nd minute : Goal no. 2 : A brilliant pack of the foot pass to Alessander del peiro who fires it into the goal brilliantly .

Absolute silence . Germany goes into mourning .
History . Hoodoo magic .Astrology .

They say that Italy gets into the soccer finals every twelve years . 1994 was the last time , 1982 was before that and 1970 much before . 2006 was to happen .

But it wasn;t just astrology , it was sheer control of the game . As Juergen Klinsmann rallied Germany at the end of 90 minutes with some pep talk , Italians rested . their coach had nothing to say except probably, go and get a goal , guys .
In the game , Germany had 148 long passes compared to Italy’s 129 and had only 303 short passes compared to the Italian 470 passes with a 89% competion rate with a 57% ball possession , they had 11 offsides attempting goals and 8 shots at the goal with 7 on target . Complete dominance of the game .

Last time , Fransesco Totti had scored 30 seconds before the end of the game to end the Australian dream run in this world cup . A brilliant kick from the 35 yards reduced Australians to tears and dashed their hopes . They have done wonderfully as a team , their 11 goals so far in the tournament have come from 9 different players .

1970. 1982 . 1994 . 2006 .

Now , is it an Franco-Italian war on July 9th at Munich ?

Selamat Datang !

2006-06-25T05:34:00.000-07:00

Malaysia makes a good first impression . And sticks with it right through its hills , beaches , straits and cities . With its swanky international airport and its elevated monorail that connects the boarding area from the checking-in area . The monorail flies right under the airstrip , so one doesn’t wait for the other . The simultaneous arriving and the landing are one great representation of great Malaysian efficiency .
Then comes the acres of green with a drive through one of the densest forests heading towards the city . The city itself is a good mix of the old and the new , the fast and the slow , the black and the white .
There’s a great amount of diversity in the city , the structures reflect different architectures , temples , mosques and pagodas dot the landscape , the entire population is a mélange of Chinese , Indians and Malays . The Buddhist maha vihara temple near Tun Sambanthan is a stark contrast to the spectacular Batu caves in the hills on the way to Genting . One needs to climb the three hundred steps upto the top of the hill to see the temple of Muruga , the son of Shiva .
In Kuala Lumpur , we stayed on the thirty fifth floor of the swank Berjaya Times Square Hotel , the forty storey hotel on top of a ten storey mall on top of a four storey games arcade and with the KL monorail running through its first floor .Some great food at the Big Apple restaurant kept us in good spirits just like the great harmonious city all around . The monorail gives a great overview of the city as it travels from Titiwangsa in the north to the KL sentral and Tun Sembanthan in the south passing Imbi ( where we stayed ) and Chow kit , the riotous shopping place .
The Petronas is an imposing structure and so is the Surya KLCC mall it houses . The variety of fish in the aquaria make interesting viewing .
Malaysia also makes for good mystery .
For instance , while little is known about its origins , some say that Indians discovered Malaysia as they crossed the Bay of Bengal looking for some sort of Swarnabhoomi or “land of Gold” ,only to find this heavily vegetated land , most of which still stands as is . In fact the cable car gondolas that transport one from Genting highlands to the lowest altitude past through 500 year old scary and dense rain forests . Genting itself is like Ooty , nestled amongst thick vegetation at a height of 2000 feet above sea levels , the only thing it has is the massive amusement theme park . It’s like Pattayya and Las Vegas as cities built on just one source of income.
The most outstanding ride is the Space Shot . As it slowly takes you high up , so high that you can see KL many miles down . Rising slowly , it gives you a great glimpse of the entire rain forest around Genting , building fear in your soul to its maximum . And then it drops you . Feet , heart , mind become numb and you shriek hard to stay alive . It is one of the most remarkable experiences one can have .
Probably , it helps you conquer fear . But it’s great fun for twelve ringgits a head .
Malaysians seem very impressionable too . Their flag is a replica of the Amrican flag with the stars replaced by the half moon crescent and star , an Islamic adaption , and most of their earlier kings were called ‘Rajah’s , straight out of Hindu history .The Government is a replica of the British monarchy , a King ruling the country with the administration looked after by a Prime Minister . Even their traditional wedding ceremony is remarkably similar to the ones done in India .
Srivijaya , the oldest of Malaysian ports was the original name for the port city of Malacca . Rajeev Menon , one of my neighbours in Pune and a great badminton buddy did the sixon-sixoff schedule as a merchant navy captain with a Norweigan company , would often recount tales of how pirates would jump ship and how he was once lighter by two thousand dollars of his personal wealth when they attacked just off the coast of Malaysia .
Pirates of the Malaccan ! plays out every night in the dark waters of the Andaman bay. The Kingdom of Malaysia forms a strange ‘V’ sign with the south China sea as its backwaters with the richer nations of Brunei and Singapore occupying pecks of land in its borders . The intensity of trade makes it a much desired destinations for pirates .
As Malaccan trade grew in volume , it attracted the middle east businessmen and soon the local heads started to call themselves Sultans and forming a cross cultural network of ships controlled the pirates .
This and the fact that non-muslim ships couldn’t dock anywhere near Egypt attracted the Portuguese who landed in Malacca in 1511 .If one were to look at the boat of the Portuguese sailor , Alfonso de Albuquerque preserved in its splendour on the coast of Malacca , one can see the spirit of adventure and the great conquest that the Portuguese made .The Dutch attacked the Portuguese ruled Malacca till the next invader came along .
The resort of A’Famosa spread over many acres has a gate that replicates the original fort as constructed by the Portuguese before the Dutch took it away . We spent a great three days in our three-bed villa with private swimming pool . A banana truck took us along around the resort .
As we sat down by the sea on the strait of Malacca , the Portuguese locality around us had a stark resemblance to Goa . They count amongst the poorest of the people now and are culturally the most bankrupt .
‘One not like this place , ‘ said Syed talking about the sea front Portuguese locality in Malacca , the dashing driver who doubled up as a history guide too. Syed had five children and his wife was buzy expecting the sixth , all of whom he supported by ferrying tourists around the Melacca city .
‘ The British change everything ‘ , he said affirmatively , ‘They come to Penang , dock ships , refuel , and go to China . But the Japanese beat them ’
As the world war played out in Europe , the Japs down here , part of the italy – germany axis , were plundering the localites here . Malaysia happened to be in their way of total eastern control ,so they threw the british out in 1942 , a couple of years before the war ended and invited the B2 bombers and the only bomb ever exploded saw them surrender it back to the British .
Finally , the Chinese came invading in 1969 , before a series of treaties signed amongst all these city states and countries settled the definition of land borders and created amongst the most efficient and progressive states in the southeast .
The road from Genting to Kuala Lumpur or the one from Kuala Lumpur to Malacca were superb , well laid , and a great drive .

The KLIA doesn’t need luggage to be screened as the entire airport has been wired and screening happens the minute you step into the airport .
I stared at the Flight scheduler with horror . The flight was delayed by over twelve hours and was slated to leave now in the morning.
I managed to convince the Chinese supervisor and his Indian assistant that I needed to be on the flight leaving right now via Chennai to Mumbai and couldn’t wait for the morning flight . Persistance paid and we managed our way back .
The Air India baggage retrieval counters in Mumbai were a mess . The luggage of different airlines turned up in different counters and there was utter chaos at two am . There was utter chaos as the conveyor belt of the Air Indian Malaysian flight got loaded with the Air India South Africa flight and all hell broke loose.
As one drove out of Andheri in the pouring rain , the dilapidated buildings , the incomplete structures , filth and ‘work in progress’ signs dotted the lanes onto the western express highway .
‘Selamat Datang India !’
‘Welcome to India ’, as they say in Malaysia .

Meter Down !

2006-06-24T02:18:00.000-07:00

Here are some of my fav songs on Mumbai from the movies , though I can’t place the movie with the song :

Aye Dil , Hai Mushkil jeena yahaan ,
Zara hatke Thoda bachke , yeh hai Mumbai meri jaan
Kahin motor , kahin carein , kahin busein , kahin manzil ,
Milta hai yahaan sabh kuch , bus milta nahin dil

I like the reality check !

Yeh Bombay sheher hai ,
Haseenon ka sheher
Yahan kissi pal bhi ho sakta hai
Koi na Koi
Haadsa ,
Haadsaa .
-from the movie Haadsaa , indicates the city's open canvas for action and opportunity.

Bombay se aaya mera dost , dost ko salaam karo
Raat ko khaao piyo , Din mein aaram karoo !

There’s an anachronism in the above line , though it celebrates the friendship . Unlike say Bangalore or Delhi where you are likely to say that you stay in Bangalore or Delhi without being a typical Bangalorean or Delhiite , a Bombay guy says he is a Bombay guy . Cosmopolitanaism in Bombay is atypical .e.g. your money skills , survival skills and opportunity capitalization skills convert you to a Bombay guy unlike in the other two cities where you can never convert to become a quintessential typical rude , arrogant and post-9pm social circuiter Delhiite or a meek , unadverturous localite typical Bangalorean . You never belong to those places , but to Bombay , you could belong . Bombay …..even against your wishes and even while you are pretty unaware of it , takes you in its fold and cosmoses you !
So the daily grind of action , the 35km daily commute , the continual adjustments that one does to quality of life in Mumbai , there can never be a ‘Din mein aaram karo ‘ kind of Mumbai guy ! for this is one city that truly never sleeps .
But I like the zing of a welcome for a Bombaiyah guy in the song here .

Eh Hai , Eh Hai Bombay nagariya tu dekh babuaah !

And amongst the newer ones ,

Na biwi na bacha , Na baap bada na bhaiyya
The whole thing is that ke bhaiyya sabse bada rupaiyyah ! ‘

-the beautifully choreographed song on cool Abhishek Bachchan from Bluffmaster .This was the get-rich-quick formula that saw the younger B’s wealth-creating opportunites only to be conned into a bigger game .

‘Kissi ka chhuta , Kissi ki daulat ,
Kissi ka lost , to kissi aur ka found ,
Yahaan pe Jindagi me har kushi
Rupaiaah hai ya dollar ya pound !
Meter down , down , down , down , meter down .
-from the great John Abraham movie Taxi no 9211 .
This was an outstanding movie with this brilliant sound track that pitted the fantastically rich billionaire against the existing-struggling-selfpitying taxi driver and chronicled their parallel lives in the city with each claiming Mumbai to be his .

Finally , there’s Rudyard Kipling’s ode to Mumbai
“The Seven Seas ”

Surely in toil or fray ,
Under an alien sky ,
Comfort it is to say ,
Of no mean city am I !

And here’s my poetic take capitalist Mumbai :

This space on which you stand
Is worth a thirty thousand grand
The time which you take with me to talk
Kills some other opportunity that knocks !

So said this steel merchant in Fort
Many years ago to me , and him ; here I quote
He, in that one line ,taught me more about life
Than Toil , Sweat , Study or Strife !

For he had put a price
Without being polite and nice
On opportunity , effort and time
And thus defined this city of mine .

Ballet on grass

2006-06-18T13:44:00.000-07:00

32 nations will battle for the soccer world cup . Who will win this one ?
Surely , the ruling deity - Brazil !
When Brazil was playing a practice match just before the final FIFA matches , 25000 people turned to see Samba magic . That’s a helluva lot of people . And why not , they have a record of 60 wins in 87 matches for an unprecedented 5 world cup titles in the 17 that have been played so far .
I was completely involved in the last world cup finals way back in 2002 , having organized the screening in Pune . Brazil won with the help of Ronaldo’s brilliance against German organization with the blazing 2-0 victory . I had gone berserk with the drums in the excitement of that match . And Ronaldo had arrived , carrying forward Pele’s legacy .
Brazilians don’t play defensive football , they don’t give long passes , they play a great risky game with short passes through competition and strike at will . They create opportunities that are studies in soccer rule books .That’s why watching them play is wonderful .It's like a ballet on grass.
Between them , Ronaldo and Ronaldhino have between them been selected world footballer of the year five times out of eight in the last eight years.
I saw all the matches of the 1986 world cup , missed the 1990 world cup completely as I had no access to television during those college years and missed the 1994 world cup as I settled into matrimony and a high pressure job . But logged into the 1998 world cup selectively as I climbed the corporate ladder . I turned the 2002 edition into a money spinner by converting it into an event and now will be a complete part of the 2006 world cup with the promise that the next world cup , I will see live in whichever country it is held in .
I love the game , it’s the best game for practicing leadership and team work at the same time ; and it’s the only sport for which I have ever won a medal . I won a silver medal for the school competitions way back in 1984 in Ambala , Haryana . I remember scoring two of the eight goals scored in all the six matches we played with the other schools that year . I have loved the game since .
It is also a great lesson in geography and history . A Portuguese team plays Angola which has been a portuguese colony for 400 years . Serbia plays Croatia , both parts of erstwhile Yugoslavia and now at a bitter five year war against each other back home . Germany plays Poland , years back having started a world war by attacking Poland ; USA plays Iran , where a war could be around the corner . France plays Algeria , a former colony , Netherlands play half of their old colonies and England play Australia , after having taken the cricketing Ashes for the first time in history last year . Cricket playing Trinidad and Tobago is the smallest country to play in the world cup with its 1.3 million population and a total land mass of 5000 sq km .So much excitement has their qualifying created in Trinidad that ther’s a comic book being released on their triumph . Five african teams battle hunger , poverty and financial crisis in their countries to give hope through victory .
It’s also a great study in combat . there are 12-13 formations to tackle different teams. There’s a new format of the ball itself with 14panels and not 32 as is normal .There’s an embedded chip that ensures that each time the ball crosses the line , it’s recorded .
‘For the record , anyone can win the 2006 World Cup’ begins the headline of the Newsweek article in its pre-match edition .Whether its three-time champion Italy or the debutante Angolans , Beckam’s England or Togo , the 61st team amongst the 62 teams vying for the 272 million dollars in prize money and the world championship , anyone can win this world cup .
I , though , would bet on some great exciting matches .
And a Brazil and Argentina final .

One Life

2006-06-18T12:54:00.000-07:00

It was pouring and like normal Mumbai monsoons , it was pouring heavily . Visibility had reduced to a couple of metres , no matter what beacon light one had in the car . The concrete roads of South Mumbai shined with the rain , but the traffic refused to thin . A few pedestrians walked on the parapet walls held up by cement tripods keeping the rough sea at bay . The huge waves lashed at the parapet and a couple hugged tightly under an umbrella hopelessly as the waves wet them completely from the sea unexpectedly .The thin girl lost her balance and the guy lost his umbrella to the furious wind .
As Rahul’s car turned the end of marine drive and headed towards the Napean Sea road , the edge of the road was flooded . This was the part of Mumbai that was supposedly well-organized but now it seemed that nature had caught up with the outdated sever system in this part of Mumbai too .
Rahul was the quintessential good son . His dad and mom brought him up with the sole mission of him becoming an IAS officer . He studied hard , gave up sports , gave the exams and made it to be the senior under secretary in the Telecom Revenue Authority of India to the Telecom Minister . Life was a series of meetings on policy . And when there were no policy meetings , there was family .Or meetings with friends like this one tonight .
As Rahul drove over , through the barrage of cars , in Kemps corner , he contemplated whether it was a better idea to park the car and take the cab to Gallops restaurant , tucked inside the Turf club , where Arjun and Palak were waiting for him or should he drive on braving the rains and the traffic mayhem .
The drenched cop on duty took the decision for him . The whistle directed him to keep driving towards Jaslok hospital and then on to the Mahalaxmi race course for the restaurant . It started to rain afresh and the pace of the car reduced to a couple of metres a hour .
He drove into the Race Course , flashing his VIP card and reached the restaurant just before the new spell of rain created the traffic jam at Haji Ali.
Arjun stood up and greeted him . He considered himself closer to Rahul than Palak , as bothhad had fathers in the Administrative services and led very similar predictable lives . Palak was different , son of an army officer , he had jumed into the rough and tumble world of business with a software firm that was billing in good healthy dollars , but keeping him away from having time for relationship . Arjun and Rahul were the only ones he cherished from college . Arjun was rising the corporate ladder , so to say , in the country’s largest engineering firm , Larsen and Toubro .He headed the western region office and was knee deep in the large infrastructure projects the company was involved in . He was the dink ( double income no kid ) guy , traveling each year to a new country , wedded to his schoolmate , Radhika , who worked in a travel firm .
‘Lot of rain ,huh ‘ , said Palak as a non-chalant greeting
‘Mumbai is a mess when it rains ‘, completed Rahul
‘That’s why I came in early ‘
‘Don’t try your one-upmanship games again , Palki ‘, butted in Arjun
‘ Chal chodd , whazzup ?
‘Same old , same old ‘, Rahul sighed , ordering the waiter up , ‘ Get me the same drink as always , and an ashtray ‘
‘The amazing thing is that nothing changes in our lives in the gap between our meetings ‘said Palak
‘Except perhaps the stock quotes ‘, said Arjun ,’ none of my brokers have been able to figure out how the hell the sensex can come crashing down from 12000 to 8900 in ten days when it took a good three years to go the same distance up. Look at my company’s stock , it gains and loses 3-4% everyday ‘
‘These are swinging times . Cheers to the integration with the global economy ’, Palak raised his glass as all of them clinked the glass and sipped away ,‘ My firm sees dramatic creation and erosion of valuation every week . The Fed is increasing interest rates , money from the emerging markets is making its way back into the American market is everyones explanation . What beats me is if the emerging market stocks return as much as 30 % per annum , how the hell is the increase by 2% points back home going to keep their money growing ?
‘Moreover , how could the commodity exchange collapse in Russia or Mittals failure to close the Arcelor bid in France trigger the collapse of the share price of Kalyani steel or Tata steel here in India ?’
Precisely the reason I stay out of stocks , folks ’ said Rahul
‘You babus have no need to work the market . You are pretty well looked after , would never run out of your job and have even when you quit years later you will still get your house , car and rations taken care of till you kick the bucket . We lesser mortals have to make money , ensure employability , pay the taxes and live in constant uncertainity . And when a medical ailment hits us , we are drained of our resources too . The market helps us keep in financial shape .’
Palak broke into a song , ‘
Na biwi na bacha , Na baap bada na bhaiyya
The whole thing is that ke bhaiyya sabse bada rupaiyyah ! ‘
That’s the theme in Mumbai .Everyone is busy making money and ultimate respect is only for the guys who are working at making money . I started small , now my firm employs over a thousand people and I am raking in dollars. My timing was just right , I guess .Yet , my investment advisor insists that I put money in equities for long term gains . Money does buy you happiness . ’
Arjun added , ‘ In fact I like the couplet in the movie Taxi no 9211 as a good descriptor of the times we live in ,
‘Kissi ka chhuta , Kissi ki daulat ,
Kissi ka lost , to kissi aur ka found ,
Jindagi me har kushi
Rupaiaah hai ya dollar ya pound !
Meter down , down , down , down , meter down .
Everyone is seeking monetary happiness . The country is moving from being a socialist country to a capitalist one and spiritual values are the ones that we abandon along the way . Americans will reduce the world to the lowest common denominator of compulsive consumers ”
Rahul was , as always , looking at meaning of life . Money was never a motivator for him and his grooming and childhood had kept him away from the lure of money as his parents never discussed money in front of him , so did he try not ot discuss money in front of others .
“And look at the predictability of our lives ,’ he said , ‘ like they say in our Vedas , the seventy five years of a mans’ life are divided into four parts , first twenty five years is the vidhyarthi stage where he is a student of learning , the next twenty five years in the grahasth where he as a householder brings up his family , next twenty five years is sanyas where he would give back to society the enlightenment he would receive from his experiences . But I guess , all of us are perennially in a stage of existing , just running to do things without reflecting ’
‘That’s true ‘,said Arjun
‘But aren’t we doing different things ?’,asked Palak
‘Well, even though we are all in different professions , we are all pretty much doing the same things .All have studied Science , done engineering and then narrowly specialized either in the Administrative services or in management .Even our families are the same , just that I have kids and you guys don’t .’
‘I don’t have a family ‘ corrected Palak .
‘Out of choice or compulsion ?’checked Arjun
‘Choice , where’s the time ?’
‘Yes, but somewhere along the way you will find someone and settle down to a mundane householders life . ‘
Palak contemplated . It could be the case .
‘That’s why India’s is so different’ , Rahul continued ,‘completely unlike the westerners ‘
‘Meaning ?’ said Arjun , feeling slightly left out at the sudden pace of the discussions .
‘Americans , for instance .No two Americans lead the same life , everyone pursues different careers , follows different paths in life . Imagine taking a two year holiday traveling the world or going to learn scuba diving in the middle of a tough financial year for the company ? ’ Rahul postulated .
‘You are so right , Rahul ,I n my firm , there are atleast 30% expatriates and I look at their lives , and they are as different as chalk and cheese . This guy , Edwin , has had four relationships , is currently living in with a Marine Biologist who visits him in India every three months in between assignments in the pacific . And my project head on Gap , is one hell of an adventure freak , he’s a certified microlight flying instructor and is looking at starting a Flying Institute in the Sinhgad hills in Pune .
I once met a Palestine Engineer who was on our road project in Mysore and when he’s not working the world , he takes a month off as a reading break , I mean , just for catching up on reading . For a guy who has not had a country for years , to be able to think like that is amazing . And here I am , not having even truned a page of the two books I bought a couple of months back. ‘
Palak said agitatedly .
‘It is beginning to happen in the movie business , Aamir Khan has just junked his wife of twelve years one fine morning and moved in with Kiran Rao , a non-descrepit , ordinary soul with film making as a call in life .Then he gets married and takes her along to every film premiere and party . His productivity has surely increased , he’s done atleast three movies in two years which betters his record of one movie every four years . Saif Ali Khan did the same and now lives in with his Italian girlfriend Rosa . That’s just two of them in a billion .’
Arjun laughed out loud
‘There must be a change in society ,sure thing , guys . Look at the number of women who don’t marry or the number that gets divorced every year . Rita , my colleague has just finished completing her divorce formalities . she’s broken but she’s picking up the pieces of her life quickly . Working more hours than normal has seen her land some great assignment , like she went to Malaysia last week to study their Cantilever systems and is now promoted to head the project . Radhika met her the other day and Rita told her that she’s in no hurry for a new relationship and says she understands men now and will define the role they play in her life. ’
Palak ordered another drink .
The rain had stopped and the grass on the race course glittered with the dew. Rahul was two drinks down and so was Palak . Arjun was in his fourth drink .
Conversations were intense now.
‘Bhatia , my security incharge and three of his men actually participated in the anti-reservation protests along with the medical students outside Sassoon hospital in Pune the ther day . They even courted arrest . I think this fight between haves and hav-nots is going to intensify . The country is being divided like never before . the guys who don’t have will fight with the guys who have .’
‘You are right , Palak ’, said Rahul, ‘even the riots in Gujarat is a part of this same thing .’
‘How canyou say that ?’
‘See , around ten years ago , I had traveled through each of the cities in Gujarat when I was attached to the Industries Minister in Ahmedabad . Man , must tell you there ain’t more industrious people than them anywhere . In Rajkot , I remember the strategies they adopted to keep the Chinese out of the Machine tool business . The industrial corridor from Vapi to Mehsana is amongst the largest chemical industrial estates in the world , a full 225 km by 50 km stretch that saw each town flush with great capital and lots of commerce . The state was extremely prosperous and it contributed to national coffers . The state was historically always ruled by the congress , and it also decided the fate of many a central government . Hindus and Muslims lived in great harmony in areas like the old city on the other side of Ashram road . Even the Industrial houses around old city had great bonhomie .
All was well till the Y2K thing put Indian software industry on the world map , creating a reason for a great exodus into the American silicon valley which coupled with the great internet boom , suddenly took the thunder away from the manufacturing industry in India and turned us into a service economy
I remember the pie share changing from 65% agriculture to 20% while services moving from a meager 9% to 45% with manufacturing also dramatically reducing.’
‘You are right , Rahul ‘
‘Look ath e appointment ads today , 90% of them are for software , just a meager 10% are for the manufacturing industry . they are creating jobs by the thousands.’
‘Just yesterday TCS decided to add 15000 people in Pune whisking away 5% of my best managers at 35% increments , added Palak woefully .
‘Guys like Chandrababu naidu and SM Krishna also techno-upgraded their cities and wooed massive FDI’s into their states .Mircrosoft has probably now more people in Hyderabad than in Redmond . GE has massive people on its rolls .’
‘And all this employment was outside Gujarat . The new money simply passed Gujarat , it missed this boom . The gujjus never learnt English , never studied technology and are stuck with their manufacturing skills which the economy doesn’t need now . That’s a have-not . And their riots are a struggle against the haves as people go with traditional low paying jobs . The BPO and IT revolutions have just passed them by . Its easy for any politician to create an artificial enemy and stay in power .’
‘Now look at the reservation ruckus ‘, said Rahul .
‘‘Reservations has raised its ugly head for the seond time running . Last time was when the liberalization was happening and now when the second phase of liberalization under the same government leadership is taking place . While socialistic pursuits like these always put the country back by a couple of years , it will forever create a reason for the merit-oriented migrating to newer countries , this time probably Russia , China or even south east asia could see a stream of Indians moving in . ‘
‘Come to think of it , doesn’t every such move be followed by a move to remove restrictions on emigrations ?’
‘We are caught in the throes of a dramatic social change .’ added Arjun , trying to get in some affect .
‘The BPO IT revolution is also creating newer cities and towns with greater avenues to spend the monies . Which nineteen year old planned for an international holiday every year in the past ? Who pays for a hundred rupee coffee and who pays for a two hundred rupee movie ticket ? This is fueled by dollar income of companies . ‘
‘No wonder when the federal ban k in the us sneezes , dalal street catches the flu!’
‘Rahul , what you say is so true ’
‘Palak , the point is that there has been dramatic change in the last fifteen years , but some of us are in a time warp . Just doing the same things as ten years back ‘
‘Rahul , why do you say so ?’, queried Arjun
‘Look at what you are doing today , Arjun . A traditional engineering job that existed ten years ago ! What’s Palak doing today , a subcontracted tech offshore business which according to me is more akin to slave labour ’
‘There are all kinds of jobs now . You neednt just study engineering or medicine , you could pursue fashion design , architecture , IT , merchant banker , a financial analyst ,creative consultant , you could become a radio jock , a television journalist all of these careers did not exist before . That’s some form of equalization happening between the science , commerce and arts streams . The world has become flatter , for sure .Each of these now pay well .Why not explore these streams ?’
‘So , why are you trapped in babudom ?’ Palak countered .
‘ I love making policy , making some old-fashioned difference .’
‘But , I will quit one day to join the entertainment business , for sure . Probably get into movie making ‘
‘You see ,the movie business is getting organized now . Most movie scripts are all sequels now , reality shows rule the roost ,and our distribution systems are integrating hindi movies into parts of the world remarkably well . Sequels like Krissh , Dhoom ,Phir Hera pheri will now spawn many more . Isn’t that the traditional Hollywood formulae , what was that ? Rocky seven !What about sequels to Jurassic park ?’
‘I can visualize that ‘ Rahul Tandon , movie producer , with a background in telecom regulatory affairs ! Talk about mundane living !’ chuckled Arjun.
‘The movie could be called ‘Dial a ticket ‘ integrating your jobs ! laughed Palak, adding ‘probably , it will be in time for Arjun’s kids ’
‘But do kids go to the movies ?’
‘ Well , my kids today are surely spoilt for choice . In our times , we had one odd game and would play board games all evening interspersed with a game of football or cricket . Today its video games and internet games . Pokemon , Gameboy , Beyblades the japs who are the masters of the indoor games have now invaded Indian homes like never before and in Mumbai with no football grounds , its difficult to get them to play outdoor games anymore ‘
‘My cousins tell me that birthday gifts nowadays are gameboy cartridges and versions of the game . Weused to have national chess tournaments , nowadays it’s the national beyblade tournaments .Each month sees a new television channel , there’s Disney and Cartoon Network each occupying a greater share of free time . Peer pressure demands international holidays and bigger toys and games each time . In our days it was just a simple visit home and time with grandparents in our ancestral home in Allahabad .’
‘Times have surely changed ‘
‘There’s also just no privacy . The mobile ensure 24X7 availability and so there’s no personal space anymore . Anytime access leads to an over-stressed life with numerous artificial emergenceies . Last night I got a call from one of my managers briefing me on the status of a deal with a client in Chennai . Now, honestly , I could have done with the update in the morning as there was nothing I could have done about it till day break . ‘
‘Mine’s worse . I get these funny sms’s on the soccer score from my friends even when I am not interested in the game at all .’added Palak to Arjun’s predicament .
Surely , we live in amazing times , but what has really changed for us .
Maybe a little more money .
Maybe a little more knowledge .
‘But, back to basics . Where’s the fun of living , the enjoyment of simple things uninterrupted by the constant cell phone or business overtime ?’, lamented Arjun , ‘ My relationships are still the same . I yearn for some good company , time doesn’t permit . it’s been ages since I took time off . I am burning at a pace faster than ever before .’
‘Listen , we have just one life . Let’s ensure we make the most of it .India is at a stage it will never be again . Everyday there is a dramatic change in the way we have been living . This is a lifetime we can't imagine again . Let's live it up with abandon. How about starting something exciting ....’ proposed Rahul .
Like what ?
The three looked at each other .
What crossed their mind ?
Well , that’s another story .

The Moolah in the Market

2006-05-07T07:10:00.000-07:00

Wednesday , 3 pm , Dinesh Khanija , Investment Analyst on CNBC
‘ The market is testing these levels and it could probably hit the 11200 to 11500 levels in the next 2 trading sessions ., said the analyst confidently .’.. in fact from now there would be a market correction of upto a 500 points and it will face resistance only around the 9500 levels . That’s a 20% downside . From now on the retail investors would jump into the market , the foreign institutional investors have run out of steam and even local institutional investors have dropped volumes . The number of rising stocks has reached a plateau .’

Friday , 12 pm
The market crossed 12000 points and some stocks hit their lifetime highs . Foreign inflows continued unabated . Confident analyst , Dinesh Khanija was not available for comment .

A month earlier the market had crossed the 10000 levels when every analyst worth his salt said that the market would crash post this level and caution was advised , but the market broke the 11000 number in a week and then crossed the 12000 level baffling everyone in the stock trade . We are now bigger than the Dow as an index number . Where is the market headed , why is it crossing level after remarkable level rapidly ? Right now , in the summer of 2006 , there are no answers , just a couple of stock pickings to make a killing .

Stock market money making has been a subject of enormous discussions and since the free trade policies of the government , spearheaded by Narsimha rao and Manmohan singh in 1991 , just as I has passed out of college , the stock market had created a new set of millionaires who create wealth trading stocks . While the handful of Kolkatta’s super rich have created enormous wealth and kept it through the stock market , Mumbai has phenomenal number of stock market millionaires . Delhi doesn’t trade in stocks as much so their stock pages are pretty unanalytical and colourless , they make money through raw trade .

My first stock buy , am the first entry in the State Bank of India’s register for stock Invest scheme in December 1991 at their office in Broadway in Chennai , was the auto anciallary company India Piston Rings , a subsidiary of the local Murugappa group . Hundred shares were allotted to me from the Initial Public Offering worth a thousand bucks , whose value today is around twelve thousand bucks .A thousand percent appreciation .

I understood the meaning of real wealth when at the end of the stock scam in 1992 , the Central Bureau of Investigation ordered the scamster Harshad Mehta to pay Six hundred and forty five crores as fine for his stock manipulations and insider trading . And Harshad Mehta agreed to pay back the amount in six cheques from Monday thru Saturday . I wondered about it for over a month . What kind of money was that .

Dhirubhai Ambani understood the meaning of the stock market when he periodically used the market to fund his industrial expansions instead of borrowing money from the banks . His issues were mega scale , just like his projects and he must be accredited to singlehandedly teach India equity investment strategies . Reliance Petroleum is the issue I remember created such an impact for its size when it was listed .His sons still do the same .

The World is truly flat and we can feel it in the billions of dollars chasing the Indian stock market , they say at five billion dollars we are a ten percent of the investment made in the Chinese economy .

Services stand where agriculture once stood , towering over the contribution to GDP with a fifty five percent share . The other forty percent is shared between the agriculture and manufacturing . Service industry has seen categories like Cable TV and radio , part of the media and entertainment industry hitting 55000 crores today from 3000cr in 1990 and Telecom becoming a $15 billion industry and Retailing with $100 billion in sales employs 8% of the country’s workforce with banking and real estate growing rapidly , India is moving rapidly to becoming a developed country Also, globalization has meant that the Indian economy is intergrated to the word economy is some very complex ways . For instance , experts say that much of the sensex’s current rise is due to an appreciation in the dollar, which has inturn spurred Indian software stocks, and three-fourths of such companies’ revenues come from exports to the US market.

Though we may be the same as the Dow Jones industrial average at 11000 points each , in terms of market cap, the Dow obviously wins hands down. The market cap of the world’s largest economy is estimated to be about $30 trillion approximately (a trillion is a thousand billion), while the sensex’s market cap stands at about $500bn. The US is a mature economy, growing at a much slower rate than India’s. Ours is an emerging market where the economy is expanding at over 8% and is currently viewed as a darling of investors,” said Edelweiss Capital MD, Rashesh Shah. While everyday crores of investor wealth is created , we’ll get to be a developed economy in another fourteen years or so .

In the meantime , I presume , one keeps busy making his moolah !

A ticket to the movies

2006-05-07T01:20:00.000-07:00

The queue was bloody long . It reached till the empty patch of land outside . The movie Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak had just released at the theatre and was greeted with an enormous response . the reviews were good and we all landed to see the movie , fifteen of us straight from the college at five pm for the six pm show . Fifteen engineering students armed with a strategy to see the movie on its' first day of release and it's second show in town .
We stood in the queue impatiently , as usual , we wanted to see the movie and wouldn’t go back without seeing it . Come hell or highwater . Getting the tickets was the issue as always , but we were armed with strategies , a sum total of our experience from buying bulk movie tickets many times in the past . To return without seeing the movie was definedly shame and akin to flunking an exam .. The queue was quite well behaved till about fifteen minutes before the movie . Then suddenly all hell broke loose , as everyone wondered if they would get the tickets at all and why the queue wasn’t inching ahead at all . A typical reaction to a stationary queue anywhere in India .As everyone started shouting , we broke into three teams , one that would attack the counter straight breaking the queue and adding to the confusion , the other would break the middle of the line so that the middle of the queue din’t protest the commotion at the counter when team1 landed there and the last five at the back would hold their positions in case the first team didn’t manage to get the tickets . The hefty musclemen standing guard sprung into action , brandishing their lathis . The first hit managed to send no message as the two guys who bore the brunt of the lathi swore back and engaged him in a verbal duel.

‘Look at the counter , there’s absolute confusion . If you have balls, get them in line ‘
‘First you get into the queue , b* ’
‘Am standing where I was standing , m* ’

The thing with dirty abuses is that ; if a stranger does it , you revolt . If your friend voices them , they are part of a seemless conversation with no malintent . Anyone unknown using the b or m word to you is cause for a fight .

That’s exactly what happened .
The guy in the queue shouted back , ‘ Go and tell this to your dad . You m* ’
The dhoti clad six foot hefty guard brandished his bamboo stick and hit him harder .
Three man broke queue and punched the guard .
There was utter chaos .meanwhile at the counter window , there was some success . I pushed in my hand with the money . Some three hundred bucks . Twenty bucks was a balcony ticket , and we saw balcony all the time .

Just the hand thrust in was not enough , you needed to shout for attention and your hand was part of a set of ten hands being thrust at the same time .The guy at the counterwindow would engage with you only when he took the money from your hands .

Just as the burly man at the counter took money from my hand , a powerful force grabbed me back . Another guard had got to me . Bargi and Khot had held him back for some time , but he managed to reach the counter through brute force and a thick bamboo stick .

‘Get back . You broke the queue , get back , get back ‘
‘My money is inside , ‘ said me , just managing to tell the guy at the counter for fifteen tickets .
The guard let go of me and I emerged unscathed through the mass of flesh of people at the counter , sweating profusely .
We had a good laugh , the movie was fun and memorable .

And most movie tickets , we bought this way till one day ,Maheswary had an idea . He suggested that we tie-up with the manager for tickets . Some kind of a pre-booking everytime a movie would be released , blocking fifteen tickets with payment in advance . No theatre manager bought the concept . Trade practice demanded that they block the tickets themselves and sell it in ‘black ‘ at five to ten times the value of the ticket . This was dynamic pricing at its best . Each blockbuster movie guaranteed that the demand for tickets went high and prices shot through the roof , making a parallel booking system with select vendors selling the tickets at this unauthorized premium . It would always force us to make a choice – to see the movie with this high premium , skip it for another day or negotiate it down to a mutually acceptable price ?

Yesterday , seeking relief from a tiring work day in Bangalore , I wanted to see a movie ‘Gangster’ .The movie released just a day back , with rave reviews for Shiny Ahuja , the star of the movie . I logged onto the net , checked the theatres it ran in , only to find one single ticket available in PVR at Forum in Koramangla . Netizens in Bangalore generally don’t leave a ticket free . All theatres , all shows were booked , except for this one . I clicked on it , paid for it by the credit card , and got a confirmation number .
Later in the evening , I glided upto the ticket counter on the fifth floor through its four escalators at the swanky mall, Forum .
There was a small queue of five people buying different movies . A slim , meek and small girl no more than eighteen or nineteen , was manning the counter .
On my turn , I gave her the confirmation number .
The screen showed the seat I had bought in a sort of position chart of all seats in the theatre .
Sitting in great airconditioning , with a well mannered crowd , she probably doesn't know what it was like to see a movie years back .
She punched out a ticket and gave it to me with a smile.

One can’t fight any longer for first day first shows , as there are neither first day first shows nor fights for tickets , atleast in urban India . We have moved from an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance . While theatres then showed four shows a day , multiplexes show upwards of fourteen a day . There's a movie after every half hour that you land in a multiplex .The concept is to hold movie premieres where the actors would watch the movie with you and you could quiz the actors , directors and producers on key aspects of the movie, mostly a day or two before it opens to public. Also ,there are paid previews , you can pay and see it earlier than its public release .

Great seats , some like Fame adlabs in Andheri have 180 degree seats that become beds , smaller plots , shorter movies and swanky multiplexes .

No sweating , swearing , scuttling or strategy . And no black !

Missing veerapan

2006-05-06T23:55:00.000-07:00

Last year , Veerapan , the notorious sandalwood smuggler , was shot dead in cold blood after a twenty year chase through dense forests on the borders of Karnataka and Tamil nadu .

I vividly remember a newly wedded me driving down those very roads cutting through two wildlife sanctuaries Bandipur Tiger reserve and Madhumalai elephant sanctuary on my way from Mysore to Ooty on the state highway . My cool as cucumber 150cc Kinetic Honda automatic bike served me well through those adventure years as it never broke down , never needed servicing , and would give me thirty kilometers to a litre without fail .
In the age of hundred-kilometers-a-litre bikes , the Kiney was a little anachronistic , but was a part of many of my driving expeditions . Had driven it earlier through the thick forests in Dandeli , the forest reserves west of Dharwad . There were bad roads , uneven terrain , heavy rains , strange forest sounds and plenty of monkeys . The forest was so thick that one couldn’t see the sun in broad daylight . We had driven one complete day through the forest chasing the monsoon . We would find an occasional pit stop in the form of a shack with water dripping through it , serving tea and deep fried onions bhajjias. The bike stood through thick and thin with me .
That 160km journey from Mysore to ooty through Madhumalai and Bandipur was one such . From Mysore , the winding road breaks through the shallow vegetation and into the thick green cover quite dramatically . It was rare to see people on the roads , some said it was because of the tigers of Bandipur , some said it was because of the elephants of Madhumalai and some said it was because of Veerapan ,the bandit .
We took the bike journey without much care , no tool kit , no medicines , had no mobile phones then , no maps , no nothing , just the two of us , me and Nal and a small bag stuffed with some clothes and books . Passing Madhumalai was scary – there were three hunting preserves within the sanctuary – Kargudi , Masinagudi and theppakkadu . The road skimmed its borders and cut though Kargudi . We hits the ghats with a stunning hairpin bend that took us about fifteen metres vertically straight above the road we just crossed by .And then another that put us up by another twenty metres , making it a great breathtaking journey for us . There were 56 hairpin bends along the way taking us two thousand two hundred metres above mean sea level , a third of Mount Everest ! Driving through landslide signs , hurriedly erected army bridges and utter greenery was sheer ecstacy . The bike rode the hills like breeze and we took a good part of six hours to climb upto Ooty .From there we chased the toy train down to Coonoor , which with its lush green tea-plantation hillsides was quite a spectacle .
People in Ooty scared us with Veerapan tales , warning us against venturing out at night . He had killed over a thousand elephants , hundreds of police men and presided over the forests of these sanctuaries like a reining deity . Newspapers would talk about beheaded soldiers of the Special task force from tamil nadu trying to nab him , there would be hushed tales of a Veerapan sighting on some side of the hills , some dead tigers , some skins recovered in a truck driving out of the wilds .Then Veerapan kidnapped Rajkumar , the superhero of kannada cinema following it up with the abduction and killing of a former Karnataka minister . It sent shivers down the sides of many a cop who braved all of these to capture and kill him after a fifteen year long chase .

Those days , late in 1994 , the sanctuaries had very few tourists and fewer jungle lodges making it a brilliant experience . It was not even on the 1000 places-to-see-before-you-die list of local Mysoreeans too.

Today , the economy has boomed , people love going to wildlife sanctuaries as tour package deals , partly because they need a breather from the rising heat , stock markets , realty prices , gold prices , capitalistic rat races and partly because Veerapan is no more . There is unabated construction , jungles resorts are coming up by the dozen , there’s a lot of crowds and tourists are coming in droves . There’s a lot of pit-stops on the highway where many shops have come up . Traffic is beginning to get denser than the wilds , there are traffic jams on the state highways . Hair pin bends no longer seem so , as the buses after buses make you inch up , missing out the thrill of the turn . The thriving IT BPO industry in bangalore and Mysore is in need of a weekend break . The forests beckon .

It is not truly wild anymore .

Veerapan smuggled , poached , murdered , and so deserved to be shot . But , he also made sure that the drive through the great forests was thrilling , refreshing , breathtaking and that the wilds stayed uninhabited by man .

Battle Ready

2006-03-28T08:52:00.000-08:00

Just as you land in arid Jaipur and drive out of the airport parking lot , you see an elaborate green signboard declaring profusely ‘Welcome to Pink city ’.

“Why is this called the Pink City ?, I asked my cabbie
‘Maharaja Jai Singh , the erstwhile ruler of Jaipur , had built a wall all around the old city which had the large windowed Hawa Mahal which was pink in color , so this came to be called Pink City ‘, said the cabbie authoritatively .
‘And why on earth is this road called Tonk Road ?’, I queried wondering what a peculiar name this was for a normal ‘Airport road ‘as it is called in any other city .
‘This road starts from a Muslim area where Tonks lived , so it must be one of the muslim names ‘, said the cabbie
As I found out later from the owners of one of the oldest movie theatres in the city , the pink color had been used at the time of its construction to create an impression of red sandstone buildings of Mughal cities of those times .
That cabbie was pretty well informed amused me . Mumbai cabbies would care a damn about why Victoria Terminus or Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus as it is called now was a built that way or where the architecture originated . They couldn’t tell their Borivalis from the Dombivilis as long as the meter was ticking and money was rolling each minute .

I landed in Jaipur to be greeted by thirty degree temperature at seven in the morning . The flight was packed with foreigners , eager to soak in Indian history . The terrain , when seen from above, is flat as flat can be and arid as arid can be . There are a minimal scattering of trees around the different parts of the city and a hillock on one side of the airport . A couple of forts can be spotted as the plane hits the runway .

The city was founded in 1727 AD , much after Shivaji had finished his fights with the Mughals in the Deccan , by one of the greatest rulers of the north , the astronomer king Sawai Jai Singh. A collection of complex astronomical instruments, chisseled out of stone- most of which continue to provide fairly accurate information to this day kept in the Jantar Mantar observatory stand testimony to the intellect and brilliance of the astrologers of those times till this day .

Forts never fail to impress me . Each piece of history that Forts hold and the amazing turn of story that each conquest holds grips me with a sense of awe . Achievement thrills me . And I consider a Fort a great military achievement and their conquests absolute strategies .

Take for instance the Sinhagarh fort thirty kilometers from Pune city , the mystery of its conquest , can goad me to to even today take a treck up the fort to feel the awesome daring of Tanaji Malasure , Shivaji’s trusted general who forsake his daughter’s weeding to conquer the fort from the Mughal King Afzal Shah . The Lizard , Yeshwanti , which stuck to the walls so that the Maratha guerillas could scale the mighty fort and attack a surprised enemy enthralls any audience . His death while fighting prompted Shivaji’s famous soundbyte ‘Gard aala , pan sinha gela ‘ , The Fort is Won , the Lion is Lost .
A poignant moment in conquests .

Another fort with a great twist of fate is the Murud-Jaljira fort one hundred and forty kilometers from Mumbai , bang in the middle of the Arabian sea on the coast a couple of miles from Alibag . legend has it that the fort was built by Siddhi Johar ,a South African King around the end of the sixteenth century over eleven years , each day seeing contruction on the outside during low tide and on the inside during the high tide . The fort with its three hundred and sixty five canons couldn’t be captured by Shivaji or by his son Shambhaji , who attempted to reach the fort many times but failed to find its entrance gate .He then tried to build a fort a couple of miles down the sea but left the fort incomplete as he had to fight other battles in Raigarh .
One can’t approach the fort directly . The canoe takes one in a zigzag manner to find the entrance , going south westward into the sea first , away from the fort , then the boatmen swing the sail the other way in a rapid well co-ordinated effort and the canoe changes direction to northeasterly and then a couple of hundred metres down the choppy sea waters , the sail is turned again so that the canoe can move south westwards again . And just as the canoe turns sailing over bouncy waves , one sees the hidden entrance to the fort . It is so deceptively hidden , no wonder Shanbaji couldn’t figure it out for his life . As you reach the entrance , the boat is held by ropes and you need to jump out in order not to be sucked by sea . A remarkable experience . The journey from the shore to the fort in the sea takes a good half hour , but you return in ten minutes as the sail is directed straight to the shore in a south eastwardly direction making it a swift journey .
The fort itself is huge , and they say a complete town settled in the three storey fort with schools , marketyards , houses and freshwater ponds inside .Architechturally , it is brilliant with its many alleys and carefully designed township .

The fort in Jhansi is also spectacular , more for its place in history as the battleground of one of India’s most outstanding queens who fought the british till the end , than for its plain architecture . The Indian Army uses it as a base now .

Alexander , like Shivaji many years later , must have mastered the art of breaking forts for in his time , 326 BC , he had captured half of the known world with sheer chutpazh and valour . Think leading a contingent of thirty thousand fighters across Persian , Egyptian and Indian soil conquering whoever came in the way . Alexander did at a ripe young age of twenty six .

That brings me to the forts in Jaipur , each of which are exceptionally functional and served their time in history . There are six forts in Jaipur and as I see some of their designs , they still look ready for battle , worn by time but built for ever .

We begin a different battle for marketshare in the Pink City tomorrow . We have to fight to win , guarding our turf , customers , listeners . The forts in Jaipur have stood testimony to great strategies and big victories by many Kings .

And they will all be around to see ours , a couple of weeks from now .

Lungs of London

2006-03-28T07:48:00.000-08:00

One of the first things that beckoned was a visit to the ‘ Lungs of London ’ , The Hampstead heath , four miles north of London , a huge green land mass with its various ponds , and houses that once had sought after occupants . Promptly catching the Tube’s Northern line from King’s Cross station to Hampstead , we were greeted by Emily just outside the Patisserie on the other side of the station’s exit . A petite , young woman , hazel-eyed Emily had served as a guide for the Walking Company for the last couple of years . The brochure said that she was an effervescent and smoky-voiced actress , who had shot to fame for her role in the production , Nicholas Nikleby . She wore an old bag slung across her shoulders , and a tanned blue french cap and worn jeans .
‘How are we this afternoon’, she asked all of us who had assembled , three british girls on a study trip , one Spanish women , five Americans with one of whom was massively built and the two of us .
‘Ready to roll ‘, said the Spanish woman .
The girls giggled .
‘I must tell you we have to walk all the way up the heath and then across a lot of great greens and then through large moors . Is everyone upto it ?’ She smiled .
Everyone nodded their heads happily .
‘ You can expect the most picturesque and perfectly preserved Georgian neighbourhood . Most of the people who came here came to breathe its fresh air and hoped to live a long life .’
‘I must begin with the story of John Constable , the painter of Hampstead ‘,said Emily as we crossed St.John’s dilapidated church .
John Constable was a painter and had earned fame for the story of his life more than his paintings . He fell in love with a girl called Mary and their romance over years and their four children born out of wedlock , forms part of the folklore of the heath.
Then we walked past the long and winding cobblestoned pathways with some very pretty cottages . The houses here were architecturally brilliant and very well created , though a lot of them were identical .
We stopped near the Kenwood house , some of the large windows of which were covered with blocks of wood .
‘The window tax was created to identify and tax the rich . The more windows the house had , the richer were its inmates .’added Emily emphatically , ‘So some of the rich blocked their windows to avoid paying the tax !’ Must tell her that some of the Indian businessmen were even more ingenious when it came to tax –aversion !
Soon , we reached the highest point of Hampstead Heath , called parliament hill , Emily asked us to pause and look over the hill for a great view of the city , just four miles away .On the left was the Canary warf area , with its financial epicenter and the stock indices in an electronic ticker circulating around the main building there .The Saint Pauls cathedral’s dome could be seen at a distance . We resumed our walk towards one of the larger ponds in the Heath , half of which was frozen and had birds walking on the icier part of the pond . A couple of swans made up the scenary .
Just as we walked around the pool under the thick foliage , there was a small patch of land with a lot of stationary wagons , most of whose tyres were deflated and was were very sad sight . A couple of people walked around , looking very poverty stricken , a strange sight in London , for sure .
‘The gypsies ‘, Emily said ‘have been around for as long as I can remember . They are extremely proud of themselves and don’t like anyone peeping into their homes . There are over thirty ponds in the heath and most served as reservoirs for water in the 17th and 18th centuries . Different ponds were used by men and women for bathing with one of them being a common public one , that one over there .’
On the northern fringes of Hampstead Heath lies Kenwood House, one of the most glorious country houses in London , which was in 1754 was acquired by Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice, and one of the great British lawyers who, when a slave was brought before him, made the great judgment that England had always been free, and that when any slave set foot in England, he was automatically free .
Much further down the heath , we came across the Highgate Cemetery with its long winding pathways , one of the 'garden cemeteries' of the Victorian era. ‘There are in fact two cemeteries at Highgate . The original one, created by Stephen Geary , the short bespectacled architect , stands on the west of Swains's Lane, and was established in 1839 as a joint-stock company .’Emily added .
This is where we found the original communist , Karl Marx , resting . It’s an irony that within a couple of miles of the cemetery of Karl Marx are the houses of the last James Bond , the debonair Pierce Brosnan and Madame Jude Dench , the irrepressible M in 007’s life .

Irving Wallace would have turned in his grave at the thought of having the creator of communist Russia , arch rival and key target of master dapper spy , Marx staying in the same neighbourhood as Bond himself .

History

2006-03-12T22:00:00.000-08:00

The graphic representation on the airlines passenger information system of the map of the world and the flight path showed how the sun was setting in Africa and parts of India as we closed in on London . The sun had set on the British Empire !
The weather report on page two of The Daily Mail forecasted two degrees in London for the whole of the week , with a maximum temperature of five degrees and four hours of sunlight thrown in . Whoever coined the term ‘trecherous London weather ’ , was right . We would soon find out .

It is true that once upon a time , the sun never set on the British Empire . The Empire span from the East Asian countries to the Australian continent and most of Africa and to the discovered lands of Americas and Canada . It is also true that they amassed vast wealth over the passage of centuries and its former colonies are still called ‘commonwealth ’ .That even much later in the years , they attacked Argentina in a Falklands war or recently jointly ran through Iraq shows that their conquering spirit still exists. History and culture is part of most of the European cities . Spanish explorers discovered parts of the world , Portugese sailors uncovered cities as far as India from around the African continent , Romans conquered many countries , Greeks fought amongst themselves prompting Alexander’s expedition , even the landlocked Moghuls invaded India and spread their religion and architecture .With six thousand kilometers of coastline , India never put a single ship out to sea , never once attempted to reach a country ,never attempted to go to any country and challenge its beliefs or understand the world . Raja Raja Chola , the only king who did so , came back half way from Ceylon when one of his ships collapsed . We witnessed a Anglo-Dutch war in our country . Imagine two countries fighting for control of India . Our history , therefore , is reactive history . We reacted to Moghuls , Portugese , French , Dutch , Britishers , Spaniards and now react to the Americans .
That is was makes London interesting as a destination , drawing people from all countries who can drop in to see a piece of their own history in the city. A Spanish Armada ship , the Kohinoor diamond , the sword of Tipu Sultan , houses of authors from all over the world who stayed here from Rabindranath tagore to Shakespeare .
Thousands of years of culture mark everything in the London , unlike other world cities like New York which is just a boiling cauldron of commerce and capitalism . It is to their credit that they created most of the educational and political systems across the cities they ruled in . How on earth would such a sparsely populated country dream of ruling over most of civilized world is as amazing as it is mystifying . Even today , as New York stands as the ultimate destination for any enterprise , London has reinvented itself to be a world city worthy of a visit . Its transport systems are created to serve the needs of twenty million people everyday ,a number that’s thrice its seven million residents ,
Walking down different lanes in London gives a feeling of exhilaration not felt in any other world city , even New York . Even though 5th Avenue and Manhattan are great walks with its brilliant facades and colourful shopfronts , Oxford street is better . More organized , more stylish and definitely more expensive . People dress well, there’s a sense of fashion . Women are pretty , impeccably dressed and extremely perfect with their lissome profiles . The chill winter breeze also makes them wear high leather boots and loosely wrapped around mufflers .
There’s also a sense of content around people . They are peaceful , satisfied and happy .Even blacks here dress well , unlike the ones in New York or San Fransisco , whose stench can be felt from far . They wear breaded hair , torn jeans and worn threaded sneakers whether in New York or Minneapolis , not in London though . Here , they carry themselves very well .
Leisceter Square and its theatre headquarters is an amazing place to spend any leisurely evening . It’s buzzing with activity till early hours of the next day .We caught the play ‘Phantom of the opera ‘ at Her Majesty’s Theatre , now in its twentieth year and it was a packed house .
The cabs of London are fresh and different , all of them look freshly painted and clean. Specially made by a firm called London Taxi Industries in acontract from the government , they cost a good thirty fve thousand pounds , very expensive. Also , unlike elsewhere , the public cabs cost more per commute than local dial-a-cab services .
There are no cops on london streets , or atleast I couldn’t see one the whole week , except the few gun-totting ones patrolling outside Scotland yard with its no-window building . Instead , I caught a lot of close-circuit cameras all over London . Streets from Kings Cross to lanes in Hampstead , the Tube , Oxford Streets , everywhere .Guess the cops keep a hawk-eye view on London’s happenings without being present . 221B Baker street , the lane housing the famous detective Sherlock Holmes had a close circuit camera too .
‘Ridiculous , Watson . That’s no way to keep an eye on crime ’, the purist Holmes would have shouted , had he seen such technology take over the sheer thrill of deduction .
It was very cold .It was the last week of February and summer was nowhere in sight . The sun rose early and set by afternoon , a chilly breeze swept through most parts of the day . It snowed in the afternoons and it rained heavily for four hours the day before we left . As we walked through Hyde park towards Buckingham palace , it snowed again .And just as we had the time of our life in Spearmint Rhino , the gentleman’s club , and emerged at one am in the morning , it drizzled all the way for fifteen minutes as we crossed streets to get to the Italian restaurant on the other side . Half the pond in Hampstead Heath was frozen and the other half had swans basking in the mild morning sun .
Must say , the weather did have us baffled .

Fact is London doesn’t play a role in the world theatre anymore is ample proof , no global businesses are British , no bog brands are British , they don’t win soccer world cups , cricket world cups , Ashes , they don’t export anything , they send forces wherever Americans do , their move to make Euro the common currency has fallen flat on their face with France saying no ,none of their banks are present in most parts of the world , the queen is forgotten , nothing British matters anymore. London is just plan history .
Yet , for that alone , it still is a great place to be .

As Dr.Samuel Johnson says ,

When a man is tired of London , he is tired of Life ;
For there is in London , all that life can afford .

Lights , Camera , Action !

2006-02-25T04:25:00.000-08:00

The Amisha Patel episode

‘ I need a Mercedes to go back home ’.
Amisha Patel , the photogenic and well endowed actress , shot to fame in the movie Kaho Na Pyar Hai . Actually , she didn’t quite shoot to fame as much as Hritik Roshan , the hero of the movie and son of not-so-successful Bollywood actor Rakesh Roshan , did , creating history unheard of before . The movie was a miraculous debut for Hritik , he became a legend overnight . One of the reason for his success was he had broken the stranglehold of the ‘Khans’ , namely Salman , Shah Rukh and Amir who were the reigning Kings of Bollywood with movie after movie starring either of these three . Hritik was Punjabi , tall , muscular and handsome , combined with great agility helping him create some super dance moves . None of the Khans had his personality , height and slick killer looks . Another reason for this success was the movie’s choreography , marvelously shot in Mauritius it was a ultimate relief for an ordinary movie-goer . Then the music . And finally , fresh , mysterious , good looking Amisha Patel.
‘I need a Mercedes to go back home ’
I had only heard of the tantrums celebs threw before , here I was witnessing one . We had bought her a return air ticket from Mumbai to Pune , as part of our compensation to her to inaugurate our radio station . She had insisted that her mother’s ticket also be paid for , which was done . Now , having done her bit by giving the first on-air interview to pune’s new radio station , she wanted to travel by road and not by air , as we had planned and agreed earlier . The flight was leaving in an hour , but she was clear that she wanted to go back by road . As time ticked , I needed to organize the car and fast .
The first of May was Maharastra day and labour day , a double holiday . On any given day , most shops shut for a siesta between one and four in the afternoon in Pune . On a holiday like this one , it was impossible to organize anything for this city of the tired , retired or ready to expire .
I made the first impressions executive call up all the travel agents in the city .
Shut .
We attempted to call the travel desks of all hotels .
‘No Mercedeses , sir . Will a Toyota Qualis do ?’
It won’t . I thought hard for a solution .
And then it struck me .
As usual , the answer was the most obvious , right under ones nose and completely hidden till the last minute .
The Mercedes Benz car in India is manufactured in the Chakan factory industrial area , twenty two kilometers from Pune . And that this fact struck me so late came also rided on the caveat that a factory can’t lease out a car , just makes and sells .
I thumbed through the telephone directory to find the numbers of the factory. The best thing to do on a holiday is to call the residential numbers of the people listed .
I called up the first guy listed , Suhas Kadlaskar .
‘Mr.Kadlaskar , I have a sticky situation . Amisha Patel has just inaugurated our radio station here and she would like to go back by road in a Mercedes . We had organized air tickets for her , but she insists on going by road . It’s a holiday , have tried all avenues and finally decide to call you from the directory . Can you help me organize a Mercedes for Ms.Patel ?’
‘I know it’s a strange request . You will need to give me some time . Can I call you back in a couple of minutes ?’
‘Sure , Mr.Kadlaskar ’
The next ten minutes seemed to last a lifetime .And the five minutes after that were awesome .
‘Where must I arrange for the car to come ? ’, said Kadlaskar .
‘Hotel Blue Diamond , Koregaon Park ‘
‘The car will be there in half hour . Could you please ensure that the car is back by the evening ?’
‘Sure , Mr Kadlaskar ‘
It was remarkable of Suhas Kadlaskar to have done that . I mean , we didn’t know each other , yet he sent his own car to drop Amisha Patel to Mumbai on my request .

Siraj Baig besides being one of our best sales managers , was also a big Amisha Patel fan when he was not busy chasing his targets . And a big , crazy fan , at that . He carried a tattoo of her on his chest and a photograph in his wallet . You couldn’t say a bad word about her in his presence . He would pick up a fight and defend her .
I called Siraj up at his house .
‘Siraj ,do you want to drive back Amisha to Mumbai . She’s leaving in ten minutes . And it’s a Mercedes which has to come back to Pune by evening .’
Siraj was dumbfounded . Amisha Patel , heartthrob , live . He didn’t believe me. Some things just can’t come true is the general belief .
‘ Her mom is traveling with her , you can even propose marriage ‘,I joked .
He just didn’t believe me , missing the opportunity of a lifetime .
Siraj can’t get over what I said then , till this day .

Suhas Kadlaskar , as it turns out , is the Financial Controller of Daimler Chrysler Benz in India . he’s the most powerful man on the board and the distinct number two man in the company in India after Hans Huber , the CEO .
As we chatted on the day of the launch of the Mercedes E230 launch on Indian soil , I pointed out the Amisha incident to him and asked him what made him send the car on a strangers , or fellow professionals , request on a holiday .
‘ Well , ‘ said Kadlaskar , taking a deep breadth ,’ you see , Amisha Patel is our customer . She drives a Mercedes in Mumbai and as part of our cultural ethos , our customers concerns override everything else .’
I was thoroughly impressed by the car and its ethos .
Later , as I test drove the car and felt the exhilaration of its absolutely superior engineering , I was convinced nothing even comes close .
On July twenty seventh , unprecedented rain caused havoc in Mumbai with major flooding in all the roads . It took three days for the rain to clear . Many people abandoned cars on the roads and ran home , creating absolute chaos . Some people died in their cars as the mechanical systems failed and the doors jammed , making it impossible to break the windows and get out before water swallowed them . Thousands of cars were rendered useless with their gear boxes turning paralytic . Most car garages after that took days to even register the cars for repair . Only one company replaced all the cars that had functional disorders due to the floods . Mercedes .

I walked upto Amisha Patel .
‘The Merc is waiting for you ‘
‘Thanks . Is it ok if we leave in an hour ‘
‘Sure , just that the gentleman who sent the car needs it back by the evening ‘
‘Sure .So we get anything to eat while on our way to Mumbai ?’
‘You could grab a couple of sandwiches here . You can’t stop on the expressway .’
‘Good idea ‘, and she disappeared in the elevator to her room .
An hour later , she was on her way to Mumbai . Siraj didn’t come and missed something .

The photographer gave the developed photographs in two days .
Amisha Patel looked stunning , ravishing and brilliantly photogenic . The entire office was staring in stupor at her beauty and charisma .
I keep a photograph of her with me and my team next to the photograph of the Mercedes E230 , the most outstanding car ever made .
Noone quite knows how the photographs are connected , yet .

The Hritik Effect

The fact that Hritik was visiting our studio was enough to send shock waves across the company rank and file . He had just completed his comeback movie , Koi Mil Gaya , a science fiction flick , directed and produced by his father just like his first mega hit , Kaho Na Pyar Hai . And as part of his promotional tour , he was jet-setting cities giving interviews to publications , television networks and radio stations . The hysteria that had ensued after his first movie was a little missing this time and one felt it in the air . There was a deafening loss of public memory after his first movie . He had been relegated as a one film wonder and abandoned to darker corners of peoples’ memoirs . From Hritik , Hritik to Hritik , who had been a painful transition for this young actor . Worse than ignomy is ignomy post enourmous fame . He coped by working his muscles even harder and waiting for the right script that could turn his fortune .We were , in effect , meeting him when he was pretty much down and out . He was expecting the release the next Friday with dated breadth , hoping for some sort of a reinstatement of his erstwhile superstar status . Fridays are when new movies hit the theatres and that’s when a star’s fate is decided , with the box office collections playing the jury . Next Friday would decide Hritik’s fate .
‘He’s coming at five’ , ‘ anybody and everybody knew this .
The photographer was studying areas around the studios trying to see places he could shoot from , looking at the possibilities of creating a not-so-ordinary environment for the photographs . Shortly, he stood on a desk , held the camera close to his eyes and examined the effect . Then he jumped and went behind a work desk to study another possibility . He looked at the studio equipment and tried creating an angle that would avoid the mikes and glares reflecting from the window .
A large flower basket was ready to welcome him . Kabir would probably object . I remember his couplets

Mujhe us panth per rakna dal ,
Jis panth per chalte veer anek .

Kabir , the faqir poet , rued the practice of garlanding people that didn’t matter . His couplet describes the desires of a flower , which as part of a garland , wouldn’t like to be placed around the heads of politicians , not on the feet of Gods , but on the path that is treaded on by courageous soldiers and freedon fighters .
Hritik didn’t qualify to be anyone of those mentioned by Kabir , but he could qualify as a fighter , fighting for a comeback in peoples minds and hearts , many years after his first movie . Just about .
‘Is the script ready ?‘, screamed the enthusiastic and energetic young producer of the show , Deepika Rana . Deepika was one of the coolest cucumbers one will see . that she handles production remarkably well is established . How stress and success sit easily on her shoulders is to be seen to be believed . Pretty cut and dry too, they don’t make creative professionals like her anymore .

Minutes later , there was some commotion .
Hritik Roshan , potential king of Bollywood , acting talent and phenomenon , was here .

Hritik looked much more smarter in person than in print or camera . All the photographs and television snatches failed to catch his extremely handsome personality . He was physically perfect , his jaw and cheek bones aligned , his musculature defined to the T , am sure his six-ab pack had rippling muscles . Tall and slight , he was well defined male. His smile and nods could easily set hearts flutter . In all fairness , Hritik perhaps deserved all the adulation he got .
His handshake was warm and friendly , neither firm like Shah Rukhs’ nor out-of-the-world like Amitabh Bahchans’.
I noticed curiously how he was paying particular attention to each and every girl in the office . He wanted to know if they were looking at him !
It was strange that he wanted acceptance demonstrated . Most girls who work in a radio station are star struck , since movies and television is the most definite next halt for most creative radio professionals . Yet having seen many stars close and having spent interviewing them on their lives , meeting them when their movies didn’t do well or when they went through trying circumstances in their lonely lives , most radio jockeys take the stars very lightly . Hritik was looking for some sort of a reaction from every girl present there . He was double checking his relevance amongst today’s young ones .Times change radically nowadays , more so in India . Every couple of years is a new generation .His last movie had been five years ago .The stars change every five years compared to decades earlier .Even technology changes radically each year now , so this new movie was adequately armed with a lot of science fiction , making sure audiences fell for its special effects and the star was reborn .
Hritik was just reading if his fan following had dried up .
Checking his effect .
He gave a soulful interview , full of optimism and hope .

Ten days later , Koi Mil Gaya , the science fiction remake of Spielberg’s ET was declared a massive super hit of 1994 , raking in millions in its opening weekend and turning Hritik into a confirmed sensation in the movie business .

I saw him again at the Filmfare awards precursor , celebrating the best movies of last year. It was the fiftieth year of the Filmfare awards , the most respected awards in the movie business in India and the coveted statuette had been turned golden for the ceremony . Everyone would get golden statuettes instead of the traditional black tanned one that was given for the last forty nine years . ‘Hamara Yaar , Hamaara bachchpan ka dost ‘, is all that Javed Akhtar , the much celebrated script writer , had to say when asked to describe the filmfare awards and compare it with the other newer movie awards that were lauched in recent years by other media houses .
Hritik was again in the reckoning for the best actor award for his performance in Koi Mil Gaya , an award he had won when he debuted five years ago with Kaho Na Pyar Hai .He looked cool with his grey flannel suit and worn jeans , holding hands with his beautiful wife Suzzane .
Confident and more surer of himself than when I had met him first , Hritik Roshan was beginning a new climb to superstardom .

Waiting for Sandhyali .

As we waited for the inaugural ceremony of the latest event that we had created , I was cordoned off in the open air lounge of the Maharastra Education Trust college of Management in Bandra with Sandhyali Sinha , a fellow army brat and an upcoming movie actress .
Her last movie and as I jogged my memory , probably the only movie she had done to date , was a tear-jerker called ‘Tum Bin ’ where she played the role of a girl who was expecting her fiancé , but as fate would have it , the guy is killed accidently by some rich guy’s son , who then falls in love with her . She has to overcome the grief first to fall in love again and so they move to Canada where she joins her uncles business and then eventually the most evident thing happens and she weds the accidental killer of her fiancé.
I remembered the movie as a fast moving script with good choreography .
She was our celebrity guest invited to inaugurate the Business Process Outsourcing event that we had organized at the third floor of the institute . Intensive radio promotions would lead to a lot of aspiring people looking for jobs coming to the venue . Sandhyali Sinha would inaugurate the event and was the main draw in our ceremonial beginning of the event. We waited at the open-air lounge , awaiting the signal that enough crowds had come and we could go ahead and inaugurate the event . The last time around we had a similar event , three months ago , we had Dia Mirza to inaugurate the event . The event was a sell out . Dia was an extremely simple girl and had an opinion on a lot of subjects under the sun , including the entire BPO revolution which she felt was damn good for India .Dia Mirza also was on a rapid fire ascent up the Bollywood ladder , being a finalist of the annual Miss India contests and having represented India on the World stage. Her list of movies was rising each couple of months .
Sandhyali , who wore her hair very elaborately , was different in that she was a relative unknown in the industry and bagged a role when she was spotted by the director at a party .
She was a little too pretty for an army officers daughter . She detailed for me the life she was leading now with leased apartments and her grandmom cohabiting with her in harsh , capitalist Mumbai . Her next movie was something called ‘Ab Tumhare Havale Watan Saathiyon ‘ with a whole host of stars and slated for release in a couple of months . She talked excitedly about the movie and her expectations , sharing wee bits of the movie story .
It’s common practice that whenever two army officers children meet , you tend to check the schools one has studied in and the locations where their dads were transferred to , hoping to find a link somewhere .
Nothing matched in our case . Srinagar , Mhow , Tezpur in Assam , Ambala , Gwalior ,Shimla Nagpur and Pune read my list . Jabalpur , Bangalore , Jodhpur , Patna , Lucknow and Chandigarh read her list .
Alas !
Nevertheless , we struck an instant communication over movies that I liked and movies that she was going to act in , again not reaching any kind of mutual agreement on a Bollywood formula that we both liked .
Soon it was time to inaugurate .
The inauguration was quick , the traditional lamp was lit , the flashlights blinked , the crowds were parted and we walked in to meet each participant company in their classroom-stalls .

In an hour ,we were done .
As I walked with her to her car , I wished her the best and promised that I would see her new movie for sure . She smiled , shook hands and left .

The movie bombed . Within a week of its release, the movie sank without a trace . It was withdrawn without even reaching a lot of cities it was meant to be distributed in .
I couldn’t keep my promise this time around and Sandhyali Sinha vanished somewhere in tinseltown waiting for another script , another movie ; leaving me with good memories of a lively conversation .

The Serial Kisser of Bandra

The Photographic studio neatly tucked outside the Mehboob studio near Mount Mary hill also doubles up as a photocopy shop . While running around for the British visa , I found this shop pretty well located for my tasks of getting my snaps done and organizing document copies .
As I emerged from the photo lab , I found Emraan Heshmi , the newest Bollywood star standing with his girlfriend discussing a photocopy requirement with the shop owner .
Emraan Heshmi , will write his name in the history of Indian movies as the guy who brought about a great cultural revolution without knowing it .
He has earned the sobriquet ‘ serial kisser’ , because of the elaborate kissing scenes his last three movies , Murder , Zeher and Ehsaan with three new actresses . The movie Murder had scenes of uninhibited sex , something that was brought brashly out of the closet by Mahesh Bhat , low budget moviemaker . Most of his movies are made on a very small scale , address an typical social issue and create a controversy to get free publicity and therefore save on promotional costs . Murder was the story of this bored housewife’s extra-marital affair . Mallika Sherawat shot to instant fame because of this movie though her debut movie boasted sixteen kisses , seemed like they were in vain . This one rocked . The audiences lapped up her sex appeal and Emraan Heshmi’s ordinary boy next door cum jilted lover profile and kept visiting the theatre for more of her skin show . While Mallika Sherawat fell out of the Bhat camp , one of the low value camps in Bollywood , the Chopras and Johars being the biggest ones , Emraan became their mainstay for future movies . Mallika is also the smartest kid on the block , with an attitude ,and she’s made it to the Cannes Film festival as a celebrity invitee on the basis of just one movie , while Aishwarya needed a ten year working history post winning the Miss World title in 1994 to be invited . She is ever ready with a soundbyte and knows what people want in this day and age .
Emraan Heshmi on the other hand is very short for his screen presence and am sure he was unaware of the revolutionary thing that he has started - kissing was suddenly okay in public and on screen , unlike the last fifty years in Bollywood where in each movie , as soon as people came close to kissing , there would surface a set of flowers covering their faces and the audience would need to assume that the actors kissed .
Maintstream movie superstars with great reputation started kissing their actresses on screen starting a revolution of sorts . Amitabh Bachchan , clean superhero without a doubt , kissed Rani Mukerjee in the movie ‘ Black ‘ released a full year after Murder , Sanjay Dutt elaborately kissed the difficult but most beautiful actress ,Aishwarya Rai in ‘Shabd’ , Kareena Kapoor kissed Fardeen Khan blissfully in the movie ‘Dev’ and Saif Ali Khan numerously kissed Priety Zinta in the movie ‘Salaam Namaste ‘. And Manisha Koirala , who’s starred in some great movies with superstars even kisses an unrecollectible non-descript actor in the movie ‘Tum’ .
With that one movie ‘Murder ‘ , Emraan Heshmi has made sure that no actress can ever refuse a kissing scene in a movie . Lesser actresses like Neha Dhupia probably can’t refuse any number of kissing scenes .In two of her recent movies , Siskiyaan and Julie , she kisses her co-stars with great abandon , making the act larger than the movie itself .
Movies have given way to television serials trying to present the kiss to the family closeted in front of the television screen .
Television has followed up the moviedom’s experiments with kissing with many of their actors and actresses kissing away to rating points .
Newspapers couldn’t be left behind , in the issue of twelfth January 2006 , Mumbai mirror a mailine daily supplement , carried a large article on ways in which people kiss and methods to improvise kissing , something that was usually discussed in issues of Cosmopolitan and read by young girls in the privacy of their rooms .
The serial kisser from Bandra just changed that .

The hardworking Kapoor

‘What next after No Entry ?’ I asked Boney Kapoor , the producer of the new movie ‘No Entry’ as he sat next to me in the Sahara airline lounge in Lucknow airport waiting for our flight to Mumbai .
Big Boney Kapoor laughed .
‘Did you see the movie ?’
‘Yes, I did . It was terrific ’
‘ Thank you . Working on my next film , it’s a big film . Tying up loose ends .’
Boney Kapoor , twice married husband to South Indian heartthrob Sridevi , was also the elder brother of Anil Kapoor , who has built his reputation in Bollywood working in the remakes of all movies that have hit great success in the south . Most of Anil kapoor’s movies have had good success and baring a few audacious large format movies like Ram Lakhan , Taal and Tezaab , he’s done well for himself in remakes .
Anil kapoor , sat quietly , saying nothing . There was a third guy in the group , who looked like a producer type . The ones who manage the monies for any movie .
Anil Kapoor soon opened up .
He animatedly had a conversation about some new movie project .He was upset with Boney for some concessions that he had done for some supplier . He was also upset that some co-actor’s role had been made larger than necessary . ‘You can’t build someone else’s brand on our money ‘ said he emphatically , ‘ I work hard , harder than any other actor . I might not have the best of personalities , but I work harder than anyone else in the industry . ’
I thought about him . Many years back , way back in 1987 , just when I entered college , the movie ‘Tezaab’ was released . It was a gangster movie on the people living on the fringes of society and their milieu . I had to fight for the tickets at the queue as it was sold out for many many weeks and when we had decided to see the movie , we needed all seventeen tickets together . There was mayhem at the ticket counter , and in the mad rush our task was to make enough way for one of us to hit the counter and get the tickets . It was an amazing experience , but we got them with our clothes and our spirit intact .Anil Kapoor became a rage . But after that , somewhere down the years , he couldn’t position himself well enough to be a good mainstream actor like a lot of the others have managed to do . And when the Khans took over Bollywood in the mid-nineties , Anil kapoor shifted to remakes for survival , only to reemerge after many years with this hit movie ‘No entry ’.
I quite liked the hard working Kapoor . He seemed to be sincere than most actors I have met .

The 88% problem

The biggest event that we pulled off was the builders mela , where consumers could get home loans from banks and multiple options for properties across Mumbai .
Vivek Oberoi , dashing young hero of ‘Yuva’ and boyfriend of the extraordinarily beautiful Aishwarya Rai was invited for the opening ceremony .
He was a true sport . he spent a long time in the studio describing how he needed a home loan himself and therefore was coming to the mela inviting all the others to come too . That it was a mela for only expensive real estate properties helped him establish his credentials as a premium actor too . Houses worth upwards of sixty lacs were up for grabs .
Vivek Oberoi came on time , cut the ribbons and walked around the stalls looking at each of the exhibits carefully .He spent time talking to each of the builders and exploring possibilities of buying the property .
An hour later , we got him to our stall where the entire sales team had been assembled for a small ceremony for rewarding the team that had sold the event .It was quite historic as an event of this magnitude had never been sold before in Mumbai and we had made a tremendous amount of money out of the event . This one event transformed our entire sales team and turned it into a victorious outfit that could go out and sell anything ,achieving the years numbers and growing the company’s performance dramatically . The team had also hit eighty eight percent of its targets for the first time in history .
We aptly got a large cake with the numbers 88% written in the centre and ‘congratulations’ written around it .
Vivek Oberoi walked upto the cake . I handed him a knife , explained the occasion for the cake .
‘Wow, fantastic show , guys ’ said Vivek to great cheering from the team .
And he cut the cake to general shouting and loud bonhomie .
Then he turned to me on the side , shifted his weight to move away from the cake , put an arm around my shoulder and said ‘ Next time , do 100 % . Okay ! ’.
Damn !

The Greatest

Ever since ‘Deewar ’, the movie about values in life , I have been a great fan of Amitabh Bachchan . All other movies added to his legendary status as the actor classique’ of Indian cinema . Much of his life is an open book , he’s covered by every publication worth its salt , the nation prays whenever he hits the hospital , his wife , son and daughter have pretty clear non-controversial lives . Even if there are , like in the case of his son’s love affair or his political career or his attempts at corporatizing Bollywood with his company ABCL or his friendships with strange political bedfellows or Rekha , he rides them over with ease .He had been there and done that and was still at it .
I had no idea of what the reality was till I actually met him as part of the Filmfare Awards ceremonies .
The new multiplex Inox was the venue where the golden statuette of the Lady in Black , as the Filmfare award trophy is called was being unveiled by us . Select guests included Dilip Kumar , Bollywood thespian , who had won the first filmfare award when it was instituted , lata Mangeshkar who had won the award for best singer and Javed Akhtar who had a great role to play in the many movies that went onto become blockbuster superhits . Yash Chopra was invited as he had made a lot of those movies over the last many years and Amitabh Bachchan was invited because he was Amitabh Bachchan and no Bollywood ceremony is complete without him .
Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu , his wife and actress of yesteryears was the first to arrive.It was a strange sight . He came dressed in ordinary clothes and had an orderly carrying the clothes that he would eventually wear for the ceremony . He walked using a walking stick , his age catching up with him fast .
Yash Chopra , Javed Akhtar and Lata Mangeshkar came in one Mercedes car and were promptly ushered into the room .
Every heart and soul there at the entrance of Inox theatre beat for Amitabh Bachchan as news spread that he was round the corner signal and expected any minute.
Ten minutes later , the crowd was swelling and ecstatic . Suddenly a whole lot of photographers emerged from the blue . Surely , they were greater than the number invited by us .
Another minute later , a large golden Toyota Lexus pulled in .
Out stepped Amitabh .
My heart sank . He has undoubtedly ,immense aura and stupendous charisma . Impeccably dressed , he emerged as a man in great spirits and as many cameras merrily clicked away , he smiled superbly .
‘Is this the party ’, he asked in his characteristic deep baritone .
I just extended my hands , ‘ Welcome ’
He grasped and released my hand firmly and rushed in .
As I ran to catch up with him, there was absolute commotion . There are two escalators to go up and down parallel to each other as one enters Inox . It could have been a scene from a movie , as Amitabh moved up the escalator , many photographers who were waiting inside came down the other escalator trying all kinds of camera angles and shots .
Amitabh Bachchan leaves an impression , unlike any other actor anywhere . Probably Shean Connery comes close . Tall imposing and very well read , his smart repartees make people take notice . As he entered the room , no one was larger , or more magnetic ,or more authoritative and or commanded more attention than the Big B . The event started and stopped with him . He could feign humility but I know now that there’s nothing bigger than the Big Bachchan .
I saw him at a couple of other occasions and it reinforces the truth . Jeetendra , father of the creator of Television sitcoms Ekta Kapoor , was once asked how he ranked himself in the industry . Prompt came his reply , I am the eleventh best star in Bollywood .
He was asked , so ‘who are the top ten ’ .
‘Amitabh Bachchan ’, said he , without batting an eyelid . It’s true .

Spoilsport !

2006-02-24T04:26:00.000-08:00

Bush is coming to India next week . In his interview he gave to a newspaper today , he states that he likes the game of cricket . George Bush , capitalist extraordinaire , commander in chief of the world’s most powerful army , likes the lowly game of cricket which is not even played in the United states ! Surely , something is amiss .Probably , he hasen’t seen a game or didn’t want to sound ignorant .
This nation of a billion people is obsessed with cricket . Was there ever a lousier game than cricket ? A game played by twenty two fools and watched by twenty two thousand . That’s the description George Orwell gave the game . Aptly so.
There can’t be a worser format than this game’s . Played either over five days or over one day , it needs a very elaborate format of play with many many matches resulting in no result . The records are created over years of play and stay unbroken for years more . There’s no other game that has players consistenly joining the game at intermittent intervals .It’s like a soap opera that has characters coming in and out of the game creating emotional turpitude . There’s no other game that has a substitute player running the runs after the batsman has hit the run in case the main player limps around nursing an injury . There’s no other game that has nine hours of play or worse , forty five hours of play . There’s no other game that interrupts a nation’s productivity over such a long period of time as much as this game does . There’s no other game played over just eight countries most of whom are poor . There’s no other game that has so much of drama and controversy . And there’s no other game that has generated so much money as cricket has. Then there are players like Mohammed Kaif , the guy is a brilliant fielder . No batting , no bowling , just fielding , Imagine standing the whole day waiting for the ball to come their way just to know that it will probably land in your hands twice a day . And there’s probably no other game that burns as little calories as this game does .
Yet , cricket is religion in India . Cricketers are worshipped like gods .Sport crazy Kolkatta went on strike because their representative Sauruv Ganguly wasn’t selected to the Indian team . That Sachin Tendulkar , accredited best batsaman in the world , didn’t pay taxes on the Ferrari that he stealthily imported into the country was forgiven inspite of the riches that he has amassed endorsing brands . The fame he stakes a claim to is a result of the opportunity provided by the country and yet he decides to default on the tax is incredulous and unforgivable . The nation forgives and forgets a cricketer .
Hansie cronje was the ruthless result-oriented captain of the feared South African cricket team with many victories in his bag .One fine day , the Delhi police, who I think rank as the best police team in the country , cracked a plot wherein game information was being given to punters by some cricketers , who were betting big dollars on the game .So, for a consideration , say ten million dollars , a cricketer would be approached to share information on a critical team decision like what would the team decide to do if they won the toss – bat or bowl . Then , a bowler would be payed to bowl bad deliveries so runs are easily scored . ‘Match Fixing’ ,this method of sharing information or playing to external gambling groups , is the hated legal term now . Hansie Cronje crafted many victories for the South African team that went on to get many laurels . A whole host of cricketers , Indian and South African got caught in the quagmire and regretted it . A promising Indian captain Azaaruddin and a budding batsman Ajay jadeja are out of the game , suspects of match fixing . This crazy lure of the moolah as laid to rest this brilliancy of any of their efforts . The game is forever suspect .Hansie Cronjie was pardoned by Nelson Mandela , started a new life consulting for a South African company . Just about settling down , he lived life as a recluse till one day , he died in an aircraft crash .
In no other sport has so much fame led to such a brutal end .
I dislike cricket from the bottom of my heart . It’s the lousiest game ever invented . Am glad that just eight countries play the game and that no new nation is planning to love the game .
The game that I love is soccer .
Short bursts of forty minutes , intensive calorie crunching , great team game , fantastic to demonstrate leadership and with the simplest of formats. Played by the richest countries in the world it is definitely the best game one can play .
Was introduced to the game in school , couldn’t play much in college but had many occasions to play while at work . the only sports medal I have ever won is the silver medal in football that I won in my eight grade . My bulk relegated me to be a backie , but have migrated to being an aggressive right winger , scoring many goals in my soccer games . Remember thrashing ICICI bank and onward technologies , two companies that I had the pleasure of thrashing in exciting forty five minute soccer games .
Soccer requires a strategy that’s intense and teamwork that has no equal .
The pleasure of Ronaldo tearing through the ranks to score his goal , the ecstacy of watching Beckam’s footwork or the brilliance of Henry Thierry each time he gives Real Madrid with its contingent of stars a run for their money is extremely satisfying .
The stylish brazilains , the systematic germans , the arrogant british and the aggressive argentinians , all make this game a sheer simple delight .
Soccer is certainly the most superior game on earth ,
So why on earth would the President of Rugby and Basketball playing country bother giving cricket even a remark ?

The Empire is srikes back

2006-02-24T03:26:00.000-08:00

India’s moving .
Three news articles in the Times of India last week set me thinking .
The Dept of posts has moved courts to legislate a law banning private courier companies from transporting packets weighing lower than 500 gms which is sixty percent of the courier business and could in effect wipe out the private courier market .
The postal department has been fighting a losing battle with email which has truly dropped the mail business dramatically . Around ten years back , I wrote my last letter in longhand and its been ages since I put pen to paper to communicate a message . Email rules our lives now , thanks to Sabeer Bhatia who’s hotmail changed things forever . There’s no revenue model yet , but the concept of free email generating millions of users got Bill Gates charges enough to buy Hotmail for four hundred million dollars and send Bhatia into retirement at the age of twenty nine . In this one masterstroke , suddenly , the world was a different place . It also created a flatter world , something that Thomas Friedman woke upto very late . Information , the key ingredient of all decisions was suddenly available to boss and employee alike and also students and teachers alike . Email exploded communication many fold , besides sounding the death knell to industries like greeting cards , stationary , photocopying machines and of late the telephone booth . You can transfer a file using the pen drive , you can host information websites , you can publish your book using blogspot , you can email photographs , files worth gigabytes across miles of space . Why go to the post office ? Prompting the department of posts to first play along by seeking to be a large mail order company supporting the internet infrastructure requirement of delivering products bought online and having failed in generating any ecommerce delivery revenues, to now examine a law that stops the competing courier companies from delivering light documents . Will it win the war in an increasingly irreversible economy .Time will tell .
Why go to a bank ? Last time I visited a bank was five years ago . Today I get all my transactions done virtually , buy and sell stock , send money transfers , create demand drafts , track my investments online . Life has changed . I had fumed at a manager of the unjab national bank manager in late 1991 when he took a long time to clear my withdrawl slip for cash withdrawing while taking a long time to open a new account for a young girl . Why does it take such a long time , I wondered for me to withdraw my money from my bank ? Citibank changed that with the Any Time Machine . My money is mine anytime I want without having to ask anyone . In one stroke , banking separated the men from the boys . Parallely , down Dalal Street , paperless trading knocked out the stock exchange thrill of seeing hectic trading across counters reaching feverish proportions , making the private sector electronic banking systems richer by making available to them portfolios of the rich and the famous . State owned banks missed out on this large profitable opportunity big time . In response to the attempts of private banks to move in and takeover government banks , the largest Indian bank , the monolithic State Bank of India , finally responded after five years of being in the sidelines watching India go capitalist . The mother of all banks has now embarked on an image correction spree with a fantastic advertising campaign . Which bank has more customers than the entire continent of Australia ? Which bank has an asset base larger than three next-in-line- banks ? Our home loans are transparent . There’s a television commercial that has a girl losing a bet on how the bank can give loans without a guarantor . There’s another that has a guy who gets to make rotis on losing a bet about a home loan from State bank of India . The elephant has moved and how .
Railways have turned a neat profit . rollon-rolloff , khullars , upgrades , increasing capacity revolutionary . In the batch of thirty people attending this years Dynamic Pricing class in Indian institute of Management , Ahmedabad , over thirteen were from the Indian railways . Television channels were abuzz with the news that two couples had been upgraded by the Railways from their second class compartments to air-conditioned class due to the new dynamic pricing policy . This one change is pretty unheard of in Indian railway history . Also , some waitlisted people were called up and confirmed seats in first class , thereby utilizing the available empty inventory in the first class . The headline in the Economic times of today , the 23rd nov blares the audacious discounts being offered for passengers to upgrade . An unheard of concept in sloppy , sleepy Indian railways – the differential pricing principle . Different rates for different folks . Peak season surcharges , lean season discounts . Hitting out at the private airlines with these strategies , the Indian railways is gaining ground , slowly and surely .
Another railway concept , RORO or Roll-on-roll-off is the new buzz amongst transporters . To fight the impeding loss of revenue due to the fantastic infrastructure created by the ministry of roads , wherein transporters were finding it better to transport on the roads with renewed vigour rather than using railways . The fully loaded trucks have to just roll onto the railway wagons and roll off at the destinations . Saving fuel bills and maintainence costs encourages the truck owners to use the railways now . The empire is striking back .
The other news piece was curiosier . You can no longer swin with the fish and stay alive . Akbarally’s , one of the larger departmental stores in Mumbai , known for decades as the final stop for shopping for a whole range of products , closed their Santacruz branch down . The reason – bigger and better malls all around . Is this sounding the death knell for mom-and-pop stores all around the country ? The employees , all of whom were unskilled labour didn’t have an inkling of something like this coming their way and therefore were shocked out of their wits when the owner sealed the store and walked away . The most the employees could do was stage a demonstration against not being informed . The formidable competitor was Big bazaar , whole mega mall in Lower Parel recently shut just an hour after opening as the number of customers swelled to uncontrollable proportions . The cops were worried of a stampede . The Mall extended its sale to over three days though it was touted as just a republic Day sale for just a day .
Thirteen kilometers away , one of the oldest theatres in Mumbai , Minerva is shutting shop .The owner , recalled sadly how it was a theatre that created many a blockbuster and he counted out the number of silver jubilees over the years in his interview to the television channel . Sadly , he has to close down next week . The economics doesn’t work anymore for his movies shows priced at twenty rupees . The audience is now used to swanky theatres with great reclining seats with large leg space , dolby surround sound , fifty rupee popcorn and a brilliant experience . It’s neighbour , the magnificient Metro cinema closed last year and is now being renovated to be a multiplex . Noone wants to see a movie here now . It’s the same state of affairs as in the Plaza theatre in Bangalore . Spankling new multiplexes would take its places . The prices of tickets would be five times the prices currently though the multiplex enjoys a tax holiday .
The maths is simple .
Six hundred tickets in the old style theatre would get it eighteen thousand rupees , adding upto seventytwo thousand over a day , while a multiplex with a four hundred seats at hundred bucks a seat adds to forty thousand a show or half a million rupees a day for its eleven shows a day . The multiplex follows a different logic . Instead of the standard four movie format in a day the multiplex logic of a movie within any half hour of you coming to the theatre works wonderfully well as people run between their new economy schedules to catch movies . Most of the new multiplex companies have publicly listed companies making enough and more money from the entertainment boom .
The Economic Times had another article today . Long distance calls cost will be priced at one rupee with the one tariff plan announced by the government last week , creating havoc in the telecom circles .Indian was the only country in the world where the number of cable television connections were larger then the number of the telephone connections which were larger than the number of cellphone connections . This was in 2002 . Three years later , we face a very different reality . There are over seventy million cellphones , around sixty million cable television connections and a fifty five million telephone connections . The world has spun around full circle . People had started surrendering their land line phones back , and with this one rupee-a-long-distance-call masterstroke , the government wants to get the landline , fixed telephony up and running again. One rupee long distance calls will change the telephony industry suddenly . What happens to all the STD booths across the country that all of us used to frequent . The kind of employment created by the last surge in connectivity due to the STD booths ten years back will be put on the block now as people move from coming to STD booths to make a call to using their cellphones for calls . They have uncertain futures , while the nation looks to a great well-connected future . How will they reinvent themselves as each member in each family has a cellphone connection , guaranteeing them instant connectivity anywhere ?
Old jungle saying , ‘some questions don’t have answers .’

India is changing , and how .