New York to Bangalore

• The last time it happened to me, I understood the situation. There was a huge thunderstorm in the New York area and my flight, a KLM, was sitting in the tarmac waiting for the weather to clear. This time around the skies were bright, blue and the Newark Liberty Airport was bathed in abundant sunshine (though I must admit there was a hint of cloud behind the Manhattan skyline). But we were kept waiting. Behind ten other equally unfortunate aircrafts, our rather cynic skipper informed us (it is a instinctively disheartening when someone in charge starts a sentence with “My worst fears were confirmed…”). Finally after two and a half hours we took off, albeit we went south towards Philly and DC instead of up towards Boston and New England. This couldn’t have been done earlier? No one knew that heading south and making a left is equivalent to going north and making a right? Too much to expect - the airlines industry has given up. In fact, I suspect it did that long time ago.

• The next time someone has “language problem” as excuse of not doing business with India, I’ll take him to the business lounges at the Frankfurt airport. Housekeeping at the showers cannot understand English (like “can you move me up please, my flight leaves in the next hour?”) and then comes the diction. I just had this intuition to do a rain check when I heard “Mayoondah” on the PA system. Basab Pradhan writes about American pronounciation of Indian names in this rather funny post and confesses to having a secret Starbucks name. I’m signing up to Basab’s brand of snake oil. Given that a lounge has a larger population I won’t risk a Smith or a Mike. I think I will pick something easy to the German tongue - like a Oliver Kahn or Max Mueller.

• The waiting area at Gate B45 at the Frankfurt airport was taken over by a gang of raucous youngsters spread in a circle playing cards, shouting and generally doing stuff you would find at undergrad dorms. However, they were rather proud showing off their lineage with everyone wearing a “Think Flat, Think Infosys” shirt. I always suspected that the factory called Infosys might be a fun place to work but I got to see the thing in action several thousand miles away from Bangalore. I always was half convinced about this “flat world” thing - I changed my mind yesterday. I might as well have been at the marijuana smoke heavy area just behind the Presidency College canteen on College Street at Calcutta. I wonder what Infosys would call a German game of “teen patti” played by its brand ambassadors in the flat world - “drei karten”?

• It was good to be home. I missed the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, though.

Technorati Tags: New York, Infosys, Flat World, Air Travel, Bangalore International Airport, BIAL

Musings from the Big Apple

1. The thunderclouds of the afternoon gave way to some lovely blue skies in the early evening over New York City. I decided to walk up and down the waterfront for a couple of hours to make up for my binging on Doritos. The waterfront was sprinkled with people - walking their dogs, pushing their prams, running or simply whiling away time. The crowd however was much less than what I am normally accustomed to seeing on the waterfront. Where were the rest? Probably huddled over Facebook, throwing e-cakes at friends and gifting virtual puppies to people they loved. The evenings come free and so does the balmy breeze, the gulls, sound of the Hudson and the warm sun. Social networking is far better done outdoors.
2. Fear is in the genes. It builds, it grows and it cripples. Pigeons in the West have seldom been hunted in the cities so they are fearless of people. Their genes carry this message and it is impossible to actually see a scared pigeon in say New York City. Contrast this with the same birds in India for who a day passed is a day survived from captivity (and perhaps even death). Same thing with the people in India. Our forefathers had never had to conquer the Wild West. Risk adverseness and economic adventurism is absent in our chromosomes. That fear of the unpredictable is passed through the generations. A couple of Lemmings are running against the tide but the vast majority keeps the genetic codes intact.

Technorati Tags: NYC Waterfront, New York, Outdoor Activity, Birds in New York

Bangalore to New York

• I don’t know how to describe the Executive Lounge at the Bangalore International Airport (BIA) because I have never seen anything even remotely like it ever. It is a third in size to a normal lounge and has a separate First Class section (there are recliners there - I peeped). The restrooms are even weird. Actually, there is just one restroom with no distinction between ladies and men. That means only one individual at a time can benefit from the service. In the secluded confines of this unisexual contraption, I re-enacted Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men - “so this is what the ladies room looks like, eh” I said.

• A bad Product Manager never listens. And there are many of these floating around in the software industry. I happened to sit next to one such from Honeywell. This lady was returning from one of those Roman outpost visits that are common with MNCs and flaunting pictures of a trip to Mysore to her colleagues. “This is me in front of the palace”, she squealed. Pat came the question - “Whose palace is it?”. A moment’s pause is broken with “Aah…some Sultan’s must be. You know, they were guys with all the money”. She was obviously not paying attention during the conducted tour. “And you know, then they took us to some Moslem tomb…”. Our Senior Product Manager (as revealed by the sticker on her laptop) was clearly in no mood to listen that day.

• A bad American never changes. Waiting at the TV area in the Business Lounge at the Frankfurt airport it is rather difficult not to notice that Berlin was reeling with Obamania. He was omnipresent - on the LCD screens to the cover of USA Today. The old American - a WASP - next to me picks up his paper and loudly wails out the headline - “Obama promised a humble America” - for his friend. “How much more, Dan? Invite Germany for a repeat of Pearl Harbor”? Poor Americans - they never figured out the difference between weakness and humility.

Yes Sir, Yes Sir, Three Bags Full

Commentator after commentator in the Indian media, political inclinations and insinuations notwithstanding, shed copious amounts of reptilian tears over the appearance of naked cash in the floor of the Parliament during the trust vote yesterday. A hallowed shrine, the sanctum sanctotum of Indian politics, was eviscerated, they wailed.

Hogwash.

Indian politics, right from the dark days of the 1970s have had carried the cancer of money infiltrating its ranks. The first generation of politicians had the dream of building a nation but that dream turned into a sordid nightmare for the citizens once the second and third generations swooped down. Governments - at both state and center - became less about governance and more about making the quick buck. The matter is remarkably akin to how countries with rich natural resources are the world’s largest anarchies today. Owners (which sometimes is the state) realizes that velocity of resource stripping is directly proportional to the quickness at which riches will flow. Actually, it is not different from the way Gordon Gekko planned to strip the assets out of Blue Star Airlines in Wall Street. Current day politicians are very awake to the fact that five years is all they have to strip whatever comes their way. And they do it with awe-inspiring efficiency.

The money, hidden away like Indian sex in the dark corners of the bedroom, finally entered Parliament in broad daylight. Good that it did. It had already entered our living rooms through scenes captured in sting operations. It had already entered our minds fifteen years back when a stock broker confessed paying money to a Prime Minister - his lawyer even brought along the suitcase used to ferry the cash (politicians then were a touch naive - they returned a $20 suitacse after taking the $250,000 content). Members of the House brandishing stacks of currency notes represents the smelly armpit of Indian politics. Unfortunately that is the current unwashed state of the country’s political existence. Those in airconditioned studios wearing Davidoff perfumes may not like it, but - alas - the brutal truth cannot be quite wished away.

The image of Mahatma Gandhi clutching his chest as he falls to the assassin’s bullet is an everlasting image in the Indian phyche. That was the day the guiding light of the country went out. Let the image of waving cash in the Lok Sabha be burned into our minds as well. The soul of Indian politics died a long time back. Yesterday we merely concluded its last rites.

They Come Together. And How.

1. Rabindranath Tagore - the Poet Laureate of India
2. Matt Harding - an idiosyncratic individual bit by the wanderlust bug. Jives with strangers around the world in a dance that is somewhere in-between Chicken and Raindance.
3. Garry Schyman - a musician based in Los Angeles
4. Palbasha Sidique - a 17 year old Bangladeshi girl who lives in Minneapolis, USA
5. Praan - poetically means “life” in Bengali. A small poem from Gitanjali

The end result is as sublime as it is electric. I’ll stop here.

Technorati Tags: Palbasha Sidique, Matt Harding, Praan, Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

Cricinfo Latest Photos

It would be funny if it wasn’t sad

They came driven in their own cars to do the needful. The needful were different for the two protagonists of the Nuclear Deal Drama India has witnessed in the past couple of weeks. Prakash Karat, the Communist boss, came to announce the withdrawal of support in a Wagon R (the small car from Maruti Suzuki). Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh, the two leaders of the Samajwadi Party, came in a Toyota Camry (a luxury sedan in India) to start on the deal to extend support to the beleagured government. Cars - perhaps - don’t make the men but in this case it starkly revealed the polar differences between the two parties and also a pointer to what the Congress party was getting into. Ajay Shah writes in his blog about Congress’ inexperience with coalitions and Saubhik Chakrabarti, who Shah cites, is correct. The SP with its skullduggery and under-the-table arm twisting will ensure that some key policy decisions are seen through while extracting their pound of flesh from other quarters. And that is the way India is destined to be run in the next few crucial years of the country’s existence.

Being a democracy is bad enough to push radical reforms through - every decision has to be debated ad-infinitum and often by people who just don’t get it. And imagine a colatition - an euphemism to describe a bundle of opportunistic once-goons-now-politicians trading horses of every size and shape - working within a democracy. If Apple hadn’t staked a claim on the phrase and put it as their address, we could have justly termed the situation as “Infinite Loop”.

A corporation that drags its feet to make decisions and flounders in forcing ahead purposefully is soon consigned to the back-alley of history. Why should governments (and nations that are ill-fated to have them) be any different?

Post Script: The UPA government faces a trust vote on the 22nd of July. Several Members of Parliament (I couldn’t bring myself to prefix the “Hon’ble”) will be brought out from jail so they could vote (”all hands on deck - rapists and murderers first”).

Post Post Script: The cast of this drama is dominated by two individuals. Your political inclinations will decide which of Manmohan Singh or Prakash Karat you will call the hero. However, neither will vote on the no-confidence motion. They were never elected to the House. TVR Shenoy writes more…

Technorati Tags: Nuclear Deal, IAEA, UPA Government, Samajwadi Party, CPM, Congress party, Prakash Karat, Manmohan Singh, Amar Singh, criminalization of Indian politics, India

GL 007: Licensed to Separate

I have been following the Gurkha movement for an independent state with tepid interest. I must confess that I have never been to Darjeeling or have crossed the Teesta river and my only exposure to the northern part of West Bengal has been through Satyajit Ray’s “Kanchenjungha” and the songs of Anjan Dutta. I have no reason to believe otherwise that the topography of the region is breath-taking with the majestic Himalayas in the north and smoky blue foothills all around. I also do not have reason to beleive otherwise that the socio-economic state of the region is as pathetic as the natural beauty is scenic.

History is laced with examples of people seeking an identity because that would make them prosperous - or so they think. This almost never works in the United States because your identity hardly counts as a parameter for success. Unfortunately it does elsewhere, and it does even more where ethinicity is inbult into a social structure. An even cursory look at large regions where races of multiple ethnic origin were bound together by a fragile fabric of nationhood reveals that they fragmented away over time. Yugoslavia is a prime example. So is the esrtwhile Soviet Russia. And fires of ethnic battles have not yet doused in several parts of Africa (the only saving grace is that no external constituency seem to be interested in redrawing boundaries in that continent).

I fear for my country. I fear that someone has managed to sneak a foot in the door. The ethinic army is waiting to swoop down through the crack that the door has opened. I am afraid that there will be a boundary line going through my courtyard.

Technorati Tags: Gorkhaland, Separatist Movements in India, Separate State, West Bengal, Darjeeling

Sign on your store, The

I took off from work early yesterday and on my way to home decided to stop by Reliance Digital to check out some LCD TVs that I have been earning to own for a while. Given that it was non-peak hour, there weren’t many people in the store. There was however this big sign that said

“We wanted to let you know that we really don’t care if you bought from our store - our goals are not aligned with your custom towards us. You are free to stroll around, see and touch anything so long as you do not ask questions of the sales staff. Please don’t expect a sales person to approach you, smile at you or display any initiative to help you purchase. You are here for reasons you know best but we definitely know that we are here not to help you bring those reasons to fruition”

No - obviously there was no such physical sign. But the sign was everywhere. I tried to engage some of the salespersons in a conversation but they somehow were gravitating towards the microwave section (possibly because that is the ladies-heavy zone). I left the store in fifteen minutes.

All businesses have signs that say something about them. It is not necessary that they are painted on a board. What does your business say?

Starting a Mexican Wave

I went to watch the Bangalore Royal Challengers play the Delhi Dare Devils in an IPL 20-20 cricket match yesterday. It was fun because I had never witnessed, in person, the off-field entertainment aspect of the sport. Shaan (a super-hit singer from the Hindi filmdom) performed live on the far end of the ground. He looked like a puppet from the distance but the gigantic video screen more than made up for it. There was this psychedelic display of laser lights and loud music played each time something worth celebrating happened during play. Lastly, but most definitely not the leastly, the presence of the Washington Redskinnettes (the cheer girls) added a whole lot of spice to the balmy evening. The spectators were hugely engaged with what was happening all around.

At the Chinnaswamy Stadium, the video screen usually sends out prompts to the audience to start a Mexican Wave. I guess the rapidity of events in a 20-20 match possibly precluded such attempts this time around. So an entrepreneurial spectator (he was wearing a South African rugby shirt) decided to try start one all by himself.

• He did the “1-2-3-Ho” act of counting and standing up after the count with raised hands. Obviously people around him didn’t respond because they didn’t know they had to
• He did the act again but this time shouting “c’mon fellas, let’s do it” before he did. Suddenly the whole aisle was rising up with him. People in the adjacent aisle took notice but didn’t respond quickly enough
• Now everyone in the first aisle was kicked up and people from many aisles out were noticing this attempt. A lot of them were just waiting for the juggernaut to reach their stands.
• The next attempt was miraculous. Not only did the second aisle respond but the wave just spread across the aisles all around the stadium. Not once but the wave did three rounds around the stadium before people again got engrossed in the cricket.

It takes time to build momentum around an initiative that involves several people to succeed. And there will always be one person with the idea to start things off.

PS: Delhi Dare Devils won the match comfortably.