Never a dull moment

I wish to review year 2009 from my perspective. The year began with a shocker- Ramalinga Raju stunned the corporate world and IT world in particular. About 60000 employees of his organizations trembled in their shoes for a few months not knowing what the future held. He has spent nearly a year in the jail but the public are no wiser on what he did and where the money has gone. Obama won Nobel Prize for elocution on world peace. He continues to follow in the footsteps of George Bush dispatching additional troops to Af-Pak region. Prices of essential commodities rose relentlessly causing hardship to poor people all over the country. Even vegetable prices have soared and there is no sign of prices coming down despite winter crop. Most people in Corporate world had a tough time coming to grips with turbulent economic slow down. Somewhere along the line, pigs got into the act. We have been persuaded to tremble before a new scourge – swine flu. Media went to town spreading scare amongst the ...

I go for long walks in the morning here at Jaipur. I leave my house before 5 am and pass through some of the idyllic areas before moving on to pink city. Some trucks and tractors playing loud music ply in the government office areas. In the pink city, one can spot auto rickshaws and pick up vans plying catering to with people arriving in the city by long distance buses. There are several small temples where people gather to pray at the break of dawn. There are two or three locations where newspaper vendors are sorting newspapers and handing them over to newspaper boys who would carry them on bicycles to the ultimate customers. I take a break by ordering a cup of tea at the gate of Sawai Man Singh Hospital popularly known as SMS hospital. This is the largest government hospital in Rajasthan and there are several tea shops open early in the morning near the gate of the hospital. The tea shops are one room establishment. Each shop has three employees- one person making the tea who I presu...

Cellular Operators Association of India had last week made an announcement that there are 500 million mobile numbers in India making it the second largest group of users in the world after China. This translates to a teledensity of 45 % overall with 97 % teledensity in urban areas and 18 % in rural areas. This statistics (as often is the case with agglomerate numbers) is incredulous. Some might infer that the number of people in middle income group have gone up. Such statistics hide more than what it reveals. It is most likely that this count of mobile numbers take into account SIM cards which have been issued over period of time but not those which have been disconnected. There was a racket in 2001/2004 period when mobile companies were trying to attract investors from abroad. One of the heavy weight measures to determine the value of a mobile company was the number of mobile connections and there was a concerted effort to increase the mobile connections by providing higher incentives...

Rajasthan Police has an interesting mission statement Aam jan me viswaas ( trust of the common man ) Aparaadhiyom me darr ( fear in culprits ) The way police is functioning now shows that they are half way to achieving the mission statement. The current status is Aam jan me darr ( fear in common man ) Aparaadhiyom me viswaas ! ( trust of culprits ) We had called on a senior police officer on work related matter this week. On his table was a plaque which stated Samasyaam ka aakri padaav ( The buck stops here ). We wish this is true! Delhi Police vehicles have the slogan “With you for you always “ painted on them but their performance so far shows that this slogan is like the marquee of the vehicles the police is using – standard accessory ! Jokes apart , police officials and police force in general are an overworked lot. They work on endless shifts and do not get leave of absence permission easily. They have to be on duty in full force during festivals and elections when the entire pub...

What activities and achievements give a person satisfaction? Is it winning a lottery? Is it being presented with a jewellery set? Is it success in examination? The list is long but to define satisfaction is a tough task. I was at a premier government hospital last Saturday with a member of my family for a follow up medical advice. I had to park the car at parking lot which was far away from the main premises of the hospital. As I was entering the medical block, I noticed a heavy person with a walking stick struggling to stand and his attendant who turned out to be his son struggling to keep the old man erect and standing. The old man appeared very sick. He needed a wheel chair and being a government hospital, such a contraption was not in sight. The attendant pointed out at a metal stretcher trolley on the other side of the road and requested me to bring it over. I obliged readily. The trolley stretcher was too high for the old man to mount. Then it struck me that the stretcher could b...

I have noticed in 1983 itself that the vegetable market in most localities in Mumbai were operating on the streets with their wares being spread on sacks which they roll up at the end of the day and carry home.There were very few vegetable shops operating under permanent structures indicating that the volume of business and the revenue generated rendered a business model with monthly rental outflow unviable. A couple of days back, I was on strolling in the neighbourhood. Somebody wished me and stopped his moped. The guy looked very familiar but I could not place him. He understood as much from my expression and told me that he was our neighbourhood barber. He gave me his mobile number and told me that he would come home if I wanted to have my hair cut. I was perplexed and asked him the reason for embarking on such a service.He said that he found it unviable to operate from a permanent set up paying rent. His neighbours were internet cafe, medical shop etc and he was not able to afford...

Tiger Woods crashed his car on to a water hydrant close to his house. Nobody knows how much of an injury he has suffered. He has not come clean on what really happened. Police has also not been able to interview him. Tiger has gone on record stating that it was entirely his fault and nobody else has to be blamed for the accident. Now it turns out that there was some rumbling in his house hold with his fidelity being called to question. Now Tiger is earning for privacy which he would not get as public scrutiny and glare is what is guaranteed if one is a celebrity. Being a celebrity comes with a price. Who creates a celebrity? The public. What makes the celebrity pricey? The craze of the public. So it is ridiculous for the celebrity to say that he or she wants privacy. Now let us look at Indian celebrities. Sachin Tendulkar. Aishwarya Rai. Shahrukh Khan…. We feel that they are infallible and we expect them to have a view on everything under the sun. I find this notion funny. Agreed these...

Any individual suffering from difficult diseases must have spirit to fight them. Medicine and therapy would not have much effect on a dispirited and listless patient. It is the combination of fighting spirit, medicine and therapy which helps patient to overcome the disease of affliction. My landlady is an epitome for fighting qualities. She had her first brush with the dreaded disease some years back. She was operated upon and subjected to post operative chemotherapy. She suffered a relapse couple of years back and was again operated upon and administered the cycle of chemotherapy. All on all, she has undergone twenty sessions of chemotherapy which could drain anybody physically and mentally. Somewhere towards the last months of last year, the dreaded disease spread to her lungs and the doctors felt she would not survive for than a month, all the near and dear ones were called and she spent a few days with them. My landlady has something which doctors can not inject or prescribe. It...

The wedding season starts in full swing as the chill weather sets in. I was invited to attend a wedding of a budding architect Kirti whose office is in the residential building where I am staying. My only interaction has been with this youngster when I moved into the house of couple of months ago. He is related to my landlord and his brothers who are our neighbors when his sister got married into landlord’s extended family. The marriage was on Friday 27th November. That day seemed to be a good day for marriage as there were a large number of baaraats all over the place as the night set in. Some of the roads I traversed on the way to the marriage hall had several baaraats ( baaraat is the event where the bridegroom is taken in a procession the public along with a band before entering the marriage ) with their bands one behind the other that it reminded me of the contingents in Republic Day parade! I reached the stretch of road where the marriage hall of Kirti was located but I found the...

New location brings in new pressures. One has to make to new friends in social circles. Since I stay alone at Jaipur , I know only my landlord and his better half other than my colleagues in work place though it has been two months since I landed here. But I have a new friend though. My landlord has a six year jet black Labrador. He is a friendly chap and realized that I was going to be a permanent resident. Specs as he is called is an example for the adage do not judge a person by looks. He looks ferocious. For a few days he used to growl when I opened the gate but would keep quiet on seeing me. His expression and gait on such occasions must be seen to be believed. The moment he spots me he would immediately put his head down and walk sheepishly towards me wagging his tail vigorously. It is his way of saying sorry for barking. Spending time with Specs is a bright spot in the morning. He would come to me as I get down the staircase and come out into the open space. He would stand rubbi...

We had bought a second hand small house for my mother from a housewife in government housing scheme in 1994. The house was bought on Power of attorney but we did not know the trouble we would have to undergo. The land owners who sold their land to housing board went to court asking fro higher compensation. Hence the housing board could not complete the documnetaion formality for this hosuing scheme until the court settled this issue in 2002. After that, there were several changes in the scheme which was done by the government to increase its income from this housing scheme. Power of attorney was eclared null and void throwing our sanction into a tizzy. I made several attempts to regularise this transaction over several trips to Kochi over the years but at each step , the combination of the systems and staff in the office thwarted my attempts. The documentation went hayware with a number of negative comments against the transaction noted by the staff. We managed to find a buyer for the ...

I am at Kochi now for an urgent personal work involving property transaction. More on this later. I am staying with relatives - maternal paternal cousins pair. They got married more than thirty years back. The lady of the house was from a struggling family and her marriage with her cousin was a way out for her. But life held different designs for this couple. They have three daughters- the first and the last being mentally challenged may be brought about by genetic factors caused by cohabitation between close relatives. The second daughter is bright but then - love is blind and truly blind. Her life partner bagged after secret romance was a poor choice and she is struglling in her family life. Dad of kids retired from a public sector company years ago and has been working with a private construction company since. The special daughters are attending special care school and are in mid twenties. Both the hunband and wife are cheerful people and go about their life with zest not for a ...

Climate change is a pet topic these days. There is a clamour for action on carbon emmission effect from all over the world but USA has been a naysayer on this front. Statistical evidence of carbon emmission is spun the other way around and trashed by scientists / officialdom in USA. USA is not prepared to bear any investment on this front as there is a feeling that this would amke American industry uncompetitive. There is also a move to make the developing countries carry the can stating that they are as much responsible for pollution as developed countries and with burgeoning population, developing countries would pile on more and more misery on carbon emmission front. As usual green technology is available with developed countries and there are efforts to create a market for these technologies by pampering third world economies. All these sound sinister but then that is the way world functions. Developing countries are forced to listen to developed world on this topic as it is the de...

Any award or prize in public domain is in appreciation of contribution / achievement of the recipient and is a public appreciation. The process of selection may vary but the general philosophy remains the same. The citation read out while the award is presented lists out the achievements. An award is not given anticipating an achievement as there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. There is a general notion in India that Dhadha Saheb Phalke award for life time contribution to Indian cinema which is announced once in a way is awarded to a personality who is in semi retirement. Adoor Gopalakrishnan was the recipient a couple of years back and is definitely an decade and half younger than all recipients so far. Adoor remarked that by presenting this award to him, the public was asking him to retire ! Manna Dey, the famous singer from Bengal, was the recipient of this award last week. He is 90 years old ! The achievements of Nobel laureates are legion. Rabindranath Tagore has contr...

Newspaper reading is a habit which dies hard. There is a brand loyalty too. Having moved to all metros and to smaller cities over the last two decades and a half, I am in position to tell a thing or two on this topic. Nearly two and half decades back, during the two years of post graduate study at Ahemdabad, the quality of English papers were pathetic there. Mumbai has only one dominant newspaper and what it puts out is gospel. Kolkata had three English newspapers but again average in quality. In Kanpur, we used wait till the afternoon for Delhi edition newspapers and it was worht the wait. Patna was again pretty low on quality of English newspapers. Bangalore, Hyderababd, Chennai and Delhi have variety of newspapers and good content too. Delhi has to widest range of English newspapers. Once again I am at a medium sized city - Jaipur. The local English newspapers are poor in content. So once again I wait for Delhi editions which are fuller. Over the period of time , the reach of Englis...

This week ,I will be shifting to a furnished accommodation in Jaipur. It is the entire first floor of a two storey bungalow in Civil Lines. So I will have top government dignitories and Governor of the state in the neighbourhood. Staying in such a locality ensures that there are no problems for water and electricity. Unlike my recent stint in Chennai, this is going to be different. I had spent my youth in Chennai and still have a wide range of social contacts. At Jaipur, I do not have any social contacts. Not being a metro, the city may not offer wide the range of activities. Setting shop is going to be easy as the accommodation has everything except gas stove and gas connetion in kitchen and a television. I have brought both from Chennai. So it is a plug and play situation. I have planned to go on long walks to get back to shape. I have been taking it easy on fitness front. I have gained some weight and my dresses are crying for breath ! On the office front, it is going to be a stres...

The week which went by at Jaipur was a stunning week. Jaipur is a beautiful city with wide roads and good green canopy. People are also pleasant and well behaved. There is a royal grandeur about all structures and public buildings in Jaipur. The round abouts with various statues can put Lutyen's Delhi to shame. The Central Park is large for a city of Jaipur's population. The jogging track running around this park is 3.74 km long ! St Xavier's school is a stunning building. Some of my collegues have been fortunate to pass through the portals of this institution. There are many such institutions all over the city and I intend doing a recce in a couple of weeks. Chennai has only handful of such structures - Madras University, Loyola College, Madras Christian College.... What stunned me was the first official communication handed over to me in the corridors of government department when I went calling for the meeting... It is a practical example for the adage one man's fo...

Once again I am finding myself in a new city where I do not have any social contacts. My career has taken to many cities I have never visited before like Kanpur and Patna. Now I am at Jaipur which I have visited as a tourist on a few occassions. We had a family of relatives here until a couple of years back. I have to start social life on a clean slate. As I am getting on in age, I am finding this aspect tougher as years roll by. Jaipur is a clean royal city. The pink city is the old city with the usual problem of narrow roads and congestion. The new city which is growing outside the walled pink city is a sprawling metropolis with wide roads and big parks withsome large palaces and temples too. Starting life all over again is a tough task but the silver lining is new people and new culture one gets to interact with. It also provides e an opportunity to visit other important cities in Rajastan like Jodhpur, Bikaneer, Jaisalmer and Bharatpur. I feel the pace of life would not be unrelent...

I have worked at different locations in India through my career so far. I had fairly long stints at some locations. One thing I have avoided whenever I left an organisation was fairwell get together. It hurts. I moved from Chennai to Jaipur bag baggage three days back ( on 18/09/09 to be precise ). The feelings were different from all the previous occassions. Here I was moving laterally from one location to another 2000 km away with a huge difference. The set up at Chennai started as an one man show an year and half back with me holding fort alone for a month and a half. Two months into action , our team was four strong. We did everything from sending out handwritten envelopes inviting candidates for interviews to receiving the would be associates at bus stations. It was a humbling experience with most of those made an offer not turning up. It bruised our pride and left us wondering how our project would take off. A large pool of us used to operate two laptop computers. Space was a big...

Time magazine brought out a special issue on Michael Jackson. I am not a music buff. That is not to say that I have not listened to songs of MJ. The magazine carried several photos of MJ as a child artiste. The cherubic face and impish smile touched me. A talented person who could have given much more to the world of music and music lovers has made an untimely departure. I wonder whether it would have been of help if some leading personalities of different walks of life tried to persuade MJ to mend his ways so that the music world could be further enriched by his contribution. MJ’s behavior and public interactions have been bizarre for a decade. Part of it could be publicity stunt but major factor had to do something with his personality. There was some insecurity and longing / craving for things we in the public are unable to fathom. But is privacy so important that some well meaning leaders of the society could not have tried to persuade MJ to change himself for better ? Or is it tha...

I am a reasonably good traveller and enjoy travelling. I tend to strike conversation fellow travellers or try reading. I prefer conversation to reading. This post is about waiting at the terminus when the transport vehicle is delayed. Most of the buas stations in India are horrible and waiting for a bus which is delayed is a painful experience. The bus stations are filthy and the eateries in the bus stations and surroundings are of poor quality. Generally there is a lot of litter all around and air is thick with the smell of daily ablution of the floating public. The other two modes of long distance travel are trains and aircrafts. I prefer waiting in a railway station than at an airport though the airports tend to be airconditioned while railway stations are not. Railway stations are cleaner than bus stations and could do better. One can all sorts of people in the railway station. From the porter eagerly waiting for a passenger ladden with goods to station master to a vendor selling p...

When one is bringing up kids, it is often a dilemma when to stop treating them as kids. We have two daughters. Both were friendly as toddlers and had no problem with new faces in the house and public. As a dad I carried them around a lot though my wife used to admonish me for doing this as they started to move from toddlerhood to being kids to childhood. My elder girl was far too heavy for any woman to carry her around by the time she was a year and half old. So I had the sole privilege of carrying her around after this age. Those men who were brave enought to attempt to carry her used to give up in a matter of minutes. Since I am well built, I could carry her around without much effort till she was three years old. As she grew older, those who attempted to lift her just gave up with a sudden loud sigh the way the weight lifters in Olympics give up when the weights are too heavy. My younger girl was of more than adequate weight but not heavy like my elder girl. So she was carried arou...

In our mad rush everyday we forget to enjoy the world around us. We are lost in our thoughts and move without observing things around us. There was a restaurant four blocks away from my residence which used to open till 11 pm. I was late returning home a few days back and decided to grab a quick dinner there . It was around 10 pm when most of the shops had downed the shutters. To my surprise, I could not locate the restaurant. The shop next to the restaurant is an ice cream parlour which was still open. But the restaurant had gone and there was a film processing centre in its place. I would have passed that way umpteen times but I had not notice this change hardly a hundred feet from my residence. My residence is not far from my place of work and I drive along the famous Marina Beach from end to end on my way to office. Recently I stole a glance at the beach and suddenly remembered that it had been several weeks since I had glanced in that direction. Several ships were anchored at sea ...

Indian cities have been growing haphazardly with increasing migration from semi urban and rural areas. Even at the best of times, the civic facilities and infrastructre were nothing to write home about. With huge surge in population and proliferation of urban dwelling in the last couple of decades, what semblence of civic services was there has crumbled. There is dirt and squalor all around. Way back in 1983, I have noticed that certain areas of Mumbai looked rain drenched upto three feet from the ground every morning. It was not due to rain but caused by the morning ablution by masses. The stench was unbearable as the public transport buses would wind through such areas on my travel to my place of work. Besides stench and associated discomfiture, such atmosphere causes low grade year around health problems which could blow into an epidemic like the bubonic plague attack in Surat some years ago. Off and on, I have been keeping track of some efforts on modern grabage disposal in cities ...

One programme on TV I could identify with was Malgudi days. I was told the serial was shot mostly at Arisikkare near Mangalore. This place was strikingly similar to my native village with sandy soil , houses well spaced out with compounds full of coconut trees. Fences made of thorny bamboo branches seperated compounds in our native place. Small openings used to be provided for passage of small animals and creatures like bandicoots and mangoose. Most of the compounds had one or two bamboo cluster at the corners contiguous with the bamboo clusters of the neighbours. These clusters used to provide enough thorny branches for mending / remaking the fences every three years. It was a good example for self sustenance. Making a fence with thorny bamboo branches is not everybody's cup of tea. Certain families of labourers used to specialise in this vocation and they used to have a month's work every year in our and surrounding villages making fences. They were multi skilled and used to ...

Childhood is very different these days. The kind of things kids do and the activities they take part in and the kind of games they play are different from what it was a couple of decades ago. For a person like me who spent childhood nearly four decades ago , the difference is much more. The village atmosphere was charming and being in Kerala, it was verdant as well. I hardly had any toys. The only toy I remember is a red bus made of wood. I used to follow my grandma to the cowshed and the shed where firewood was stacked. I also spent time with her in the vegetable garden patch. Grandma always kept an eye on me when cucumber started sprouting. I used to pluck and eat the tender cucumber and grandma used to scold me. I had the uneviable task of carrying home ashgourd which had a pungent smell. I used to wrap it in a piece of plantain leaf and used to hold it as far away from me as possible. I used to run all over the place in the evening with my friends. We used to play with an improvise...

As a kid, getting my hair cut by our village barber was a painful experience. It took a lot of time and one was forced to sit holding one's head still in certain positions. If one moved, the barber used to give a knock on the head with his knuckle and would change one's head position by a quick jab with his open palm similar to changing manual gear in a car. The barber used to click the scissors incessantly to emanate a chirping chatter in between cutting the hair the way Mumbai bus conductor asks passengers to buy tickets by pressing and releasing the spring loaded ticket punching stapler like handset. The worst aspect of the barber shop experience of yesteryears was the use of machines to get the final close finish around the periphery. This contraption used to pull out hair rather than cut it. Over a period of time, barber shops have become "solution" providers with good ambience. There are a lot of creams to be applied on hair and face and some also provide a impr...

We have high expecations and dreams on academic front even when we send our kids to play school. Some of the most interesting movements of our life have been the first few days of our kids at play school. The elder one Shobha was very reluctant to go to play school when she was around two and half years old. As a dad , I felt bad that kids have to be sent to school at a tender unlike my childhood days when I entered the school on completing five years of age. My wife and mom accompanied Shobha to play school on the first day. She kept looking back at them often as they hung around the campus. The teacher suggested that they should leave the campus and as they were leaving, Shobha started crying loudly. When my wife went to fetch her in the afternoon, she could not find Shobha at a glance .Finally she spotted her in a boy's dress playing on a see-saw. Teacher said Shobha was howling for along while and vomited and the spare dress sent along was used. She vommited once more and she h...

We all talk about how everybody has right to education and access to education. I travel around the country side a lot on work and try to strike conversation with students and youngsters while travelling in public transport. The places I visit could be large cities like Madurai and Coimbatore, medium sized towns like Tanjore and Cuddalore and smaller towns and localities. Of course, I interact with youngsters in Chennai and Delhi. The youngsters studying in English medium in smaller towns do converse in English with a lot of prompting. They are able to convey ideas and matters even if the English is not gramatically correct. One thing common was the general awareness and knowledge of current events decerases as the size of the town decreases. There seems to be a critical density and total population threshold beyond which general awareness and knowledge of current events increase exponentially. The youngsters in smaller towns are not aware of the opportunities and academic streams ava...

I found the first follower of my blog- Thomas Mailainathan ( Jegharaj ) my school mate as well as my college mate. We studied in Madras Christian College School where I was in Malayala medium in 6th and 7th standard and then shifted to English medium. Thomas M was in English medium through out his school days. We were in different sections. I got to know Thomas M in NCC Airwing in 9th standard. We attended a 10 day camp together. The toilet facility at the camp being bad, we used to eat very little food to avoid nature's call. Water was also in short supply and I took bath only twice during the camp. He won a corporal rank in second year of NCC and became a sergeant in third year. Holding a poorer rank , I ended my NCC stint in thea two years. We spent the five years in College of Engineering in the same section. I had met him on a few occassions in early 80s after graduating from college. He did surface through our batch yahoo group. I got to know him better as a famly man and bre...

A strange sounding topic. I could not think of a better caption. Recently , I attended a marriage of a biologically distant relative but personally very close to our family. They are from a poor family of four sons and a daughter with the dad earning his living as a supervisor in a small hotel. The second son , say Mr.X , proved to be exceptionally good in academics but was forced to take up employment in a central government laboratory after a bachelor's degree in chemistry. He published some research papers in German journals. He got a break at an Amercian University in 1976 ( two years after graduation ) as a prominent member of faculty there was on a visit to India and was impressed by Mr.X's work and secured him admission. Mr.X went on to do M S in two subjects and a Ph D in chemistry. He has been a reserach scientist at a leading pharmaceutical company ever since and has completed twenty five years of service. He worked for several years in drug formulation department.Now...

My college batch get together went off very well. It is difficult to know all the members of 300 strong batch. I was one of the least known as I have been away from Chennai for long. Varying degree of wear and tear which is natural as people get on in age also made identification difficult. As a rule, people have gained weight and sported receding hairlines . After all those present made a systematic introduction of who they were and what they were up to which was interspersed with humour, we settled down and had a good time. One could easily make out those who have settled in USA. The unmistakable American drawl made them stand apart. The most interesting part was somebody came up to me and told me that I have grown taller after my college days ! Growing taller after 22 years of age ? It was definitely a question of mistaken identity. I had the unenviable task of giving a pep talk on how to prepare for entrance exam for post graduate management studies. I think I did a good job of i...

We are having a get together of our batch from my College tomorrow.It has been 27 years since we graduated and readers can guess the age of the wards of classmates who are also turning up for the meeting with their parents. In such a crowd, one has to be a bit careful when we recount our escapades and and truant behaviour as youngsters. I have been given an unenviable task. I have been asked to give a pep talk on how to prepare for entrance exams to management institutions. I am not going to deliver a lecture. I am going to interact with the group and prompt them to ask me questions. I have been proud of the fact that I am the only one who made it to the particular management school from 300 batchmates. Now I realise that this pride comes with a price and responsibility. Neverthless I am excited and look forward to the interaction. I have noticed that it is much easier to motivate others' wards. Children seldom listen to their parents !

European Union had brought out a book on the relationship its members have with India and it covered history too. It was amazing to read the variety of vegetables Portugese, who are inverterate sailors , had brought to India. Potato is an essential part of daily food in North India. This was brought to India by Portugese. Again place of origin of potato is not Europe but the home land of Machu Pichu- Peru. Peru has about 2000 varieties of potato some of which are poisonous. Another essential vegetable Indian cuisine has absorbed is onion which again was brought in by Portugese. Some other vegetables which sailed into India are cauliflower, cabbage, pineapple, chillies, tomato and coffee bean. On the topic of India, the food habits differ across the country. The range of cooking oils used is amazing -coconut oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil, rape seed oil, mustard oil... some of the recent additions are cotton seed oil, rice brawn oil, palm oil.... Cottage cheese is popular in North India...

There has been several changes I have been noticing in newspaper content in India over the last three decades. The most striking has been the increasing space given to show business in the main body of newspapers besides the suppliments devoted to cine world. Controversies, film awards, love affairs of cine artistes, their travel plans film festivals taking place all over the world makes it to the newspapers. Academy awards have space of prominence what with "Slumdog millionaire" pushing Academy award ceremony to the front page headlines. Even contents of blogs of film stars have become newsworthy. Hollywood matters have also been gaining prominence in newspapers. Business occupies much more space these days. Of course , businessmen and industrialists have also become newsmakers in daily newspapers. Another recent trend is a number of ranking list coming out in newspapers like most beautiful women, the best dressed men , the best dressed couple, richest people in the world an...

History varies depending upon the narrator's perspective. A number of articles had been written about D Day celebrations - the Normandy landing anniversary affair which has been reduced to a Franco American event with the British occupying the side lines like a kneeling ball boy in the tennis court with Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer slugging it out. Russia, a major player in the Second World War has been totally side lined by the Western World. United Nations itself has estimated that Russia lost 13.6 million soldiers - sixteen times higher than the combined losses of the US, UK and France put together. Churchill had gone record in his memoirs stating that a major reason for France -UK - USA combined landing in Normandy was to halt the Russian Army as much to the East as possible. Russia would have got the better of Germany without help of US- UK combine. There has been attempts in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania recently to portray Russia as the aggressor and occupier instead of Na...

After spawning new terms and expressions like outsourcing, offshoring , knowledge management etc IT industry has moved on to greener pastures on language front. Recently a software major sent good number of their employees into virtual pool. Unlike a swimming pool, this pool does not leave the occupants wet but they feel left out in the cold. I assumed that virtual pool must be barren but I was mistaken. A recent report from this software major mentioned that the employees in virtual pool were seated on virtual benches. A lot of investment in terms of thought process has gone into create the virtual pool and associated infrastructure . Who knows, creating such virtual infrastructure could be the next " big bang" opportunity. A report says that Lear's macaw ( named after poet and artist Edward Lear ) which faced extinction in Brazil has moved from "list of critically endangered species " to "list of endangered species". The report also mentions that ...

Way back in December 1990, my parents joined me at Kolkata to attend a wedding in my sister's in-laws family. My marriage was slated to take place in March 1991. My parents were in a hurry to go back to Kochi to attend another wedding but I persuaded them to stay on. I requested to return on the earliest date confirmed tickets were available on the direct train. As a result I could enjoy their company for four weeks. I used to go for long walks with my dad around the lakes of South Kolkata . We used to walk at a rapid pace ( I still do ! ) and one of my colleagues who had seen us from a distance could not believe that it was my dad who was giving me company. Not only was he very fit, he had a youngish look about him with a mane of thick hair. Little did I know that these were the last few days I would spend in his company. His sudden demise in late January 1991 of a cardiac arrest came as a bomb shell. Death of beloved one very close to the schedule for my marriage left us rat...

I have two daughters who are full of verve and energy. The elder one talks incessantly while the younger one though a good conversationalist is more circumspect. My wife and my mom complete my family. There is never a dull moment in the family. Being the only male member, I feel the pressure for my attention and time. Kids keep complaining that I do not pay enough attention to them. My wife says that all my attention is on my kids. Mom's voice is lost in the wilderness. I enjoy each and every minute with my family. An year and half ago, I took up a "challenging" assignment which has forced me to stay away from the family. Chennai where I work and Delhi where my family stays is far away and I can not afford to travel frequently. The implementation of the project I am working on kept me busy and engaged for an year. The ful fledged office is functioning smoothly and now life has become very boring. I do not know what to do with myself after office hours. I bought several bo...

Unity in diversity is a thing which we Indians are proud of. While unity is laudable, diversity has to be catered to while introducing interventions for improvement and economic development. Look around the world.There are very few countries which are bigger than our states. These countries are China, USA, Indonesia and Russia. Many countries in Africa and Europe are like states in our country. As for developed nations, but for USA, all others have a population of 100 million or less. It is evident that economic development intervention has to be different for different geographic clusters like North, Hill states, North East, East, Central etc. Rise in popularity of regional parties have to do with diversity of development requirement ( to put it another way, skewed development achieved so far ) besides lingustic / regional likings. What is required is political will and sagacity. How does one achieve this when number game is important in formation of government. May be the cacophony i...

Spelling has been my bugbear on emails. I cursorily glance over what I have typed. Psychologically we tend to see what we meant overlooking glaring spelling mistakes. That brings me to the recent report on commonly misspelt words in English in UK. This study was done based on a survey of 5000 people from different walks of life. The most misspelt word is ' definitely '. Most people were confused whether an i or a followed f. The second place went to 'sacrilegious' which left people confused about whether it was an e or i in the middle. The next place went to "indict" which was misspelt as "indite". The descending order upto tenth place are 'manoeuvre', 'broccoli', 'phlegm', 'prejudice','concensus' and 'unnecessary'. Words like 'supersede' , 'connoisseur' and 'particularly' figured high in the list. I have a habit of misspelling habit as habbit ! This makes me a rabbit in spelling...

We were 174 students in our batch at IIMA. We were drawn from various parts of the country with diverse social and acaedmic backgroud. Going by theory of probability, chances 0f two batchmates sharing the same birthday is low and gets lower for three batchmates to have the same birthday. Sometimes theory of probability is rendered a chance event ! Jasmeet Kaur and VC Nadarajan share my birthday. Mind you Mathematics and Statistics for Management course at IIM was not my favourite subject. May be our birthdays want to cock a snook at this subject.

Today- 19/06- it is my birthday. I started celebrating birthdays after my marriage. Birthdays as per date of birth was not celebrated in my family. The star birthday ( one of the 26 stars ) was observed by elders by some offerings in the temple. The star birth day and date of birth coincide once in 18/19 years. There was a narrow miss this time around. My star birthday was on 18/06 and my mom reminded me after verifying the same from a vernacular calendar. My kids called to wish me this morning. For a decade and half now, my birthday has been a birthday of “left overs”. My elder daughter was born on 18/06 and we celebrate her birthday with gusto. As a result, there is a heap of garbage to clear and bits and pieces of all sorts of eatables left over which herald my birthday. Transition from a family atmosphere where no anniversaries are celebrated to an era of celebration after wedlock has not been difficult. I have not missed my better half’s birthday and our marriage anniversary. I su...

Summer holidays for kids are different these days. Besides braving the hot sun, parents have to face the heat of "holiday homework" of their children. As kids we have spent time with gay abandon in summer break. We never used to read any books and never wrote anything significant. It used to take a couple of weeks to get back handwriting rhythm after school reopening. As parents, our time is spent in carting our kids from some activity to another activity during summer break. What little spare time available is spent in "doing" holiday home work. Most of the topics are beyond the comprehension of our kids. I have started dreading any long school break of our kids One way of keeping our brain young is to do new things. This is the main benefit from "holiday homework " !

Untouchability and caste divide continue to plague our nation even in the twenty first century. Reports on religious atrocities and caste problems are common place. We have a long way to go to achieve equality amongst all citizens of the society. I have not read our epic Mahabharata thoroughly. But caste feelings are evident in this epic. Birth of Pandu and Dhritharashtra are examples of caste prejudice. Most of the off springs born of wedlock of people from different background in this epic were "kinky" characters and were looked down up on. Even Karna suffered discrimination and humiliation by Pandavas as he was the adopted child of a charioteer. Most Indians have grown up listening to stories from Mahabharata. How are we going to get rid of the scourge of castism and untouchability which has been deeply ingrained in our psyche for generations ?

The kind of questions kids come up with are amusing. Lack of prior knowledge and absence of self doubt amongst children helps. I am recounting couple of questions my younger daughter Sandhya came up with couple of years ago. She was watching a programme on National Geographic describing the social behaviour of gorillas. The narrator said that a gorilla kid is in the care of mother till it is three years old and then moves away on its own. Sandhya had a serious question:" Dad, Who will tell the gorilla kid that it's third birthday ? " Another gem- we were travelling in Rajastan and we visited a temple. My better half prayed. Sandhya wanted to know what her mother asked for and in which language she prayed. My wife told her that her prayer was in Tamil. Sandhya was at a loss not able to understand how a deity in Rajastan would undertstand a prayer in Tamil ! I intervened and told her that my wife's prayer would have landed at a BPO at Bangalore who would translate her ...