Veni!, Vidi!, Vici! without any Ad ostentationem!

Yusuf Dikec is a household name today, thanks to social media that made him viral. The ‘virality’ on social media eclipses the essence of the coveted silver medal at the Olympics 'he' won, that every sports person aspires for in life.

But wait a minute… Did he win this medal alone? No! He was a part of the mixed team 10-meter air pistol shooting event. This was a Team sport and only his image & name went this viral, I wish to present before you the name of his team mate no one knows, or rather the less 'virtually' popular,  Sevval Ilayda Tarhan who is nonexistent in the entire narrative. Had Sevval performed badly would he have been on the Silver podium? NO! is my emphatic answer, and had he not been part of the silver winning team, would his image have gone viral with messages of motivation like ‘Success doesn’t come with your hands in your pockets’ tagged along with it? That’s another emphatic NO!!! Incidentally, Sevval also shot with her hand in her pocket!!!!

This image for me gives multiple messages of relevance to each and every one of us, be it in our personal or professional lives. Social Media takes bits and pieces of the life around us that we project and amplifies to an extent that people around get mesmerized by the ‘now’ image and do not look into the so called behind the scenes or do a fact check on those events or images. This is a rather dangerous trend irrespective of the context we apply it in.

In the professional context this is akin to a Manager over shadowing his best performing employee from being part of the success story, also from the now all-important inclusivity angle, was that not a sidelining of the contribution of a woman in the success that got them the silver? Her only fault was, Unlike Dikec, she was competing with large ear defenders, a visor, as well as braids in the red and white colors of the Turkish flag. She was shooting with one hand in her pocket, too.

His one hand in pocket image portrayed nonchalance and confidence and inspired people the world over to be like him, while her show of patriotism towards the country with braided hair in Turkeye’s national flag colours and her large ear defenders (Dikec was wearing ear plugs) and a protective visor (Dikec was wearing a glass, the power of which we know not) cost her the moment of glory in the virtual world of virality even though she was an equal contributor to the first ever silver medal in Shooting for Turkiye. Sadly, Sevval Ilayda Tarhan’s hand in pocket image did not gain the same traction, the male shooter got? Wasn’t that nonchalance? Was that not Confidence? Dikec has been competing in the Olympics since 2008 and has never won a medal, so where was his nonchalance then? Where was his confidence then?

In the Corporate world too, akin to a team sport, the main contributor / player, Manager or even the team / company is only as good as his / her / its team.  In the personal world the so-called influencers send a multitude of naïve children, youth and even grown-ups to pursue the path of attaining virality on social media without really understanding the real not reel story behind the scene. The story is always longer than a scene or the reel and unfortunately given the pandemic like attention deficit all possess today it is very difficult to inculcate the virtues of patience in people to understand the essence or the real story behind the events happening around us.

Talking about inclusivity when you google up Yusuf’s name most of the searches return questions like Did “he” win a medal?  And the results that throw up are “He” won a medal when the actual reply should have been “They” won a medal, as it was mixed sport and he won it because of her! In this era of pronoun sensitive prose this is an unpardonable and glaring error.

Dekic might have Veni! Vidi! Vici! the virtual world!

Sevval not only Veni! Vidi! Vici! but also helped her country in walking away with the silver medal without any Ad ostentationem!

FOMO on a Silver Jubilee!

Finally, yours truly now has something more silver to look forward too than just the silverware at home or a scanty silver haired cranium.

We touched our Silver Jubilee as wedded husband and wife. 25 years back, falls under the prehistoric era in the evolution timeline of the so-called Big fat Indian weddings. Those days the weddings were neither fat nor were the bride and the groom, they looked famished by the end of the wedding ceremony, and with no Toni or Guy around to make us look like a Bollywood hero or heroine and we also did not have the right lighting to make us look fairer than we claimed in our matrimonial ads.

To reminisce the day, I had a glance at our Wedding Album after ages... Was shocked to see, I had been devoured from the cover page of the album by other inmates who co inhabited with us the last 25 Years. Wondered why only I was taken apart while my wife was still smiling, consoled myself saying I must have been the sweeter of the two! When I saw a copy of the same picture, I realized I was all sweaty, famished and glaring without any emotions and the photographer then did not have the tools nor the skills to make me look otherwise... The insect inmates must have mistaken me to be glaring at them and devoured me to glory.

The entire ceremonial affair was done and over with in less than 72 hours, and I’m talking about the engagement, marriage and in some cases even meeting the girl / boy for the first time. The closest I got to the Sangeeth ceremony of today was when the cab driver of the car I was travelling in for my engagement churned out a creaky version of Congratulations and Celebrations from his archaic car stereo!!!!

Less talked about the photo shoots of the days the better. It was more like a shoot at sight for me. May 18^th in Madras is like being barbecued and here comes the photographer with super bright lights at my face, the heat from which literally tanned me and took the sheen out of the efforts I had put in to look fairer the previous evening.

The staple menu in almost all weddings was, a Biriyani followed by a scoop of vanilla ice cream and if you are lucky they would throw in a few pieces of fruits of the season and viola you had a fruit salad too.

Fast forward to today, The Indian wedding industry is a 159 Billion Dollar industry, starting from hiring the likes of a globe-trotting Seema Taparia for your match making which technically was a freelance activity for your neighborhood aunties then, to date nights that cost a bomb now which were limited to samosa cut in two and a cutting chai then. Not to forget the tribe of Wedding Planners who would go any length to ensure you were shot from tree tops or underwater, bedeck your venue with Tulips from Keukenhof, Michelin Star Chefs would be dishing out the choicest Foie gras and Sushi and finally not to forget the designer wear that might look good at Met Gala events but not quite designed for Madras Kathri in May.  Ah and not to antagonize the senior citizens of the household, add a dash of tradition too into this cacophony with the likes of Mehendi and a Haldi ceremony which is a fixture, irrespective of the cast or creed you belong too, they would justify it saying after all turmeric is just an anti-oxidant. Mind you, this trend is not just confined to the ultra-high net worth strata but has trickled down to the middle and lower middle-class India too, albeit in a marginally scaled down fashion.

The latest addition to destination wedding is in a space capsule and to add salt to the wound it was announced on 18^th May 2023 exactly 25 years after I got married. You can have up to 8 guests in the capsule that will take you 100,000ft above poor Earth and will also feature a play list, my guess is that Stairway to Heaven would feature in them and how much more literally closer can you to get to the old adage “Marriages are made in Heaven”, but the Indian version says for it to last, it should be written in the stars. So, all you folks who are going up there please read the script on the stars as well and pray that it lasts on humble earth too.

As we celebrate our Silver Jubilee, I am going through a sense of FOMO (Frustration Of having Missed Out) on all of the above. I want to shake a leg, but cannot, as the knees are creaking, had hair then but no stylist or a head spa, designer wear these days come only in slim & super slim sizes and on the best days I can fit just about an arm into these shirts, the closest I get to haldi is in our kitchen while cooking and no drone photo shoots from tree tops for me, else they will capture a barren head. Wish I was born 25 years later!!! Having said that, I still cherish going through those moth-eaten photographs in my wedding album and vividly remember every guest who came on stage (and the gift he / she gave me). I can vouch, this joy, no wedding planner or a big fat wedding can give.  

Here’s Wishing my wife of 25 years all patience and strength with help from all Gods & Stars to endure another 25 with this annoying man!!! 

BOT (Bought) me not!

The buzz around the new BOT on the Tech block was making me go crazy, and I decided I will join the bandwagon too. Google will be out of business someone mentioned, while another said education is going to become redundant, well the thing about education becoming redundant had little effect on me as I had already used and misused what was taught at school and work and hardly had another decade of effective working life ahead of me and realized education cannot get me far anymore. Then someone said writers are going to be extinct as the new kid can write Prose and poetry with poise. Now, that hit me and I had to take a quick call and write a Requiem for my Blog. RIP Writers and bloggers, I told myself.

The doubting Thomas in me still refused to believe and buy into the idea that a couple of chips, wires, waves and cryptic codes could invade and hijack my thought process and creativity. After all we are “The Creation” isn’t it? And the new kid is just our creation.

So, armed with a user name and password I decided to confront the new Frankenstein in the room out to destroy the creativity of mankind. The gladiator in me walked into the coliseum to take on the massless but artificially intelligent rival!

Will a writer become redundant now that AI can write poetry and prose with ease? I asked

The speed at which it/he/she/they replied amazed me. I heaved a sigh of relief as I read the contents with bated breath...Relieved I was!

The new kid ChatGPT surrendered saying it can only generate text and acknowledged the fact that it does not have the same level of creativity, nuance and emotional depth as human writers and will not be able to bring the cultural context that a human writer can bring to text.

I have posted the complete transcript at the end of this blog. But what impressed me was the humility with which ChatGPT acknowledged its limitations. I totally admire the quality and speed at which technology surprises us every day. However, we humans are gifted with a power unique to us when compared to other living species that inhabits the universe. It is the power of discernment, which is also considered a virtue, decision making with discernment involves both the heart and the mind. Discernment is an important tool in Management, Personal life, and even Technological decision making.

ChatGPT might have an edge over us in the head part of decision making as our brains are wired in a complex way which can, to a certain extent be replicated outside the boundaries of the skull. But, the way of the heart is out of bounds to tech yet, except for the fact that tech can keep it oiled and working for just a while and not more.

Chat GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer and as the name suggests it is Pre-trained and it needs a trainer, that is us, to transform our queries/prompts. I’m not a naysayer of Tech and hope that it goes on to add value to human existence, but with the same humility that ChatGPT exhibited to my query I should admit that 'THE CREATION', that we are, happen to be far ahead of anything we create.

So, our 1000+grams of grey matter, any day will outclass the creation of latest chips, waves, codes and wires

Now for the fun part!!! Please find below the transcript of my interaction with ChatGPT

My Prompt: Will a writer become redundant now that AI can write poetry and prose with ease?

Artificial intelligence (AI) can generate text, such as poetry and prose, using a variety of techniques, but it does not mean that human writers will become redundant. While AI can generate text that may be grammatically correct and coherent, it does not have the same level of creativity, nuance, and emotional depth as human writers.

AI-generated text is based on patterns and trends found in existing text data, and it can produce results that are impressive in terms of its technical capabilities, but it lacks the ability to understand the human experience, emotions, and the cultural context that a human writer can bring to the text.

Additionally, the creative process of writing is not just about producing text, but also about exploring and understanding the world, expressing oneself and connecting with others. For many writers, the act of writing is a form of self-expression and personal exploration, which is not something that can be replicated by AI.

Moreover, as technology advances, so too do the expectations of readers. They are becoming more sophisticated and discerning, and they expect to be engaged in a way that is hard for AI-generated texts to match.

In conclusion, while AI can generate text, it does not replace the role of human writers. Human writers bring creativity, emotional depth, and cultural context to their writing that AI cannot replicate. The role of human writers will continue to be important in literature, journalism, and all forms of written communication.

The Happiness Paradigm

I have just rung in the New Year... But, given all the new age hype about living in the ‘now’ and not worrying on the morrow or not dwelling on one’s past, I was wondering if dwelling on the past is as bad as it is made out to be. Dreaming / planning about the future, may be yes. The past teaches you lessons and shows you the path not to take, while dreaming of the future only helps in aspiring and planning for the future, a future that can be offset by events we have no control over. So, my two cents would be to embrace the past, use the experience, tend the bruises from the falls and learnings and learn to live in the now.  

As one rings in the new year we are being flooded with Happy New Year messages digitally every other minute. Images, GIFs, videos, memes and what not... ‘Happy’ in the Happy New year seems to be an abused adjective. Circa 2022 was a year of mixed emotions for me, more biased on the side of sorrow than the joys. Lost a dear cousin at an age I shouldn’t be losing him. The gurus of happiness say cliched stuff like happiness is a choice and one choose to be happy and all. I totally disagree with that.  Did his family or me have a choice to be happy when he left us on a Friday evening? No, Not all. Happiness is not an individual perception, Happiness cannot be a choice, Happiness is a state of mind heavily influenced by the past and present events. One can be unhappy or happy thinking about the past, one can be happy or unhappy thinking about the present, but one can never be happy or unhappy thinking about the future.

So, wishing someone a Happy New Year is just a cliché and means nothing. New Year greetings should be changed to Wishing one a New Year with whatever it has to offer you! Offended? Call me a pessimist or whatever, why should I be an Optimist when it comes to happiness? How can I decide on the unknown as defined by the Latin root of Optimist, Optimus which means it is not only good or better but the best, that is utter rubbish, it might soothe my senses but rationally I do not know if the future holds the best or worst for me? 

We live in a world today that says data is king. Can someone confidently tell me with the assistance of AI and all the data over the last 2022 years that you can confidently predict a Happy New Year to the 8 Billion plus people around the globe.

So, Here’s Wishing you all a Year filled with 365 ‘Nows’, How the ‘Now’ will turn out to be, neither You nor I know. Take the experience from the past in your stride, buckle up and ride the roller coaster of life in the present!  Unbuckle as you reach the destination and be ready to buckle up after another365 nows.

Future can only be understood when the Future becomes the Now!!!

...and the final whistle is here!

 The final whistle of the FIFA 2022 is just less than 8 hours and with the end of another year in 12 days, I thought It would be best to end my rather inconsistent blogging year with my views on the World cup and the bon-homie around it, as I had the fortune of living in the host country and be part of the festivities first hand.

From the time, the State of Qatar won the rights to win the World Cup on 2^nd December 2010, I have been fortunate to have played a small part in the related infrastructure works starting from the City that is hosting the finals, the Stadiums and the Drainage networks around the country, it gives me a sense of joy and pride to have been part of this history.

Though not an ardent football fan, I tend to follow only the World cups and the earliest in memory is the 1986 World Cup in Mexico which was famous for the wrong reasons with Diego Maradona’s Hand of God becoming more famous than God gifted feet of his. I was 14 when that happened and here I am 36 years later watching it with my daughter all of 14, as World Cup unfolds in front of her. I followed a world cup on paper while she was fortunate to actually watch it live. Football or for that matter any sport has evolved greatly over this period of 3.5 decades and had there been a VAR then, Argentina might not have qualified and gone on to win the world cup. That was a period when God played a hand and technology was not around, but in my opinion, technology brought in that unwanted perfection to sports.

My knowledge of football continues to be pathetic so much so that if they call an offside now, I am immediately reminded of how brilliant Vishwanath & Ganguly were on their offsides while it is scorned upon in Football. Its not that I love football less but I love cricket more.

As someone who witnessed this from close quarters I can say this was a seamlessly organized World Cup with close to 25K volunteers of diverse nationalities putting in their heart and soul with a smile to welcome the world to Qatar. I am no FIFA guru to compare it with the rest of the World Cups but from a resident, and an unbiased spectator point of view I can say the organizers did not leave a stone unturned.

As in any GCC country the Indian population which is a predominant one, found itself in the thick of things and this was the first time a World Cup happened closest to the Indian Subcontinent, the time difference being a mere 2.5 hours.  The majority of the Indian diaspora come from Kerala which unlike the rest of India love their football. Can’t blame them as the state’s only notable contribution to Indian cricket has been the fiery Sreesanth and the constantly fired but always fired up Sanju Samson. Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar and even some of the un-pronounceable Croatian & Polish players were worshipped as Gods in Kerala, some went under water with a hoarding of Messi, some prayed for him in institutions cutting across the sensitive religious divisions. The Keralite fans sporting the favourite team jerseys outnumbered and out voiced the native Brazilians and Argentinians and luckily their jerseys were not the ‘Besharam Rang’ (thankfully Netherlands were ousted in the Semis!). Though there was an entourage of Bollywood and Mollywood Celebrities including Deepika Padukone who will unveil the World Cup later today, I am hopeful someday a country of 1.3 billion people produce 11 Mbappés to pose an Indian challenge in the World of Football, and graduate from being just super fans to players to watch out for. Waiting for the 1983 moment in Indian Football!

As the curtains come down on the month long festivities in my adopted city, I can vouch that this has been a truly inclusive and the most diverse world cup, but at the same time one which glaringly highlighted a deepening East-West divide.

No country or region can claim the right to a sport. Cricket is a testimony to that. A sport has no boundaries, only rules. Anyone who is skillful enough and can play by the rules can claim the sport to be his/her/their own too. As the FIFA Qatar 2022 tagline goes Now is all...I certainly believe Now is just the beginning to all. Mexico / America / Canada are all set to host the next World Cup in 2026, from the diversity point of view I believe you will see Tacos, McDonalds and I don’t know much about Canada, just like the visitors knowledge was limited to Shawarmas in Qatar. No offense to any one from those three countries, my excuse is that I am as ignorant as you folks there in the west when it comes to the knowledge of Geography and culture on the other side of the world.

Sick Lit

Not to be confused with Chick Lit which was a genre in writing in the late 90’s early 2000’s and was popular fiction targeting Young women and hence it took a Sexist turn and I do not want to even tread that path within 72 Hours of celebrating the International Women’s day.

Sick Lit can be more interpreted as Sick Literary sense exhibited by a tribe, but then again, I would be branded a stereo typist if I call them a tribe. Stereo typist is not related to listening to the Stereo and Typing.... a bad Dad Joke is what they will call it, Wish I could understand the Gen Z language to call it good or bad.

This is an effort to compile a ready reckoner to all parents of Gen Z to understand their language and effectively communicate with them. This language sounds like a hybrid born out of the collaboration of the escapees of the Tower of Babel and illiterate native English Speakers.

So, brace yourself for the crash course and I will be around to pick you up from the crash.

Sick: Sick is no longer the sick you and I knew about, it is so good that its sick. Got it? No? Don’t Worry Neither have I, but simply follow the tribe.

Vibes: Every experience these days is prefixed or suffixed with vibes. So much so, that a humble Vegetarian joint with such a spiritual name like Kailash Parbhat have suffixed their name with Vibes to christen one of their outlets. Wonder what Vibes Kailash would give one? Vibe is a short for Vibration which is a huge topic on its own delving into resonance and natural frequency etc. I’m yet to tune into their frequency and resonate with the vibes.

Bae: Before Anyone Else is what it stands for...Unfortunately a friend who eats my daughters’ lunch at school comes before her parents who manage to pay her fees BLD (Before the Last Date). I made it up, If they can so can I. You will see many more of mine at the end.

Drip: Being in the Pump industry for over 2 decades the first thing that comes to my mind is Drip Irrigation, sadly if I wear a dapper jacket they say Drip, Drip and I end up looking down to check if I’m suffering from some bladder incontinence. I later came to know Drip meant I was looking cool in my jacket.

Dope: Hahaha...I know what you thought, that’s not what it is. Dope is a close cousin of Drip, they mean you are way too cool. Those days it used to mean cool and high...Now the altitude is gone only attitude remains.

IYKYK: This is brilliant, it’s an abbreviation for If You Know, You Know. Wish I knew what you know anyway what You and I know is no great know how. I’m happy that they did not abbreviate it as IUNUN, they sure know how to spell You & Know, Else It would have been an I followed by 2 UN’s...Sadly even 1 UN is powerless today.

Fam: They hardly need their Family these days but address their friends as Fam. The fam stays with them while the Family is too long and boring to stay close.

No Cap: Honestly all what I wrote above was true...No Cap, I wasn’t lying. With or without a cap one can lie. Wonder, how this came about.

Lit: We belong to a Christian Denomination called the Mar Thoma Church. The motto of the Church is Lighted to Lighten. Today the Gen Z uses Lit to express anything and everything that is amazing or brilliant. Wish, I get to see a day when our Gen Z kids would say the Church is Lit!!!

And finally, my favourite

YOLO: You Only Live Once, they live like there is no tomorrow. My worry is that if they see through the once and are still around to see the morrow they might not have enough to live YCLTT....You Can Live Twice too!!! So, in order to prepare them I coined, SYBAO (Slog Your Bloody Ass Off) If you want to YOLO

So, people be kind to me and post your comment below and please don't forget to say how Sick this blog was!

Meta, Delta, Crypto, Deivam!

 Oh, My Cron...Sorry! meant to type Oh My God and auto correct prompted it to Oh My Cron. The title of the blog and the blog itself is inspired by the hierarchical people to be revered in life, which is imbibed in Indian traditional values which goes thus, Maatha (Mother), Pitha (Father), Guru (Teacher), Deivam (God)

The title kind of sums up the journey each one of the inhabitants of planet Earth went through the last year. I will try and present my perspectives from the New Normal Point of view here. Not necessarily in the same order as the traditional one.

Delta: I slowed down on my blogs after I wrote two on the Covid19 virus and then felt that this was becoming monotonous and there was nothing else interesting going around to write about. Since then Covid 19 has moved on to 20, 21 and 22 versions eclipsing the likes of Windows, iPhone and Samsung launches and, in the process, taking along with it half a dozen Greek alphabets too, at least the names of the virus took us back to some elementary high school algebra. Waiting for versions named after Fourier and Laplace, guess they have reserved that for more severe mutants. As the virus continues to hold us at where it matters the most, humankind (to be gender neutral) has been brought to its knees praying to God.

Meta: As Delta was raging and reigning over the world there came along another Greek alphabet to establish absolute supremacy over humankind. This time it was man made, and there was no ambiguity on the origins of this unlike the Delta. Meta promised unparalleled joy and experience. An avatar we could take and express and enjoy ourselves and yet do not be ourselves at the same time. As it is, I’m yet to understand the difference between a Story and a STORY and Reel and REAL, for me story was all about emotions, the truth and real flesh blood experiences and even if it was a fictitious one it was well within my realm of imagination. Unfortunately, the stories of today are so ephemeral and make believe and false smiles and laughs and those that ‘influence’ you and others around. The meters and meters of reels were rolled around several spools to create magic that captured emotions. Today a 30 Second snapshots of 100’s of images whizz past you that you almost go blind or a twirl or even a laugh is a reel and they garner more attention than the real-life stories around. Stories of people, passion, poverty, purpose, they all go unnoticed. What I realized was that they wanted the aesthetics of the yesteryears to narrate the stories in 30 seconds...A filter that is most popular is the old grainy VCR filter with the date and time covering half the screen.

Crypto:

a combining form meaning “hidden,” “not perceived immediately or with certainty” 

As the definition of the term goes it is not perceived immediately or with certainty. I am no authority on this. But people say it’s the next big thing in the Digital Financial world. Move over equities, bonds, derivative and the likes, the big boys of the town are here. The real reels to rake in money are through cryptos. To know less about it and how confused I am, you can read a blog I wrote a while back here about a close cousin of Crypto called NFT. Rightly so, the Greek root to it means Hidden.

So, after we have revered the Meta, that means transcending (to what, we are yet to figure) and Delta that is simply shaped like a triangle and denotes a difference mathematically and to Crypto that means hidden, life has been all Greek and less of Latin which means we have understood it partially. Sadly, Crypto takes the place of the ‘Guru’ in the traditional hierarchy, Unlike the Crypto, a Guru knows all and shares all and does not hide anything.

Now finally it’s only the ‘Deivam’ part of the traditional Indian value Hierarchy that has not found a replacement yet. It might / cannot be replaced by the antecedents in the original version but in the new normal version each of them is trying to be the ‘Deivam’ or the God. Meta plays God that promises happiness and joy in a Virtual world. The Delta happened because someone tried playing God the creator and Crypto is the hidden God of wealth. Irrespective of the caste, creed, religion or region one is from, there is one power above us all that make us what we are collectively, Human.

As a wise man once said....” We might not know what the future holds for us, but we sure know WHO holds the future!”

Wishing Your Families & You a Blessed Year filled with Good Health (sans the influencing ‘STORIES’) and Happiness in real life (without the help of Meta)V

The Star who saw Stars!

 A fleeting glimpse of an elderly couple desperately trying to peep through the cracked open gates of the infamous Arthur Road prison just minutes after Body guards with packs in multiples of six swooped a celebrity kid (kid? No, not anymore, but will refer to him as that throughout this piece due to his naivety) from the very gate into a swanky shiny Range Rover made me write this piece. Fortunately, that image just caught my eye for a fraction of a second as the byte hungry media vultures were packing up and getting ready for their flight to keep pace with the horsepower of the Turbo Charged Range Rover.

Now, let me make it clear, this is not about taking a stand on the case and analyzing the rights and the wrongs, this is just a rant on the two malaises that haunts the Indian society, the Judicial system and the celebrity sycophancy. The rate at which the celebrities are being pulled up for drugs and other related offences, it makes sense to open an Arthur Road Annex in Bandra or Juhu as that would spare the commoners using the Artur Road and the infamous prison the inconvenience of road blockades etc.

Call it vendetta, targeting, framed, stereo typing etc. I believe in the old adage there is no smoke without fire, pun not intended, as these days you don’t need a smoke to create that ecstatic fire. It’s a fact that he was picked up under suspicious circumstances and was in jail for a good 28 days. Given the power and money involved, had it been a framed event it would have been exposed much earlier. But again, if the framing was as good as Plan B of ‘Casa De Papal’ then I have no arguments nor did the former Attorney General for two full days. I’m not sure I can call it a travesty of justice as the matter is Sub-judice. If it was a mistake to call it that, I hereby render my unconditional apology as I cannot afford the former Attorney General to bail me out. It is here, that my heart goes out for the elderly couple at the gate of the Arthur Road Prison. I just hope and pray whoever they were waiting for and whatever their crime was, he or she was out to celebrate the festive season with them today. Hopefully Justitia’s  (Lady Justice) Blind fold has not gone loose nor have the scales tipped due to the winds of change!

Heart goes out to the father, for whom I have huge respects, as someone who made it on his own in an industry flush with nepotism and familial rights. He was truly an embodiment of the great Indian middle-class common man making it big in the glitzy world of Bollywood. His affluence to get his son temporarily out of legal trouble might not compensate for the pain he might go through at the guilt of having been partly responsible for it to happen.  Sadly, the father fell into the trap like many middle-class parents of his generation, and it was very evident from the interview he gave when his son was hardly 3. He did mention a lot of things in jest, that are being attributed to the situation his son has found himself. However, I will definitely not concur to those nor hold that interview against him, as some are doing today. But will certainly hold him responsible for one statement he made in that interview. ‘He should do everything I have not done!’, this is one statement from a parent that spells doom for many a kid of this generation.

If this case can become a case study on parenting irrespective of, if you are a celebrity or not, the one statement you should refrain from when bringing up your children is “He or she have/should do everything I did not have / have not done”.

The celebrity sycophancy is another malaise that needs to be dealt with in this case. We had Bollywood divided right at the middle on this case. Virtually vociferous statements of support from people appearing ‘close’ to the celebrity, followed by a few journalists and media houses who rode on the closeness to the celebrity went all out. The noise was, as deafening as the silence from the other half which included the erstwhile Kandhans of Bollywood (not to be mistaken with the Khan-dhans of Bollywood who came out in full support) who refrained from making a statement / tweet of support of the celebrity.

I just hope and pray as the kid made his way back home, the name of which meant a Solemn Vow or a Pledge, made a vow / pledge himself sitting on the leather upholstered seats propelled by an 8 Cylinder engine to not to let his offspring have or do what he did not.

While the intention of the statement from a parent might be good, the execution of that will is not in their hands, just as it was not in the hands of the Super star father who saw stars before he saw his soon-to-be star son after an entire Lunar Cycle of 28 days.

A celestial disorder of sorts!

The Lost art of Public Speaking

 

Public speaking was one art that had the power to stoke revolutions, create nations and also transform people. Sadly, this art like many other yester year artforms is going through a disruptive phase. Disruption is the buzz word these days and those who refuse to be disrupted will fall by the way side. 

 Today public speaking is taught as a skill in schools, and by Life Coaches, Communication gurus, 100-Year-old Non-Profit Organizations etc.  But has the essence of good public speaking been diluted overtime? Content and Language were the quintessential elements that went on to do all things mentioned in the first line of this blog.

Unfortunately, today content and language has been replaced by histrionics and drama and the speeches have been diluted to glorified mono acts on stage. We were taught the importance of the stage dimensions, gesticulations, modulation of our voices and emotional expressions. But all these acts were done only when absolutely necessary and only when the content, the timing of the content and the language warranted it.  

In a good speech the emotions and the drama came from within the deliverer spontaneously, while today the emotions, voice modulation and drama are being practiced during the run up to a speech. Drama was confined only to declamations in those days where one needed to enact the Protagonist of the speech and not just deliver the passage. Growing up I was fortunate to witness some great declamations, a few gems I still remember for the quality of deliverance was a rendering of Francisco's Money is the Root of all evil from Atlas Shrugged, and Shylock addressing Antonio in the infamous Pound of Flesh court scene in Merchant of Venice by acclaimed speakers of my era. The associated drama was a pleasure to watch. Not when a 12-year-old is delivering a Speech on Gandhi on his Birthday, voice modulation yes but no histrionics please as the subject/topic does not warrant it.

We take pride in our knowledge of English and wore our vocabulary skills up our sleeves. We were taught young to pronounce words correctly and write the cursives neatly. The post Industry 3.0 and Satellite television era with exposure to western sitcoms Indians started to imitate the western accent. Children took on from Pokemon, Spiderman and the likes, Teenagers from romcoms, MTV and VTV, desperate housewives from Desperate Housewives and the working executives from Bloomberg, CNN and BBC.

The emergence of BPO’s and Call centers legalized this new found love for western accents and that rubbed on to the Gen Z and their public speaking adventures. So today if you attend a Speech competition you see histrionics, mono act delivered with a borrowed accent swallowing the Ts’ and R’s in the process, just that the native accents make its appearance frequently like the intruders from across the borders. If the topic is humor throw in some clownery too with the rest.

I am no great orator myself, but my advice to thousands of speaking coaches / gurus out there involved in creating a tribe of good speakers, please train them up as speakers who can research and write well on a topic, deliver it with passion not drama, let them pace the stage in a measured way and not run or jump around the stage and for heaven’s sake they don’t need cardboard boats, swords and other paraphernalia  as props to get their message across. Forgive them if they do not pronounce a word right, as long as they can spell it right they are all good. A well delivered speech should stay in the minds of the listener much after they leave the auditorium and the two declamations I mentioned above were heard 31 years back.

These days I get to hear the great ‘I have a Dream’ speech delivered in multiple styles, and soon after, I have Nightmares!!!

What if Rodin’s The Thinker was just a Thought?

This blog is a requiem to the likes of Michael Angelo, Auguste Rodin, Donatello et al. A day when they would be turning, nah even getting up from their graves, masking themselves and heading to Italy to slap one of their tribe!

I’m not a connoisseur of art, nor a collector. But do love pieces of art and indulge in collecting affordable pieces, but these days love or appreciation of art is bordering between insanity and eccentricity. More than the art itself, the way it is being projected / perceived increases its value than the actual workmanship of the same.

Sculptures were synonymous with some great workmanship with dedicated hours, if not months of hard work and detailing. Thus, were born some all-time famous sculptures like David by Michael Angelo, or Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker in the West and some great pieces of art of Gods and Goddesses in the Indian peninsula. However, in the subsequent centuries’ sculptures started becoming bizarre and was acclaimed more for the explanation that came along rather than the workmanship or the craftiness of the piece itself.

Rodin made the first version of The Thinker around 1881. The first full-scale model was ready by 1904 and around 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson pursuing another art, the art of writing came up with a masterpiece of a book called Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde which continues to grace the prose books of today. A story of a man drinking up a serum and turning invisible.

Well almost 140 plus years later, that thought of R L Stevenson has crossed the mind of a sculptor who has ventured into producing or rather not producing, and displaying or rather not displaying a sculpture or nothing, and going on to sell that nothing, for something really big. All along, projecting that invisible sculpture as a work of art and giving the following explanation.

 “The vacuum is nothing more than a space full of energy, and even if we empty it and there is nothing left, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, that nothing has a weight,” “Therefore, it has energy that is condensed and transformed into particles, that is, into us.”   

He throws in Heisenberg, some might throw in Einstein, others Plato, and sell art that is not art as art. How artful of them! He calls the invisible Sculpture ‘Io Sono’ (which translates to “I am”).  Descarte once said ‘I think, therefore Iam’. Here comes Salvatore Garau, who sells an ‘I am’ even though the ‘I’ doesn’t exist for 18000 US$. It is beyond my reasoning that there were bidders at that auction who pushed the price up for something that they could not see. Salvatore Garau sold an invisible sculpture in a 5 X 5 Foot space. The explanation that followed said “When I decide to ‘exhibit’ an immaterial sculpture in a given space, that space will concentrate a certain amount and density of thoughts at a precise point, creating a sculpture that, from my title, will only take the most varied forms,”

Salvatore Garau sold 25 Sqft of space that you could carry home authenticated by nothing else than a certificate and gaze at all day and imagine a sculpture there all the while spending a fortune on it and be happy of your proud invisible possesion. If it were for me, I would have also asked him to accept his remuneration as a figment of his imagination and explain that the value of money also exists in the same vaccum that holds his sculpture, then it would have been a fair transaction. Had Salvatore Garau been born 140 plus years back Rodin’s Thinker would just have been a thought.

For the uninitiated who have not understood a word so far here is the link to the full story

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-artist-auctioned-off-invisible-sculpture-18300-literally-made-nothing-1976181

Well as I said, unfortunately art appreciation has been abused over the years, a banana strapped to a wall or wall painted blue gets passed off as works of art and humanity has reached that obscene levels of stupidity and end up paying astronomical sums for things they don’t understand / see / feel / touch.

If Salvatore Garau could sell his invisible sculpture for US$ 18K, I would also place on auction at Christies, the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants of Covid19 for 18 Million Dollars.  At least it’s also a work of invisible art by the Gods above that brought humanity to its knees!

18 Million dollars should help us buy a lot of vaccines!!! Any bidders???

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 The title reads “This piece is worth a Million Dollars’ Note the upper case ‘M’ and ‘D’. You change that, you get a different code altogether. I don’t blame you at this stage to think that I have lost my marbles due to the unending pandemic. Wish we could start calling it an Endemic, justifiably so, as new strains are emerging in line with the Vocal for Local philosophy.  At least a name like endemic would give us a hope of seeing an ‘end’ somewhere.

Gloom apart, I recently realized not everything around us is as depressing as it is made out to be. The uber rich are indulging in life big time continuing to collect art work and what not. Just that the art they are now collecting is in the form of NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens). So, what is it? I don’t intend taking your precious time trying to explain something I haven’t understood. Given below is a definition from the internet.

 ‘’They are essentially certifications of ownership recorded on a blockchain. Nonfungible tokens put the ownership of a digital product -- be it digital art, a video/audio clip or even just a jpeg or gif -- on that ledger. In the age of NFTs, downloading a picture is like owning a print. Having the NFT is like owning the original painting.’

Any image, gif, pdf, jpeg, tweet and even a blog as important as the one you are reading now can be traded and saved for posterity. Art has well and truly come out of the closet and one need not be a connoisseur anymore to collect one. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey sold his first Tweet for US$ 3Mio and a digital art sold for US$ 69Mio. The insanity has reached such levels that some are even selling the sound bite of someone breaking the wind for as high as US$ 400.

Looks like an idle non-corona mind is a digital workshop these days. An overload of Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, NFT etc has crept into my reading in recent times. From what little I have understood Blockchains are the backbones for all this. A stack of blockchains are made up of what they call a Cryptographic Hash Function to form a ledger which I presume will look like a paragraph of my title which by the way was generated on a platform. The last I remember remotely about Cryptography was while reading the Da Vinci Code. I must admit that even during the high paying heydays of Tech and Coding careers I have shunned this field and stayed away, a decision, that I now deeply regret as I try and put this piece of writing on sale on the NFT platform looking for some bored rich soul to buy it as a recreational activity paying a few millions in any currency. All you naysayers out there, brace yourself and get Crypto and Blockchain savvy as it will touch your daily life sooner than you expect.

This might well be one of the last pieces of comprehensible writing mankind would see as the days of writing with known scripts are nearing its end. From now on it will look like the title of mine, the advent of emojis were already a precursor to the times to come.

My apologies to the experts on Cryptocurrency like Bitcoins, Ethereum, Ripple etc. and the gurus of Blockchain and the ‘art’ and fart collectors on the NFT platform, if I have belittled your efforts, research or investments in any way. My only concern is that mankind should not find its way back to the Tower of Babel to communicate in gibberish and write/sketch using Hieroglyphics as our ancient forefathers did.

The Humble Hawaii

 When I mention the word Chappals or slippers the first image that comes to your mind is that of the humble blue and white soles with an easy to slip into ‘Y’ shaped blue straps. When Bata in the 50’s introduced the brand name Hawaii for slippers, it was a best seller, as the common man had finally found an affordable footwear with a feel good brand name that would give him a feel of walking the pristine beaches of the far away Hawaii, while in reality he was strolling down the shores of the Marina in Madras.

Hawaii went on to become a generic and people simply bought Hawaii and not chappals anymore and the brand name itself was used in many households as a weapon to shape the lives of many a wayward youngsters, both by their parents and the girls next door.

One of the most durable pieces of footwear of the days, as the soles outlived the straps everyone had a spare strap at home. A safety pin is all that was required to ensure that you could reach that last mile home and then replace it with a brand new one.

As the nation and the people grew in economic stature the poor little Hawaii found its place being moved to the insignificant corners of the house and slowly got confined to the wash rooms only.  And what a fall from grace it was for a name like Hawaii, to be called bathroom slippers. The final nail on the coffin was when the Indian PM a few years back commented that he wanted to see people who ‘even’ wear Hawaii chappal in a hawai jahaz. A statement akin to the one made by Shashi Tharoor referring to Economy class passengers as Cattle class, but the former quote courted less controversy for obvious reasons.

With Globalisation and opening up of the economy fashion statements changed and that brought about a change to the semantics of casual foot wear too. Flip Flops appeared from nowhere, slippers and chappals were crass and unsophisticated. Manufacturers of the good old Hawaii imitations also changed the design to remove the stigma associated with the blue and white bathroom slippers! Branding came into our lives and turned to an obsession and we were respected for the brand we adorned.

The inspiration to this story was when I saw the soles of my branded hardly worn ‘flip flops’ open up recently. I realized the relevance of a concept I came across called the Veblen Effect in Psychology which was being used inadvertently in the beginning but deliberately later, in brand promotion. Veblen effect is when consumers perceive higher priced goods to be worth much more simply because they cost more. This is exactly what happened to the good Old Hawaii slippers. They vanished when the chappals / slippers became flip flops, and when someone put a logo on the straps and you ended up paying and buying the brand and not foot wear for its utilitarian value, all the while paying more so that you felt it was worth much more. Incidentally the new global head of Bata is an Indian and this is also a shout out to him to revive the good old Hawaii!!! 

War and Virus

War has been an integral part of humanity ever since its evolution. The greatest enemy of mankind has always been man. We have fought wars to dominate one another and achieving war supremacy has been our prime purpose of our existence.

Until recently, War was the only thing humanity really planned for as a universal calamity and feared would wipe him out of existence and hence our focus has been to develop our defense systems even at the cost of our immune systems. When bunkers were being built, quarantine centers were the last thing on their agenda. The Defense budgets in poorer countries far eclipsed the allocation for alleviation of poverty or even healthcare & nutrition.

This quest for supremacy in warfare and war time requirements has in fact stoked most of the industrial inventions and innovations. Furthermore the concepts of war found its way into corporate management and war analogies was used across functions in the corporate world. We introduced corporate jargon prefixed and suffixed with war, War Rooms, war footing, price war etc. Basic fundamentals of negotiation of even a harmless everyday product were drawn from war time strategies / thinking.

Most of my knowledge of wars has been from the history books and fortunately have not found myself in a war zone yet, the closest I got to ‘see’ a war was the Gulf War in the early nineties, which has the credentials of being the first war to take the media by storm and was beamed live over international and national channels. I learnt all about scud missiles and early warning systems etc. I learnt for every Scud that was launched there was a Patriot anti-missile system well in place.

From the first industrial revolution of the 18^th century to the most acclaimed fourth  revolution more commonly referred to as Industry 4.0, the catalyst for development has always been war time needs. Even the first workable prototype of the Internet in the late 1960s with the creation of ARPANET, was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. No wonder once a virus hits the internet, an anti-virus patch is made available within hours by the Kasperskys and the McAfees of the world.

Man fears War more than anything in this world and this fear is the one that sells the most, that’s the reason why even a small civil war happening in the most insignificant of regions of the world finds its way to the front pages and primetime media and not the news of starvations or an epidemic in some deep corners of an under developed part of the world. That’s the reason why I feared for my life when Gulf War happened thousands of miles away from where I was. This is why, even when we had enough early warnings in the form of SARS / MERS & Ebola we did very little and waited for it to blow over and scorned it as just another flu. The virus did not instill the same sense of fear or urgency a war would into our psyches.

Today, even when the whole of humanity is held to ransom by a virus which has claimed lives equivalent to war time causalities; I still don’t see the same fear that war would bring in the eyes of humanity. They certainly are worried, but not frightened. The dalgona challenge, cooking adventures, fitness histrionics etc that are making the rounds on the internet just show that while we are trying to stay away from the virus we are not as much perturbed by it. Can you imagine indulging in such frivolous pastimes when missiles fly over your skyline and tanks roll down the highways?

In pursuit of our Industrial and War time supremacy we have under invested time and money into basic health care and the wellness of humanity. We have a wrist watch that measures our BMI or the steps we take but cannot detect viruses we touch. Industries were too focused on lifestyle diseases rather than life threatening diseases. When Industry 4.0 was happening we forgot to develop our Life Sciences 4.0 or Values 4.0. The harsh reality is that a Premier League football club and its players earn more than a Bio-Science researcher.

Finally, the irony is that we are now fighting a Virus from War rooms that were set up on a War footing but continue to carry out ‘Surgical’ strikes with ‘clinical’ precision during a war! Sadly humanity is gifted with short term and preferential memory; that’s why, memories of World Wars and other wars outshine the great plague or even the Spanish Flu.  A Corona Virus memorial will not kindle the same emotion in a human as visiting a War memorial.

The Virus that went Viral!

Virus:

"An infective agent that typically consists of a nucleic acid molecule in a protein coat, is too small to be seen by light microscopy, and is able to multiply only within the living cells of a host."

This is the only meaning of Virus we knew growing up and then came along a new one when information technology emerged.

"A piece of code which is capable of copying itself and typically has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data."

Viral:

"Of the nature of, caused by, or relating to a virus or viruses."
 
We understood this too well until the millennials came along and taught us their sole objective in life was to make things go viral. Something as trivial as a video of a loud sneeze started going viral. Bless You!
 

"(Of an image, video, piece of information, etc.) Circulated rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another"

We were doing pretty well with all the above interpretations, until a humble flu virus came along and humanity took it upon them to make both the virus and the information about it viral. This was when Life sciences crossed swords with the Information Revolution and is proving to be fatal both realistically and virtually.

It came by the name Corona; it meant Crown or wreath in Greek. Humanity were of late behaving like kings of the universe and they carried a halo of invincibility around inflated heads, little did they realize a crown when placed horizontally across their 56 inch chest could also be referred to as a wreath, the last floral arrangement that will adorn you ever!

The buzzword today is Social Distancing. We were already experts at it the last few years and since the advent of social media we have been distancing ourselves socially; we had become a tribe addicted to our smart phones. We were in fact only poking or pinging socially, now they have added a physical measure to it too, the distancing. The most affected would be the page 3 crowd and the millennials who hug each other at the drop of a hat, who now will have to take a temporary break from it. A Bollywood diva, now a Hollywood spouse recently claimed she has promoted Namaste to the western world for long; hopefully she does not become the brand ambassador for the same. This humble mode of salutation is now basking in its minute of fame & glory. From Royals to Political leaders across the world are patronizing it and the nationalists back home are like, We told you so!!!  Wish we had patented the Namaste, we could have bartered it for the Kohinoor.

Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, App for every trivial tasks, we were slowly growing bigger for our shoes, when man plays God, God plays with man. The great nations across the globe are being brought to its knees even as this is being written, by a humble virus and the whole of Humanity is feeling the sense of vulnerability that they have never felt in centuries. Cutting across the rich and poor the virus has proved to be an equal-opportunity attacker, a true socialist at heart, no wonder it began its journey from China. As we start to self-isolate ourselves we are going through what I call the Noah’s Ark moment, just that ark needs to be well partitioned. The 40 days and nights has also a significance in the origins of the word quarantine, the root of which is the Italian word Quaranta Giorni that also means 40 days, the number of days people were isolated during the great plague, Black Death, in the 13^th Century.

As we spend our time in isolation and look at the world slowing around us, it is time to introspect on how vulnerable we as a tribe are and it’s time to get our priorities in order, however as I type, someone has cracked an algorithm to detect a virus by your voice and would launch an app for the same soon….and then what I ask? Again a case of skewed priorities!

Let’s pledge to be socially responsible by being prudent on social media and slow the viral spread of the virus rather than creating a fear psychosis around it by making it go viral!

A few inches of feet!

I’m back after a hiatus and let me begin by Wishing you all a Blessed 2020.

After a certain age discussions on health becomes the most discussed topic in town, particularly when section 144 is not in place. This happens when 3 or less who are at the cusp of half a century meet, we start talking about our cholesterol, sugar, blocks and all levels possible. Amongst the 3 one will be a health guru who dishes out unsolicited gyan, the other the ardent follower of the guru, one who vouches for all that the health guru doles out and the third, a skeptical one who is actually afraid to live long since he does not have enough insurance to cover his extended stay on planet Earth. Yours truly is the third protagonist in this story.

The health guru rattles out words like KETO, LDL / HDL Cholesterol , Type 1, 2 3 Diabetes,  Intermittent fasting, Bullet coffee, OMAD (for the uninitiated it stands for One Meal A Day) etc. The skeptical one sips on the gin and tonic bubbly while biting into a lamb chops barbeque and listens to this entire health gobbledygook while the 2^nd person takes notes on longevity.

 The health awareness cult hit its nadir when I came across the concept of Gutter Gourmet. A lifestyle that eulogizes the benefits of scavenging food from dustbins and leftovers at restaurants to contain diabetes and to further their cause they link a UN sustainable developmental goal to it …reducing waste. It is at this point I lost all patience and took to writing this blog.

It is not my intent to show disrespect to the hardcore patrons of a disciplined health / nutritional regime, but the sad part is that man has started playing God these days by challenging the process of metabolism and toying with the Protein and Carbohydrate levels and reducing the human body to the level of a high school chemistry lab experiment. Religious texts were misinterpreted in several ways all these years to the convenience of a few, leading to the disturbance of peace and brotherhood all around the world, and now the same malaise has befallen Health science. We have contradicting versions around the correct measures of Cholesterol, effects of Carbs or even the diabetic counts or the condition of the arteries that pump blood to the heart.

Doctors were a revered tribe and we took their word in the good old days and followed their advice religiously, sadly it’s not the case anymore, today we have Dr. Google at our finger tips and as soon as the doc writes a prescription we engage him into a conversation that will remind him of his graduation dissertation. Doc! ”Why does the content of the pill you prescribed show 5.2 mg of Phenylalanine, I know for sure it’s not suitable for persons with Phenylketonuria”. At this, the poor doc gets stumped. We have sadly started to abuse the access to information we have and end up challenging the doctor and his expertise. Not that all docs are saints but for the sake of generalization I would place the majority on the right side of things in this noble profession.

There are an equal number of papers on the internet that say Carbs are needed as much as there are on the ones professing zero carb diets, similarly with Cholesterol levels, diabetes etc.  So where do we draw a line? We all have an unique genetic make-up and have been brought up on some kind of dietary habits almost half our lives and suddenly one fine morning we decide we see the need to reverse that fat build up around the waist/ abdomen and we are advised the best way is by going for an entire change in nutritional regime which is still not proven in the long term. They ask me to shun all what my ancestors ate and ended up living beyond the nineties. Genetically I have inherited their genes. Well, the counter argument could be the quality of the food or the lifestyle we lead today or the environment we live in are far different from that of our ancestors. So be it…I am willing to discount a clear 15 or 20 years from the 90 they ended up with and more so, the societal / familial support system  is falling apart these days and I cannot afford to support myself that long on my own.

My mantra is to follow a lifestyle and food habits that you have been born and brought up with, the genes are designed to take them, moderate the intake to counter the ill effects of poor production conditions your food has gone through and the causes due to external environmental factors like pollution etc. you are subjected to. Here I am trying to lose a couple of inches around by belly to fit  into those slim fit shirt they make these days, sadly it is slim fit or Plus sizes nothing for the in-betweens. I certainly don’t intend to go on zero carb or on an intermittent fasting regime. Will moderate my intake and see where it takes me. Intermittent eating sounds more positive than intermittent fasting and I still intend to have 3 square meals a day as long as I can afford and am alive.

I am not looking at a six pack; all I want is, to see a “few inches of my feet” when I stand straight and look down without the view being obstructed by my abdominal fat.

Music transcends languages

It’s that time of the year when painting happens at home before Christmas, We end up changing wall colors once in a while to break the monotony and it was the time to do so. The painter assigned to me by the facility management team of the real estate company landed at home on the day sporting a broad smile and with the help of an interpreter explained French and Arabic were the only two languages he spoke.

Day one started with my wife taking a day off from work and explaining to him with the aid of google translate the rooms he needed to start with and the shades she wanted etc. Wife ended up learning broken French and bits of Arabic as she managed to learn all terms related to painting in these two languages.

Day 2 was my responsibility and here I was armed with 2 Years of elementary French tried explaining to him that I spoke very little French in French and Arabic…It went something like this…Je ne parlez pas Francais, Je parle shwayye shwayye!!! Roughly translated as, I don’t speak French but only little…little in a mix of French and Levantine Arabic. Though he understood he just laughed off my illiteracy and continued working rather uninspired cursing his fate on landing up with an Indian family who spoke no French or Arabic.

I ended up striking a conversation with him and I understood with the help of a globe and animated gestures he was born in Tunisa but spent time in Algeria and Morocco. That’s when an idea struck me. I played the number ‘Didi’ sung by Khaled, the first Arabic song we Indians fell in love with in the early 90’s. We had only fallen in love with the beats and rhythm and till date; do not know the lyrics or its meaning.  As soon as he heard it, his face lit up bright and started to sing along. I could see a marked difference in his approach to the job on hand. The efficiency level had gone up and there by the productivity. We ended up discussing other Khaled songs and as I started to play one after another sacrificing my Friday afternoon slot for Illayaraja music, I realized I was really making him feel at home.

He then came up to me and mentioned Maami, Maami and frantically gestured pointing at my wife when I look bewildered he started raising his hands and also pointing to his ears. With my little knowledge of French I realized he was trying to connect my wife with an elder version as in a grandma or Maami  in French and it was also something we should listen too. It was then it struck me that Mami was also an Algerian singer like Khaled. I kicked myself for that, how could I forget the Arabic piece in Desert Rose by Sting? We ended up listening to Khaled and Mami and he had completed more work in a day than the previous one.

This is when I realized that music transcends language and can be a great catalyst in promoting efficiency at work and harmony in the society. Both of us were expats in a foreign land. We can take a person out of the country but never the country and culture out of the person.  When I sacrificed an afternoon of Illayaraja for Khaled and Mami I made a Tarek smile along with me and made his day. This year thanks to Tarek the monotony was broken not only in the colour of our walls but also in our music. This was not only a learning take away in life but also in our professional space where cross cultural interactions are so vital.

This is what a Global citizenship is all about. It’s all about love & humanity sans frontiers!!!

Of Designer wears, Limousines, and after parties!!!

It’s that time of the year when the Oscars are due in another 8 Weeks and it is but natural for you to be misled by the title and think this is a blog on the red carpet antics of celebrities who grace the biggest entertainment event. Well, you are mistaken; this is all about a bunch of 17 years olds planning to celebrate the end of their 12 years of rigorous intellectual pursuit. The ‘end’ I mean, not the achievement of the same.

The whole concept of farewell parties in schools is taking a leaf out of the Prom nights in the US; after all they need to be indebted to the people who gave them the Instagram, Google and Snapchat. Guess, you guys must have got a clue that this is a rant by a 17 year old’s father coming to terms with the build up to a farewell party looming large in the horizon along with the Oscars.

These days I try very hard to avoid beginning a sentence with ‘When I was your age…..’ but unfortunately get drawn into that time and again. Well this was one of those times. I sat back and reminisced on my farewell parties. I had 2, one in my year 10 since the school at that time had classes only till year 10 and the other in Class 12.

I remember the Class 10 farewell quiet distinctly for the fact that we were the first batch to arrange for the video recording of the proceedings on a VHS tape. A disruption of sorts, some trendsetters, we were in those days. The irony is that after 3 decades I am still trying to trace that tape which none of us have seen. Apparently there was one copy and it had to stay put in the Head Master’s room.  My class 12 graduation afternoon (no nights then) consisted of a piece of cake/Pastry (Colonial appeasement), a Vada (to bring in the local flavor) and a samosa (to please the public hailing from north of the vindhyas) followed by thirst quenchers on a hot Madras afternoon….a diluted glass of Rasna, from the colour of which, we could actually calculate the concentration of the drink. So this kind of acted as mock Chemistry practicals too.

Ah!!! Enough of the boring 80’s, let’s move over to the more happening millennials and their celebrations. If the first 4 paragraphs sounded like the script out of a Satyajit Ray / Adoor Gopala Krishnan movie you ended up watching on Sunday afternoons on Doordarshan the next few will sound more like a Rohit Shetty film.

Haute Couture was a term that was normally heard in Milan but the last few days it is doing rounds within the four walls of my household. The farewell suddenly became the doomsday looking down upon us, being the proactive family we are we were equipped with the wear for the farewell the last time we visited India and we made a Tarun Tahiliani out of our poor Shankar, the neighborhood tailor. Alas! little did we know the colours or trends of last vacation were no longer ‘in’ and they were in the end of season list six months down the line.  Move aside the Taruns and Sabyasachis, it’s the after party time, and we need the Donna Karens and the Pradas in the shades that are in now. And so the hunt continues.

Kids booked Limousines from the stables of top European brands to reach school on their day, forgetting that it was M/s Ashok Leyland that safely brought them to school all these 12 years. Well they all learn from a leader who loves to sell the make in India concept while secured in bullet proof German car!

The world has come a full circle, and this is definitely not a rant, but introspection on the evolution of the nature of celebrations. If we were trend setters arranging a VHS recording of our farewell 3 decades back, applying the same logic of inflation that is applied to finances, we need to apply an inflation factor on the aspirations and accept that these kids have not gone overboard with their celebrations.

As they celebrate like there is no tomorrow, I wish to remind them that the memories of a farewell are even sweeter when they ‘fare well’ in their lives ahead!