This is neither about raising a stink nor about being on a high. I was on a sabbatical from all forms of electronic media for the last few weeks as it was getting a little out of hand since the Barkhas and the Arnobs were competing with each other to drill their opinion down my head. So much so that a nervous breakdown was inevitable as a result of breaking news overdose. Thought it best to seek solace with an old friend, the print media.
Picked up the latest copy of the Outlook and walked into the most peaceful part of my house and the place where I get all inspirations from. Settled myself on the throne and started to read the cover story. It was about India's no 2 problem. We are not talking about a deputy to the Indian Prime Minister; even if that was the case it would have been a number 3 problem. It was nice to read that the who's who in Indian politics was vying with each other to stand up to the cause. All along they were at each other's throat as sitting MP's and occasional taking a hit at each other, no, I spelt both words right if you are wondering about a missing 'h' and a ‘s’.
Sanctity and sanitation were no longer at crossroads but the sanctity of sanitation certainly was. The debate over the old saying Cleanliness is next to Godliness was undergoing an image makeover. Political parties across right, left and center were challenging each other to rephrase it, and cutting across party lines and ideologies they settled on a rearranged version. They showed the courage to say Godliness was next to Cleanliness. It might be a small step but certainly will make a huge difference in our efforts to be a sanitation friendly state.
Parryware the legendary sanitary ware manufacturers were the first to position washrooms as Glamour-rooms. It showed the most sought after models endorsing candle lit glamour-rooms when a majority of Indian women had to walk miles to relieve themselves. The kind of evolution that is taking place in the design of cisterns is phenomenal. They have motorcycle shaped designs for the young and the adventurous heart shaped ones for the romantically inclined wonder why you would want to do it through the heart.
Move over the designer ware cisterns. This is the era of innovative Smart Potties. The crown amongst the throne is the one that can be controlled with your smart phone. I mean the smart phone can only trigger the lifting of the toilet seat and the flushing of the cistern and bidet not the urge itself. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or what app you may develop when you got to go you got to go!!! You can flush with, not flush down your android or your ios enabled phones. It can maintain a diary of the music you want to listen to and play it from an in built speaker, depending on the situation you are in it can play a Beethoven or a Metallica.
The sad part is all these developments are aimed at improving your comfort during your stay in there. These days with the foray of international sanitary ware manufacturers making a beeline to tap into the potential real estate market in India, I feel it should be made mandatory as part of their corporate social responsibility to offer at least 1 pot along with a shelter from their basic model for every 50 they sell.
So all of you out there, as you sit in there like androids or monks in deep thought trying to hit upon that game changing idea and run out like Archimedes, spare a thought for the millions of less fortunate who have to walk miles or stand in long queues for the same.
We all know **it happens….but I believe that we as a community can make it happen in a more pleasant way for the less fortunate around us.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Friday, September 13, 2013
The back to school market mania.
The last week saw the reopening of schools after the summer break in the part of the world I live and was surprised at the back to school offers. Newspapers carried entire supplements screaming offers on all the wares a school kid needs.
There were sections dedicated to Pens, Pencils, sharpeners, erasers (rubbers for less initiated ones like me), style statements and gadgets. Why was there a back to school offer on cars by a leading car maker I wonder.
A leading writing instrument manufacturer was promoting a pencil and promising you ‘unbreakable creativity’ with an ABS on their pencils. They call it Anti Break System. I was given to believe that their lead breaking was controlled thanks to a protective coating. Pencils were made out of wood from PEFC certified sustainably managed forests. God knows what it means. The only time I felt a pencil was more complicated than rocket science. Pens were competing with each other on low friction and the meters of writing it produced. One even compensated the flow of ink for the rapid changes in air around, which was some fluid dynamics I thought. They came in shades, sporty, casual, bright and pop style. After analysing a few, the clear winner was a Xylene and toluene free pen that did a cool 1200M of writing and also came in even cooler colours. Whattay design!!!
Another was selling a pen that was fade proof, fraud proof, and time proof. I wonder why they did not think about all these when I was younger but I almost got the answer immediately. Our passions never faded, we were too innocent to indulge in fraudulent activities and some of our memories were timeless.
The correction pens entered the fray as the saviour, after all the low friction, air adjusting smooth writing pens and more importantly your grey cells had failed you. Even these were competing with each other on their inbuilt evaporation system efficiencies.
Now the lead might not break but it sure does abrade away. So don’t we need a sharpener? The sharpener for me was my dad who never let me touch the blade when I was a kid. Well my kids are fortunate because my dad did not teach me how to sharpen a pencil with a blade so I had to buy my kids a sharpener. A sharpener with a built in option to adjust the degree of sharpness and point angle was on offer too.
Well there were offers for designer bags, school wear with ink resistant pocket, anti-bacterial socks and here I sense a small inter industry rivalry. When the pen makers are busy making anti leak pens the shirt makers are designing anti stain and ink resistant fabrics.
We as kids carried nice little bags made of khaki coloured ruck sack material and our back to school wares consisted of a black coloured fountain pen though the more fortunate ones carried a ‘HERO’ pen which had those nice shiny golden caps that sported a built-in filler. The lesser mortals carried the above mentioned fountain pens filled with ink from Bril ink bottles using a filler at home and exactly knew the quantity of ink required for a Maths, Science, English or a History paper. We also had a standby pen in case of any force majeure event. Additionally we carried a Nataraj pencil for all our drawings and a Red pencil that was our highlighter along with an eraser that could only erase pencils markings. So you actually had a small tolerance for error when using your pen and that was the perfection we were in pursuit of. There were shops that could replace nibs, clean feeders and other components of our pen and refurbish the same.
In the same back to school week, I had the privilege of attending a seminar by Mr Anand Kumar of the famed Super 30 Training institute of Bihar which churns out IITians year after year from the lower strata of the society. After his speech and his methodologies I realised, all that a child needed was a good teacher and not the best of infrastructure or instruments.
I wish to conclude by drawing your attention to a reply by a kid when asked what he considered his best talent was that I came across recently. The reply went thus ‘I’m trying to master the art of being good with people’ he said. I’m not sure if he was taught this by his parents which in my opinion was a bad piece of mentoring. But sad to see the world reach a state when 11 year olds think being good with people has become an art that needs to be mastered.
There were sections dedicated to Pens, Pencils, sharpeners, erasers (rubbers for less initiated ones like me), style statements and gadgets. Why was there a back to school offer on cars by a leading car maker I wonder.
A leading writing instrument manufacturer was promoting a pencil and promising you ‘unbreakable creativity’ with an ABS on their pencils. They call it Anti Break System. I was given to believe that their lead breaking was controlled thanks to a protective coating. Pencils were made out of wood from PEFC certified sustainably managed forests. God knows what it means. The only time I felt a pencil was more complicated than rocket science. Pens were competing with each other on low friction and the meters of writing it produced. One even compensated the flow of ink for the rapid changes in air around, which was some fluid dynamics I thought. They came in shades, sporty, casual, bright and pop style. After analysing a few, the clear winner was a Xylene and toluene free pen that did a cool 1200M of writing and also came in even cooler colours. Whattay design!!!
Another was selling a pen that was fade proof, fraud proof, and time proof. I wonder why they did not think about all these when I was younger but I almost got the answer immediately. Our passions never faded, we were too innocent to indulge in fraudulent activities and some of our memories were timeless.
The correction pens entered the fray as the saviour, after all the low friction, air adjusting smooth writing pens and more importantly your grey cells had failed you. Even these were competing with each other on their inbuilt evaporation system efficiencies.
Now the lead might not break but it sure does abrade away. So don’t we need a sharpener? The sharpener for me was my dad who never let me touch the blade when I was a kid. Well my kids are fortunate because my dad did not teach me how to sharpen a pencil with a blade so I had to buy my kids a sharpener. A sharpener with a built in option to adjust the degree of sharpness and point angle was on offer too.
Well there were offers for designer bags, school wear with ink resistant pocket, anti-bacterial socks and here I sense a small inter industry rivalry. When the pen makers are busy making anti leak pens the shirt makers are designing anti stain and ink resistant fabrics.
We as kids carried nice little bags made of khaki coloured ruck sack material and our back to school wares consisted of a black coloured fountain pen though the more fortunate ones carried a ‘HERO’ pen which had those nice shiny golden caps that sported a built-in filler. The lesser mortals carried the above mentioned fountain pens filled with ink from Bril ink bottles using a filler at home and exactly knew the quantity of ink required for a Maths, Science, English or a History paper. We also had a standby pen in case of any force majeure event. Additionally we carried a Nataraj pencil for all our drawings and a Red pencil that was our highlighter along with an eraser that could only erase pencils markings. So you actually had a small tolerance for error when using your pen and that was the perfection we were in pursuit of. There were shops that could replace nibs, clean feeders and other components of our pen and refurbish the same.
In the same back to school week, I had the privilege of attending a seminar by Mr Anand Kumar of the famed Super 30 Training institute of Bihar which churns out IITians year after year from the lower strata of the society. After his speech and his methodologies I realised, all that a child needed was a good teacher and not the best of infrastructure or instruments.
I wish to conclude by drawing your attention to a reply by a kid when asked what he considered his best talent was that I came across recently. The reply went thus ‘I’m trying to master the art of being good with people’ he said. I’m not sure if he was taught this by his parents which in my opinion was a bad piece of mentoring. But sad to see the world reach a state when 11 year olds think being good with people has become an art that needs to be mastered.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Eerie Economics
I was taught that economics combines both Art and Science. Over the last few weeks the horror that is unfolding in the Indian economy is posing a threat to The Conjuring at the box offices. Theatrical it has been, to say the least… ah! so it’s more of an art. The Sensex was running around like a headless chicken and the rupee staggered down the forex corridors singing a melancholic requiem, occasionally doing a rare celebratory jig. Economics turned eerie.
As a layman who was short changed by Lehman not so long ago I do not know if I should be sceptical at all the happenings around me. Domestic financial planning has become such a conundrum these days that make me miss those sparrows from the TNSC Bank ads of the past.
Fearing a nervous breakdown I tried to stay away from the idiot box where the ‘experts’ analyse the rise and fall of the rupee and diagnose the health of Indian economy. These experts keep referring to the fall out of the global financial crisis triggered by unregulated monetary policies that needs to be corrected by bringing about major changes in fiscal policies which in turn could call for injecting the much needed stimulus in the form of quantitative easing in countries the world over. I have no clue about the words in Italics above. But this was a set script of these analysts irrespective of the organisation they represented. And recently when the rupee touched 68 to a dollar they were wise enough to ‘predict’ it would touch 70. Wonder where they were when the rupee was at 50. You ask them that and they come up with a whole lot of stuff on market dynamics, current account deficits and blame it on Black Swans. Just that, these days the Black Swan events are so common that the time has come to change the colour or rename the metaphor for game changing events. I even refrained from pages devoted to Business, Finance and Economics in newspapers and stopped subscribing to business journals. The unfortunate fact is that Economic news is no longer confined to the inner pages of the newspaper or is a supplement that could be left untouched, but manages to DOLLAR its way to the front pages every other day.
Added to this are the rating agencies whose general ‘standards’ are pretty ‘poor’ keep ringing the downgrade / upgrade bells at regular intervals analogous to school periods. The rupee, stocks, bonds, GDP, funds and the King Khan were all in frenzy to head south. The only ones that ended up north were inflation and Khan’s earnings. Crashes, tumbles, tanks and bloodbaths were the words that did the rounds. You could play and win a depression bingo with these. The antonyms of these words did show up once in a while too but that was mostly during the intraday trading sessions. But what surprised me was the sensitivity of the Sensex, it was behaving like an adolescent with bad mood swings. One tweet from the Finance Minister propels it and almost immediately a moment of nothingness from the PM makes it nose dive, wonder why this happens though, by now the market must have also got used to his silence. The fundamentals that we are so proud of, are they really strong is what I wonder?
As in every story, there needs to be a Hero and so be it in our drama called Indian Economy. Enter the Messiah, Dr Raghuram Rajan, acclaimed of Nostradamical powers of predicting THE crash, now that’s a rare breed among the economist tribe. Most of them I know or heard are skilful in dissecting the cadaver. But I’m not sure if he has used up all his powers of prediction in 2008. He however safely acknowledged he is not a magician nor does he have a wand. What we need, is not a magician Dr. Rajan, but an exorcist who can put an end to this demon that played spoil sport in the India-growth-story fairy tale. Within 24 hours of assuming office and quoting from IF by Rudyard Kipling among other things that I did not understand, the stock market propels and the rupee stabilises….for a day. Communication is the key he said, wish I could communicate in a similar fashion to my bankers and ask them to waive a few EMI’s. Not sure what works in the market, Sentiments or Fundamentals. We keep harping on our strong fundamentals whenever we have an Economic crisis the same way we talk about resilience after each terrorist attack on Indian soil.
For the risk averse financially naïve common man these are hard times. Fixed deposit returns do not counter inflationary trends, aurum throws up tantrums, Equity markets are volatile, stocks are drunk, forex market is on marijuana, bonds are not bonding, real estate is a bubble, and the government is in a huddle, with such a bouquet of misbehaved, ill brought up financial instruments, Can someone out there tell me what to do? Demand daily wages from your employer spend for your food and clothing on a daily basis and get yourself a nice little piggy bank (not a swan shaped one) the ones made out of tin with little lock and key that the good old SBI distributed to school kids of yore and drop in whatever is left at the end of the day.
As a layman who was short changed by Lehman not so long ago I do not know if I should be sceptical at all the happenings around me. Domestic financial planning has become such a conundrum these days that make me miss those sparrows from the TNSC Bank ads of the past.
Fearing a nervous breakdown I tried to stay away from the idiot box where the ‘experts’ analyse the rise and fall of the rupee and diagnose the health of Indian economy. These experts keep referring to the fall out of the global financial crisis triggered by unregulated monetary policies that needs to be corrected by bringing about major changes in fiscal policies which in turn could call for injecting the much needed stimulus in the form of quantitative easing in countries the world over. I have no clue about the words in Italics above. But this was a set script of these analysts irrespective of the organisation they represented. And recently when the rupee touched 68 to a dollar they were wise enough to ‘predict’ it would touch 70. Wonder where they were when the rupee was at 50. You ask them that and they come up with a whole lot of stuff on market dynamics, current account deficits and blame it on Black Swans. Just that, these days the Black Swan events are so common that the time has come to change the colour or rename the metaphor for game changing events. I even refrained from pages devoted to Business, Finance and Economics in newspapers and stopped subscribing to business journals. The unfortunate fact is that Economic news is no longer confined to the inner pages of the newspaper or is a supplement that could be left untouched, but manages to DOLLAR its way to the front pages every other day.
Added to this are the rating agencies whose general ‘standards’ are pretty ‘poor’ keep ringing the downgrade / upgrade bells at regular intervals analogous to school periods. The rupee, stocks, bonds, GDP, funds and the King Khan were all in frenzy to head south. The only ones that ended up north were inflation and Khan’s earnings. Crashes, tumbles, tanks and bloodbaths were the words that did the rounds. You could play and win a depression bingo with these. The antonyms of these words did show up once in a while too but that was mostly during the intraday trading sessions. But what surprised me was the sensitivity of the Sensex, it was behaving like an adolescent with bad mood swings. One tweet from the Finance Minister propels it and almost immediately a moment of nothingness from the PM makes it nose dive, wonder why this happens though, by now the market must have also got used to his silence. The fundamentals that we are so proud of, are they really strong is what I wonder?
As in every story, there needs to be a Hero and so be it in our drama called Indian Economy. Enter the Messiah, Dr Raghuram Rajan, acclaimed of Nostradamical powers of predicting THE crash, now that’s a rare breed among the economist tribe. Most of them I know or heard are skilful in dissecting the cadaver. But I’m not sure if he has used up all his powers of prediction in 2008. He however safely acknowledged he is not a magician nor does he have a wand. What we need, is not a magician Dr. Rajan, but an exorcist who can put an end to this demon that played spoil sport in the India-growth-story fairy tale. Within 24 hours of assuming office and quoting from IF by Rudyard Kipling among other things that I did not understand, the stock market propels and the rupee stabilises….for a day. Communication is the key he said, wish I could communicate in a similar fashion to my bankers and ask them to waive a few EMI’s. Not sure what works in the market, Sentiments or Fundamentals. We keep harping on our strong fundamentals whenever we have an Economic crisis the same way we talk about resilience after each terrorist attack on Indian soil.
For the risk averse financially naïve common man these are hard times. Fixed deposit returns do not counter inflationary trends, aurum throws up tantrums, Equity markets are volatile, stocks are drunk, forex market is on marijuana, bonds are not bonding, real estate is a bubble, and the government is in a huddle, with such a bouquet of misbehaved, ill brought up financial instruments, Can someone out there tell me what to do? Demand daily wages from your employer spend for your food and clothing on a daily basis and get yourself a nice little piggy bank (not a swan shaped one) the ones made out of tin with little lock and key that the good old SBI distributed to school kids of yore and drop in whatever is left at the end of the day.
Saturday, August 24, 2013
A MALTAN's tribute to Madras.
As the Madras day celebration is now an extended affair from a day event to a monthly one I thought I should contribute to its history through my history in this wonderful city. I lived in Madras from 1972 to 1996 and all along during this period I never knew Madras Day was on the 22nd of August. I was pretty surprised that the city suddenly thought about celebrating its birthday since 2004 and that’s a clear 360 odd years after its birth. It was so, due to the efforts of a few people which included the likes of the historian Mr. Muthiah is what Wikipedia says and I'm happy for that, since no one better than the respected Mr Muthiah. The doyen who has chronicled Madras history more than anyone else deserves to be credited with the evolution of this event.
I write this because I owe a lot to this city; Madras is what made me what I’m today. Let me first introduce myself, I’m neither a hard core Dravidian nor a part of the much accomplished and more re-known member of the Tambram community that shaped the intellectual and artistic landscape of this city.
I am a MALTAN. There is no chance that you might have heard of this tribe or usage before, since I just coined it as I was writing this piece. No, I don’t come from Malta, I’m someone who was just born in Gods own country, Kerala, but over the years have made Madras my home. MALTAN is a word I coined which could sound more like the anglicised version of MALAYALATHAN which I was referred to, during my growing up days in Madras or an amalgamation of a MALyalee, living, adapting and imbibed in the TAmiliaN culture, just like the way the word TAMBRAM was born. In fact we had a lot of stuff common with the Tambrams except the Non veg part. We were a community that challenged them intellectually and earned our place in the multifaceted society of Madras. We (as in TAMBRAM and us) both belonged to the erstwhile Forward Community as per records irrespective of our economic or social standing, which means we were the only ones to compete with each other when it came to admissions to professional colleges and I still wonder how a SYRIAN Christian could NOT find his way to the list of minority communities in Madras.
The Maltan’s contribution to Madras has been awesome. We played a pioneering role in the economy of the city ranging from tyres, carpets and all the way to jewellery. We also did take part in creating some of the great educational institutions in Madras. More importantly my mother’s contribution was that she managed to teach each of our domestic helps Malayalam but managed to learn bits of pieces of Tamil, while my dad has learnt to read Tamil from all the wall posts of Thina Thanthi and Thina Malar and I can narrate a piece out of Silapadigaram or a few couplets from Thirukural. This is how we have managed to merge with the society. This is what gives me hope of surviving in the Middle East without knowing Arabic.
I deliberately left out a profession practised by the Malayalees in Madras which I felt needs a higher stage than the ones listed above. The term Malayalathan came into existence only due to the efforts of malayalees who set up Tea stalls across the length and breadth of Madras which was further propagated by movies churned out of Kollywood. Any TEASTALL in Madras in those days was referred to as Nair kadai irrespective of whether it was owned by a NAIR or not, just as any provision store was referred to as Nadar Kadai.
Coming to me, I was fortunate to have been brought up by liberal parents who taught us secularism in all its true sense unlike the ones propagated by the vote bank biased politicians of today. We, a family of Syrian Christians lived in a building owned by one of the richest and most influential Muslim family in the erstwhile Border Thottam in Madras with a hard core TAMBRAM family having their roots in the erstwhile agraharams of Kumbakonam as our immediate neighbours who taught me the virtues of Brahmanism and vegetarianism. I fell for their doctrines and displayed the principles during family reunions in Kerala so much so that I earned myself the name BRAHMANAN within my circle of relatives which has stayed on even as of today, though a good Kerala Beef Fry accompanied by Old Monk will top my to-do list any day.
I was even more fortunate to have studied in a school called Christ Church on Mount Road which was located sandwiched between 2 of the most famous cine complexes, the Devi group of theaters and the Plaza, was actually half as old as the city and was founded in 1842, a clear 100 odd years before India attained Independence. It was here the fundamentals of real secularism was taught thanks to the wonderful friends circle that I had from different spectrum of the Religious, economic and intellectual spectrum of the society in and around the school and the teachers. Even after I moved to the so called more affluent part of the city, Besant Nagar I was at ease with the diverse and more affluent version of the Tambrams of Adyar, Gandhi Nagar and Besant Nagar whom I encountered in another great school called St Michaels Academy in Gandhi Nagar.
I could not have earned this experience anywhere else in India except Madras. People might say Bombay or Delhi offers the same, sorry folks; Madras knew and still knows what it takes to play host to a secular community. No particular political party need to take credit for this. It’s just the people of Madras now Chennai that need to be given the full recognition for creating this secular atmosphere.
Thank you MADRAS for making me what I’m today and thank you Chennai for letting me enjoy the same freedom in the city that welcomes me with open arms each time I visit it.
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