Coincidence

Saw about 100+ huge trees being chopped off on Friday... To make way for a highway extension... 

Saturday and Sunday were very very hot days... At least 100+ clocked on the mercury... 

One day of Coincidence? May be!!!

Years of chopping of huge trees... Mercury soaring with every such tree being chopped?
Coincidence? Oh Yes!!!

Not so cozy

As a part of constant realignment, with an aim to harness the synergies between closely aligned business teams -- whatever that means -- my team was relocated over the last weekend. We are now in the same building, just on a different floor.


Earlier, we were nicely consolidated in one cozy corner of the floor and had a world of our own. We had so much fun and activity and positive vibe in our section that so many others used to say that would love to be a part of our team, just so that they can get a chance to sit in our aisles.


Now, we are spread all over the place, basically filling out the empty pockets on this new floor, so that an entirely new team can fill our old floor. We really do not belong to this new place, it takes 5 minutes to walk to the cube of your nearest colleague and just to plan a luncheon takes 30 minutes or 50 emails.


But I am not cribbing about this, it is a part and parcel of our dynamic IT world. We have to be ready to adjust to new people and new surroundings. I am sulking because of something else.


In the old place, the Indian team members were about 15-20% of the total workforce. More importantly, they were decent and carried off themselves nicely. This new place is sheer disaster. There are at least 50-60% Indians and the way they carry themselves around makes me look down upon myself for being an Indian.


Basic etiquettes are not followed -- 
a - Coffee Pots are empty more often than not. No one has the basic courtesy to brew a new pot when they take the last drop of coffee. If I put a new pot to brew and go back to my desk (so that I do not waste the 10 minutes it takes for the brew), the fresh coffee is over by the time I come back.
b - Microwaves are always dirty. No one bothers to clean up any spillages in the microwave.
c - Cafeterias are not just places to fill your coffee mugs or warm your food, they also double up as chatting joints. More importantly, these chat sessions are never supposed to be lesser than 30 minutes duration and should ALWAYS be conducted in the mother tongue. Free Telugu / Tamil / Hindi coaching, just in case anyone is interested. And the decibel levels have to compete against the best speaker systems known to mankind.
d - Deodorants and perfumes are things meant to be window shopped. Using such cosmetics causes significant damage to the personal finance sheet. So, stay away from such petty items as much as possible. Same applies to shaving products -- you should shave only on appraisal days.
e - The dressing theme for EVERY day is odd-day. The shirt, trouser and shoes should never have anything in common or any relation to each other. Belts are a religious stigma.
f - Cubicles are not private areas meant for working. They are public spaces meant for socializing at least 5 hours every day. And it is critical that these socializing sessions also broadcast whatever is happening in your life, in your Indian dialect.


This is just a glimpse of what I have been going through for the last 5 days. I had a horror Monday and on that day, I decided to give myself 4 more days to evaluate the whole situation with an optimistic angle. But I really can not find ANYTHING optimistic here. Come Friday evening, I could not stop myself from writing this blog.


And mind you, not everyone is like this. There are a minority who are doing a very good job of maintaining the decorum of the place. But, to a neutral eye, its few and far between.


Why do we bring ourselves down like this? Today, we are dominating the IT industry and our drawbacks are ignored purely because of our technical prowess. But soon, some other country (no, not China, they are worse in such aspects) is going to come to the fore with equal technical ability and better behavioral characteristics. And guess who is going to get the kick on the hind side.


High time we get our act in order.

My Mother is an Ugly Woman?

Such a beautiful post from Subroto Bagchi... Very touching... 


My sense of shame in being an Indian in front of foreigners has somewhat changed over time.

When I was younger, I used to be very bothered whenever I saw people begging, pestering a visitor at the traffic intersection and of course, the sight of people defecating in full public view.

These sights do not put me to shame anymore.

I have come to terms with the underlying causes that make my countrymen beg, bother foreigners near touristic places or live in squalor next to heritage sites and five star hotels.

When people do not have a roof above their heads and everyday is a matter of survival for the majority, what use is my shame?

I am deeply aware that every civilization must progress on its own terms, in its own time. There are no short cuts to uplifting more than half of a country with 1.2 billion people into a developed state. I have done my own bit towards that cause, and I will continue to do what I can, but in my lifetime it is very unlikely that there will be no beggars on the street, or that people will stop relieving themselves in public view, or that I will see the vanishing of squalor that co-exists with the sometimes ugly opulence in our cities. So, these days, when I am with a visitor from overseas, I am not ashamed any longer with the sights, smells and sounds of India .

But last week, I held my head in shame-deep shame - and this happened in a small University town in Germany .

I had been invited there to speak at a student. Along with my wife Susmita, I had arrived the day before, and we were touched by the affection and hospitality of the students and the faculty. During the dinner that night, we had told our student hosts Paul and Leo that if ever they came to India, they must stay at our home so that we could return some of their hospitality. Because our two daughters left home a long time back, we live in Bangalore all by ourselves, and love hosting young people from around the world.

That was the night before.

The next day, when the student event actually began, my talk was preceded by one from an Indian gentleman based in Germany ; he runs the German operation of a family-owned Indian conglomerate that is a household name in India . The gentleman has been in Europe for a long time, and has evidently done well for himself.

He started his presentation titled "The Indian Mind". It was a medley of Internet jokes customized for India , a bunch of PowerPoint slides that frequently spam all of us depicting the greatness of ancient India , and a bunch of cartoons that depicted the so-called "the Indian way". There was also a short movie that contrasted Germans and Indians based on cultural generalization. Finally, he delivered his own take on what Indians are supposedly like.

The presentation opened with the macabre picture of a skull with a dollar sign stuffed inside it.

The narrative to match this dramatic, if disturbing, image went something like this:

An Indian went to see a banker in Manhattan . He wanted a $100 loan; he was willing to pay any amount of interest, and offered his Porsche as collateral. After taking the loan from the flummoxed banker, he went off to India on a month long vacation. When he came back, he promptly returned the $100 along with the interest of $20 and reclaimed his car. When the banker asked him to explain this puzzling behavior, our man proudly said, "Where else in Manhattan could I park my car for an entire month for all of $20?"

WOW!

The two hundred or so young German students laughed at the joke.

Then came slide after slide on the glory that once was India : Aryabhatta to Charaka, he depicted the story of zero to the fact once upon a time, India had invented chess. He told the audience how we had figured out gravity before Newton did, and the concept of inter-Galactic travel before anyone else.

The audience sat in awe.

Then he switched over to a film clip that sought to contrast the past with the present.

His film clip showed Indian legislators break chairs, throw footwear at each other, and not stopping there, break their microphones to hurl missiles at each other until blood flowed from the injured, and finally some law makers were seen taking cover under their tables.

The German students were now bewildered and I started to feel uncomfortable sitting in their midst. But then I told myself, maybe the truth must be told and this is important knowledge about India that the 200 future leaders must know. And why not? As I gulped down my discomfort, more Internet jokes followed.

One was about corruption and inefficiency. .

A man supposedly went to Hell only to find that there were regional options available down there. There was this American Hell that offered a hundred lashes. Next to it, he found the German Hell that offered a choice between an electric chair and fifty lashes. The man moved on to check out the Indian Hell and finally settled for it. Why?

In the Indian Hell, there were power-cuts so the electric chair did not work and the person in charge of lashing sinners simply took his salary and never came to work!

The students laughed some. That was indeed funny!

Then he went on to tell the next Internet joke.

Americans had invited international bids to build a fence around the White House. An American and a German firm that submitted bids had taken careful measurements and then they had quoted $700 and $1200 respectively for the work. Then there was the Indian firm that took no measurements and simply quoted $2700. The bewildered decision-maker called in the Indian bidder and asked him to explain. "How can you quote such a high price when you have not even taken measurements?", he asked. Our man replied with supreme confidence, "I do not need to take measurements. I will pay you a thousand and take a thousand and we will sub-contract the work to the lowest bidder."

WOW!

Then our presenter showed a short film contrasting how Germans and Indians thought of the idea of forming a queue - the Germans fell into instant orderliness and formed a single file but Indians pushed around, and broke the line as soon as one was formed. Then he showed a German parking a car, and how an Indian does it, and a few other such things including how Indian bureaucracy and politics differ from that of the Germans.

Everyone in the audience was getting the message.

At this point, he returned from the movie to slides.

With dramatic flourish, he showed a picture of a bucket full of crabs.

"This picture was taken on an Indian beach while I was with a friend from Germany . He was curious to know why the crabs were not escaping the bucket. I said, 'Let us call the fisherman and ask him'. The fisherman listened to the question and told us, 'These are Indian crabs. When one tries to get out, the others simply pull him down'. "

Oh well, never mind if you have heard a dozen variations of the same joke.

Now the attention of the students was beginning to wane a little bit. So, he came to the end of his presentation on India .

He had a slide that said Indians liked to receive (and, thankfully, also give) presents..

And then he went on to hold aloft his magnum opus, a slide that prophetically read:

"Indians do not mean what they say and do not say what they mean"

It required a story to explain.

So, he narrated how a group of Germans were once called home for dinner by an Indian. The Germans being Germans took the invitation seriously and actually showed up only to find an unprepared host who opened the door in his pajamas. The message was clear. Do not take Indians at face value.

My mind turned to the dinnertime conversation the previous night, and I wondered what Paul and Leo were now thinking about our invitation to come stay with us when they visited Bangalore!

Finally, the man gloriously wound up, saying that despite all this, India was one of the fastest growing economies in which if anyone chose to put in his money, it was bound to fetch a great return.

The audience clapped and then everyone took a fifteen minute break.

I headed to the toilet.

There was a long queue.

Suddenly a young German student in the queue, unaware that I was behind him, did a mock drill of breaking the line to form what he called an "Indian Queue".

I was the only Indian there, and I had only my countryman to thank for the ignominy.

I had to wait until that afternoon for my talk, and when done with that, we returned to our hotel.

The next day, one of the student organizers came over to drive us to Frankfurt in a rental car so that we could leave for the US from there.

While driving on the Autobahn, unfortunately, the car drove over some object and its two left wheels burst. We pulled over, and, after counting our blessings for what did not happen, called for help. After probably an hour, another student organizer reached us and we switched over to his car. The first student had to stay with the damaged car, waiting for a tow-truck to arrive.

Soon we were on our way.

The entire episode had shaken everybody, but thank God, no one was hurt. Nonetheless, many plans had gone haywire. We were all past our lunch time by the time the second car had arrived. So when we finally reached our hotel in Frankfurt , we invited our young friend to join us for lunch since he too had missed his, and was to now drive all the way back to his University town. When Susmita asked him to park his car and come into the hotel to
have lunch with us, he responded spontaneously, and without any malice, "The German way or the Indian?"

We tried to laugh off the repartee, but deep inside I felt hurtwhere once upon a time, I used to feel shame.

Poor Susmita started convincing him that we really wanted him to have lunch before he drove back, and of course, he joined us, but I wonder how on earth we were to change the newfound knowledge on India that was now deeply imprinted in 199 other young minds because an Indian in a position of authority had so convincingly delivered the message that we do not mean what we say and don't say what we mean.

I can deal with my poor, uneducated, disheveled countrymen back home, begging at traffic intersections, troubling foreigners, living in squalor and defecating in public view, and behaving in a thousand other unacceptable ways.

But I have difficulty when the educated, the well-to-do, the ones who have everything going for them, mentally defecate, trying to impress the world at the cost of their own country.

After lunch, when the young man was finally on his way and Koblenz was behind us, I thought of the idea of motherland. 

The word "Motherland" evoked the image of my mother.

In that moment I wondered if there is anyone in the whole world who thinks that his mother is not beautiful.

Worse, is there anyone who actually tells the world that his mother is an ugly woman?


I have seen this happen so many times in the US. The last time it happened, we were at dinner with a bunch of our colleagues. Somehow the discussion drifted to the concept of arranged marriages and how "elders in the family" can decide the wedding. While I was stoically trying to defend how these weddings are actually "arranged", another junior of mine (obviously, Indian) was actually enjoying the whole episode and spicing it up by giving  more and more instances of "marriage-in-10-minutes". He even said that his parents had not seen each other until the wedding day etc etc etc. After he brought his parents into the discussion, however, I could not say more.


Later though, I gave him a piece of my mind without holding back. Always remember, others will respect you, only when you respect yourself.

CITY OF GOLD

After a long search, I finally managed to find this movie online. It came in 4 parts of 100MB, uploaded on Rapidshare. Free download of such magnitude is restricted to 1 per day, hence I could download only 2 parts in the first 2 days. Somehow, I could not resist the temptation to find alternate sources to watch this movie. Eventually, I found out one (dailymotion) where the movie was uploaded for online viewing.


And what a movie it was!!! Very hard hitting and a authentic depiction of the real events that changed the face of my city for ever. In spite of reading so much about the Bombay Textile strike for so long and from so many different perspectives, it was very mind numbing to see the same story on celluloid. A gut wrenching saga which hits hard and hurts the mind.


And when I see movies like this (and Astitva, Viruddh) from Mahesh Manjrekar, I seriously wonder, why does his brain freeze while making other stupid movies. He has an incredible sense of the pulse when it comes to two genres -- gangster films and Maharashtrian background. All his successful films belong to either (or both) these two genres -- Vaastav, Astitva, Viruddh, this one. The Marathi viewer can instantly connect to such movies.


Anyone who is unaware of the background of the strike might find this movie boring. But anyone who is aware of the background of the strike will still find this movie hard hitting. And thats where the success of the director lies -- to surprise the viewer with the representation of an element that the viewer already knows very well. Not everyone is capable of doing it.


Having seen (just seen, not experienced) the life in such chawls on multiple occasions, I can very well relate to the origin of the sombre moods which are prevalent even today. It is so sad that the so called union leaders are politicians today (probably enjoying the fruits of power today), the mill owners are super rich and the common mill worker still languishes in the same 150 sqft homes, still waiting for the court cases to get resolved.


Yes, the strike was never called off. On paper, it is still going on, amidst this city of gold.

Life = Traffic Lights?

In life, things can change from green to red with just 1 fone call... Then they turn red to yellow with another fone call... Now its yellowish green... 


Looks like another trip to India beckons... 

Fireworks!!!

Family visiting the states and hence we found ourselves in NJ over the long weekend. Had a couple of memorable experiences during this visit.


First -- when you are hungry and by hungry, i mean, really really hungry. And you get the best food you ever craved for. Is it not akin to dream. Well, the dream came true.


vegetable biryani recipe


        I overslept and was in serious risk of missing my flight. So, I came up with the easiest way of saving time -- skip breakfast. I did not even have a glass of milk -- my usual time-saver breakfast -- and by the time I reached home at NJ, I was so so hungry. Lo!!! The lunch was served after about an hour, but what a lunch it was. Original Hyderabad Dumm Biryani with very spicy green chilly curry and raita. I have never ever eaten such good biryani. It was amazingly cooked and so flavorful. The basmati rice, the saffron, the tender marinated veggies and the awesome blend of spices which never over powered the rice -- WOW!!! Add the super spicy chilly curry and the soft raita, for a foodie like me, it was a dream come true.
        I ate like I was hungry for a week, not for a day. I atleast ate 3 plates of Biryani and believe me, those were no ordinary plates. I could hardly move after that wholesome meal. I will never forget that meal for a long long time... 


Second -- 4th of July. You go to go and see the fireworks. My uncle read somewhere that the fireworks at Atlantic City are the best on the east coast. We were not sure, but since there was nothing better to do, we decided to drive down to the casino city just to check it out. We reached there without much fuss and the fireworks started on time. It was one experience which I will never forget in my life -- unless I see something better, which seems unlikely for now -- ever.


fireworks02.jpg


The fireworks went on for abt 25 minutes and the intensity was ever increasing. With every new set of showers, we thought that this was the grand finale and it would end now, but it was not ending at all. Soon, there were two simultaneous shows going on. What more, there was a stiff breeze blowing in our direction and it drifted the fireworks even closer - so close, that people were actual worried by the proximity of the luminous bodies. For the first time, I felt that I was at the right place at the right time.


The ride back was a pain though -- with all the cars craving to load-test the Garden State parkway, it took us almost 2.5 hours to cover the first 20 miles and abt 5 hours to complete the entire 100 miles. But, its all worth it, especially if you slept the entire 5 hours of the return journey ;-)


I was lucky enough to be armed with a  camcorder and captured the spectacular extravaganza on tape. As soon as I can lay my hands on it, rest assured, I will post the link here. Till then, let me get my breath back... And let me get my digestive system back in order as well...