How will the media evolve? (Part 2)

Once upon a time, network TV like DD, BBC, ABC, CBS, DW etc, were one-stop-entertainers showing sports, news, music, films, sitcoms, vaudeville - all in one channel...Then came Cable and the so called "Niche" channels cropped up. And then came more and more channels within the same Niche; since Niches are by definition small and as the niches got crowded, these Niche clones had to also show programs from other Niches, and then all channels started looking like more or less the same. Here are some examples of these signs of convergence (SOC) between the million, zillion, traptopillion number of TV channels in the world:

1) Sports and Family channel SOC: Friends in US complain that they hardly get to see any sports on ESPN- (ESPN mostly shows Poker, spelling-bee, talk shows etc.).. They actually have to tune in to ESPN-Spanish or obscure channels like OCM to catch any sports...In India, Sony Max is a sports plus movie channel, Zee too would have taken the same route if they got the cricket rights
2) News and Glamour TV SOC: CNN drew a lot of flak two years ago when they promoted one of their star anchor "Paula Zahn" as "a little sexy"...Its a well-known fact that news anchors are chosen more for looks than for much else (When will we see this coming in India?)
3) Music and evening TV SOC: Music videos are shown on MTV and VH1 in the US only in the morning...Rest of the time its only Date the Mom, Date one out of three, Roadies, Celebrity party-life kind of shows..
4) Business and evangelical channels SOC: In India, the morning hours on many business channels are devoted to astrological forecasts.. not very different from Aastha, Sanskar etc..The same is true for many family channels...The evangelical channels in turn show TeleShopping programs most of the time...
5) No choice within the same niche: All news channels have become so predictable, especially in India.. They more or less show the same news item at the same time..I came across a Ghulam Navi Azaad interview on Sahara News, switched to Aaj Tak- the same interview, switched to Zee News - the same interview... In US, Seinfeld, Sex and the City, etc.. appear on most sitcom channels...
6) No choice within the same channel: When it comes to movies, its highly likely that you will see the following movies whenever you switch on- Zee Movies-Andaz apna apna, Star Movies- Jurassic Park, HBO- Mummy, Zee MGM- Kill Bill, Gangs of New York etc., the same news played 24/7 on news channels; the same episodes on cartoon channels
7) Similar formats: Yes, the "choose one out of many after many-1 weeks" format is being used in all channels: Rock Star- INXS, Big Brother, Apprentice, ESPN- Commentator, Discovery-King of the Jungle, Indian and American Idol, MTV Roadies etc...these are often the star programs of their respective channels...

As you see, there is not much difference between different niches, between different channels within the same category, and between different programs in the same channel... So, what next? Are we going back to the old network days? Will language and logos remain as the only difference between TV channels?

How will the media evolve..(Part 1: News)

I mean both newspapers and news channels. Here are some of my observations which I personally feel strange about:

1) As per "The Economist": In 2004, NBC's evening news show devoted just five minutes to the genocide in Darfur, CBS a mere three and ABC, .... 18. By contrast, they together devoted 130 minutes to the plight of Martha Stewart.
2) Closer home, Govinda's wife's accident got much more coverage than our P.M.'s independence day speech on news channels..The accident also was the key front page news item in the newspaper I keep (Free Press Journal-usually non-tabloidish)..I had to search through the paper to see the P.M.'s speech article

Has the news media lost touch with .. er news?
Now one may say that that we get what we deserve, that our appetite has changed with times, that Govinda's wife affects our day-to-day lives more than P.M.'s speeches or Naxal killings. But what about this:
In today's Free-Press-Journal, they did a very noble thing of translating Vande Mataram to English (I say noble as the state of things is such that many think A.R Rehman wrote this song). But the translation was in Shakespearean English with words like thee, thy, hath, etc. in abondon..So who has lost touch with the audience - media or the audience themselves?
By the way, today's news are not just about celebrities, I think its more about sensations..People with cable homes and access to english newspapers are hardly excited by Village Road schemes or death of some MLA Reddy...So for them the "Gateway of India" stabbing is so very "Tell-me-more" ..So I feel that news media will evolve into more of pure celebrity/ sensation media...But someone will have to give the traditional news- may be the traditional stuff we call news will come as risk disclosures on mutual-fund advertisements...(statements like mutual fund investments are subject to market risks et al)
Watch a mutual-fund ad and after the main feel-happy theme, the ad tells the risk-disclosures in a super high speed voice-over while a very fine print comes on the screen...The same happens in newspaper ads where they appear in very fine print....Will traditional news items like P.M.'s speeches, budgets and Naxal killings have the same fate?

8% growth, 7800-sensex, Mumbai-Shanghai and ....

Yes, while all these have been happening, there are people who are oblivious (these are my own observations):

1) The middle aged lady who was urinating in full public view at S.V. Road, Goregaon (she probably couldn't afford a Sulabh)
2) The 5-6 year girl who ran after an auto-rickshaw in between full traffic; when the signal turned green, right at the moment when the rickshaw rider was about to give her a rupee
3) The family of 5 selling lime-chili talismans to cars and auto-rickshaws (Rs 5 a-piece, how much can the family make in a day?)
4) The 4 year kid first cleaning the car windows and then hoping that you will pay for it?

So how does 8% growth, 7800-sensex, Mumbai-Shanghai and IT exports effect them? Life of beggars and street vendors depend a lot on traffic lights. If traffic becomes more high-speed because of more flyovers, less signals and less jams- where will the beggars find their targets? If we all becomes less superstitious as we get more developed and educated, who will buy the lime-chilies? As faster growth is usually accompanied by higher inflation, will things (even Sulabh) become even less affordable for the poor?

OR will trickle-down effect be enough?

And by the way, for how many years will we keep on celebrating Independence Day?

Sensex and common people

The NSE Index went up by 1.8% today...If I were Manmohan I would have declared a national holiday tomorrow to celebrate this and termed it as Mumbaikars heroic fight-back (I would have also termed it as Rajiv Day)..and if I were the communists I would have declared a strike to prevent further economic growth.. All the same I feel like taking a day off...

Middle class people exhibit very interesting attitudes towards stock markets and these are some of the excerpts:

Mother: It’s gambling. How does your conscience allow you to deal with shares?
Sister: The more high valued a stock, the more attractive it is. So Infosys at 5000 is a better buy than Infosys at 2500..
Neighbors: Give me some tip. Please give me some tip. How is that broker? Oh, do give me some tip..
Jeeja: I am really scared of stock-markets. Since you insist, I will invest Rs 500...
Father: You buy shares, but buy some Kisan Vikas Patras also
Friend 1: I know that stock is good..I have insider and I did analysis
Friend 2: I have no money to invest. Do you have some?
Colleague: What? You bought mutual funds instead of stocks..Are you getting married soon?
TV analyst: If the market is going up, it means it is going up...If it's going down, it's going down

Dixie tour of Hong Kong

I won't call it a Patel tour..kind of like the "Dixie" prefix....and I am a pro in Dixie having done dixies at Chicago, Cincinnati, Singapore, Fredrikshagen...I come prepared, search 2 hrs over the internet to figure out which places I want to see and how to reach there, and then I plunder with my camera...I print out downloaded maps and write in the hour-by-hour plan behind it...Any mistake is going to cost me time and snaps...I check-in all heavy stuff and just carry a back-pack with a back-up of undergarments, socks and headache pills...

I land at 5:30 AM at Hong Kong and have eight hours in between flights...By the time I get out of the airport, the sun has come out... Now before I start on a Dixie, I always play some groovy electronic music on my head (to help my body not think about its loss of time-zone sense )..I start off at Kowloon, "Firestarter" playing...Promenade, Avenue of stars, Star boat ferry to Central, Victoria Peak tram ride, the Peak, Hong Kong Park..they all fall one by one before my camera...By the time I reach the worlds longest escalator, the heat and humidity has drenched me and legs are aching..I play some heavy metal to take my mind off the pain..I go up 1/4th the height in the escalator, I get the idea, come down, head off to Man Mao Temple..Now one thing that freaks me out when I am on a dixie is when I find that maps are not drawn to scale..I play "Primus-Electric Uncle Sam"...At Man Mao, I stand next to some worshippers and take snaps of their Gods..Funny, how worshippers and snap-happy tourists stand side by side in the cramped temple with totally different motivations, each waiting for his moment..Mission accomplished, I head back to the airport and change my clothes at the Cathay lounge..Content, at another clinically executed trip, I play a more happy tune - "NoFx" version of "Kill all the white men" :-)...
Suddenly on the flight I realize a mistake.. At any new place I visit, I ensure that I do a no. 2 there and I missed it at Hong Kong...

Everybody go Yoggin, Yoggin USA

People stretching their legs and arms as they reach for their inner self, tolerating the pains of 109F temperature as they sweat away their malice.... I am not talking about Benaras or Kashi...This is Palo Alto, California. Yes, California is the real yoga land, where there is a yoga center every block (incidentally there is a MacDonalds every three miles in USA)..California has become that unique place where first world concerns (obesity and stress) are encountered by third-world or should I say, other-world solutions.
Of course, US has an abundance of people who occupy more physical space than they should, but even then, the presence of 15 million yoga practitioners in USA is !!!!!!. I wonder if there are even half that many in India...
But then of course, in India there are different issues - For some reason, the yoga show comes on Aastha TV at dinner time !!!!!!! Also in the US, you are most likely to encounter celebrities, corporate honchos and young students of the opposite sex, in a Yoga center...Whereas in India, its more likely to be 35+ gujarati or marwari wives seeking a solution for their gastro problems...And every Friday, at city squares in Calif, Indians dressed in jeans and tees and Americans dressed in Saris and Dhotis sing out loud and spread the message of Yoga...
Yoga in California also invariably comes with a prefix- Power, Hot, Psychedelic and of-course Iyengar and Bikram - truly, many roads to the universal truth... I have only two memories of a similar kind of craze - the Kung-Fu craze in North-East India around early 90s and the present Fencing craze in Kandivali....By the way, will the day ever come when - Yoga will be - "For here" or "To Go"..

Moral Science

I studied in a Catholic school in the North East till Class VII...And one of the 14 interesting subjects they taught at school was Moral Science...And since I am pretty clueless about what to write, I thought I would dig up this subject...The subject was about commonplace do's and don'ts, importance of punctuality, cleanliness, good manners etc., and I believe they are taught in other schools too. Now, when I grew up and became a perennial skeptic, I realized that I had lots of issues with the subject. Of course there are those clichéd issues (Is morality a science, is catholic morality good enough for all, should they teach you to believe in God at school, should morality be taught through rote learning etc.).. But, leaving these thoughts aside, I have one question I haven't an answer for.

The pass marks for the subject was pegged at 35% like the other 13 subjects... So what’s the point? Is 35% moral awareness good enough? What about the lack of awareness of the remaining 65% of morality? Does society in general accept that 35% morality is good enough?

Being a self-proclaimed degenerate (and also by some others), this post shouldn’t be taken as my appeal to increase the pass marks in Moral Science to 100%. I would rather drop it altogether to reduce the number of subjects to 13.

Random security checks

Random backpack checks and frisking...Random as defined by uniform probability distribution wherein chances of being frisked are independent of race, skin color, name structure and facial profile. Thats what the declared intention is..but people are suspiscious that a particular segment is picked more randomly for these checks....It's easy to take me for a Puerto Rican, but my name being so non-hispanic, I am always pre-selected randomly for a detailed security check while taking domestic flights in US...But I think thats how it should be, cause the security threat is of that nature...Would one, for some instance, insist that India have the same level of intelligence coverage in Nauru as much as in Pakistan...The logic is simple..if past experience shows that people having a certain physical profile have been responsible for insurgency, then it's only rational to keep a more watchful eye on that particular segment....
However, security agencies in US, UK etc. have played to the politically correct gallary and publicly insisted that the searches are really random...while in practice there is every evidence that its more random for some..
Also, I have no idea how retina scans and finger-prints taken during immigration are going to be useful in enhancing security...As per some reports these measures may increase potential misuse of the collected information.....Somehow one gets the feeling that things are being done just to show that something is being done.

Mumbai awards "Honorary MBA" to our PM

As reported in Indian Express:

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday ‘saluted’ people of Mumbai for ‘demonstrating to the world what a Mumbaikar is made of’ while dealing with the rain-induced flooding in the city....“You have borne a lot of personal distress in silence and have worked to restore this city to normalcy. You have demonstrated to the world what a Mumbaikar is made of and I salute you all,” he said. On Mumbai, which made a significant contribution to the Central government in terms of taxes, not getting a proportionate amount in return, the Prime Minister said, “I think Mumbai deserves greater attention”. Replying to a query whether the heavy rains and the administration’s tackling of the situation had affected the dream of turning Mumbai into Shanghai, the Prime Minister said, “the city needs greater infrastructure. We will coordinate with the state government in making this dream come true”....Asked if the situation following heavy rains in Mumbai was a result of unplanned growth, he said, “we should take a holistic view of the developmental needs of the city”.

Yes Sir PM, I am so moved by your answers that I decided to give you an "honorary MBA". I also tried practicing your answering skills for some day to day questions:

Q: What is your name?
A: You have asked me my name
Q: What will you have for dinner?
A: I shall have dinner tonight.
Q: How do you plan to go to office today?
A: I shall use a method of commuting which serves the country's immediate needs
Q: Have the rains stopped?
A: We should take a holistic view of the sky

The world is now so easy to live in for me thanks to our PM.

Oye, Yeh Van Gogh Shan Gogh ki hai

Have you seen the "Sex and the City" episode where a film actor goes to an art gallery, mistakes the fire extinguisher to be an art work, and asks for its price?
Well that has been always the case for many of us including me. Yes, till the 18th century it was OK.. the paintings had some semblance to reality and you could admire how well Rembrandt had painted the cloth folds, how neat the spoon was in a dutch still life, or how Georges de la Tour used light and dark effects. Many middle class families do buy prints of modern paintings but mainly based on how well it matches with the wall paint and the rest of the furniture. It is especially difficult for us Indians, used to calendar paintings of bloated images of the Gods, to appreciate a Frank Stella 3D jumbo. Of course the rich can buy an original along with a book on its criticism, and often the art trader himself gives a crash course on social talk to be accompanied with the sold painting.
An interesting animal is the Indian software engineer, he has to go to the art galleries abroad for tick value (and also most public art galleries are free entry). But once there, what does he do? Often he doesn't waste any time, goes straight to the museum shop and buys a safe "Van Gogh" or a "Da Vinci" print to show-off back home. And for some it ends up as another opportunity to check e-mail in the free museum computers. Art for the sake of art or for the sake of tick?

Avoiding bad luck 100% of time

According to Financial Times;

The man shot dead in south London on Friday is not connected to attempted terror attacks on the capital, said police. The statement came as it emerged that police have been given secret new shoot-to-kill guidelines in recent weeks. New shoot-to-kill guidelines for armed police and surveillance officers confronting suspected suicide terrorists advise them to shoot to the head and not the body in case the suspect has a bomb.

The world has indeed become a frightening place. Whereas some days back I would have termed terror attacks as isolated incidents and that we should carry on with our normal lives..this incident has really changed my outlook. On one hand are some crazy individuals bent on killing innocent people in US, UK, Spain, India, Egypt, etc....and on the other hand are security men with new stringent guidelines. And in between is trapped the life of the common innocent man. The innocent man has to avoid the bad luck 100% of the time, while both the terrorists and the security enforcers have to succed or missjudge just once. Also advertisements in public places urge us to keep an eye for anything suspiscuos. What is a suspicious action for an untrained eye? If someone is new at place and walks here and there confused to find out his way, is he liable to be killed in the name of security? Will backpacks mean death? And all these risks have become so pertinent in the day to day activities of a common man - metro, bus stations, shopping malls, use of backpacks etc...Of course security departments are walking a fine line..If in a split second decision, they take chances and don't shoot and then something untoward happens, the whole public security system will collapse. But I am always skeptical of irreversible punishments - whether it is the death penalty or pre-emptive killing.
It is so sad and disgraceful that a few insane individuals (terrorists) have been able to create so much uncertainty in the already unprivileged life of ordinary innocent individuals.

Mumbai to Shanghai

We are all waiting for the day when Mumbai will become Shanghai. The government has been talking about this at every meeting. Mumbai intellectuals have been recommending better habits to citizens to make the city cleaner. A company of thinkers has drawn out an elaborate plan with enormous investment suggestions to make this happen.

Most of us have never been to Shanghai. Some years back my idea of Shanghai was only of being a centre of sleaze in China. However many of the Mumbai wellwishers have become convinced that Shanghai is the way to be. Roads have been dug up at all place. Hills are being cut and our ladies have started dressing differently. The municipality has set up signboards everywhere encouraging us to bear with them to enjoy Shanghai in the near future.

But when people are charged up they forget simple basics. For example, why create all this hassle to daily life and spend so much money when things could be done so easily. Turning Mumbai into Shanghai could be achieved so much more easily just by changing the name of the city. We have done this earlier so many times (Bombay to Mumbai, Madras to Chennai, Calcutta to Kolkata etc). So why have we forgotten this simple route now? We can achieve our desired goals. The Chinese given the current brotherly attitude towards India, will not bother to claim this city as theirs. This way, we can have all the great cities in India. Chennai can become Sydney, Calcutta can become New York and Delhi can become London. The americans have adopted this strategy long back. All the major cities like London, Toledo etc are there in the US. You even have a Delhi and a Bombay. And look how that country has done economically and politically. So as always lets use our heads and take the easy route.

O Africa !!!!!!!!!!!!

I have always been fascinated by Africa and Africans and have found it so amazing that the land of origin of homo-sapiens and the Egyptian and Ethiopian civilizations could also be subject to the worst in history - slavery, colonization, race pogroms, brutal dictators, malnutrition, child warriors, apartheid etc. But then I have still not been in Africa. The closest I have been to Africa or Africans has been through talking with Eritrean and Nigerian taxi drivers in Ohio, listening to a bad Toto song or reading books by Rider Haggard (she, King Solomon's mines) and Saul Bellow (Henderson the rain king). These books inevitably projected the fairy-tale extrapolated view of Africa- one where white men were mistaken for Gods and men ate men. TV channels found African animals more worth than men and the Live8 concert and the G8 summit didn't educate me any more. I tried internet searches on Africa(ns) and came across this startling fact that according to some biblical interpretation Noah cursed Cannan and his descendants to be slaves. Many people interpreted that Cannan was black from whom Ethiopians originated and used it as a justification for slavery. Of course, modern politically correct interpretations deny it, but isn't it amazing how purposefully ambiguous scriptures can cause so much problem.

All the same, internet searches led me to books by the late Ahmadou Kouruma and I gobbled up his "Waiting for the vote of the wild animals". It's fantasy but is so refreshing from all previous accounts of Africa that I have had. The book tells the life of an African dictator in a ceremonial rendering. I will just mention a small sample of the most astonishing ideas (please read the book for more):

1. The French colonizers instituted a "degree of civilization" for natives
2. After the colonizers gave freedom to Africans, they created several countries-appointed their puppet as the father-of the-nation, wrote for him a national song and a speech at the UN

3. One of the most astonishing achievements of the colonizers was that 5 natives got educated in 50 years, compared to their initial target of 5 educated natives in 150 years

4. Dictators rationalized their oppression through tales of magic and forecast- phalluses of assassinated men were stuffed into their mouth to prevent their souls from taking revenge.

5. How the dictators played the West against in the East during the cold war to maximize their benefits

6. How journalists from western media were treated lavishly to keep their mouth shut

Of course all this is fiction, but Africa to me has always been like that. Who knows if Mugabe is really bad man or is it an impression created by few white farmers in Zimbabwe who has been asked to flee? How could Liberia, the nation of freed slaves who planned to create an ideal society, fall into so much chaos? Till I go there, I shall read on….

Will good manners get commoditized?

I was at the Pizza Hut at Mountain View this weekend, and the cute Chinese lady at the counter greeted me with her charming voice "How can I help you?" and after I had given my request "Is there anything else you would like today?" While I was having my Pizza, lots of customers came by and she greeted everyone with the same trained mechanical jingle. After hearing it a couple of times I got really irritated. And then I started to wonder..If any shopkeeper greeted me this way in Mumbai (probably the friendliest city in India), I would have been really happy, So why was I getting irritated now?

Is this what happens after an environment has reached a certain stage of consumerism - that basic good manners are taken for granted and not given any special value. Does the voice from an IVR machine become as warm or cold as that of a real person? Does a smile become a scorn depending on which side of the face you are looking at? Does "How was your weekend" and "How do you do" become as mechanical as a phone-dialing action to begin an objective conversation? Do I see the store guy at the counter or do I only see the black bar separating my groceries from the person ahead of me before the altar-the bar code reader?

<>Too much of balderdash, please to vote on the left side of this post....(:-)

Sikhs mistaken again

The Indian Express reports a ten fold increase in race related crimes in London after the recent London blasts. As after 9/11 sikhs are being targeted mistakenly. There has been a petrol bomb attack on a gurdwara in Kent and an attack on a gurdwara in Bradford. And all because common people don't understand the difference between headgears. To prevent such mistakes, Pulitzer winning cartoonist, Anne Telnaes had published this wonderful cartoon after 9/11. This cartoon should be posted at all traffic signals and before religious institutions in large print.

Spare a tear for IT support

Everywhere, at least in India, IT has become synonymous with success and youth power. If you are twenty-something and appear well dressed, you must be working in IT. My apartment neighbors can’t hide their smirk when I say that "unfortunately I am not an IT consultant, but a management consultant :-(". But all said and done, one segment of this glorious industry has been left behind - and those are the IT support staff.

Yes, may my worst enemy be spared from having the life of an IT support guy- a thankless life spent clicking on Install, Uninstall and Restart. Every time he has to clean up our mess (systems) after our previous night's excesses without having ever heard those two words "Thank you". He is supposed to know it all and we laugh in his face at the slightest hint that he is having some difficulty understanding our IT related problem. His private life is worth peanuts and we are allowed to call him up anytime and thrash him for any self created emergency. He is often a contract employee and always outnumbered by the mainstream employees-so he can never say "Enough is enough". And 24/7, hundreds of geeky nerds, who are much smarter than him, are creating new viruses and spywares to add to his misery.

Only once the IT support guy has some chance to redeem his prestige and that is when a new person joins in the middle or lower ranks. Then it is all like a tribal ritual. First, our IT support guy gets a special one hour session with the new joinee explaining why he is not allowing him any IT privileges (128Mb RAM, net access etc.). And then within a day or two when the new joinee has complained to his boss about limited access, our IT guy is thrashed and humiliated again. Now the new joinee too joins up the Reducule-IT-support-gang.

Let’s observe a moment of silence for these people- who have been bypassed by the IT revolution. Friends, don’t love an IT support guy but please don't hate him- allow him that only moment of glamour when you join new- that is the only twig he is holding on to in his miserable and lonely life.

P.S. : Given the times we are living in, this may be a taken as a satire on IT support. But really, I do feel for them.

Armchair Entrepreneur

A handful of MBAs do social service, and a few start their own companies. The rest of them are employees at various levels in hot-shot firms. Among this class a select few become what I call "Armchair Entrepreneurs". I shall not divulge whether I am one of them but i know the breed quite well...Also I owe this post a lot to Jayesh who helped me thrash out the profile of the armchair entrepreneur.
How do you know an armchair entrepreneur? Most of them behave in the workplace as if they have seen it all, they have changed a few jobs, worked on different roles and make fairly decent money; and having seen it all they have come to the conclusion-its not worth it and that they should start their company anytime now. And here is what sets apart our armchair entrepreneur. He has been only thinking for the last 3-4 years. He believes that thinking about a business model is all that is requiresd....he is too lazy, content or risk averse to try it out and is happier telling 'i told u 5 yrs back' when someone else creates a business of it. Every month or so he takes industries one by one and reads as many analyst reports as he can. Finally he junks that industry again saying- "its not worth it". Among friends he discusses company stocks as if the CEO of those companies were his best pals and told him all the insider secrets before going to bed. His main crib is 'other just dont get it'. Now he often brings in as many friends as willing to the virtual board of his ever forming virtual companies. And he feels that even if 3 people agree, he is victorious. He hates people who asks uncomfortable questions about his business plans and stops talking to them. Among his friend circle he frequently cites some distant relative or friend who earns so much by doing so little. He frequnetly drops names of Michael Dell and the Google-yahoo guys and how some fictitious contact is ever eager to sponsor him. And his most terrific character is that he is a cynic in his own class- he pollutes others around him and laughs loud when others say- i worked till 11PM, 10PM, 8PM, 7 PM, 6PM, 4PM. Eventually they get married, join infosys/ TCS, buy a house, rest happily ever after.

Do you know someone like him or are you one of him?

Obsession with Time

Now I had written about the human race's obsession with time in my previous posts "Who - the Hare, or the Turtle" and "Time everywhere".

Came across this really funny snippet on "The Blu Collar TV" on Comedy Central. The snippet showed a papa and a daughter chewing food with the comforting advertisement voice saying this: "Troubled with spending so much time on chewing food? Do you know that an average human spends 1/65 of a percent of his life chewing food? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could save all this time? Introducing pre-chewed food from company X....Our experts chew the food in advance and then we package it.. There are different levels available - semi-chewed , well-chewed and almost digested... SO enjoy your life now...Have a pre chewed sausage while doing your exercise"

GASP... Is this where things might end up with...

Because it is there

When I was a kid, I had a big crush over astronomy and space science and would spend hours making amateur devices to look at the sky. As I grew up and learnt to think through things, I got increasingly disillusioned and the Columbia accident coupled with our Met's continuous failures to predict monsoons convinced me that space science was a total waste of money, talent and effort. Globally space research agencies are going through the same thought cycle as achievable near-medium term goals seem rather mundane (and correctly so) to some of the best minds in our world. In the midst of this came George Bush's fillip for NASA and the Discovery mission-the first manned flight by NASA after the Columbia acident, will take place this Wednesday. This mission also made me think if there is any need for furher efforts in space science at all.

I believe that space science could be hypothetically of the folowing uses:
1) Use for our day to day lives: Lot has been done-Satellite TV, Radio, SatPhones, weather forecast etc. The next logical use could be oil extraction from Saturn, designer stones from asteroids, spas in moon, space tourism etc. The problem is while many of these seem too frivolous to invest such huge sums in; economics wouldn't permit mineral extraction from planets for a long time since there is enough scope in improving efficiences back in earth.
2) Use for defence/ security: Once again there are lots of uses through reconnaisance efforts, satellite guided systems etc. There is enough that can be done through existing systems only and gone are the Regan days when public opinion could be in favor of spending trillions to build Space Wars capabilities. Most agree that softer intelligence will prove a lot more critical in solving terrorist threats.
3) Psychological use: Space research could be of immense help to lift up the morale of the people- Appollo mission for instance told Americans in Vietnam days that they could win the Cold War. Once again, Regan days are gone. Other countries like China and India could try manned space flights to achieve the same opium effect, but that would be like re-inventing the wheel.
4) Because its there: Finally, the last reason why we should invest in space science could be just "because its there". The arguement for further investment will be just to whet the curious appetite of the human mind and the hope that someday something may come out of it all.

The problem with space science is that it is the last reason which is currently posing as the strongest reason why we should invest in this. Gone are the days when Newton could do astonishing things (in a relative sense) just by using a prism. Modern science calls for huge collaborative efforts involving billions of dollars. With no major commercial gain in, all the money has to come from public bodies and they are already pressed by rising pension and healthcare costs coupled with the fact that probably half of world population is impoverished. So is the last reason strong enough? I can't justify it through reason but the romance of the idea urges me to the conclusion "Yes".

Blame it on the enemy

Many of the political leaders in our country have this tendency to blame it on the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, for any untoward incedent as we saw after the recent bomb blasts at Ayodhya. And they do it seconds after they come to know of the incident. If they had such good information about the cause why not do something to prevent the ISI? Or does the ISI specially ring up some of our politicians immediately after they had causes some damage? Of course, I dont think anyone in India takes these ISI blames seriously at all. But still, why glorify ISI by hypothesizing about its ability to harm India unchecked and in the process why belittle our own intelligence agencies? I wonder whether Pakistani politicians play the same blame game after any terrosist attack in their homeland. Such irresponsible claims does sometime bring harm to the blamers. Last year, the incumbent Spanish ruling party lost the elections after they incorrectly blamed the Basque militants for the Madrid blasts two days before the polls.

Time everywhere

I wonder whether time-pieces have become the most common sight in our day to day lives. There is a time-piece on my mobile, my pen, my microwave, radio, refrigerator, AC remote, laptop screen and even the Dali print in my room. There are time pieces on feng-shui items, car panels and a small time-indicator appears at the corner of many TV channels.

And guess what even my watch is a time-piece!!!! Wait a minute, the manufacturer has also put three smaller time-pieces inside it. Since each clock or watch has a life of its own, i find it increasingly difficult to ensure that all of them are moving together. They are like a flock of sheep that have to be kept in a pack by the herdsman. I can understand why there has to be a road light every ten meters or a square meter of tree cover every 3 square meters, but why should there be a time-piece for every square feet? Nowadays time pieces come cheap, so they can be put everywhere- but then so many other things come cheap: ball-pens for instant. So which new items will come with time-pieces attached - belans, condoms, eating plates? May be cigarettes.

Golden arches nostalgia

Different countries show different social attitudes towards McDonalds- In US and particulary in the classy UK, you don't get a lot of social respect if you have been dining at McDonalds. There McDonalds is for tourists and poor east europeans and africans. Whereas in India, going to Mac is a great family affair even for the affluent middle class. One can say thats because McBurgers are expensive enough given the PPP of our country (though the Rs 20 burgers are a big hit) to keep out the lower economic strata. But I have seen the same favorable family attitude in Norway (the most developed country in the world), where families love to feast at the Mac. Of course, in Norway everything else (except 7/11 hot dogs) is too expensive for even the well-off locals to enjoy.
Now there is this huge backlash by the anti-obesity movement against the McStyle foods. The documentary "Super Size Me", where-in the director Morgan Spurlock subjects himself to a month long diet of only Mcfood, showed scientific evidence of becoming overweight through Mcfood.
As for me, my attitude towards the Golden arches have also changed. When I was in Londoan 4 years back I could have a Burger almost every day. Nowadays I cant have it more than once a month and after having it I feel loaded the whole day.However, I shall always have fond memories of McD. In Sweden, a 24-hour McDonalds gave me shelter in a freezing night when I didnt have a hotel to stay in. And any new place I go to, the sight of Golden Arches assures me that I shall not go hungry.

Why should we pay for VISAs?

Off to USA again this Saturday and I have plans to visit Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China as well; this brought back thoughts on VISAs and immigration checks. Hong Kong and Macau are one of the few places in the world that award Indians VISAs on arrival. Even Singapore, whose economy depends to some extent on the inflow of Indian tourists, have started the VISA requirement for us. A visit to the foreign office websites of countries would reveal that most of them have enforced VISA requirements for citizens of developing countries while waiving the same for citizens of developed nations. And often developing countries themselves have similar stipulations. I don't have a major problem with countries enforcing a differential VISA regime. But I do have a problem with the fact that it costs to acquire a VISA. When we pay the fees to get a VISA for a country X while the citizens of say USA don't need a VISA for the same country, doesn't that mean that we are bearing the bulk of the cost of country X's consular operations worldwide?
The scale and the impact of this may be small compared to robberies like agricultural subsidies, but I think something needs to be done about this form of apartheid.

Ami Englisss bolte pari

Continuing from Jayesh's article at booletpoint with our fixation with English - so much so that parents ban their kids from talking in any other language. One of the main concerns with spread of English is that a large part of our population (esp. rural ones) will be left behind. But hold on- fixation with English is widespread. Last week, while I was giving my order in Hindi at a Sindhi restaurant to a very desi looking waiter, he kept on talking to me in very broken and funny English. The other day, a boy from the Pizza hut came asking for "broccoli" to our neighborhood vegetable seller. The duo failed to communicate with each other and after the Pizza boy left, we had a nice laugh.
Also the fixation with English is not limited to India. During my exchange program at Norway, I asked my Dutch roommate why he only listened to English, were there no good Dutch songs? He said it was difficult to sing or write song in Dutch, so that’s why.
However, transition from a rustic life to one equipped with English can be awkward like puberty. A bunch of freshers were asked in my engineering college " What do you call the hair in your groin in English". One guy proud to show off, answered "Public hair".
And of course no matter what, some things will always look and sound pretty odd if done in English - imagine Shaadi mantras in English, giving gaalis in English to the beggar who tapped on the glass of your Chevrolet, dancing Dandiya to English tunes, etc.
Those familiar with Chomsky's theory of universal grammar (that all languages have a common base, since a child can learn any language if exposed early to it) now wonder if it was actually English Grammar. The spread of English has undermined severely the Christian God's pursuit in the story of "The Tower of Babel". (as per the story, God created many languages so that men couldn't communicate with one another and would leave the city of Babel).
However, in the end, it’s all a matter of individual choice. If someone should be free to choose his belief system (religion) etc., he should also be free to choose his language. But should parents choose the language for kids? And as with everything else, I believe fixation with any particular idea can be risky. People who know a bit of Arab in the US can get such lucrative jobs in the post 9/11 world. Who knows, someday our own Hindi and Bengali will be the languages in demand and perhaps for the right reasons?

Someone get me Rajiv Gandhi back

So much analysis has crept into our lives. Each and every action is analyzed for hours on TV. Every ball from a Bangladesh-Netherlands cricket match is analyzed so many times. Mandira Bedi analyzes screen shots during Sony Max movies. Soon after 9/11 experts cropped up from all corners of the world and started writing about Taliban and Arab life. And even the Kolkata municipality elections were analyzed for almost 24 hrs in a regional language channel. Some-times I wonder if global events are intentionally created by analysts. Sarbanes-Oxley implementers, please to take note.
Gone are the good old DD monopoly days when only Rajiv Gandhi would be shown everyday during the 20:30 news and he would say with a smile that India is on a fast-track course to super success. Convinced, I could then sleep peacefully. Nowadays there is no respite, each analysis is multiplied many times over by multiple news channels and there is an expert with an explanation for everything. Of course the random search for experts and explanations can lead to some goof-ups. For instance, the dubious claim by an expert in US that living with gay parents can be harmful for a child's mental development. The Michael Jackson trial was analyzed for hours by hundreds of lawyers and law experts and the majority expert opinion was that there would be some conviction. After Wacko was acquitted on all counts, John Stewart remarked - "Thank God, the lawyers and law experts were busy on TV and thank the TV channels for keeping them out of courtrooms."
All the same, I am tired of all these analysis. I switch channels whenever a news reader starts talking to an expert and I turn off the commentary during cricket matches. Someone get me my Rajiv Gandhi back.

The world after Shaadi.com

Yes, the world shall never be the same again. Shaadi.com and several other matrimonial sites have spread into our consciousness. If your colleague is working late at office, please check, he may be getting married soon.
Shaadi.com is good for the economy as so many new services may open up. There will be third party profile rating services in the lines of credit rating or movie reviewers. These raters would provide independent reviews of the attractiveness of profiles at Shaadi.com - **, *** etc. Soon the market will be flooded with countless self-help books - How to write a Shaadi.com profile in 24 hrs (like Learn HTML in 24 hrs), You can get married too (like You can win), What they don't show at Shaadi.com (like What they don't teach at IIMs), Know your audience (girl or girl's father)
A mobile version of the site and its services may be available in future - one could then browse through countless profiles during that arduous train journey from Churchgate to Andheri!!!!!!!
The matrimony sites have also showed how Indian traditions, values and ethos are so very compatible with modern technologies and innovation - Religious and Casteist feelings have a ball in this supposedly liberating media.
The only concern I have with the popularity of these sites is that this may seriously widen the digital divide. As men from internet savvy families get married to women from internet savvy families only, a sub-species may evolve. As evolution takes charge and in-breeding among internet savvy populations reach incestuous proportions, will this new sub-species have drastically different traits from the homo-sapiens we know?
I have written all these, but for all you know, I may soon have to put up my profile up there :-(

Looking with one eye shut

Dominic Emmanuel, a Catholic priest from the Delhi Catholic Archdiocese together with the omnipresent Samaritan, Mahesh Bhatt, is leading the efforts to make a Bollywood style movie on HIV/AIDS. The main motto of this movie 'Aisa Kyon Hota Hain', full with song and dance flicks, is to communicate to masses that "The best way to evade AIDS is by avoiding promiscuous relationships". The movie doesn't ever mention the word "condom"!!!!!!!!!!!!

I mean, yeah, it surely is possible to explain cricket without mentioning bats or balls, isn't it? It's also possible to explain a car to someone without mentioning wheels!!! The Catholic Church has long opposed condoms, but for the higher cause of saving human lives, couldn't it have for once lived with some humility? If at all the message in the movie has some effect, it will be on simple, untrained and illiterate minds. Isn’t it a good enough deed to give a whole and true picture to such an audience who rely on others for knowledge? The effects of such one eyed view's can be very dangerous. Several leaders like George Bush, Thabo Mbeki and our own Sushma Swaraj have been reluctant to fund programmes that help spread condoms.

Incidentally, this month in Italy, a referendum to make fertility treatments more accessible failed after the church, together with the new pope, asked people to abstain. How can such institutions, mainly made up of people who had never experienced parenthood, dictate rules for those unlucky couples who go through the most excruciating experience of having difficulties in having a child? Also it’s only the poor couples who are most affected because of this, since the richer ones can afford to go to more liberal countries and conceive there. So, shouldn't cricket commentators stay out of seismology? And shouldn't gynecologists stay out of brain surgery? Some people are looking with their one eye shut. I am not sure if the other eye is open either.

<>P.S. I thought that this cartoon by the Pulitzer winning Anne Telnaes was the most appropriate for this post.

The world of Non and Nous

The French have said Non and the Dutch have said Nous. The overwhelming reason cited for many of them rejecting the European constitution was the fear of "Polish farmers" and "Polish workers" flooding their local job market. The situation is very similar in India where we periodically hear campaigns against Bangladeshi workers. Not just the Bangladeshis, we don't want even our own Biharis and East UP workers spoiling the landscape of our metropolises. The same Software Engineer who stands for hours waiting for a US Visa and then answers the questions of the Visa man/woman with kiss-ass politeness, shoos away the Bihari beggar in the most abusive language. Once in US, our IT sunshine boy sleeps on the floor with six other software engineers in a one-room apartment in a filthy corner in Bronx and discusses in the same house with his friends how Mumbai is getting covered with slums. Is our software dude any different from our slumdeweller? But then, it's easy to have a misguided sense of proportions.
We fail to realize that our cost of living would skyrocket if there were no slumdewellers and our bais would charge every month in thousands of rupees. Yes, there are cases of illegal entries and illegal encroachments. But is a nice view (free of slums) from our windows worth more than one slumdeweller getting a chance to feed his family after a hard day's work? So, next time we plan to say "Nahi".........

P.S. Why cant an Indian or a Chinese ever want to be the President of America? Because there is no more promotions for the president.

The Met needs a sting operation

One service that The Indian Met department religiously performs for our country is to provide a punching bag for our usually frustrated souls. Every year, the Met officials toil night and day, study ghostly satellite images and build fuzzy models to predict the monsoons. And most of the time, the rains behave with the Met like Indian communists -never agreeing to anything. It is a sad occasion when every year in March, a hesitant met official appears before press and says amidst roars of laughter and boos, "The rains will be normal (96.34343221%) this year". Readers of this post, please observe a moment of silence for this official.
The Met has tried all sorts of things: asked Indian space agencies to make more satellites, asked for faster supercomputers, put in all sorts of variables. But alas, it's the same story - the rains don't agree. Rumors say that one frustrated Met official started to fight with neighbours asking them to take out their umbrellas while there was not a semblance of cloud in the sky. To maintain his sanity, his wife had to go to the floor above his house and drop bucket-loads of water on the ground to resemble rain.
Unauthorized reports from a sting operation on met officials reveal that after this years failed forecasts, Met employees are thinking of putting up a final all-out fight: Met officials have been asked to make offerings to the rain gods to oblige with their learned forcasts; the government is planning to send blue-eyed Met boys to Africa and North America to learn rain-dances from their natives; opinion polls are being conducted among astrologers.
The met department has always insisted that its very complex to predict monsoons compared to other weather systems and hence the disconnect. Since the met has not stopped bothering us with their forecasts, they will have to bear with our punches and laughs. Many can also form an uninformed opinion about the quality of met forecasts by trying to visit their website.

PS: Jayesh has written a nice post on Mumbai and Monsoons

The great indian broiler chicken

I find the great Indian broiler chicken the most interesting animal of all. For no other living being does living conditions depend to such an extent on its perspective.

Let us consider the evironment of this great bird. Usually they are herded compactly in a netted cage with multiple floors. The meat seller jugulates the chicken on a board located near one end of this cage. For a chicken who can see this board, life is a living hell. He constantly watches his fellow cagemates being dragged out and slaughtered. For the chicken at the other end who can't see this chopping board because of the crowded conditions, life is a for a long time just one thing - hope.

Imagine the psychological differences between the chicken at both ends. For the one who can see the board, each passerby is carrying a letter of death which could be carrying its name. Each grain it feeds on will only add to its weight making it a good buy for a party.
The chicken at the other end however thinks that whenever a chicken goes out of the cage (it can feel because the crowding lessens a bit), it is set free. It sees the shiny happy people outside the cage and eats happily hoping that someday it too shall be free. Of course I am assuming that chicken cant talk the way men do and even if they can, the ones who can see the truth and know, have their heads too heated up to talk cogently.
Sooner or later, both the chicken meet the same end under the butchers knife.

So what does it mean? Is it better to know and be sad or is it better to be happy a little longer by being ignorant? I dont have an answer. The great Indian broiler doesnt communicate that well to help me know? And do i need to know?

PS: This article might give a feel that I am a veggie veggie. I am absolutely not. I believe uprooting a beet root from the soil is as cruel as jugulating a chicken. As Tarrou had said in Camus' "the Plague" all our actions lead to a death sentence.

How to win a majority

Political parties the world over are finding it extremely difficult to establish a majority on their own. Many of these parties are looking at their patron dynasties to help them cross that magnificent hurdle. The Democrats in the US need more and younger Kennedys. The Congress party in India needs the handholding of the Gandhi family.

Many people hate dynasty politics; however, except for some of the African dictators, many dynasties have actually done quite well. Voters often trust them more (its like buying a Sony rather than a lesser known brand). The dynasty torchbearers also have a lot more at stake (since earning a bad name for the dynasty will ruin their chances for ages).

Therefore political parties must actively use technology and emotional arguements to ensure that there are enough electable people from their totem dynasties. Say the parliament of a country has 500 seats. The party with a star dynasty will have a much better chance of winning the majority if they have around 300 people from the same dynasty. Therefore party members should encourage the members of their star dynasty to produce a lot more babies. They should actively use technologies like in-vitro fertilization to ensure that such huge number of births do happen.
This is definitely a long term strategy but will also result in huge benefits for parties who already have a star dynasty. However too little and too many babies would create problems. Reaching the right numbers is cucial. The implications of too few babies is obvious. Too many babies will lead to divisions within the party with a dilution of brand name.
So how do the parties who dont have such star dynasties react? They need to draw inferences from this small statistic. In my locality only 44% of the eligible voters voted during the national elections. But of the ones who didnot vote, 26% actually voted for candidates in the "Indian idol" TV show. So these unlucky parties without dynasties should coach their budding politicians to be photogenic singing dancing metroes, as going forward only these local idols will have the power to attract voters and win their party that elusive majority.

My musings on death 1

The eternal question: What happens after death? For bulk of the population the answer is obvious and simple. For some you have to pass through the toll at the purgatory gates. For some you come back as a snake, a fish or a man, and if lucky you get the balcony seat in a place called heaven. For some apparitions roam around leading to fear of the dark. The movie Flatliners provided the pop view of death suggesting that adultery videos can be seen after death . For a sceptic few like me, death brings the end of all analysis.
In this post I would to talk about my concerns with one of the theories about death and thereafter - the reincarnation theory, popular in many oriental religions. According to this, living beings are born again into higher/lower/same life form in her next birth based on the net accumulated good deeds in the balance sheet of her series of lives. Man is typically the highest life form while insects, snakes etc. are regarded as lower forms. Also it is possible to escape this series of births if one's net good deeds exceeds a certain threshold or if she has gone to some holy place a certain number of times. And here is my problem with this theory- an implication of this theory is that the total world population of living beings can only decrease over time. As the graph below shows the global human population has increased significantly over last 50 years from 2.2 bn in 1950 to 6.1 bn in 2000.

World Population Growth, 1750–2150

World Population Distribution by Region, 1800–2050

Source: United Nations Population Division, Briefing Packet, 1998 Revision of World Population Prospects

If reincarnation theory were to be true this would be possible only if a lot more than 4bn of lower life forms died and got reborn as humans becasue of their good deeds in this period. (I say more than 4bn because after the violence of world wars, many humans would certainly have reborn as lower animals.) So what were those good deeds by the animals, can anyone say? And what explains the rise in population in the most backward continent - Africa? Were the African animals more pious OR did fewer Africans (compared to rest of the world) were reborn as animals - this is highly unlikely given the bloody recent history of Africa. Now one can argue that the extinction of several species supports the hypothesis that more animals are being reborn as humans. But then all recent extinctions have been statistically linked to human activities and not to any good deeds by these animals.
I am not proving anything but merely stating the problems I have with the re-incarnation theory. I shall talk about the other theories about death and there-after shortly.

Statutory Warning: Blogging can be injurious to .....

A certain Arash Sigarchi, an Iranian blogger, has been jailed for 14 years on charges of spying and aiding foreigners. He, along with another jailed Iranian, Mojtaba Saminejad, had also aired opposition to the Iranian government on their bogs.
Last year, an airhostess in the US was fired by her company for posting "inappropriate images" on her blog Queen of the Sky.
A court ruling in March allowed Apple to examine the e-mail records of three bloggers who had allegedly leaked trade secrets about Apple's upcoming music product through their blogs.
In Singapore, A*Star (Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research) forced Chen Jiahao, a student, to close his blog by threatening legal action. Chen had allegedly made desultory remarks about A*star and it's boss in his blog.
Bloggers in China have been asked to register their sites with the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (MII) by 30 June or pay hefty fines.
Of course such incidents were only to be expected given that blogs have provided such an easy route to voice our opinions. Also the power of blogs in bringing about significant change is increasing. In April, the Canadian government almost fell because of revelations about a judicial commission in Captain Ed's blog.

The Indian blog scene has been rather jovial so far. When shall we have our first blog controversy and showdown? One incident has already happened: Mediaah, a media related blog, had to close down after receiving a defamation notice from the The Times of India Group.

Have trust, will spray oxytocin

I came across an article in this week's Economist that a swiss research team has found statistical evidence to suggest that a chemical oxytocin, if sprayed nasally, increases the level of trust. Oxytocin is a peptide hormone also responsible for stimulating childbirth and lactation among it's various other uses.
So what could be the possible uses of this finding? Currently Oxytocin is easy and cheap to produce. So will we have one Ambani brother spraying the other with oxytocin before their split negotiations? Will marriage counsellors spray couples before discussing marital discord? Imagine the Israelis and Palestinians negotiating a peace deal in a room sprayed with oxytocin. Or for that matter the Indians and Pakistanis. The US may like to spray the whole of Iraq with Oxytocin. Of course oxytocin effect is not going to be permanent and people may resume their discord once the effect of the hormone is over. But with time, one would be surely able to develop sustained-release oxytocin (sustained release drugs are those that once taken are released to the body system gradually).
Even then, people would like to take safeguards so that they are not very trustful. So researchers would possibly work for vaccines against oxytocin. Politicians would probably take antidotes to oxytocin before going to meetings.
I believe that once these research results are validated, oxytocin would be most helpful in getting justice. Suspects of any crime can be sprayed with oxytocin before taking their statements. All the same, beware if you suddenly feel trusting towards somebody.

P.S: For more information on oxytocin please read Nature, Economist and Medline Plus

The past is more uncertain than the future

In "Mao: The Unknown Story", Jung Chang and her husband, Jon Halliday, have used their 10 years of research to describe him as the worst despot in history while also claiming that he didn't bathe for 25 years. They claim that Mao was carried by others during the Long March, that his victories were mere flukes and that he intentionally failed to unite the Chinese against the Japanese. Though even the Chinese state machinery has accepted excesses during Mao's regime, this book has gone way over the top.

Back home, the leftist historian Romila Thapar claimed in her "Somanatha, The Many Voices of a History" that contrary to popular perception, the destruction of Somnath by Mahmud Ghaznavi was a non-event. She claims that the temple was looted by several Hindu kings before Ghaznavi and it was economic and political reasons rather than his religious zealotry that drove Ghaznavi to destroy the temple.

The Japanese textbooks deny the Nanjing massacre. Turks deny the Armenian massacre and the Ku Klux Clan denies the Holocaust. So what's the truth that's really out there?

And as Orwell had said in 1984 (the quotes also popularized by the Rage against the machine song "Testify"):

Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now controls the past

In India we have become accustomed to change of history textbooks with every change of ruling party at the center. The point that I am trying to make is that it is extremely difficult to get a true picture of our past. And though it is said that an understanding of the past is essential to be able to deal with the present and the future, I believe that a botched understanding will only exacerbate our existing complications. So is study of history any good? Aren't our history books merely badly written fiction books with a zeal for propaganda?

Expect Scream to be found soon

The Norwegian police have finally arrested two suspects for robbing the Scream and Madonna from the Munch Museet. The paintings are yet to be recovered though. The Scream is the best known painting by the Norwegian maestro Edvard Munch which is also known to many of us Gen X people courtesy an MTV cartoon snippet based on it. The paintings were robbed in broad daylight in August last year and had been stolen once before. I wonder whether the museum officials have any hand behind this, and all with a noble purpose.
Once an art is stolen, it can reach instant popularity. The Mona Lisa by Da Vinci reached instant fame once it was stolen in 1911. An italian workman stole it from the Louvre in Paris as he was disturbed to see so many italian paintings in France. Once stolen, thousands of visitors came to see the blank space in the wall and this began the process through which even our panwala knows the painting.
The Scream is well known but not well known enough like the Mona Lisa or the Sunflowers. I have been to the Munch Museet myself and even though Norway is a sparsely populated place, there were hardly more than 30 people in the museum that day. However the painting is quite recognizable and will be difficult for the robbers to sell. When the Scream was stolen the first time, the thieves accidentaly set off the alarm but no guard turned up. The thieves then left a note saying "Thanks for the poor security."

There are malls and then there are the Gurgaon Malls

Like the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Gurgaon has got a mall mile which is the main attraction of the city- only difference being that in Washington, the magnificent mile consists of Smithsonian institutes and national monuments, while in Gurgaon, its a series of swanky shopping malls. But undoubtedly, Gurgaon is the mall capital of India. And Gurgaon malls are the only place in Delhi an its suburbs where people are friendly in an otherwise rough city.
A few differences can be noticed between a Gurgaon mall and malls in other parts of India like Mumbai. For one, there are mostly families roaming around in the Mumbai malls while the Gurgaon mall crowd consists of a lot more young groupies and lovebirds. Secondly, one can see a line of auto-rickshaws and taxis outside any Mumbai mall; in Gurgaon its only a swarm of private long-bodied cars.The Gurgaon malls also have the same stores in all the malls- a Pizza hut, a Reebok, a Levis etc.
But for all the promise, some malls are not being able to sustain themselves in Gurgaon. A big store- Arcus, has closed down. Many stores are also up for sale while some are offering big discounts on clearance sales. The mall crowd consisting predominantly of call centre workers is yet to afford a Rs3000 shirt or a Rs 500 meal on a regular basis. So what next for malls in India. One option is to go for the niche segments. So we expect malls that target only people above size 44, malls for stags, and malls only for window shopping which charge a small entry fee.

PS: The plight of some of our malls has been even covered in international media, the Time and the International Herald.

Mall a Mall - All this week

The Great Mall Mania is on. As soon as a big retail mall like Big Bazaar opens in a locality, swarms of consumers swoop on it like locusts in a cane field. TheIndian consumerist soul repressed for decades finds its nirvana in the wide array of choices and freebies. This modern day Kumbh Mela goes beyond shopping and has significant social impact. Jayesh and I plan to dig deep into the mall culture and come up with our views and findings the whole of this week.

So stay tuned all this week for this unique attempt at colloborative blogging.

Every day Kumbh Melas

I went to the newly opened Big Bazaar at Kandivali last Sunday and believe me, I was astounded. The place was as crowded as the Kumbh Melas. The queue length at the cash counters were longer than ones before the Madam Tussauds. How has our country suddenly changed from being one full of spiritual individauls who at the drop of a hat quoted ancient texts to scorn at the materialistic instincts of the rest of the world? Well, for the first time, so many of us can really afford it. But there are several other factors also. For instance, I think India is getting increasingly fashion conscious. Girls have stopped wearing their dad's shirts and trousers. Salwars are no more made for kangaroos but for homo sapiens. And the lettuce, broccoli and aspargus has made a quiet entry into the Indian kitchen. The malls also offer the highest ratio of attractive faces per square feet compared to any other public space in India - so "Lech Mans" and "Lech Crofts" can have a ball. And for some, its just the pleasure of passing time in a clean air-conditioned place without being questioned.
But given such attractive propositions and a limited number of malls in India, the existing malls are getting overcrowded and shopping is increasingly resembling an ordous attempt by an Andheri resident to get down from a Virar fast train. Chances of a stampede are increasing and the malls might easily be targeted by terrorosits. So i suggest taking a few drastic measures to make shopping a more pleasant experience. We should have expressways and traffic signals inside malls to allow faster navigation. No person should be allowed to shop more than 20Kg and for all bills above Rs 3000, one would have to get an income tax clearance. Also apartment dwellers can engage in community shopping by sending one representative from their flat to shop. May be some malls can adopt a "no stags allowed" policy during certain hours. Congestion taxes could be imposed in high visit areas. And like restaurants, people may be asked to book a space in advance before coming to the mall. Are these drastic measures? Well afterall, these malls are evoving into heritage monuments and are definitely emerging as institutes of national importance.

Relationships between the sexes have changed because of the coming of the malls. See the complete post on Booletpoint to see how 'malls they are a changin'.

Sudoku Sudoku everywhere, not one I can solve

For the few who are yet to hear about it - Sudoku is an ancient Japanese game which has 81 squares with a few numbers between 1 to 9 written on it. One plays the game by filling out the empty squares to ensure that all the numbers 1-9 appear in all the rows and columns as well as on grids of 9 squares without any repetition within these grids. For people conversant with computational theory, Sudoku is an NP complete problem that can be expressed as a graph-coloring problem. The stars of sudoku started to rise first in Japan around 1986 and then in the UK in 2005. Nowadays the game cliams to be the fastest growing puzzle in the world - the Rubics Cube of the 21st century, with the Japanese alone buying 600,000 sudoku magazines a month. British newspapers including The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian, The Sun, and The Daily Mirror have all started publishing the game like the daily crossword. Some say it was promoted heavily by the Brit newspapers after the Brit general elections to fill up the space previously filled by election coverage. The Times provides a mobile version of the game chargin 4.5 pounds for 10 game versions.

Ancient games have been making a comeback. Games like Go, Thai Boxing etc. are widely popular now. Some social observers say that the intellectual level of the society can be understood by studying the games popular in the society. If that is true, then are we coming full circle? Sudoku has become popular because of it's simplicity in understanding and it's complexity in solving. Also its very paper-format and screen friendly. Will Sudoku replace the crossword? Only time will tell.

For the more initiated: try www.sudoku.com, www.sudoku-solver.com, www.sudoku.org.uk/

The year of the Homo-sentimentalis

Recently the Joint Council for Qualifications, which represents the three exam boards in England, came up with certain guidelines for students appearing in the GSCE or A-level examination (class X and XII in India):

1. Students will get maximum 5% extra points if a parent or close family member died recently
2. Max 4% extra points if the deceased is a more distant relative
3. 2% extra if the house pet dies on examination day
4. 1% extra if the pet died a day before exam
5. 3% extra if the student witnesses a distressing event on examination day
6. 3% extra also for a freshly broken limb or asthma attack
7. 1% extra if student is suffering from headache on exam day

GAAAAAAAAAASP....
Of course, all these have been framed with the best intentions. But my wicked, sick and sunless mind immediately tried to work out the possible consequences. For example in a hyper-competitive world, won't people be more pro-active in getting these extras? Will kids start muredering their pets, distant relatives, close relatives and parents? As well as get a headache while watching these distressing events the same day, breaking a limb or two in the process? Or will samaritan parents, distant relatives, and pets themselves sacrifice their lives on exam day? Whatever be the way to implement, there could be crisis situation in hospitals, police stations and at Hampstead Heath. So England, please gear up your infrastructure, just in case.

Stress test in Ohio

Last year when I was at Columbus, Ohio, I came across a hip-hop fair while strolling past the Botanical Garden.There were shops set up by black americans, africans and make shift galleries where amateurs were singing hip-hop. I thought of checking it out. However, I had a feeling that my visit there might lead to an awkward situation. It was presidential election time and Ohio being a swing state, feelings were running high. If one of my colleagues saw me in a hip-hop fair, I would be surely taken for a Democrat. This could have positive or negative but all the same awkward consequences in office. Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to quietly pass through the fair without spending much time.

Alas, when I was crossing a large open tent, a young black woman handed me a booklet and before I could react, an affable black man guided me inside the tent. The smooth talker made me sit near a table with a few dialled instruments on top. He made me hold too large steel cylinders and asked me my name. When I opened my mouth to respond, all the needles in the instruments swung to the maximum. My affable friend told me that it was because I was under a lot of stress, almost near the threshold of passing out. But he said, there was hope. He introduced me to something called "Scientology" founded by someone called Ron Hubbard. Yes, scientology was the cure to all my problems. He showed me around several pictures which showed people with yes stress and no stress, before stress and after stress. Yes, i thought I need to do something to make those dials stay quiet. After 30 minutes of chat, my affable friend finally showed me the books which if read, would solve it all for me. The cheapest was worth 25USD. I touched the steel cylinder on my own and this time even before opening my mouth, the needles hit maximum. "Not working my friend", I said. Disturbed he asked me to atleast donate some 5 dollars for his foundation. He kept the cylinders away from me this time, but he saw my head tiliting to show that again I have hit the maximum. Totally stressed out, my affable friend said, "Come-on, all this scientology stuff is based on the holy Vedas from India only, atleast give two dollars for this booklet!!!" (After all he had spent 30 min with me)
I handed back the booklet to him and left saying, "Thats the problem, my friend. These Indian books never work for the Indians."

Missed opportunity for self-help writers - Yogi Berra

I have always had trouble with self-help books. Not because they always seem to suggest so much scope for improvement in me. But also because they are based on examples from the known history or phenomena. So what happens is that they will often cite the best in any area as the example to follow. And here is my major concern. If I try to emulate a particular person I will get limited by his limitations. And thats a great turnoff for me. The more initiated may get shocked by this attitude but the fact is what is.
So I have decided not to read any self-help book. Rather I have started internalising the quotes from Yogi Berra, US baseball legend who also happens to be the most quoted sportsman in the world.

Please find inspiration from some of his quotes:
"Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time?"
"You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there"
"If you can't imitate him, don't copy him"
"You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six"
"Baseball is 90% mental -- the other half is physical"
"Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded"
"It was impossible to get a conversation going; everybody was talking too much"
"I made a wrong mistake"
"Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel"
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours"
"I didn't really say everything I said"
His quotes hit my subconscious and hit it hard. Wish the self-help writes could be half as sublime as Yogi.

More on this to follow.

My struggle to increase eyeballs

One month into blogging, my blog statistics read something like this: 28 site visits, 43 page views, average visit length of 53 seconds. Not only are few people reading my articles, the ones who are reading are probably just glancing through them. Or may be they are such frequent readers that they just read the latest post and move on. Some fans (fans ????) have consoled me saying that may be I am part of that "Long tail". But I am concerned whether I am really part of the tail or just the flies moving around it.
Whatever it is, I am convinced that I need to do something to increase my blogs popularity. I have several really good ideas to do that and I am sure they will succeed. Expect some of these in my next postings:

• More sex; my blog will from now onwards give you just what you need together with a viagra pill.
• I shall change my name and write under the pseudonym of a young girl. Then my postings will give you all a peek into the woman in me (as a fan?? suggested)
• More of the customary intellectual bashing: Yes there will be lots of protest articles against George Bush, Laloo, Saurav Ganguly, Gujarat riots, call center working hours
  
• More of the customary intellectual support: And lots more of support postings for orange-red-tulip-rose revolution in the ex-soviet republics, gay rights, IIM fees-hike, genetic feminine superiority etc.
• Lot more page 3 : Yes, more remix articles. I shall give you the details of what happened beyond those glamorous parties.
• More remix: I shall remix the more famous blog posts (So you will se post like "Indian IT sector shines- Lost in the bathtub mix" and so on.
• More scandals: Yes, I shall reveal how Maikalal Jaikisan handled me when I was a kid....Only on this blog
  

Suggestions are welcome. Help me reach you better

Who - the Hare, or the Turtle

The internet, advanced and cheaper telecom networks, Blackberrys and Ryan Air have unleashed upon us the world of BPO, 24 X 7, global village, always-on executives. Decisions have to be made on the fly. Accuracy is secondary, Speed is the key. Wait a minute, theres no choice, you have to be accurate at double the speed. No Walk the Talk- its talk while you walk, or for some "walk while you talk". Go to China first, then figure out what to do. Buy a CRM first then figure out who your customer is. Sleeping elephants have woken up and are dancing too. Instant superstars - American idol, the Apprentice, King of the Jungle. Pre-emptive attacks!!!! DHA, ARA - make your brains work earlier in your life. How to learn HTML in 24 hours, 7 habits of effective people - instant pocket guides to salvation. Pre-cooked food, fast food, speed reading, GMAT, GRE. Be quick or be dead. Be the hare or - You are fired!!!

However the turtles are also hitting back - and as expected - slowly. The Concorde has been withdrawn. The Slow Food Movement, which promotes having non-industrially prepared food along a good company movement, is gradually drawing strength. Founded by Carol Petrini in Italy, the movement now boasts of 83,000 members worldwide. People are practising yoga, slow sex, reiki etc by hordes. In Italy again, 42 towns now belong to the Slow Cities Association.
Soap operas that run for a lifespan are fast filling up the prime-time. "Not working on weekends" is back in fashion. And yes, even the US of A is going slow on Syria.

PS: The more initiated can speed read through Carl Honore's In Praise of Slowness : How A Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed. Carl wrote the book when he reached his moment of truth when he bought "one-minute bedtime stories" to read to his son.

News - Clontz style

Eddie Clontz died in 2004. But his legacy lives on through the Weekly World News. Clontz was a firm believer that "truth should never interfere with a good story". So his newspaper made an art of false news on UFOs, aliens, hoax scientific inventions supported by quotes from imaginary persons and facts. The magazine reached its peak through articles like "Bat-Boy" and "Elvis is alive".

Some of us may quickly come to dismiss his style since we regard our conventional news with such high esteem. But what is news after all? Isn't it just a recollection of events as told by a novice reporter? And arent these reported events colored by the enormous range of motivations constantly at work? News is created mostly when men do something. And what men do is not always genuine. Good examples of this are the news about the Piltdown Man, the Iraqi WMD threat, the Indian prodigy getting the NASA award and countless others. And with sting operations catching fancy with news providers, the line between fiction and facts are getting dimmer. What "Weekly World News" does is that it brings the hoax one level donwstream. It will be interesting to see how this concept catches on in places like India.

My article on Time Asia- But is democracy the final goal

In 2001, one of my articles appeared on TimeAsia.com.

http://www.time.com/time/asia/news/article/0,9754,170238,00.html

In that article I had argued that India's greatest achievement after independence was to keep the democratic system going. I reasoned that despite enormous failings of the system, democracy ensured some basic dignity for all.

Four years hence I stand not so convinced about this. I think that a lot of such democratic babble (including my time article) are based purely on emotion rather than facts. Given that an average Chinese has become so much richer than his Indian counterpart, what value lies in our pride in democracy? Many people would question whether happines is the ultimate objective of a society. The Bhutanese convinced about happiness actually started a National Happiness Index. Many would argue the objective of a society is rather the facility for its individuals to exercise free will. But with people like Edward Wilson, Dawkins etc. suggesting that there is no such thing called "Free Will" since all of us are genetically hard-wired, the aha of democracy seems subdued. Or is it the plain simple economy, stupid?

Our day to day lives provide some clue. For most of our waking hours we are unable to exercise our free will (if it exists). When we are young we are under the command of our parents who guide almost all our actions. When we get higher education, our whims are fancies come way below in priority when compared to the whims and fancies of our teachers and professors. When we pursue our careers, we have to bear with the most autocratic system of all - the corporate culture. And finally when we have retired and grown old, we are often at the mercy of society, doctors and our children.
So for much of our lives we are simply unable to exercise any hint of free will. So why make so much hue and cry about not being able to vote once every 5 years?