Still Crazy After All These Years

Economics: Enter The Dragon

2011-09-18T10:55:00.000-07:00

As everybody knows, there is another global economic recession along the way. Some (including me) would argue that we never got out of the one that started in 2008, never mind what the economists and statisticians say. The UK’s GDP growth last quarter was an anaemic 0.2% and the rest of the year looks worse. I would argue that the developed world (as it is defined currently) is in a state of terminal economic decline and will never recover.

Why do I say this? Looking at Western Europe (the United Kingdom and France in particular), you will notice that there are no great globally competitive manufacturing companies left in these countries. Britain’s largest manufacturing employer is the India-based Tata Group. Britain’s economy is now kept afloat by the healthcare industry which provides jobs, and financial services, which provides profits and tax revenues.

As a result of the recent seismic events in the banking and financial services industry, a host of new banking regulations have been proposed in Britain that would curtail the powers of banks to raise capital and ultimately increase the cost of capital for both banks and borrowers. As a result of these proposed regulations, many of the banking giants based in London are threatening to relocate to other parts of the world. It is unlikely that all banking operations will be moved elsewhere, but investment banking operations would be a probable candidate. If this happens, it would greatly diminish Britain’s economic power in the developed world. And the key question here is – what would replace banking as a generator of jobs, profits, taxes and economic growth in Britain?? There is no replacement for banking at the moment in Britain. Manufacturing is not an option (why would an automotive company want to open a plant in Britain when it can produce cars at a fraction of the cost in South Asia?) and service industries moved out of Britain many years ago.

Southern Europe is in even worse shape. Britain has financial services as an engine for growth. Countries such as Greece, Italy and Portugal don’t. The only way these countries could compete earlier was because they had their own currencies and costs were lower in these countries as compared to Northern Europe. With the advent of a single currency, the euro, the disaster waiting to happen has happened. In one stroke, the competitiveness of these economies was destroyed. They were no longer less expensive economies, the cost of living increased dramatically (with the advent of the euro) and these economies were no longer able to export their way out of recession. The only hope for these countries is if the euro is disbanded, and these countries revert to their original currencies and once again become less expensive economies that can then export their way out of a recession. This will mean incredible short-term pain as these countries default on their debts, but there is no other option. Expecting German taxpayers to pay Greece’s bills indefinitely is not feasible, and there are signs that Germany itself is slipping back into recession.

The United States and Germany will hold out for another decade or so. Both these countries still have reasonably strong manufacturing industries that provide employment. However, as the years go by, more and more large manufacturing companies will move – to China and other places in South Asia that can provide a labour pool with the same skills for a fraction of the costs of production in the US or Germany. And the same key question applies here as well – what will replace these industries once they leave??

It is nothing short of a huge global transference of wealth from one part of the world to the other. It will lead to chaos and the rise of populist, nationalist parties in Europe that will blame foreigners and immigration for all their ills.

India would have been very well-placed to take advantage of this transference of wealth, but will not be able to do so due to frailties and divisions within its political system. A handful of politicians and bureaucrats will prevent India from becoming an economic superpower. When it comes to those who govern India, I agree completely with what Winston Churchill said at the time of Indian independence: “Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues, freebooters; all Indian leaders will be of low caliber & men of straw. They will fight amongst themselves for power and India will be lost in political squabbles”. This prophecy has come to pass, and unless something changes dramatically, India will continue to be mired in indecision and administrative paralysis that will prevent real change.

So who will benefit the most from this transference of wealth? Beneficiaries will be countries that have an educated labour pool with a strong work ethic and governments that want their citizens to benefit from this transference of wealth. The primary beneficiary will be China. China is already the US’s largest trading partner and owns trillions of dollars of US debt. They are buying up European debt, and the Chinese are the largest investors in places as far-flung as Australia and Africa. The dragon is not rising. It has already risen. The king is dead, all hail the new king!

Economics: Don't Blame The Bankers Alone

2011-08-21T05:48:00.000-07:00

I must start this blog by saying that I am conservative in my economic views. So I support liberalization, globalization, an open economy and capitalism. Capitalism may not be perfect, but it is infinitely preferable to socialism. I should know. Like most Indians more than forty years old, I vividly remember the 1970s and 1980s, when there were no jobs and everybody was struggling to make ends meet all the time (except of course for corrupt government bureaucrats, crony capitalists and those with ancestral wealth). Thanks to regressive socialist economic policies, India remained poor and backward for decades after independence (and thanks to the liberalization process being only half complete, large sections of India's population still remain poor and backward).

But India's half complete transition to a modern economy is the subject of another blog. This particular blog is about why it is unfair to blame the bankers alone for the Great Recession, which sees to have reared its head just when you thought it was safe to go out shopping again. I now live in Britain, where it is fashionable to view all bankers (especially investment bankers) as the spawn of Satan. I know several investment bankers quite well, and in fact, worked as one many years ago. Nobody can accuse these former masters of the universe of being softies whose primary concern is the welfare of those less well-off than themselves. However, to blame banks and bankers alone for the current mess is wrong. Allow me to elaborate.

The last time I checked, London contributes a disproportionately large amount to the British economy (30% of Britain's GDP is generated in London). A majority of this wealth is generated by banking, since London (along with New York) is the financial capital of the world. Even in these dismal economic times, it is the banks and bankers (and the tax revenues they generate) that keeps Britain's economy afloat. It is the dramatic expansion of banking and investment banking in particular in the Noughties (circa the years 2000 to 2008) that funded the huge growth of jobs in Britain's public sector in the last decade. The public sector workers in the UK who blame the banks for everything and keep threatening to go on strike would do well to remember this. Had it not been for the buoyant tax revenues generated by London and its investment bankers in the Noughties, these public sector workers would not have found jobs in the first place. Yes, some of these bankers were reckless and did take unacceptable risks with shareholder money, but to blame them alone is wrong.

It is also important to note that some of these public sector workers (such as council heads and BBC television/media heads) make large sums of money (which I define as more than £ 150,000 a year). One of the principal tenets of finance (and life) is - higher the reward, higher is the risk associated with that reward. Therefore, if one wants to take a job that comes with large sums of money, one must also accept the fact that such a job will come with associated risks - such as the risk of getting laid off or being forced to take a pay cut. One cannot expect a guaranteed, very highly paid job for life - in either the public or private sectors. Many of these highly paid public sector worthies are being asked to take a pay cut and some of them have been saying that they could find better salaries in the private sector. Really?? When was the last time they worked in the competitive private sector, and if such jobs are available, why don't they take these jobs up?

I may be an economic conservative, but I am not anti-public sector. The public sector has an important role to play in an economy. I disagree with the Tory plans to cut back on essential services such as police, fire brigade ansd community youth programs. I disagree with any pay cuts that the defence forces may be forced to take. But council heads, fat cat administrative bureaucrats in broadcasting services and the Health Service do deserve to take pay cuts. Everybody in the private sector is taking lower salaries and bonuses home this year and next year as well. So what makes these highly paid public sector workers so special? Why do they deserve to be singled out for differential treatment?

The fact is that the economy (and the health of both the public and private sectors of the economy) will not improve until the banking sector starts making money again. So I urge these disgruntled highly paid public sector employees to start praying for a banking recovery - their own future economic salvation is dependent on the robust economic health of those they hate the most.

Politics: Finding Weaker Enemies

2011-03-27T05:36:00.000-07:00

Some years ago, I read a great book called “The Name of The Rose” by Umberto Eco. The book is set in 13th century Italy and France, during the Dark Ages, before the Renaissance changed Europe forever. Europe at the time was a brutal, poor, uneducated place – riddled with disease, superstition and political and religious tyranny.

While the book itself is a classic, one line in the book has stayed with me ever since. The book’s main protagonist, an impressionable young novice monk, is speaking to an older monk who is a poor peasant. The older monk in his youth persecuted Jews and participated in the slaughter of Jewish residents in his village in Northern Italy. The novice monk asks the older man why he killed Jews, when the real oppressors of the peasants were not the Jews but the Church and the King of Italy, who between them, brutally exploited the peasantry. The old monk replies by saying that “when one’s true enemies are too strong, one has to find weaker enemies”. The villains in the piece were the Church and the monarchy, but since they were too strong and powerful to fight, the Jews were attacked instead because they provided an easy, weak target.

That line has stayed with me ever since, and human behaviour does not change. So today, in the developed world for example, when governments start targeting skilled immigrants as culprits responsible for the economic recession, I realize that this is a case of finding weaker enemies. In the United Kingdom, the real enemy is the decline of leadership in the manufacturing and service industries, not the entry of skilled overseas labour. But rebuilding Britain’s leadership in research and development, science and manufacturing is something that will take a decade of focused governmental initiative in primary and secondary education. This is a formidable challenge, and it is so much easier to blame weaker enemies (skilled overseas immigrants in this case). This same principle applies to the US President’s populist outburst last year, where he vowed to stop American jobs from being “Bangalored”

In India, every single political party claims that their foremost concern is for the well-being of the “aam aadmi” or “common man”. But the rhetoric belies the political reality. Every Indian political party, irrespective of ideology, serves only itself. For fifty years after independence, the long-suffering “common man” in India was denied any opportunity for economic advancement. Three generations were condemned to a life of subsistence and mediocrity. Poverty and squalor were glorified in the name of socialism. Wealth, education and economic advancement were looked down upon as consequences of a decadent capitalist society. Then the Indian economy was liberalized in 1991 (out of compulsion, not choice). Over the last twenty years, economic growth has helped raise millions of people out of poverty.

However, many Indian political parties (especially our revisionist Communists) still target economic liberalization as the root of all evil. India’s true enemies remain poverty, illiteracy and lack of economic opportunity, not economic liberalization. However, tackling these substantial problems will require governmental discipline and efficiency. It will require taking hard decisions that will disturb well-entrenched, powerful lobbies within the government who have prospered for decades at the expense of India’s teeming millions. It is so much easier to blame economic liberalization, which is actually the solution to the country’s problems and not the cause. But then, the search for weaker enemies has not changed since the 13th century.

India: Caste – The Beginning of the End?

2010-11-27T03:39:00.000-08:00

I am not religious. I was born a Hindu, and there are many aspects of Hinduism that I consider praiseworthy. Hindu philosophy (what little I have read of it) is profound and rational. At its best, Hinduism is a gentle way of life that preaches compassion and tolerance. There is room for speculation, discussion and debate. However, there are things about the way Hinduism is practiced that is truly detestable. The worst of these is caste. Caste (and the way casteism is practiced in certain parts of India) represents all those things about Hinduism I would rather forget.

Nowhere is casteism practiced more aggressively than in the Hindi-speaking heartland of North India, in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Together, these two states are the most backward in India, on virtually any parameter you select – whether it is economic development, literacy, gender equality, infanticide, healthcare, crime or primary education. Together, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar form about 30% of India’s population, and unless there is significant positive change in these two states, India’s dream of becoming an economic superpower can be forgotten.

So-called “lower” castes were persecuted for millennia under the garb of religious sanction. After independence, every Indian government irrespective of political persuasion has found ways to develop and maintain caste-based “vote-banks”, playing off castes against each other to obtain votes and power. This political tactic of divide-and-rule is still very widely practiced all over India. In more progressive parts of India, education, literacy and economic development have made a significant dent in caste-based politics, and though caste is still important, it is no longer all-important. It is not easy to eliminate thousands of years of institutionalized prejudice and it will take time for things to change.

Many right thinking people had given up hope regarding any significant change in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Which is why the re-election of Nitish Kumar as the Chief Minister of Bihar is such a refreshing development. As Chief Minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar has brought about much needed change in India’s most backward, benighted state. Instead of focusing on caste-based politics in a quest for power, Kumar has focused on economic development and security. The changes he has brought about in Bihar in the five years he has been Chief Minister would be considered modest in most other places. He has built roads and schools and put criminals in prison. He has provided modest livelihoods to the desperately poor. In Bihar, a state where there was no security, no roads, very little education and absolutely no economic development, these changes are truly revolutionary. There is still a long way for Bihar to go. It remains extremely poor and backward. But still, a beginning has been made.

Kumar’s shrewd tactic of focusing on security and economic development must have been a huge gamble, especially in a state where everybody assumed that the only way of obtaining power was propagating destructive caste and religion based politics. But against all odds, it has worked.

Does this mean the beginning of the end of destructive caste-based politics in India? I certainly hope so. It took thousands of years to build the destructive institution of caste. It may be too optimistic to think that it can be dismantled in twenty years. Can we dare hope that a start has been made?

Politics: Obama’s India Visit: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

2010-11-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of the United States of America. I lived there for six years, and since then, have been back a few times. No other country in the world is freer, more diverse or tolerant. No other country in the world is more honest – Americans make no bones about the fact that you do need money to be happy, and a firm belief in capitalism is a cornerstone of the American way of life. It is a country that respects and encourages individualism, and believes that personal choices and not governmental intervention are the key to individual and societal happiness. I happen to agree with all these principles.

India and the US have had an indifferent, sometimes tense relationship over the last sixty years. During the Cold War, India was a Soviet ally and was in the ludicrous position of opposing the US ideologically, while being heavily dependent on US food aid to prevent mass starvation.

Over the last twenty years, however, the Indo-US relationship has thawed considerably. On the economic front, India’s economy has liberalized and the country has prospered. India views the US as the biggest market for its services and manufacturing exports. From the US perspective, the impressive purchasing power of India’s rapidly expanding middle class has resulted in US corporations making a beeline for India. On the political front, both the US and India view the rise of authoritarian China with increasing nervousness. India has an aggressive, authoritarian China as its immediate neighbour on its eastern border and crumbling, increasingly fundamentalist Pakistan on its western border. India and the US are both liberal, progressive, secular democracies and a strategic relationship between the two countries should be in the natural order of things. India needs the US to remain a superpower to guarantee its own future prosperity.

Under George W. Bush’s presidency, the Indo-US friendship improved considerably. Bush pushed aggressively for free trade as well as the Indo-US nuclear partnership. The Bush Administration agreed with India’s aspirations of becoming a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. So, Indian hopes were running high when Barack Obama became US president.

However, Obama’s early pronouncements were not encouraging. He railed against jobs being outsourced to India (and probably invented the term“Bangalored”) to win cheap political brownie points, when any economist worth his salt would have told him that free trade is mutually beneficial. His administration’s message seemed to be – You must open your markets to our good and services, but our markets will remain closed to your goods and services.

Obama now wants India to buy billions of dollars worth military equipment. This will create jobs for American workers in a tough recession. I have no problem with that. But I do have a problem when he says that he also plans to give similar military equipment to Pakistan - FOR FREE. I find this mystifying.

Pakistan is indeed under attack from within, but I fail to see how providing it with the latest jet fighters and tanks will help it fight fundamentalists who live in caves in the mountains. The Obama Administration is also conspicuously quiet about China’s plans to supply Pakistan with nuclear technology, but at the same time, is pressing India to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). India has been a responsible nuclear power for nearly forty years, and has never exported nuclear technology to pariah states such as North Korea or dubious Middle Eastern tyrants.

India’s foreign policy has never been aggressive or expansionist. India has contributed billions of dollars of developmental aid to the redevelopment of Afghanistan. India has contributed troops and money to many of the UN’s interventions around the world – from Kosovo to Rwanda.

Despite India being a model international citizen, the Obama Administration seems to be indifferent to India, at least when it comes to concrete benefits on the ground. Which just goes to prove the old adage – no good deed goes unpunished. And Obama’s constant refrain about how much he admires Mahatma Gandhi doesn’t count. We would prefer free trade and equal access to US markets, thank you very much.

India: Superpower Status and the Ever-Present Banana Skin

2010-10-03T05:14:00.000-07:00

This week has been a newsworthy one for India, since the Ayodhya verdict has been announced. While the Indian newspapers will devote large amounts of newsprint to the analysis of this verdict, the British newspapers have been full of the Labour leadership elections, the impending “savage” cuts to public finance and of course, India’s lack of preparedness for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

The British press seems to have two very different views about India. The first is respectful – one that holds that India (along with China) is becoming an economic superpower in the 21st century. The second is dismissive – an older, established view of India as an uneducated, impoverished, backward nation. A recent newspaper article (I think it was in the London Evening Standard), claimed that 800 million Indians (80% of India’s population) lived on less than £ 1 a day. This is rubbish. The number of Indians living below the poverty line is about 350 million, or 35% of the population. In this day and age of course, it is a tragedy that so many Indians are still so poor. Between the two opposite views mentioned above, there is no middle ground.

Regarding the adverse coverage in British newspapers regarding the Commonwealth Games, the editorial in the London Times last week got it spot-on when it said that there were two Indias – one led by a vibrant, competitive, efficient private sector which is rapidly becoming a world-beater, and the other led (if that is the right word) by a slow, corrupt, incompetent public sector that isn’t accountable to its citizens or anyone else.

Unfortunately the Commonwealth Games is being organized by India’s public sector, which consists of discredited politicians, and their corrupt minions – the bureaucrats. If this organizational exercise had been handed over to a private sector group such as Reliance or Tatas to manage (with government funding), these Games would have been the best in the world, and would have cost far less.

Why? Because I am extremely optimistic about most companies in India’s private sector. Many of them are better run than their Western counterparts, and I am confident that in ten years, India’s private sector companies will be major global players in automobiles, banking, medical research, pharmaceuticals, life sciences and engineering goods, just like their counterparts already are in information technology and computing.

India’s private sector will boom and bring prosperity to India’s teeming millions only if it is allowed to do so by an obstructionist, corrupt government.

So while India’s private sector grows from strength to strength, the country’s public sector languishes. If anything, the public sector is getting worse. Apart from being corrupt, it is also unaccountable to the people it is supposed to serve – the citizens of India. While foreign media commentators have been concerned by the shoddy preparations for the Commonwealth Games, they have been dismayed at the callous, uncaring attitude of the Indian government officials who created the mess in the first place. Indians on the other hand, have not been surprised by either the incompetence or the attitude of their government representatives. That is because the Indian government does not view itself as being there to work for its citizens, and we as Indians, know this. It is as simple as that, and it is a situation that has actually gotten worse over the last few decades.

Therefore, when people talk of China and India emerging as the new superpowers of the 21st century, I agree as far as China is concerned since this is a stated objective of the Chinese government and they are concertedly working towards it. I am not so sure about India. While Indians have the intelligence, industriousness and gumption to eradicate poverty and become a superpower (as our private sector so aptly demonstrates), the Indian government and its’ corrupt, incompetent and apathetic administration is like a banana skin, on which our national aspirations could slip up on at any time.

Observations: An Alien in El Dorado

2010-07-30T07:19:00.000-07:00

If you look up “El Dorado” on Google, you will find many different definitions for it. The simplest one says that it means "the Gilded One" or "the Golden Man," which refers to a legendary South American king who covered himself in gold – a sort of South American King Midas. European adventurers (mostly Spanish) became obsessed with finding the legendary treasures of El Dorado, and searched for a city filled with gold in the 16th and 17th centuries. These Spanish conquistadors were initially led by the notorious Cortez. They were filled with missionary zeal and insatiable greed. For two centuries, they raped, pillaged and brutalized the original inhabitants of the South American continent in their search for the fabled “City of Gold”. In many ways, the phrase itself came to symbolize the obsession with material greed that consumes us as human beings.

The Middle East in general and Qatar in particular, appear to symbolize the new “El Dorado”. The region’s economy is booming, thanks to the world’s insatiable demand for petroleum products. Tiny Qatar is the world’s third largest producer of natural gas, and is well-positioned to cash in on this demand. There are new, futuristically designed office buildings coming up everywhere. Local inflation rates and real estate prices have skyrocketed over the past few years. The number of foreign expatriates has also skyrocketed. Like the rest of us, they come to Qatar only for the money. The total population of this country is approximately 1.5 million people, of which 80% are expatriate workers – a polyglot of nationalities, of which South Asians form the majority.

So what is life like in this new El Dorado? On the surface, everything is new, larger than life and shiny. The locals drive around in super-sized SUVs since petrol is ridiculously cheap. The men are immaculately turned out in their Arab traditional white dress. The women are covered from head to toe in their black “abayaas”, yet wear large amounts of make-up and expensive designer clothes under their traditional garb.

The aim is to impress peers and countrymen with large houses, oversized cars, branded luxury goods and a lavish lifestyle. The amount of food one sees wasted at local restaurants is staggering. Recycling of plastic bottles, newspapers and cans is unheard of. Someone told me that all plastic cans and bottles are sent to India as trash – they are then recycled there. Qatar is a desert with no large bodies of fresh water or rivers, yet very few people think of conserving water. Desalinated sea-water is used to satisfy the country’s water needs. It is an expensive proposition but money is not a constraint for such a small, rich country.

Obesity amongst the local population has reached alarming levels. Conspicuous consumption (and the need to let everyone else know that you have “arrived”) is the order of the day. This need for an ostentatious display of wealth is contagious, and one sees it amongst locals and expatriates alike. If the United States is (or at least was) the land of plenty, the oil-rich states of the Gulf are the land of excess.

Part of this phenomenon can be traced back to the fact that the entire Gulf region was unproductive desert only two generations ago. It is only in the last forty years or so, and particularly since the OPEC oil crisis of 1973, that these tiny autonomous states became prosperous overnight. Therefore, the wealth is all new, and one can understand (though not necessarily sympathize with) the desire to flaunt this new-found status. On the surface, all material needs of the population (resident and expatriate) are met, with more than enough to spare - which is why all the expatriates are here in the first place.

There are strict social hierarchies here, as rigid and inflexible as any caste system. The locals are at the top of the social totem pole, followed by those with passports from developed Western countries (it doesn’t matter where you come from, as long as you are blessed with such a passport). Next on the totem pole are Arabs from other rich countries, followed by Arabs from less fortunate countries (Sudan, Somalia and parts of Africa). Then come the Filipinos who do a lot of the semi-skilled work in the country. Bringing up the rear are the South Asians (Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis, Nepalese and Sri Lankan Tamils – in that order). The Indian community is a mixed bag – a majority are laborers, clerks and peons, but there are quite a few highly qualified Indians as well. The way you are treated depends in large part on the nationality stamped on your passport.

I often wonder whether the Indians here are a happy lot. One of the people I know here is a man who irons clothes for a living. I will call him Dilip. He is typical of the large South Asian labor community. He is from eastern Uttar Pradesh, India’s Gangetic heartland, an area that is culturally and historically rich, yet economically impoverished. He has been here for many years. I used to walk by his little shop every evening, with a bunch of clothes that needed ironing. There was a beat-up old cassette player in the corner of his shop, which played old Hindi movie songs by Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar. I often watched Dilip through the glass window of his shop while walking by late at night, with the music playing inside. You could see the grief, homesickness and sense of loss in his eyes. He was in Qatar because his own country was been unable to provide him with a decent livelihood.

Looking at people like Dilip, I feel ashamed; ashamed that one of my countrymen is forced to live in such deprived circumstances so far away from home; ashamed that sixty-three years after independence, we still haven’t found a way to provide basic essentials such as elementary education, safe drinking water, healthcare and literacy to a third of our population. Spin it as you will, that is the grim truth.

As Indians, we are proud of our lively parliamentary democracy. I am all for parliamentary democracy and the ability of an individual to participate in guiding the destiny of his or her nation. However, how much of a difference does this make to people like Dilip and three hundred million other Indians who do not have access to the basic necessities that most of us take for granted? For people like Dilip, what is more important? Are they happy with a democratic political system that provides them the fundamental right to vote and (at least theoretically) participate in shaping their destinies? Or would they prefer to live under a totalitarian (but efficient) system of government in India if it provided them with a roof over their heads, moderately paying jobs, an education for their children and uninterrupted access to safe drinking water, healthcare and electricity?

I do not know the answer to this question, and neither, I suspect, does Dilip. He probably hasn’t thought about it, and I do not blame him. He is too busy struggling to survive in this alien land and save up some money for his retirement and his children’s future. Unlike Indian expatriates in Western countries, he cannot assimilate into this culture, since that is not an option in this part of the world. So he remains an eternal alien in El Dorado.

My time in Qatar has been financially rewarding, and provided me with significant financial security. Still, looking at Dilip, I realize that all that glitters is not gold. And even gold exacts a very heavy price on those who come to El Dorado in search of it.

Football: Bring on the World Cup!

2010-06-06T09:01:00.000-07:00

Football is a game that I have always loved. As a child, in the days before cable TV and overly-competitive primary schooling, I grew up in what was then the idyllic suburb of Bandra in Mumbai (Bombay). As kids, there were two ways of proving your worth to your peers (and kids can be an extremely critical and occasionally cruel peer group). The first was to excel academically. However, academic excellence was not considered cool. Playing football and hockey and dribbling your way past a maze of defenders who were bent on doing you physical harm was considered cool.

So, I grew up idolizing older kids who excelled at either hockey or football (though we played cricket as well, it was considered an elitist game that cost a lot of money, at least when played with a cricket "season" ball).

Luckily for me, I turned out to be a good field hockey player, who some said could have tried out for the Bombay team. One coach said that if I was really devoted to the game, I could (maybe) have tried out for the India team. But then hockey was a profession that paid badly, and there was no point pursuing that particular dream.

Unluckily for me, I was never a good football player. This was largely due to the fact that I could not head the ball, since I wore glasses. So I sat on the sidelines and watched some truly gifted players during school and university games. The more I watched the game, the more it fascinated me. Many years later, as a student in the U.S, I became friends with a guy who had played for the Sikkim state football team (Sikkim is one of India’s North-eastern Himalayan states). He took me under his wing and trained me.

I never became a very good player and my enthusiasm clearly exceeded my ability. My sole claim to fame was that during a university game where I came on pretty early in the first half as a substitute, I restricted the opposition’s centre-forward to only two goals , which I thought was an excellent performance. This guy had tried out for Zambia’s national team, was about six feet four inches tall, two hundred pounds and would have given a fleet-footed cheetah pretty stiff competition in a race.

Since I was a child, I have followed football closely. I watched old videos of Pele, Garrincha, Beckenbauer and the other greats. I was heartbroken when France (led by the great Michel Platini) lost to Germany in penalty shoot-outs in the 1986 World Cup. I watched with amazement as Diego Maradona scored what was possibly the goal of the century against England, when he dribbled past five or six England defenders and put the ball past Peter Shilton, that great England goalkeeper. I also watched the infamous “Hand of God” goal that Maradona scored in that match. I was overjoyed when France under the great Zinedine Zidane won the World Cup and the European Cup. What a great player he was, and what a treat to watch!

This year, we will have the privilege of watching a man who is probably the best player the world has seen since Diego Maradona – another Argentinean, the 22 year old Lionel Messi. Like Maradona, he is short in stature and has a low center of gravity, which means he rarely falls when tackled. Like Maradona, he has extremely quick reflexes and great peripheral vision. And like Maradona, he can accelerate and change direction so quickly that he leaves defenders struggling and gasping in his wake. I watched Lionel Messi single-handedly demolish my favorite football club Arsenal in the Champions League quarter-finals this year. He scored all the four goals for his club Barcelona in that match, and was simply unstoppable. Whether Messi can live up to his (justified) billing remains to be seen.

There will be many other great players to watch as well. Didier Drogba for the Ivory Coast (though he has broken his arm), Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard, Cesc Fabregas (probably the best midfielder in the world) and so many others.

Who will win? There will be upsets, and new stars will be born. Some established stars will disappoint and fall by the wayside. All of us have our favorite teams, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we will get a chance to watch some of the most gifted and graceful sportspersons in the world, in what is undoubtedly the most popular, unifying and democratic sport in the world. If there is one activity that can unite all of humanity for a little while, irrespective of religion, political leanings, nationality, gender or anything else, it is this – soccer, the “beautiful game” as Pele once called it.

Travel: Why Do You Do It?

2010-05-19T04:22:00.000-07:00

I was born with wanderlust. As much as I love my home in Pune, India, I love to travel, and would spend the rest of my life travelling if I could afford it. Unfortunately, I cannot. Luckily for me, however, I am not alone in my love of travel, and am married to someone who loves to travel as much as I do.

Many people ask my wife and I about how we manage our marriage, considering the fact that we have spent most of it living on different continents. I agree that this is not an ideal state of affairs and we will, in the near future, have an opportunity to spend more time together.

Part of the reason we have spent so much time apart has been due to our love of travel, or rather, our love of seeing and living in new places. The actual “travelling” bit can be pretty dreadful. I absolutely hate airports and the whole process of getting from one place to another by air. If I had the time and money, I would travel the world by train, since I enjoy train travel. When I lived in the US many years ago, I saw a lot of the country from the passenger seat of a car, which was also enjoyable.

My definition of travelling and seeing new places is a little different from some other people. I like to see new places, but only at my own pace. Actually, I like to live in new places as opposed to seeing them. I like to try and understand the local culture and politics, find a favourite bar and/or restaurant and learn more about the local food. I like to meet and chat with locals, and hopefully make a few friends. This means that I need to spend a considerable amount of time in a place, until it starts to feel like a surrogate home.

For many people, travelling means continuous frantic movement from one place to another, as their camera-shutters keep clicking incessantly, showing them standing in front of famous monuments or historical buildings. People who love seeing six new places in seven days are tourists, not travellers. Tourists usually know nothing about the places they visit, and are more interested in immediate photo-opportunities and quickly moving on to the next destination recommended by their tour guide. More often than not, they aren’t interested in really getting to know the places they visit. As a result, they usually leave a place with as little knowledge of it as when they first arrived there. Tourists usually have everything organized and accounted for in advance. Travellers, by contrast, often make spontaneous decisions and prefer to go off the beaten track, in search of a unique or different experience. I have nothing against tourists, but I cannot be one. I prefer to be a traveller instead.

While the world is a large place and I doubt I will be able to see much of it, I consider myself lucky to have seen as much of it as I have. I have travelled the high cold plains of the American West, driven through Yellowstone National Park on the first day of the season, eaten “recession-special” pizzas in the Bronx in New York and lived off Coal Harbour in beautiful Vancouver, Canada. I have visited the Taj Mahal on a moon-lit night, trekked at 11,000 feet in the incomparably beautiful Indian Himalayas and watched the sunrise on the 25,600 foot high Nanda Devi. I have seen the beautiful temple carvings at Khajuraho and crossed the Ganges River in a decrepit steamboat.

Along the way, I have made several great friends who have enriched my life. Thanks to the Internet, I have rediscovered some of them after many years. There is still so much more to see and do, and if life is kind, I will continue to travel. This probably means I will sacrifice career opportunities and financial stability to satisfy my wanderlust. So be it. I may not die rich, but whenever my time comes, I can at least say I was well-travelled.

Nostalgia: The Sunday Morning Matinee

2010-04-24T07:41:00.000-07:00

I do not know if Sunday morning matinee movies still exist. I hope they do, because some of my fondest childhood memories are from watching such movies. As usual, I will elaborate (possibly at too much length).

I grew up in a place called Bandra, in the city of Bombay (now called Mumbai). At one time, Bandra used to be called the “Queen of the Suburbs”. It isn’t anymore. It is crowded, expensive and in my opinion, not worth living in anymore. But thirty years ago, it was all different.

Bandra was a quiet, clean, tree-shaded place by the sea, full of beautiful cottages and an old world charm. Back in the old “socialist” days, very few people had cars, so traffic wasn’t a problem. In the 1970s, Bandra was still not populated with high-rise residential buildings, shopping malls, cable television and beauty parlors. Instead, we had huge playgrounds where we played cricket, football and hockey every day of the year and for entertainment, we had the New Talkies cinema hall.

The New Talkies cinema hall was a beat-up, old movie theatre on Hill Road. On weekdays, they usually showed the latest Bollywood blockbusters. But on weekends (Sunday mornings), they showed old black and white Hollywood movies from the 1940s and 1950s. And these are the movies my dad took me to see when I was seven, eight, nine years old. Going to these movies with my dad every Sunday morning was a treasured ritual; moments in time that I will remember as long as I live.

In particular, a few movies stand out. The first one was the “The Corsican Brothers”, the 1941 black and white version, starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as a swashbuckling swordsman in a double role. For an eight year old, it didn’t get any better than this. An epic tale of sword-fighting, revenge and romance, with not one, but two Douglas Fairbanks sliding down banisters with sword in one hand and the damsel in distress in the other. The two Corsican brothers (both played by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. of course) are separated at birth, and destined to meet at some point. To add to the drama and pathos, both of them become expert swordsmen and fall in love with the same woman (actress Ruth Warrick). There is a dastardly villain, and of course, one of the brothers then has to sacrifice himself for the other. I wonder if our Hindi movies got the idea of siblings separated at birth from “The Corsican Brothers”!

Another movie was “Godzilla” – the original black and white Japanese version dubbed in English. The opening scene showed Godzilla emerging from the Pacific Ocean at the stroke of midnight, poised to terrorize whole villages of Japanese peasants. For some reason, Godzilla’s preferred time of surfacing from the Pacific Ocean was always midnight; and in the movie, church bells ominously chime twelve times every time Godzilla is about to emerge. This was my first “horror” movie, and watching Godzilla terrorize the Japanese countryside was plenty scary for a seven year old.

I remember many other such matinee movies I watched with my father; “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1937 version with Ronald Colman and yes, the ubiquitous Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The Three Musketeers”. Watching these movies with my father made for some enduring and happy childhood memories. They were great opportunities for me to bond with my dad. For him, it was a chance to re-live his childhood, since most of these Sunday morning matinee films were from the 1940s and 1950s.

Today, the New Talkies cinema hall is long gone; replaced by a huge, glittering mall. I feel no sense of attachment to the mall, but every time I walk past it, I still mourn for the New Talkies theatre, that air-conditioned palace of dreams from my childhood.

Nostalgia: The Little Train That Could

2010-02-06T01:49:00.000-08:00

Distinguished author Paul Theroux has written a great many books on travel; especially train travel. In one of his travel books he says that he never saw a train go by without wishing he was on it. I know that feeling.

Unlike air travel which is soulless and impersonal, train travel offers the traveler a chance to escape - from a dead-end job, a stressful life, an unhappy personal event. It offers a chance to assume a new identity, reinvent oneself.

And of all types of train travel, steam train travel was undoubtedly the most enjoyable. Steam engines have gone the way of the dodo, and I doubt there are any railways in the world that use steam engines anymore.
But I still have memories from thirty years ago, when as a child, my parents and I would make the annual pilgrimage to visit my grandparents up in the Indian Himalayas. Nowadays, there is a reasonably good highway from Delhi, as well as a couple of high-speed trains (high-speed by Indian standards, anyway).

But thirty years ago, there was just one meter-gauge train from the Indian city of Agra in the congested plains of North India. That train was the Kumaon Express, so named because it transported travelers from the city to Agra to the Kumaon Himalayas. And best of all, that train was pulled by what looked like a toy steam train engine. The engine had a distinctive whistle that sounded like a boy on the cusp of puberty. It was shrill and broke when it hit the high notes. In Bengali, we used to call it “bhangaa-gola”, or “broken voice”.

How mightily the little steam train huffed and puffed to cover the three hundred and fifty kilometers to our destination! Its maximum speed was about thirty kilometers an hour. At that speed, the whole train compartment would shudder and shake, and it felt like it would come apart at the seams.
The train journey was an overnight one. All through the cold foggy winter night, the train would travel through the fertile plains of North India, with its distinctive whistle blowing.

In the morning, you woke up to winter mist and fog, and little stations in the verdant green fields of the Indian terai. The train stations would suddenly loom through the fog, and you felt you had suddenly gone back in time. The stations looked and felt like they were lost in time; shades of Stewart Granger and Ava Gardner in that old Hollywood classic “Bhowani Junction”.

Tea-sellers rushed through the morning fog, selling tea in small matkas (earthenware pots). Porters (known in India as coolies) rushed hither and yon pursued by harried passengers looking for their train compartments. The cries of hawkers shattered the early morning silence, as the train leisurely ambled its way through places with names like as Lalkuan, Kicchha and Baheri.

The journey would finally end at the last railhead – the Kathgodam train station, where the pine and oak trees of my beloved Himalayan foothills would suddenly come into view. Although I would be covered in soot and coal ash, my spirits would rise as the Himalayan foothills appeared on the horizon. They were the land of Jim Corbett and tigers. They promised everything I craved for – deep, dark forests, cool, crisp mountain air and best of all, the sight of those snow-covered titans in the distance.

The train would finally stop, its labors complete for the day. With a huge whooshing sound, the engine would finally shudder to a halt, sounding like a marathon runner with respiratory problems breasting the tape at the end of a race.

Today, there are broad-gauge, comparatively high-speed trains that cover the same distance within a much shorter time. But I will always remember the Kumaon Express fondly. It was the little train that could. It was the train that took me home.

Music: The Romance of Bootlegged Audio-Cassettes

2009-12-16T14:04:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago, as a new blogger, I wrote a paean to the long-playing record (LP). I still believe that a true music connoisseur will always prefer listening to LPs than to compact discs (CDs). CDs provide crystal-clear sound, but sound soulless. LPs on the other hand can be temperamental and are high-maintenance. Only someone who truly loves music will take the trouble of owning, maintaining and playing LPs. The sound of an LP is so rich and natural. LPs have personalities of their own. CDs do not.

Besides, perfection is not always everything it is cracked up to be, anyway. A little bit of imperfection always makes anything more interesting. Please read my blog on the long-playing record to find out more about that particular subject.

Today, while surfing the Internet, I stumbled across an astonishingly powerful cover version of “Almost Cut My Hair”; a classic 1969 song by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY). Listening to it brought back a flood of memories, of youth and life in college in India, when the most pressing concern we had was whether we had enough money to buy a quarter of rum. I still remember the beat-up old CSNY LP (which contained this song) that a friend of mine loaned me in 1984. I rushed to dub the LP onto a Sony audio-cassette.

Those were innocent, fun-filled days when my friends and I would gather at my home to listen to bootlegged audio-cassettes. Much of the music I still listen to today I first heard on an audio-cassette. I still remember where I was and what I was doing when I first listened to the Who’s “Baba O’Riley” with its beautiful violin solo. I borrowed a bootleg cassette of the “Who’s Next” album from a friend. He was very reluctant to loan it to me. I don’t blame him. I would have been reluctant too.
I used to take a bus back from my college in Matunga to my home in Bandra. I wasted no time and started listening to the cassette the moment I got onto the bus. I had a brand-new Walkman, gifted to me by my uncle who lived in the US. This was 1984, and owning a Walkman in India back then was a big deal. I remember playing “Baba O’Riley” on the Walkman in the bus, and as it wound its way through the slum of Dharavi, the violin solo at the end of the song came through the headphones. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I had never heard anything so beautiful, so immediate. I wanted to grab hold of the passenger sitting next to me and say “Listen to this!”

I had many enjoyable evenings (and afternoons) listening to bootlegged audio-cassettes of “Who’s Next”. The audio-cassette had an audible hiss and eventually wore out. When this happened the spool would get entangled in the tape recorder, and I would painstakingly unspool it and make sure the tape did not break. I was a pretty good “cassette surgeon”. But bootlegged audio-cassettes were all that broke college students could afford back in those days. Besides, it wasn’t easy to get original albums of the music I wanted to listen to, since these albums were simply not available in India at the time. Therefore, bootlegged cassettes were the only way to go.

This was how it worked. Someone you knew usually knew somebody who had an elder brother who owned the Cream’s “Disraeli Gears” LP. Since you were a big fan of Eric Clapton and the song “Sunshine of Your Love”, you made it a point to get know the somebody in question. Over tea and a cigarette at the corner tea-shop, you begged and pleaded with him to speak to his elder brother and ask him to loan you his copy of the “Disraeli Gears” LP for just a day. You impressed upon him how careful you were with other people’s things, especially other people’s LPs (this was true).

After much coaxing, you got the LP you wanted. Then you ran home and promptly taped it on the best Sony audio-cassette you had, and invited all your friends to drop by and have a listen. I was always the “music guy” back in college, which made me pretty popular. Some of the best friends I made were at these music listening sessions we had. I turned on a lot of people to rock and jazz music. I often wonder what happened to all of those people, and whether they still listen to “Sunshine of Your Love” and “Almost Cut My Hair”.

The last time I was in the US, I met an old buddy of mine from the 1980s who now lives there. He is wealthy, married and has a family; he is a poster-child for the successful Indian immigrant. He picked me up from the airport. While we were driving back to his home, he turned on the radio, and the Who song “The Seeker” came on. He turned to me and said; “I first heard this at your place more than twenty years ago”. Then we both proceeded to sing the lyrics of the song at the top of our lungs all the way home. For a few moments, the years melted away and we were teenagers again.

The next time I get home, I will try and find the old bootlegged cassettes of “Sunshine of Your Love” and “More Than A Feeling” and play them. I now own these albums on CD, but listening to music on CD just doesn’t give me the same thrill.

Those old carefree days are gone forever. But maybe those memories can be recaptured for just a little while when I listen to those old bootlegged cassettes. Baba O’Riley still lives (fans of the Who will know what I am talking about).

India: An Economic Prediction

2009-12-04T04:09:00.000-08:00

This is probably the first blog where I am making an economic prediction. Let me start by saying I am not a financial expert. Many (including me) will say that there are thousands of people far more qualified than me when it comes to predicting India’s GDP and stock market growth. And all of them will be right. I am only an amateur economist. I do not have a PhD, and I do not have the expertise to run complicated mathematical models of economic data. Nevertheless, I will persevere in making my own predictions, because as everyone knows, economics is the “dismal science”, and my guess is as good as anybody else’s.

So here goes. India’s GDP grew at a very healthy 7.9% last quarter, on the back of 6.1% for the quarter before that. We are talking real (inflation-adjusted) growth here, not nominal growth. Therefore, India’s real GDP growth for the six months of this financial year stands at 7%. Considering the GDP growth rates in the rest of the world at the moment, 7% is very healthy indeed. In addition, India’s stock markets have risen over 80% in this calendar year alone.

The key question is: will this GDP and stock market growth continue over the next six months?

Some pundits are now saying that the recession is over as far as India is concerned, and the time has come again for celebration. Let the good times roll! I suggest caution, for the reasons outlined below.

First, let us look at the stock markets. In business school, one is taught to look at “fundamental value” of any stock before buying it. Is the Indian stock market currently overvalued, undervalued or correctly valued? I would say that it is overvalued at the moment. It is not domestic investors who are flooding the Indian stock markets with money, but American fund houses and investors. Why American investors? Because the rate of borrowing in the US is ridiculously low right now, thanks to the recession.

Imagine if you could borrow money at 2% and get a return of 20% on that money. You would make a killing. That is precisely what is happening right now. Interest rates in the US are at artificially low levels right now, and these low rates are not sustainable. Sometime in the next six months, US interest rates will rise, as the economy comes out of a painful recession. The US Fed will then start concentrating on controlling inflation, and they will do this by raising interest rates. Also, investors (especially the Chinese) are beginning to get nervous about the returns they are getting on their US investments (Treasury bonds). The Chinese want higher returns on the US $ 1 trillion they have invested in US Treasury bonds. If they don’t get it, they may pull out some of their money and invest it elsewhere. So sooner rather than later, the US Federal Reserve is going to hike interest rates.
When that happens, the plug will be pulled on the Indian stock markets, as the easy money dries up. So, Indian stock prices will fall. I predict that this will happen in the first quarter of 2010.

Second, let us look at India’s GDP growth. Most of the stimulus in the Indian economy today is being created by the government through its borrowing and demand creation schemes. The largest of these is the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission which has put billions of dollars into the pockets of India’s millions of under-performing government bureaucrats. This has stimulated consumer demand which in turn, has increased demand for goods and services, which has contributed to 7.9% GDP growth in the last quarter. Is this sustainable for much longer?

The answer is no. Unless the Indian private sector now steps in and starts borrowing and expanding capacity rapidly, GDP growth will stall. The private sector expanded capacity rapidly between 2004 and 2008, and they feel that at the moment, there is a surplus capacity of goods and services in the system. Unless the private sector starts investing, job and money creation will not happen and domestic demand and GDP will not grow.

When do I expect this (increased private sector investment) to happen? Not before the last quarter of 2010. By then, the recession should have played itself out and they should feel confident enough.

The last and probably most important factor influencing India’s GDP growth is inflation. The government proudly trumpets the fact that Wholesale Price Inflation is below 2%. This claim is ludicrous. Food inflation in India currently stands at 18%, thanks to a poor monsoon and harvest last year. In a country where spending on food is the highest part of the household budget (for at least 50% of the population), this is alarming.

There is no reason to assume that food inflation will come down in the near future. There is much the government can do to alleviate it in terms of optimizing the food supply chain “from farm to fork”, but so far, we have only heard lots of talk on this front, and no action.

In addition, as the world economy recovers the price of petroleum will start increasing again. Combine increasing petroleum prices with already rampant food inflation, and you have all the ingredients for high inflation levels for the first half of 2010. High inflation means lower savings and lower real GDP growth.
There is much the Indian government can do to improve the situation; such as rapid disinvestment of Public Sector Units (PSUs), increased spending on infrastructure, improving the food supply chain to reduce waste and lower costs, etc. But the government’s record on making and rapidly implementing firm policy decisions is poor, and unlikely to improve anytime soon.

So what is my final prediction?

The stock markets will come down by 15% to 20% in the first half of 2010. Real (Consumer Price) inflation will go up to between 8% and 10%. Real GDP growth will come down for the first half of the year – to about 5% to 5.5%.

We will see light at the end of the tunnel during the second half of 2010, when borrowing by the private sector will start increasing (even though it will be at higher interest rates). This will spur capacity expansion and job creation and a rise in the stock markets and GDP growth. If we have a good monsoon in 2010, we should end with GDP growth of about 7 to 7.5% for the year ending March 31, 2011, on the back of a strong economic performance in the second half of that fiscal year.

Of course, all of what I have just said could be completely inaccurate and things may in fact, turn out just the opposite. But this is my prediction! Your comments (including any mistakes I may have made in my assumptions in this blog) are welcome.

India: Bombay Meri Jaan

2009-11-25T09:26:00.000-08:00

Bombay Meri Jaan (which in English roughly means “Bombay, My Life” or “Bombay My Love”) is a very famous old Bollywood song from 1956. The song is sung by a character who is a petty thief, and he sings about how tough life can be in this City of Dreams, this modern-day Babylon – a city where millions of people come with stars in their eyes and the hope of making it big.

I am attaching the youtube link to the song. Most Indians would know and love this song. If you haven’t seen this video, I recommend you watch it. It has English sub-titles for those who do not speak Hindi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6INOamqU7xs

Fifty three years after this song was written, Bombay has lost much of its luster, though millions of people still come here from thousands of miles away in India’s hinterlands, seeking a livelihood and a respite from the desperate poverty in their villages. This huge migration of people has caused the city’s population to swell to twenty million, and put a huge strain on the city’s infrastructure which was designed to cater to five million inhabitants.

65% of the city’s population now lives in slums. The overcrowding in the city has also started causing tensions between “locals” and “outsiders”. India’s political parties, who never miss a trick, have started encouraging and exploiting these divisions for votes. Still, Bombay is the only truly “Indian” city in the country, with every single one of India’s states represented (and probably every district as well).

Citizens of Bombay are famed for its toughness. They are known for their intelligence, street-smarts, sass, tolerance, hardiness and sense of humor. It could hardly be otherwise. People live in tiny, one bedroom apartments in the far-flung suburbs, and often commute one hundred kilometers a day or more, packed like sardines in sweltering train compartments. You need all of the qualities mentioned above to cope.

You may not like Bombay; it is no longer a beautiful city. But you cannot deny that the city has a character and personality of its own, and how many cities of the world can you say that about?

I no longer live in Bombay, mainly because of two reasons. Firstly, I am not as young as I used to be. Pretty much everybody who works in Bombay is a workaholic. No matter how smart you are or how hard you work, there is always someone younger and smarter snapping at your heels. As I settle into comfortable middle age, my competitive spirit doesn’t burn as brightly as it did ten years ago. Secondly, Bombay is a chain of islands, and since there is no room for growth, the price of residential real estate is astronomical. A decent 1,000 square foot apartment in the area I grew up in costs in the region of US $ 400,000. I am not willing to mortgage my life to buy an apartment in a city that is already way too crowded, polluted and noisy.

But Bombay is still the city I was born in, the city I grew up in, the city that shaped the man I became. And there will be many others just like me; people who escaped Bombay to live in less stressful places. But ask them how they feel when they see a picture of Victoria Terminus (as in the “Bombay Meri Jaan” video), or Marine Drive or the Gateway of India, and wherever they may live, and however long it has been since they last saw Bombay, chances are they will look at the pictures and think “home!!”.

There is so much more I could say about Bombay, but for that, I would have to write a novel. So I will cease and desist!

Tomorrow (November 26th) marks the first anniversary of the terrible terrorist attacks on Bombay. This is my salute to everyone who lives in Bombay. People like the accountant I knew in one of my workplaces many years ago; a woman who lived in Kalyan and commuted every morning by train to Fort (a distance of about sixty kilometers one-way). A woman who woke up at 5 am every morning to cook breakfast for her family, feed and dress her kids for school and then come to work. A woman who returned home only by 10 pm every night, to cook dinner and then help her kids with their homework. She was super-efficient at work too, and accomplished more in a day than most people do in a week. I was in awe of her. And Bombay is full of millions of men and women like her.

So I would like to dedicate this blog to her and the millions of other hardworking residents of Bombay, that western-most of India’s cities. You deserve so much better.

India: The Many Indias

2009-10-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

Having lived overseas for more than half of my adult life, I have often been asked the question “What is India like?” I always find this question difficult to answer, because India, unlike many other countries in the world, is very difficult to categorize.

There is nothing homogenous or uniform about India. When people want to categorize India, I often tell them to think of India as Europe – if Europe had been a single nation. India has fifteen (or is it sixteen) different languages (each with its own unique script), thousands of dialects, and dozens of ethnic groups. Culturally, ethnically and linguistically, Hungary and Iceland have more in common than Tamil Nadu (a South Indian state) and Uttar Pradesh (a North Indian state). Western India is more economically prosperous than Eastern India, Southern India is better educated than Northern India, and then of course, there are the “seven sisters”, India’s North-eastern states, beautiful but distant, with warm and hospitable people but populated by separatist groups. Culturally, the North-eastern states have more in common with Tibet and Myanmar than India.

This same diversity applies to India’s urban and rural areas. Urban India has its face to the West, and sophisticated Indian cities have some of the finest restaurants, entertainment and nightlife on offer anywhere in the world. Parts of rural India on the other hand (especially in economically backward Northern and Eastern India) are as backward and poor as sub-Saharan Africa. Real estate prices in Mumbai and Delhi are among the highest in the world; on par with cities like Tokyo and New York. An Indian corporate magnate recently constructed one of the most expensive buildings in the world, and converted it into his residence. He is among the fifty richest men in the world, I think. Yet, barely a hundred kilometers from where he lives is one of India’s poorest districts, where malnutrition and hunger cast a dark shadow on the lives of the rural poor.

Is India a rich country? Yes. Is India a poor country? Yes. Are primary education standards in rural India abysmal? Yes. Does India have some of the finest universities and scientific research institutions in the world? Yes. Is a large percentage of the Indian population illiterate? Yes. Does India have the largest English speaking population in the world? Yes. Is India’s government venal, corrupt and inefficient? Yes. Does India have some of the best-run private sector companies in the world? Yes. Does caste and religious discrimination still exist? Yes. Are some of India’s most distinguished people (including the country’s Chief Justice as well as former President) from these communities? Yes. Does religious bigotry exist in India? Yes. Are all religions equal under the law in India? Yes. Is India one of the most densely populated countries in the world? Yes. Are parts of India among the most sparsely populated places on the planet? Yes. Is India a hot country? Yes. Is India a cold country? Yes.

You see how difficult it is to categorize the place. All this diversity causes huge problems that would daunt many nations. Yet somehow India endures. I would like to say that it thrives, but that would be too strong a word to use. It is my fervent hope that India can and does start thriving soon. In school, we were taught that India meant “unity in diversity”. That cherished idea is still alive and well, despite many organized attempts to kill it. India can and should thrive, because no other country in the world is as diverse, as unique and as flawed. But this diversity also means unlimited potential; a latent ability to show the rest of the world how so many different cultures, races, ethnicities and religions can co-exist and prosper. It is an honor for me to call myself Indian. To paraphrase Nobel Prize winning Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, may India thrive and “into that heaven of freedom, My Father, may my country awake”.

Environment: Are You An Environmentalist Yet?

2009-10-05T10:54:00.001-07:00

Many years ago, when I was a university student in the U.S., I had a Native American friend from the Shoshone tribe. Like me, he was getting a degree in Business Administration. We became good friends, and one year during Thanksgiving, he even took me up to an American Indian reservation where his family lived. I do not know of too many Asian Indians who have visited American Indian reservations. But that visit (or what I remember of it after so many years), will have to be the subject of another blog.

I was curious as to how Native American tribes viewed the American Gold Rush, the “discovery” of America and the West by people from Europe, and their view of American history. While talking about land ownership rights, my friend said something that has stayed with me all these years later: “Native Americans do not believe that people own the land they live on. Instead, we believe that the land owns us. We are only temporary custodians of the land we live on, and it is our responsibility to take care of it and nurture it for future generations”. I thought that this was one of the most profound things I had ever heard.

As a citizen of one of the most densely populated countries on earth, I have seen first-hand the devastation caused by overpopulation, greed and environmental degradation. Thirty years ago, Bombay (Mumbai) was still a scenic city, with the sea on one side and green, rolling hills on the other. The population of the city in the late 1970s was about eight million people. Today, thirty years on, all the open spaces are gone, filled with buildings or slums. The population has risen to twenty million people, though the infrastructure of the city (roads, public transport, electricity, water supply) was designed to cater to only about five million people. The beloved city of my youth is gone, forever.

When I go up to the Himalayas every year, I am distressed by the increasing vehicular pollution, the sprouting of ugly concrete houses on the hillsides, and the trash generated by uncaring tourists. It is infuriating to watch city tourists in their gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles defile the calm of the mountains, with their blaring Indi-pop music and their amazing capacity to generate mounds of garbage. The least they can do is to respect the sanctity of their beautiful surroundings, but I guess that is too much to ask for.

I usually head out into the wilderness very quickly to soothe my soul. The fewer the people I have to deal with, the better. Luckily, there is a growing awareness of the environment in India’s Himalayas, as locals also realize the economic value of conservation of trees, as well as the value of preserving and replenishing traditional sources of fresh water such as springs, etc. But India’s burgeoning population means that environmental conservation is always a challenging task, as the competition for finite sources of water and energy (such as firewood) intensifies with each passing year. There is much that the government can do in terms of environmental awareness and education, but then there is much that the government can do in all spheres of public life which sadly isn’t being done.

The Native American tribes were among the world’s first environmentalists because they revered the land they lived on, and took care of it. They learned to live in harmony with nature. There is much that we could learn from them. In this day and age, as global warming and climate change begins to manifest itself, there are simple things we could do to stave off a catastrophe. Plant and care for trees where possible, use public transportation where safe, clean and efficient public transportation options are available, judiciously use electricity and water – to name a few. If we don’t, the land we live on will continue to exist (in some form), while we will become extinct as a species. The pertinent question to be asked therefore is not are you an environmentalist, but are you an environmentalist yet? Because if you do not care for the land you live on, pretty soon it will not care about you. And that would be the end of the world as we know it.

Home: A Place Where Birds Nest

2009-09-30T16:28:00.001-07:00

As someone who has spent more than half his adult life living away from home, every piece of news and information about it is valuable and precious. I make it a point to read all the latest political, economic and sports news about India very regularly. I incessantly e-mail friends to find out what is happening back home. Even the most seemingly trivial piece of information is most welcome.

Which is why I was thrilled to learn that a family of songbirds has made a nest in our little terrace garden back in Pune, India. There is nothing grand or magnificent about our Pune home. It is a spacious, bright two-bedroom apartment in one of the nicer parts of the city, surrounded by lots of trees. There is plenty of natural light that streams through the house. The main attraction of the place is the little terrace garden we have, which is being looked after (quite well, it seems) by our maid. One of the distinguishing features of the place is the continuous sound of birdsong, in part due to the little lawn we have. Birds of many varieties come by, looking for worms on the lawn. I have spent many a lazy afternoon, watching them as they visited the lawn. Once they figured out that this unemployed guy wasn’t a threat, they became completely unafraid of me.

Apparently, a family of songbirds have taken a fancy to one of the bamboo trees we have in the garden, and built a nest there. I like to grandly call it the “bamboo grove”, but in fact, it is just four bamboo trees, that we planted last year and which have now grown to over seven feet tall.

We spent a lot of time last year looking for a nice home. I have a marked tendency to over-analyze, and would probably still be searching for the appropriate home if it hadn’t been for Deepali. She took one look at the open space that eventually became the terrace garden and decided that this was the place she wanted to live in.

It was a great decision in hindsight. Both of us love the place. We have made some good friends in the neighbourhood. When we do live there (which is not very often lately), we often have friends over. People we know seem to love the place as well. I flatter myself, but I do believe that the place gives off a relaxed, positive, cheerful vibe that attracts visitors (including feathered ones).

It is great to know that a family of songbirds has found our home a fit enough place to raise a family. Home after all, is where birds come to nest, isn’t it?

Travel: Old Is Nothing

2009-09-24T11:58:00.000-07:00

Deepali and I just returned from what is billed as the most spectacular train ride in the world; the Whistler Mountaineer from the city of Vancouver, Canada to Whistler, a ski resort in British Columbia. I haven’t been on all the train rides in the world, but I can well believe this claim. No other railway in the world takes you up through the spectacular British Columbia coast, with the sea on one side and evergreen forests, gushing white-water rivers and snow-capped mountains on the other. These areas are prime breeding grounds for killer whales, bears (grizzlies and black bears), salmon and bald eagles. We rode past Howe Sound, which is the southernmost fjord (glacier-carved sea inlet) in North America, through the hamlet of Squamish, considered the recreation and outdoors capital of Canada and up into the ski resort of Whistler.

I will be posting photos soon. Photos of course do not do justice to the awe-inspiring beauty of this train ride. I now have to admit that in my book, British Columbia is right up there with the Himalayas as the most beautiful place in the world. While the mountains here are lower, one also gets a view of the ocean and fjords at the same time.

We had a memorable ride on the Whistler Mountaineer. The train had a “Glacier Dome” compartment, one that was completely encased in glass and offered a 360 degree view of the natural beauty on offer. Since we paid an arm and leg for the trip, we were pampered with local Okanagan Valley wine, smoked salmon sandwiches, Glenfiddich scotch whiskey and lemon tarts. I must say it was a dining experience like no other.

What astonished me was the number of senior citizens on board the train. At least 80% of the travellers on the train were aged 65 and above. Many of them were in their 70s and a few of them were in their 80s. Older people in the West are so active and still have so much zest for life. I find that admirable. Here in Vancouver, the number of older runners and joggers outnumber their younger counterparts. I consider myself quite fit, but some of these elderly athletes put me to shame.

It is heartening to see so many senior citizens going mobile. But it is not surprising, considering the facilities that are always available for them, right from wheelchairs, clean and easily accessible toilets and medical staff. It is a pity that such facilities are not easily available in most places in India. Senior citizens often have worked a lifetime and have cash to spend, and would be an ideal market segment for tourism. Unfortunately, despite the so-called “Incredible India” tourism campaign mounted by the Indian government in the last few years, very little has changed on the ground as far as travel is concerned. Buildings are not easy to access for those who are disabled or elderly, medical care in smaller cities is not good and public toilets in India are few and far between (and indescribably filthy when you do find them).

India, along with the United States of America, has the most diverse natural attractions on offer – right from snow-capped mountains to beaches to deserts. We also have some of the most historic tourist sites in the world, from the Taj Mahal to the ruins of Hampi and so many forts, palaces and castles. We have an ancient civilization that rivals Rome, Greece, China and Persia. But we get so few international tourists, and even fewer elderly tourists.

We need those tourist dollars. The money could be spent to provide livelihoods to millions of people and give a major boost to the rural economy that would be a godsend in places where employment options are few. A carefully crafted and delivered tourism strategy would lift millions out of poverty. But is anyone in the government listening?

Coming back to those senior tourists I saw on the train, I salute them and their enthusiasm for life. Getting old doesn’t mean that one is waiting to die. The whole world is out there, waiting to be explored. And what better time to do it than when one is retired, the kids are independent and one has both time as well as money to spare? To paraphrase the punch-line from a running shoe commercial; “Old is nothing”

Up On Crank’s Ridge: Where It’s Always 1969

2009-09-20T20:08:00.000-07:00

Memory is a funny thing. There are some places one has visited that bring back fond memories. Then there are a few places one has visited that one would rather forget. Lastly, there is a special category of places where one feels like one has somehow gone back in time. This blog is about a place that is as much a geographical location as it is a state of mind. I blogged about it in passing a couple of years ago, but this particular blog is fondly dedicated to Crank’s Ridge, the old hippie hangout tucked away in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, where it always feels like 1969.

Every time I go back there (and I try and go back every year), the old hippie song “Something In the Air” starts playing in my head. Crank’s Ridge, six kilometres above the Himalayan town of Almora in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, is known by several names; Kasar Devi (the traditional name), Crank’s Ridge (a tribute to the assortment of famous eccentrics from across the world who have lived there) and Hippie Hill (from the time in the 1970s when it became a haven for hippies and mystics).

There is something special about Crank’s Ridge. Apart from some of the best Himalayan views anywhere in the world, there is something about the quality of the air here – a sort of golden, hazy sepia-tinted glow that I have never seen anywhere else in the world. Standing by the side of the single lane tarred road that passes through the ridge, one can see the Himalayalan foothills roll away into the distance, and beyond them, three hundred kilometres of the mightiest mountain range in the world, with the summit of the 25,600 foot Nanda Devi Peak front and center. The view is breathtaking, and I guarantee that no matter how jaded a traveller you are, it will leave you speechless. The great Himalayas shimmering in the distance, sunlight glinting on a butterfly's wing, rolling meadows and tall, evergreen trees. As a nature lover, you could not ask for anything more.

Yet Crank’s Ridge is not just about astonishing natural beauty. It has a reputation for being a spiritual “power centre” and has played host to a number of famous (and occasionally eccentric visitors). This is as good a place as any to mention some of them. The first was Indian mystic Swami Vivekananda who lived and meditated at the Kasar Devi temple up on the ridge back in the 1890s. In the 1920s, it became a haven for Buddhist mystics, famous artists and poets. D.H. Lawrence spent two summers living here as did artist Earl Brewster, Buddhist scholars Alfred Sorensen (a.k.a Sunyata Baba) and Lama Govinda (a.k.a. Ernst Hoffman). Lama Govinda was the world’s foremost authority on Tibetan Buddhism. Indian Nobel Prize poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore, Uday Shankar, dancer Zohra Sehgal and sitarist Ravi Shankar also lived here in the 1930s and 1940s.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, this remarkable and remote place became a haven for beat poets such as Allen Ginsberg and future hippie guru Timothy Leary. Timothy Leary lived here for several years in the 1950s and wrote part of the book “The Psychedelic Experience” here. But the true boom in Western visitors came in the 1960s and 1970s. Crank’s Ridge is supposed to be a deeply spiritual place. The marijuana plant also grows rather liberally on the lower slopes of the ridge, which is also a big draw for many. The 1970s saw many celebrity visitors – including Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan and George Harrison. There are unconfirmed rumours that all of the Beatles may have made it here back in 1968 or 1969. This is very possible, since they spent substantial amounts of time in Rishikesh, on the other side of the mountains. Also, the Beatles were very good friends with Timothy Leary, who lived on Crank’s Ridge.

Western tourists came in droves in the 1970s, as many people (not all hippies) came up to Crank’s Ridge as part of their spiritual search. Apart from the hippies, there were many distinguished visitors as well. Dr. Robert Thurman, noted Buddhist scholar, professor of Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and father of actress Uma Thurman came and spent a summer on Crank’s Ridge in 1971 to write his thesis and study with his guru Lama Govinda. Thurman brought his family with him, so the infant Uma Thurman also probably lived here!

Another distinguished visitor was Dena Kaye, the daughter of Hollywood actor and star Danny Kaye. She opened a state-of-the-art hospital in this beautiful rural part of India, named the Dena Hospital. The Dena Hospital is still very much in existence, and is staffed by doctors from Mumbai and Delhi. The last time my parents visited the area a few years ago, they were astonished to find that some of the doctors at the hospital were their students from the G.S. Medical College in Mumbai (Bombay).

Much has changed in the last thirty years I have been visiting Crank’s Ridge. In the 1970s, there was only a dirt track that wound its way up through forests of oak and pine, from the town of Almora a thousand feet below. There were very few houses, no electricity and almost no tourists, except for the visiting hippies who had “freak-outs” and dances on summer nights.

Today, there is a tarred road, several expensive hotels and a four-star resort that have come up there, offering everything from local treks to exotic Indian Ayurvedic massages and power yoga. There also is a settlement of Tibetans who live here and a serene Buddhist monastery. The tiny local restaurants now offer pizza and burgers as part of their menu. There are several Internet cafes, and the locals rent out their village homes to visiting Western tourists in search of nirvana. There are a couple of hundred aging Western tourists who came here in the 1970s and decided to live here permanently. There is also a settlement of Israeli kids, who come here to relax and unwind after serving their time in the military back home.

But the aura of the place remains unchanged. The Himalayas still watch over the little town, silent yet awe-inspiring sentinels. And every time I visit, I still walk up to the top of the windswept ridge, where Swami Vivekananda meditated a hundred and twenty years ago, where one can still hear the eloquent roar of the blessed mountain silences.

For me, Crank’s Ridge still conjures up visions of flaxen-haired hippies in tie-dyed clothes dancing joyously in the meadows to the strains of “Something in the Air”. To quote the lyrics of the song:

“Call out the instigators
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right
We have got to get it together now”

I was never a hippie. The whole hippie thing always seemed too naïve and well-intentioned to work. The promised revolution came and went and very little in the world changed. But somehow, up on Crank’s Ridge, everybody pitches in and everyone seems happy. So call out the instigators, because the revolution is here and I am going back up to Crank’s Ridge where it still feels like 1969.

Care to join me?

Adaptability

2009-09-01T06:54:00.000-07:00

“You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes,
You just might find
You get what you need”
- Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (1969)

I often ask myself the question: Why is it that all things being equal, some people succeed and others fail? There are of course, many unknowns that contribute to individual success and happiness – luck, determination and ambition are a few that come to mind. Also, some people are naturally gifted or more intelligent than the rest of us. But the operative words in the question posed above are “all things being equal”.

By success and happiness, I do not necessarily mean economic wealth, though that is important. I mean contentment, a sense of modest achievement, a few friends, basic levels of comfort. In the course of a moderately interesting life, I have travelled extensively and met many different types of people. I have met reasonably intelligent and talented people who are happy. I have also met exceptionally intelligent and talented people who are miserable. I have come to the conclusion that true happiness is fleeting and momentary, and not a permanent state of being. There is no “happily ever after”, only the present. And the present keeps changing, often in unpleasant ways. Those who stuck in the past or dreaming about the future are doomed to remain unhappy.

Happiness is based on the ability to adapt to an uncertain and rapidly changing world around us. Like an American friend once said to me: “Never get too comfortable with any particular situation, because life will throw you a curve-ball when you least expect it”. The one thing about life that is certain is its uncertainty and fragility. The moment you start taking any particular situation or person for granted, the rug suddenly gets pulled out from under your feet, and you are right back to Square One.

Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” principle is as applicable to individuals as it is to entire species. The happiest people I know are the ones that are able to rapidly adapt themselves to changing situations. This means realizing that life and people can never be perfect. To expect a given situation or person to be perfect is setting yourself up for disaster. When I was younger, I was frequently disappointed when things did not work out like I had envisioned them. I spent considerable periods of time trying to figure out why things didn’t work out exactly as I had planned and hoped for, and was frequently unhappy.

Nowadays, I realize that while planning, hard work and sincerity are a good start, it is important to be able to land on your feet when things don’t work out like you want them to. That is the secret to true happiness. Because very often, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need. And smart people learn to be happy by adapting to changing circumstances, while realizing that getting what you want just doesn’t happen sometimes. There will always be the enviable few, the beautiful people, who possess a rare combination of luck, good looks, intelligence and ability. I do not belong to that select group of individuals, and chances are that you don’t either.

So if I ever have grandchildren, I will give them this advice; “Learn to roll with the punches, if you ever want to be happy”. This may be contrary to many of the things we are taught as children, but it is true.

Music: Remembering Jimi

2009-09-01T06:45:00.000-07:00

September 18th, 2009 will mark thirty-nine years since Jimi Hendrix died in a London hotel room in 1970 at the age of twenty-seven. Nearly forty years after his death, his albums still sell more than a million copies a year. Many books have been written about the life and death of Hendrix by people far more knowledgeable than me. Movies have been made about him. As I write this blog, there is a big-budget Hollywood movie in the works with the singer of the rap-rock band Outkast in the lead role as Hendrix. I am a fan and have been one for the last twenty-five odd years. This blog is my own little tribute to the greatest popular musician of the twentieth century. He wasn’t the most popular musician of all time, though he was and remains very popular. But he definitely was the most innovative and phenomenally talented musician of the last century.

After many months, I took out my copy of Hendrix’s 1968 double album “Electric Ladyland” today and listened to it in its entirety. Forty-one years after the album was released, many of the songs still sound so fresh, so new, so innovative. The album is only one of the great albums Hendrix released between 1967 and 1970. He released three albums in 1968 alone, and each was a sonic landmark. The songs on “Electric Ladyland” range from the dreamy Beatlesque “Little Miss Strange” to the soaring cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” and the impossibly heavy “Voodoo Chile – Slight Return”. And who can forget the effortless guitar solo at the bridge of “Come On (Let the Good Times Roll)”. That solo feels like a warm ray of sunshine on a bitterly cold, wintry day. In contrast, his peers such as Clapton, Townshend and Jimmy Page sound forced and laboured.

But for me, the brief, blinding guitar solo at the end of “All Along the Watchtower” is the best piece of music I have ever heard. I remember the first time I heard it twenty-six years ago on a beat-up old bootlegged cassette. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. It still does. Hendrix pours his entire soul into that solo. Listening to it is a spiritual experience and for me, it is the closest I have ever felt to being in the presence of God (except for trekking up above the tree-line in the Himalayas possibly). How can something sound so sublime, so perfect, so heartbreaking?

Jimi Hendrix invented heavy metal. Just listen to “Voodoo Chile – Slight Return” or “I Hear My Train A-Comin” to know what I am talking about. This is cosmic blues; B.B. King raised to the power N; intergalactic stuff, music for the Star Trek generation. Esteemed musicians such as Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd sound like pale imitations of the real thing, once you have heard Hendrix. And what is “Crosstown Traffic” if not the first rap song ever written and performed? But Hendrix was not all about blood and thunder. He also had a deft light touch and he wrote and played some of the most delicate ballads you will ever hear. Listen to “If 6 were 9” or “Little Wing” and you will know what I am talking about. And who can forget that bittersweet instrumental romp at the end of his epic two hour set at Woodstock?

The 1960s were a very turbulent decade. By 1968, Jimi Hendrix was being pulled in many different directions by activist groups who wanted him to be their spokesman for their causes. Anti-war activists wanted him to be more outspoken in his opposition to the Vietnam War. African-American activists, demanding civil rights, wanted Hendrix to be their spokesman, since he was the most famous black man alive at the time. Hippies wanted Hendrix to continue to make spaced-out psychedelic music that represented the aspirations of a new generation. The mild-mannered Hendrix could never say no to anyone, and tried very hard to be all things to all people. The pressure on him as a performer was enormous.

Offstage, Hendrix was a shy, retiring man of few words, with a keen intelligence, great sense of humour and an almost child-like sense of innocence. Watch his old interviews with Dick Cavett on YouTube to find out more. He was an unwilling celebrity; and all the adulation made him look like a deer caught in the headlights of an onrushing car. He was ill equipped to deal with fame. When he was alive, he was exploited by groupies, hangers-on, managers and record companies. After his death, nothing changed, as many “recordings” were put out in his name. Most of them were poor in quality, and incomplete studio jams at best.

Onstage, Hendrix had a different persona. He was probably the most charismatic performer of his generation, and this was a generation that gave us live acts like the Rolling Stones and the Who. Hendrix had a sinewy lithe grace onstage, which combined his own onstage charisma with Keith Richards’ swagger and Pete Townshend’s acrobatic ability. He had audience members eating out of the palm of his hand, and women clamouring to gain his attention.

Other musicians often felt completely inadequate in his presence, though Hendrix himself was an extremely reticent individual. The great American guitarist Michael Bloomfield said that after he saw Hendrix perform for the first time, he was so intimidated that he “gave up playing the guitar for a year”. In London, Pete Townshend of the Who and Eric Clapton were so stunned when they saw Hendrix play for the first time in early 1967, that they left the club he was playing at and went and saw a movie together. “Neither of us said a word” Pete Townshend recalled many years later; “since words could not express how overwhelmed we felt”.

Clearly, Hendrix made an unforgettable impact on those whose lives he touched. Recently in Vancouver, I saw a televised concert by Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood. Half the songs they played were Jimi Hendrix songs. The Who still play a version of Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” at most of their live concerts as a tribute. Pete Townshend says he still thinks of his friend Jimi Hendrix every day. So does Bob Dylan. A few years ago, I watched an interview with Kathy Etchingham, one of Hendrix’s old girlfriends. She moved on, got married to a member of the English nobility and started a family. But she never forgot Hendrix. Thirty years after she saw him for the last time in 1970, she broke down and cried as she described the kind of person Jimi Hendrix was.

Hendrix lives on through his influence on other guitar players. John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers often sounds a lot like Hendrix, as did Stevie Ray Vaughan (especially his live concerts). Pretty much every modern guitarist owes a debt to Hendrix, who expanded the guitar’s vocabulary so greatly that post-Hendrix, the electric guitar became an entirely different instrument. Hendrix greatly influenced jazz as well – especially people like Miles Davis, John McLaughlin and Herbie Hancock. Apart from inventing heavy metal and taking electric blues music to an entirely new level, Hendrix also invented jazz rock. The great guitar player Carlos Santana thought Hendrix was God Incarnate. Ironically, Hendrix himself was a humble, quiet man who thought of himself as only an average guitar player. His guitar playing skills were so prodigious that his considerable song-writing skills are often overlooked. He was a brilliant songwriter as well.

You can’t help but ask – what would Jimi Hendrix have accomplished if he hadn’t died at the age of twenty-seven? What would this quiet musical genius have done if he had lived through the 1970s and 1980s? The mind boggles, but the question is a moot one anyway. Jimi Hendrix was a force of nature, a comet that blazed across the dark night sky, leaving everybody mesmerized and everything else far behind in its wake.

Some things in life will always remain a mystery and can never be understood, only appreciated. So I am going to play all the Jimi Hendrix albums I have back-to-back on his death anniversary of September 18th, as my personal tribute. Join in – play a couple of his songs off YouTube if you don’t own any of his albums. There are plenty of them available, last time I checked. Join me in remembering the greatest popular musician of the twentieth century on his death anniversary on September 18th.

India: Why the Opposition Matters

2009-05-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

The Indian General Elections are finally over. The incumbent Congress Party led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition is back in power. Most people are heaving a sigh of relief. The only ones disappointed with the end of the election frenzy are the television media who of course, need to have something to report, since they are 24 hour television news channels. Round the clock television channels are media monsters that need to be fed all the time!

More and more people are beginning to recognise India as a potential giant on the world stage. I will give you an anecdotal example. Day before yesterday, my wife and I went up to Grouse Mountain, a scenic peak above Vancouver. The views of Vancouver and the surrounding ocean from Grouse Mountain are stunning. We hired a local guide for a trek around the area. Part of our little trekking group also included an English couple in their late fifties. As we were chatting with our new found friends, I asked them what they thought of India. The elderly couple responded by saying that their son-in-law often travelled to Mumbai from Essex, England (where he was based), because he worked for the Tata Group of Companies in India, which has interests in steel, automobiles and information technology. Our tour guide had been to the Indian Himalayas in the past, and he was now familiar with Indian information technology and call centres, since he interacted with an Indian business process outsourcing centre (BPO) for his credit card problems!

On the same evening, American television host Charlie Rose had two of India’s leading industrialists Azim Premji and Anand Mahindra on his television show which airs on PBS. Rose had obviously done his homework on India and the Indian economy. His questions were regarding the growing world stature of Indian corporates such as Wipro, the Tata Group and Reliance.

Clearly, the international view of India as a place of endemic poverty, slums, overcrowding and cows dozing on the streets is changing; albeit slowly. India is still a very long way from transforming itself into a player on the global stage, but hopefully that process has begun. We fervently hope that this government will continue with the reform process, which began two decades ago. The new government is making all the right noises; it remains to be seen whether they can deliver the high expectations the long-suffering Indian electorate has placed on them.

Among the losers in this general election are the Communists and the right-of-centre National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which is led by the so-called “Hindu nationalist” Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). I say so-called because the BJP is often unfairly targeted as being “fundamentalist” and “non-secular”. While fringe elements in the BJP certainly are, these tags are unfairly attached to them by their opponents at election time. The BJP as a whole is a secular party.

Both the Communists and the BJP have an important role to play in the Opposition. The Congress has in the past, exhibited a sense of arrogance in its own power. They need to be reminded that they owe a debt to the people who have elected them in the first place. I am a fierce critic of India’s Communists. For the most part, they believe in regressive authoritarian polices which would take India back a hundred years. But I agree completely with them when they talk about education and healthcare reform in India. Of course, they themselves have done precious little in these areas in the states that they do govern (Kerala and West Bengal). Still, their outdated doctrine does place emphasis on both primary education and rural healthcare, two important areas that we must make progress in. They need to quit raising the bogey of so-called “U.S. imperialism” and start pressuring the government to deliver on education and healthcare reform. Hopefully India’s Communists have realized that the electorate is more concerned about basic issues such as education, jobs, roads and water and cares very little about who delivers it. The Indian electorate is fine with being a “strategic ally” of the U.S., as long as their aspirations to a better life are met.

Similarly, the BJP has an important role to play as the primary Opposition party. The BJP is a reform-minded party, and much economic reform was carried out under their rule; the benefits which we are reaping now. The Congress has talked up a storm on economic reform over the past five years and delivered very little. Some of this lack of delivery is due to the compulsions of coalition politics in the last government. However, there can be no excuses this time around – either concerning economic reform or domestic security; another area in which the last Congress led coalition performed poorly. The BJP needs to push the Congress to deliver in both these areas.

A strong Opposition is the lifeblood of any democracy. But their role is not to oppose just for the sake of it. If our opposition parties mature, open up a meaningful debate on national issues and hold the government accountable for delivering on its promises, they will play an equally important role in determining India’s future as the current ruling coalition in Delhi. Let us hope they do.

Music: The Million Dollar Quartet

2009-05-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

I was watching a television documentary on the Million Dollar Quarter last night. The Million Dollar Quartet comprised of four musicians who practically invented rock and roll music in the 1950s. They were Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. All of them were white, born and raised in the American Deep South during the 1930s and 1940s.

The American Deep South was a very different place fifty years ago. Racial discrimination was not only widespread, but legal. The Million Dollar Quartet played a big role in making the US a much more racially tolerant country, by taking old blues music (made by African Americans), speeding it up a little bit and inventing rock and roll. Rock and roll music was invented and made palatable to white kids by these guys. They also made sure that they toured extensively with black musicians. The cross-over appeal of rock music among white kids played a big role in reducing racial discrimination in the U.S – especially in the South.

While Elvis Presley and later Johnny Cash became superstars, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis didn’t. Carl Perkins did not have the luck or looks that Elvis had, though he was much more talented – he played a mean guitar and wrote his own songs. However, Perkins did have a huge influence on the Beatles and Eric Clapton, both of whom covered his songs on their albums. Jerry Lee Lewis’s burgeoning career was cut short by a sex scandal. To learn more about Jerry Lee Lewis, watch the excellent movie “Great Balls of Fire” with Dennis Quaid as Jerry Lee Lewis. Of the Million Dollar Quarter, only Jerry Lee Lewis is still alive and performing; at the age of seventy-four. The other three are dead.

The documentary I watched was narrated by Stan Perkins, son of the late Carl Perkins. Stan Perkins is also a musician. He spoke about the awe he felt when he first met George Harrison of the Beatles. George Harrison told him “The way you feel about me, I feel about your dad – he is my idol”. Both George Harrison and Eric Clapton toured extensively with Carl Perkins when he was alive.

One of the stories that Stan Perkins told was very touching. Carl Perkins died of a stroke in 1998 in the small town of Jackson, Tennessee. He was sixty five years old at the time of his death. George Harrison specially chartered a plane from London, England to make it to Carl Perkins’ funeral. At the end of the funeral oration, Harrison picked up an acoustic guitar and proceeded to sing one of his favourite Carl Perkins songs – “Your True Love”.

What Stan Perkins learned later was that at the time of his father Carl’s death, George Harrison himself was suffering from throat cancer and undergoing radiation therapy. George had not sung in a few years, and was not even sure that his throat would permit him to sing. As George later told Stan; “I wasn’t sure anything was going to come out when I opened my mouth to sing at your father’s funeral”. But George did sing the Carl Perkins song “Your True Love” at his funeral. And as Stan Perkins said on the documentary yesterday; “George nailed the song”.

That is rock and roll. It is a love that transcends time, race, culture and geography. This blog is dedicated to George Harrison - one of the nicest guys who ever picked up a guitar.

Lingerie: The Universal Language

2009-05-18T15:29:00.000-07:00

The Indian general election results have finally been declared, and I am happy with the result. I will blog about the Indian elections soon. But for now, I thought I would write a short blog on universal words that are understood the world over.

Over the last century or two, many Indian words such as “bazaar” and “guru” have made it into the English dictionary. These words are widely used in English, and well understood. I recently found another such “universal” word.

Let me elaborate.

Vancouver is probably one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, with a predominance of South-east Asians – Chinese, Taiwanese, Filipinos, Thais and Vietnamese. Of course, there is a fair sprinkling of Indians as well, though they tend to congregate in greater numbers in Toronto, on the other side of the country. Parts of Toronto, I am told, resemble Chandigarh in the Punjab.

Indians (as everyone knows) are everywhere. The worldwide Indian diaspora numbers about twenty-five million, of which about two million are in the United States. Indians sometimes tend to be resented by locals in the countries they migrate to, because they can be clannish and do not always assimilate into the local population and culture.

As a student in the U.S., I knew a fellow Indian who worked in Africa for some years – in the Congo, I think. He was in the Congo at the height of the brutal civil war there. He was (if I remember correctly) a salesman of stainless steel buckets. He was an interesting character. Once during his travels, fierce fighting broke out in the region of the Congo he was in. It was nearing sunset and he was stuck in a lawless border town in the Congo, where life was cheap. He was afraid for his life, until in the setting African sun, he saw a hotel that had a board outside that read “Shree Ganesha Hotel”. Relieved, he walked through the doors of the Shree Ganesha Hotel, and was provided food and shelter by the friendly Gujarati who owned the place. As an Indian, there is one thing for certain (apart from death and taxes) - even in a lawless, remote town in an African country wracked by a bloody civil war, you will find a Shree Ganesha Hotel!

Now let me get back to the subject of my blog. While travelling in public transport in Vancouver, one sometimes feels like one is in a city somewhere in South-east Asia – Shanghai or Hanoi, maybe. One hears a multitude of languages being spoken, with Chinese being the predominant one.

While travelling on the train here I enjoy listening to people speaking in different languages and I often try and decipher as many words as I possible. It is a good way to while away the time. Yesterday, there were a couple of Chinese women sitting across from me in the train, talking away in Chinese. I do not know Chinese, and I did not understand a word they were saying. Until, of course, I heard the words “Victoria’s Secret”. At the mention of these two words, my ears perked up. It was obvious that the two women were out shopping for lingerie.

“Victoria’s Secret” and “lingerie’ are universal words and part of the vocabulary of all the languages in this world. You do not need to be a linguistic expert to understand what they mean. They mean the same thing in every language spoken on the planet. Lingerie is a universal word that spreads peace, harmony and understanding among the various races and ethnic groups of this world! All you need is love – or is that lingerie?

India: Beware of “Sakoolar Phorsej”

2009-04-20T16:50:00.000-07:00

Before I start this blog, I would like to state that I consider myself an agnostic – I am not religious at all. I am also impartial in the great Indian Caste System Debate; you know, the one where many people insist that certain castes are “backward” and a few are “forward”. I also like to think myself as colour-blind, when it comes to judging people on the basis of the colour of their skin. I also believe that women are as capable and intelligent as men, if not more so. The only way I categorize myself is by stating that I am an Indian.

Unfortunately, not enough voters in rural India appear to think so. This is because our politicians insist on dividing people on many different criteria. The two main criteria for dividing Indians are caste and religion. So we have politicians who tell us that they hate Brahmins, because they are secular. We have politicians telling us that we should tolerate terrorism because we are secular. We have politicians telling us we should stop using computers and discard the English language; because use of the English language means that we are somehow “inferior” and have a colonial mindset. These last statements come from Mulayam Singh Yadav, India’s own answer to Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. Yadav has much in common with the infamous Mugabe, who is a Robin Hood in reverse – he steals from the nation and makes himself rich.

Like Mugabe, Yadav also believes that everything in India that has gone wrong is because of “progressive forces”. The English language? It cannot be good, because it is a colonial hangover. All of us must communicate only in Bhojpuri Hindi, for the true glory of Indian civilization to return. Never mind the fact that English is the only truly common language that binds the entire nation. Never mind that English is the language of business, and is the main reason that India’s GDP has surged so remarkably in the last few years in a globalized economy. Never mind that Mulayam Singh Yadav’s own sons were educated in Lucknow’s finest English-medium schools and did their college education in Australia (where the last time I checked, they speak English and not Hindi).

Computers? Never mind that India’s software service providers are now among the best in the world. Customers the world over have heard and often worked with Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services. Indians make good software engineers and millions of jobs in the information technology sector have given rise to a new breed of confident, educated, urban middle-class Indian; professionals who live and work all over the world. India’s software services are the envy of the world. But not for Mulayam Singh. He believes that the use of computers must be banned, because they create unemployment. He has no scientific basis for this statement, but who cares? Computers and the Internet are the libraries of the 21st century. And in Mulayam’s rulebook, education itself is a bad thing (except for his own family of course). His vision of India is one where all Indians are poor, illiterate, live in mud huts, commute in bullock carts and practice subsistence farming. All Indians except for him and his family of course. Everybody and everything must be reduced to the lowest common denominator. This is Mulayam Singh Yadav’s version of socialism.

His vision of “secularism” is equally frightening. It means doing vote-bank mathematics, and cynically pitting the so-called Other Backward Castes (OBCs) and Muslims against everybody else. Luckily, neither the OBCs nor the Muslims in Uttar Pradesh (India’s most populous state) bought his vision of “secularism” the last time assembly elections were held there two years ago. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party was wiped out. Like all Indians irrespective of caste, colour and creed, Muslims and OBCs also want jobs, education for their children, security and a shot at a decent life.

Secularism as it is defined in India, is used to divide, not unite. The definition of secularism means that all people are treated equal in the eyes of the law, irrespective of race, religion, gender or colour. Unfortunately, in India, secularism is used as a weapon to confer special status on groups of people in return for votes. This brand of secularism has been practiced by all our political parties, irrespective of ideology. It has caused a great deal of damage to the social fabric of India and it is time to say “Enough”.

Is it possible that the hundreds of millions of the rural poor in India’s hinterland are slowly waking up and realizing that they have been cheated time and again since independence with empty promises? Are they realizing that they have been betrayed time and again by the so-called “secular forces” they have voted into power? Will these millions finally stop voting on the basis of caste and religion, and vote based on good governance instead? Will we see a time in the next twenty years when politicians will have to work hard to actually deliver education, jobs, healthcare and security to the hundreds of millions who constitute India’s poor, instead of merely parroting that they represent secular forces, as if this was some sort of badge of honour?

I hope so. Until then, I hope that you, the educated, urban voter take this opportunity to hold your local politician accountable for good governance and not be fooled by him or her saying that they represent “sakoolar phorsej”.

Football: The Great Leveller

2009-04-17T12:13:00.000-07:00

Footballing legend Pele once called soccer the “beautiful game”. He didn’t just mean that football was a pleasure to play and watch. He also meant that football, unique among all sports, has the ability to unite people across the world, irrespective of language, race, gender or culture.

I understood what Pele meant at a soccer game recently, here in Vancouver. The wife’s office organized a round-robin football tournament, and all the games were played yesterday afternoon. The wife, who was nominated to play for one of the teams, was a little nervous. She had never played soccer before. She ended up enjoying herself a great deal.

I went to the matches, as a spectator and cheerleader. It was amazing to see people from different races and cultures, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, playing for the love of the game. There were older British bosses chasing and trying to keep up with their younger, nimbler Chinese and Italian subordinates. There were Indians yelling out encouragements in Hindi, and Chinese exhorting their colleagues in Mandarin. A Chinese lady who had never played the game before, scored a goal. It was hard to tell who was more ecstatic about her goal – the lady herself, or the hundred-odd office colleagues who roared their approval.

For a couple of hours, everybody forgot about office politics and (dare I say it), religious, ethnic and cultural prejudices. None of it mattered. When your teammate scored, you cheered just as loudly for him if he was German as you would if he had been Indian or Russian. There were some very good players, and there were many who had never played before. That didn’t matter either. The better players passed the ball to their inexperienced colleagues. The objective was to ensure that everyone had a good time. Even the wife came close to scoring a goal! Like with most things she does in life, she gave it everything she had. She now wants to join a local league and play every weekend!

Unfortunately, since I do not work for the wife’s office, I was ineligible to participate. That did not prevent me from giving what I thought were insightful inputs into the game! You will never find a more incisive armchair critic than Your Truly!

After the game, everybody went to the local pub down the road, to soothe thirsty throats with a couple of cold beers and reminisce about the game before going home.

Football is a game that is truly egalitarian. Anybody can play it. It does not require any equipment or training, it is inexpensive, and it is beyond class, colour or creed. In many parts of the world, including Brazil, it is a ticket out of poverty.

I am glad I went to the game. I finally understood what Pele meant. Football will teach you how to respect and admire people based on their talent, enthusiasm and ability, irrespective of the colour of their skin, nationality or gender. Football will also teach you to respect your fellow players. It will teach you how to be a fierce yet respectful competitor. It will teach you to communicate in a universal language. It will teach you the value of teamwork and collaboration, and how to contribute to an overall objective that is bigger than yourself or any single individual. Aren’t these the greatest lessons life can teach a person?

Football is the great leveller in life. If you love football, you will never walk alone.

Observations: The Happiest Person I Ever Saw

2009-04-08T17:22:00.000-07:00

The last few days have been lovely and sunny here in Vancouver. The cherry blossom trees are just beginning to well, blossom, and it feels so good to get out in the sun, and walk through a temperate rainforest that is just beginning to visibly come to life. Days like these make me happy. So I thought I should write a blog about happiness. No, this is not a blog about the secret to universal happiness. I am not qualified to write about that, and I do not think that such a state exists. Different things make different people happy. Happiness means different things to different people. I cannot reveal the secret of happiness, because I do not know it. I can only report on happiness when I see it.

So who is the happiest person I have ever seen? I would like to have said “happiest man I ever met”, but I did not meet him. However, I did see him, last November in the Indian mountain temple town of Rishikesh.

My wife and I were wandering through an area of Rishikesh called “Muni Ki Reti” (the Hermit’s Sands). This is the place where the fast-flowing Ganges River emerges from the high Himalayas and meets the vast plains of Northern India. “Muni Ki Reti” is a sandy beach, which overlooks the swift Ganges River and the bustling town of Rishikesh beyond. It was a cool sunny day, and across the river in the distance, the temple bells were tinkling. There weren’t too many people walking around “Muni Ki Reti” apart from us, a few white-water rafters in the distance and an assortment of dazed backpackers looking for nirvana. Their search seemed to be going nowhere.

Suddenly in the distance, by the riverbed, I saw a lone “sadhu” (hermit) who was relaxing on his “charpoy” (a wooden cot bound together with rope). It was obvious that he lived on that riverbank. His sole possessions were his “charpoy”, a couple of tin drums that contained his meagre personal belongings, a stove, and a battered old transistor radio that was playing old Hindi film songs sung by Kishore Kumar. Like many other sadhus, he was dressed in only a loincloth, though the day was quite chilly. His hair was braided and dreadlocked as is the sadhu custom, and he looked like an Indian version of Bob Marley. He was lean and muscular, and his age was undeterminable. He may have been thirty. On the other hand, he may have been seventy. It was hard to tell, just by looking at him.

Many sadhus are usually looking for your money, and since most of them live alone, they tend to be a garrulous bunch who will take every opportunity they get to chew your ear off with stories about spirituality and God, in return of course, for a little cash. Having been the reluctant victim of such sermons from sadhus in the past, I was a little wary and gave the guy a wide berth. But I could not help but notice how happy he looked.

As I walked past him, he turned around and gave me the happiest, sunniest, laziest, most welcoming smile I have ever seen on the face of a human being. It was such an infectious, contagious smile, that I could not help but smile back. I observed him closely. He did not look like he was under the influence of the potent local “ganja”. It was also obvious that he was not looking for an audience. Nor was he looking for a handout. I was in his neighbourhood, and it was just his way of welcoming me to it.

Four months later, that smile has still stayed with me. The next time I am up at “Muni Ki Reti” in Rishikesh, I will keep an eye out for this guy. If I see him, I will ask him what makes him so happy. I may also learn a thing or two about happiness.

Economics: The G-20 Summit and A “Cho-Chweet” Moment

2009-04-02T19:42:00.000-07:00

The CNBC television channel today indignantly reported the extremely high compensation figures for Chief Executive Officers of several U.S. companies, at a time when their organizations are getting hammered by the stock markets and their revenues and profits are falling. This newscast was featured against the backdrop of violent protests outside the venue for the G-20 summit in London, where leaders of twenty of the world’s most powerful nations are meeting to try and figure out how to nurse the world’s economy back to health. People are beginning to get really angry. Of course, there was the usual assortment of Luddites and anarchists among the protestors. But for the first time, there also were sober older people who have lost their jobs and savings in the current recession.

It was obvious that Barack Obama’s charm and charisma stood out at the G-20 summit. Obama and his wife are still getting rock-star treatment in the U.S and around the world. The charisma, promises and potential that the Obama administration represent are all very good; but very soon, people all over the world are going to start wanting results. It is a little bit like the Beatles re-uniting (if they were all still alive). Everybody would be excited, but at some point people would start expecting a hit new song or album.

The breathlessness and excitement that the Obama family causes was evident during a press conference at the end of the G-20 summit. The U.S. President held a press conference. As usual, he was a mesmerizing speaker, and had the world press eating out of his palm. The speech was long on promising rhetoric but short on real progress made by the leaders of the world’s top twenty nations (which now includes India).

The Obama-mania came to a head when a pretty young Indian journalist with the Times of India who identified herself only as Simran, asked him what the U.S. planned to do regarding terrorist activities emanating from Pakistan and directed at India. You could tell that young Simran was trembling with excitement and anticipation. Obama started answering her question by saying that he thought that Indian Prime Minister was a very decent and good man, to which Simran said “Thank you”. I am not sure if Obama’s assessment of Manmohan Singh is accurate, but that is not what this blog is about.

Simran’s response to Obama’s praise of Singh raised a few laughs among the audience of journalists. Obama then teased her by asking her whether she had anything to do with the (perceived) fact that Manmohan Singh was a nice and decent man. You could tell that young Simran was completely and totally overwhelmed by Obama’s charisma. It was one of those “cho-chweet” moments that the U.S. media telecast over and over again; one that will make a 15 minute celebrity of Simran. You can bet that talk shows back in India will start interviewing her about her momentary brush with fame. She is going to be talking about this moment to her grandkids.

It looks like Obama’s charisma is still working its magic. While that is good for him, his administration needs to head to the studio and start making that new hit song or album. The whole world waits with bated breath. Hundreds of millions of jobs and the world’s return to economic health are in the balance.

Economics: Of Bonuses and Human Nature

2009-03-16T13:40:00.000-07:00

I love bonuses. As someone who tried working as hard and (hopefully) as intelligently as possible, I looked forward to my bonus at the end of the year. I used bonuses to either bolster my savings or to take a vacation. But I always realized that bonuses were a way of rewarding good performance, not a birthright.

Which is why I find the latest controversy about bonuses at American International Group (A.I.G) so interesting. The financial giant, stricken by huge losses, is planning to use US $ 165 million dollars of the U.S. government’s bail-out money to pay bonuses to traders in its financial products division. These bonuses, when awarded, will go to the very same people who got A.I.G. into this mess in the first place.

So what are the basic facts about the A.I.G. bonus controversy? The facts are as listed below:

1. A.I.G (specifically their financial products division) made billions of dollars of losses with bad bets on derivative financial instruments, including trading in mortgage backed securities.

2. A.I.G then went to the U.S. government with hat in hand, pleading for a bail-out. Six months ago the organization’s Chief Executive said that if A.I.G. collapsed, there was a real danger of the entire U.S. financial services industry collapsing. This was true.

3. Based on Point # 2 above, the Bush and then the Obama administration agreed to bail out A.I.G. The U.S. government then pumped in US $ 150 billion to keep A.I.G. alive. This gave the U.S. government 70% ownership of this once-mighty blue chip financial conglomerate, a beacon of American free enterprise.

4. A.I.G. came back recently and said they needed another US $ 30 billion, which the U.S. government, in principle agreed to provide. This additional infusion of money by the U.S. government meant that the U.S. government would own about 80% of A.I.G shares, effectively nationalizing the organization (though nobody wants to use that dreaded word)

5. Last week, A.I.G. said that they planned to use US $ 165 million of the bail-out money (about 1% of the total bail-out funds) to provide bonuses to employees in their financial products division.

When asked about the wisdom of providing such large sums of U.S. taxpayer money to the people who caused such huge losses at A.I.G. in the first place, an A.I.G. spokesman responded by saying that these bonuses had been “contractually agreed to” in 2008, before this disaster unfolded. The spokesman also said that if A.I.G. did not provide these bonuses to these selected employees, it would be detrimental to A.I.G “attracting and retaining the best and brightest talent”.

“Contractually agreed to”? Huh?? I always thought that bonuses are optional, in the sense that they are awarded to employees based on individual and organizational performance. Therefore, in good years when the organization turns in a healthy profit, deserving employees get a healthy bonus. In bad years, you do not get bonuses. When the organization in question makes a loss, it is supposed to either terminate the services of those employees who caused the losses, or at the very least, not give them bonuses. That is how capitalism and the private sector are supposed to work.

“Attracting and retaining the best and brightest”. Huh?? Are these A.I.G. derivatives traders the best and the brightest in the financial services industry? Remember, these are the same guys who put A.I.G. in this hole in the first place. If these guys were so bright, how come they caused this mess in the first place? They should consider themselves very, very lucky to still have jobs. If not receiving bonuses for their disastrous performance makes them leave their jobs, A.I.G. should consider itself lucky. America is in real trouble if these traders constitute the “best and brightest”. I am sure there are thousands of people within A.I.G. who do deserve a bonus. But not these guys!!

Does President Obama have the right to use the “bully pulpit” of the Oval Office to denounce A.I.G’s decision to give these bonuses to derivative traders? You bet! Remember, A.I.G. is now 80% government owned. The U.S. government is the majority shareholder in A.I.G. As head of the U.S. government, the President has every right to do everything in his power to prevent this bonus being paid. A.I.G. is now (to use an Indian term for a loss-making government-owned organization) a sick “Public Sector Unit”.

However, the President has been left red-faced; because it appears that no such pre-conditions were put in place before the governmental bail-out money was handed over to A.I.G.

Obama, and his administration, are definitely going to be slammed for not putting in stringent conditions in their bail-out package before actually handing over the money to A.I.G. in the first place. Two U.S. administrations rushed the bail-out package through, without providing for adequate checks and balances. The fact of the matter is – the U.S. government does not have any legal recourse when it comes to A.I.G. and the bonus issue. The President can rail, rant and thunder, but he cannot stop A.I.G from handing out these bonuses. He can sway public opinion against A.I.G. (which is what he is doing), he can pressurize A.I.G. to reconsider its decision, but he cannot actually stop A.I.G. from using taxpayer money for bonuses to those who caused this financial crisis.

Coming back to bonuses, I did not think that India’s Sixth Pay Commission payout to India’s (largely non-performing) Civil Service last year was a good idea. This bonus was given to our bureaucrats to help get their votes in the approaching General Election. It had nothing to do with their performance. They did not deserve the money, because collectively, they failed in their job – which was administering India. Like the traders at A.I.G’s financial products division, India’s bureaucrats and politicians believe that bonuses are a birthright, and not a reward for good performance.

To summarize, bonuses are optional, and not a birthright – and this should apply to both the private as well as public sectors of the economy. I am amazed that private sector companies can “contractually agree” to provide bonuses, even before the performance of employees can be assessed. I am also amazed at the cynical way in which politicians use bonuses and pay commissions to woo bureaucrats and buy their votes at election time. Unfortunately, that is how human nature and bonuses actually work.

U.S. Politics: The Role of the Press Secretary

2009-03-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

I watch a great deal of the MSNBC news channel here in Vancouver. One of the highlights is the daily briefing of the press by the U.S. president’s Press Secretary. The current incumbent is a gentleman named Robert Gibbs.

Of course, I do not know Mr. Gibbs personally, but the more I see of him, the more respect I feel. This is not an easy job. The Press Secretary has to face a gaggle of knowledgeable, nit-picking journalists every single day. These journalists ask very pointed questions on a whole host of topics, usually involving interpretations of the President’s views on critical issues such as the Iraq War, the stock markets, the economy, healthcare, the budget, terrorism, proposed education reforms, etc. Watching Mr. Gibbs answer these questions is like watching a man navigate through a minefield. He has to ensure that he puts the right “spin” on Barack Obama’s comments. He also has to ensure that his own comments are not misinterpreted, and reflect exactly what the U.S. President wants to say, or would have wanted to say.

If the President says something that can be construed as being even remotely controversial, the Press Secretary has to defend his boss by ensuring that the statement is not misinterpreted. If the President says something that is plain inaccurate or wrong, he has to defend that as well. He also has to have a very good understanding of the issues being discussed, remain calm, and be able to think on his feet. At all times, he has to be able to keep his own opinions to himself, and only express what he thinks the President would have wanted to convey.

And he has to do all this on live television, in front of a bunch of journalists who more often than not, resemble a pack of hungry wolves, just waiting for a misstep or weakness on his part. Journalists in the U.S., like their counterparts elsewhere in the free world, always wait for the opportunity to take any statement, however innocuous it may seem, and make a screaming headline out of it. American television journalists appear to be as opportunistic as their Indian counterparts. They also seem to have the same breezy attitude towards the truth as our Indian television journalists. The focus is on getting viewer ratings, not getting to the truth.

The only difference I see between American journalists and their Indian counterparts is that the Americans actually allow the interviewee to complete a sentence without interrupting. Many Indian television journalists I see are more interested in getting their own point of view across, without even considering the opinion of the person they are purportedly interviewing. As a result, most interviews and debates on Indian television end up being shouting matches, and when you watch them, you are often left no wiser than before.

Coming back to the U.S. Press Secretary, this cannot be an easy job. Standing up in front of a bunch of intelligent, often hostile people who sometimes view you as potential prey, and that too on live television, must be extremely stressful. Yet Robert Gibbs always has time to listen to everyone’s questions. He is always patient and never seems to lose his sense of humour. He keeps the wolves in good humour too, by always being respectful to them, even though the reverse may not be true. And he has to do this live, every day. This is a tough job!

The daily press briefing does provide listeners with a lot of information. I could be wrong, but in India, our Prime Minister does not have a dedicated Press Secretary who faces the press every day. If we did, do you think it would work, in terms of clarifying what the Prime Minister did (and did not) say and mean?

India: A Pensioners’ Paradise?

2009-03-02T14:07:00.000-08:00

As a young man, I lived in the U.S for nearly six years, and in many ways, Canada, where I am living currently, is not very different. There is a lot to be said for living in a “developed” country (I always found that term a little strange, but that is the term that is most frequently used to describe economically advanced countries). However, there is one aspect of living in “developed” countries that I find sad. That is the condition of the elderly.

There are few sights sadder than watching a lone old man or woman here in winter, struggling to wheel a loaded shopping trolley across a huge parking lot in sub-zero temperatures. Old people here are often lonely, with nobody to look after them or even have a conversation with. Living in “developed” countries is great as long as one is working and fit. Once a person becomes old, children more often than not move away and do not keep in touch with their parents often (I realize that this is increasingly the trend in urban, middle-class India as well). Older middle-class people in the U.S, Canada and elsewhere are often forced to live all alone in difficult conditions. Unless one is rich, one has to do everything oneself, and there are no maids, chauffeurs and other domestic help available. Again, this is fine when one is fit and healthy, but when a person gets old, this can become a problem. The lack of a support system is a real issue for the elderly in Western countries.

This is why I think India (or parts of the country anyway) would be a great pensioners’ paradise for older folks from Western nations. If I was about to retire, what would be the factors I would take into account when deciding on a place to settle down? In my mind, the factors to consider while choosing a location to retire in would be:

1. A secure, stable place with a low crime rate and high levels of political stability
2. Plenty of sunshine and mild, warm temperatures. Cold weather has greater adverse affects on older people
3. A place where the cost of living is low, and my retirement savings will allow me to have a comfortable life
4. A pleasant, quiet, scenic location surrounded by nature
5. The availability of good, inexpensive medical care
6. The availability of domestic help such as maids, chauffeurs, etc.
7. Good public transport
8. Good infrastructure in terms of uninterrupted water, electricity and civic services
9. A place where the English language is widely spoken and understood.

Many parts of India score high on most of the factors listed above, except for Point # 8 (good infrastructure in terms of uninterrupted water, electricity and civic services). Erratic electricity supply is a major stumbling block to our country’s growth.

However, there are many parts of India that meet most of the criteria I have listed above. Goa, Kerala, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh come to mind. All of these places are very desirable places to live in.

Let me give you a personal anecdote. I used to know an old American guy who lived in the town of Almora, in the Indian Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. He was in his seventies when I met him, and divorced. He had worked in the U.S. financial services industry all his life, and had a Masters’ in Business Administration degree from Yale University. His daughter was married and lived in the U.S. They were not in touch often. Once I got to know him better, I asked him what made him come to a small Himalayan town to retire. He told me that the only other choice he had was to die in an old age home in New Jersey. He was alone, and felt that he still had a lot left to offer. He also had an interest in Buddhism. So he decided to chuck his life in the U.S., and move to Almora. He enjoyed life. He was an avid trekker. His dollar denominated retirement pension allowed him to have a very good standard of life in India. He died last year, and I am sure he never regretted his decision to move to India after retirement. He had ten years of an active, enjoyable life in Almora before he died in a hospital in Delhi.

In Europe, Spain is a very popular retirement destination for many people from the United Kingdom. It is cheaper to live in than Britain, and has much better weather. The Spanish government actively promotes Spain as a retirement destination, since British retirees bring in plenty of foreign exchange. Retirees, unlike immigrants, do not compete with locals for jobs, and you very rarely hear of seventy year old burglars or serial killers. These British retirees also create thousands of jobs in Spain, since they need locally based maids, drivers, doctors, nurses, financial advisors, real estate agents etc. Spain has many towns and “gated communities” that are full of British retirees.

There is no reason that parts of India cannot become a pensioners’ paradise. The places I mentioned above (Goa, Kerala, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh) have great, mild, weather, are very scenic, safe and it is reasonably easy to get domestic help. These states also have reasonably large local English speaking populations. Medical facilities in these states are decent, and cities such as Mumbai and Delhi are easily accessible and less than two hours away by air. Most importantly, a pension of fifteen hundred pounds a month goes much further in Goa than it does in Britain.

If the Indian government actively promoted “pensioners’ tourism”, it would help in bring in law-abiding, prosperous retirees by the thousands, as well as millions of dollars and pounds in foreign exchange, apart from creating thousands of jobs. There would be a role for the private sector in providing hospitality and elder-care services. Of course, the government would have to do its bit in creating better quality infrastructure, specifically roads, water and electricity.

These are my opinions. What do you think?

Hunger: India’s National Shame

2009-02-27T10:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday’s online edition of the Times of India carries a headline that said “India tops world hunger chart”. You can read the entire article by clicking on the link below:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India-tops-world-hunger-chart/articleshow/4197047.cms

Unfortunately, this is the India that most of the world used to know till recently. This is the India of “Slumdog Millionaire”, without the songs and happy ending. A corrupt, inefficient country that until recently repeatedly went to the rest of the world for aid, begging bowl in hand. There is another related article which shows how corrupt, incompetent and completely callous the government-run Food Corporation of India (FCI) is. The FCI is responsible for collecting, storing and distributing food-grains to the poorest of the poor. In this endeavour, it has failed miserably. Over one million tonnes of food-grains lying in FCI warehouses have been allowed to rot. One million tonnes! These food-grains would have fed over ten million hungry Indians for a year!! Statistics like these make my blood boil.

India is a crowded, overpopulated country to begin with. Resources are scarce and inefficiently distributed. To top it off, we have corruption, wastefulness and criminal negligence in government run organizations such as the Food Corporation of India. Why is nobody held responsible for allowing such huge amounts of food-grains to go to waste? Who is responsible? Does anyone in the government care?

I have heard some experts say that the facilities in FCI warehouses are poor. Apparently, these warehouses do not have proper refrigeration facilities for food-grains and they are rat infested. Many reports by impartial agencies have highlighted the need for the government to invest in a “cold chain”, since efficient refrigeration and transportation infrastructure is essential for the effective distribution of food to the hungry. So far, nothing has been done by successive governments.

The tragedy here is not that India does not have enough food to feed its people. We do. It is the gross inefficiency and negligence of the public food distribution system, as represented by the Food Corporation of India and allied governmental agencies. This is not an insurmountable problem. It does not require additional money or resources to solve. All it requires is the better use of existing resources.

Why hasn’t the government done anything about upgrading the food supply chain in the country? Why does the government not focus on upgrading these FCI warehouses? Why do you hear about this appalling hunger epidemic so rarely on national TV channels? Is it because this is not supposed to be part of the brave, sexy new India, where actresses and cricketers are paid millions of dollars for endorsements? Why is our media, which is so active in highlighting many other trivial issues so silent on this one? An issue that affects 250 million people. Is it because there is no “lobby” that speaks up for them? Or do they care only about their TRP ratings? After all, “real” news is that which sells, not that which is true. To quote eminent journalist P. Sainath: “I learned that conventional journalism was above all about the service of power. You always give the last word to authority. I got a couple of prizes which I didn't pick up because I was ashamed”. I will tell you more about Sainath later in this blog.

Anybody who has spent significant amounts of time in rural Maharashtra and North India will know the extent of the hunger epidemic. South Indian states especially Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are better administered, and consistently score higher than their North Indian counterparts on nearly every economic parameter. Last year, there was a news article that gave a graphic account of famine in Thane district, barely a hundred kilometres from my home in Mumbai. Such deprivation so close to India’s largest city should have caused a stir. Instead, it barely caused a ripple.

If you are interested to learn more about India’s hunger epidemic and the non-existent government response to it, I highly recommend P. Sainath’s book “Everybody Loves A Good Drought: Stories from India’s Poorest Districts”. Sainath is an award winning journalist and won the 2007 Magsaysay Award for journalism, literature and creative communication arts. The book is a little dated (it was published in 1996), but it will give you a good idea of the complete paralysis and lack of action of governmental agencies to this crisis. Not much has changed on this front since 1996.

Have we become so unfeeling as a nation? Have we become so much like those government bureaucrats and politicians we despise? I sincerely hope not.

Of course, all of us in our individual capacities can help in small ways. However, this will not solve the problem. At a macro level, you can start by holding your government responsible, at both the state and central levels.

My solution would be to dismantle the Food Corporation of India, and hand over the entire task of storing and distributing food-grains to the private sector. That way, someone would be held accountable for criminal negligence. If you hear of any political party proposing this course of action, vote for them. What are your views?

Economics: Swami Recession-ananda’s Unsolicited Economic Advice

2009-02-26T11:41:00.000-08:00

Times are tough. The current morning temperature in Vancouver, Canada is – 3 degrees centigrade. Taking the wind chill factor into consideration, it feels like – 9 degrees centigrade. My new-found friend, a local black squirrel, who shows up at my apartment balcony every morning looking for a food bail-out (like many of us these days), did not stop by today. It is too cold for him this morning, I guess. It is also too cold for me to go running in the local park.

So I thought I would put on my economist hat and give my blog readers unsolicited economic advice. President Obama launched his US $ 800 billion stimulus package with great fanfare day before yesterday. Why am I focusing on the US economy and not India? Because whatever people may say about China (and to a lesser extent India), the US is still the heavy hitter of the world’s economic system. Over the last six years, as the US prospered, China enjoyed 11% annual GDP growth. India had 9% economic growth. The economic fate of the whole world depends on how quickly the US economy recovers. When America prospers, the world prospers. Make no mistake about it.

If Obama's stimulus package does indeed stimulate large-scale public works in the US, it will stimulate demand, put money in the pockets of consumers, and hopefully stimulate demand in other industries. This is classical Keynesian economic theory at work.

If this happens, the US (and consequently the rest of the world) will be pulled out of the recession. If it doesn’t, things are going to get a lot scarier than they are currently.

Large-scale government spending has worked before, most notably during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal” helped pull the world out of a recession. Of course, the Second World War also played a big role in reviving the world economy, but I am not advocating a Third World War.

So how do we get out of the current economic mess? Swami Recession-ananda(me) has some unsolicited advice to give. Everybody else is weighing in with their opinions, so why should I be left behind? So here goes:

1. American banks are just not lending, even to creditworthy customers. Short-term interest rates are close to zero. As far as monetary policy is concerned, there is nothing further that the US Federal Reserve can do. Fed Chief Ben Bernanke has used up all the bullets in his arsenal. So how does Obama ensure that the flow of credit, the lifeblood of commerce, is restarted? In my opinion, he has got to temporarily nationalize banks. For example, the US government has already spent US $ 45 billion on trying to nurse the ailing Citigroup back to health. This constitutes 8% of Citigroup’s equity share capital. It hasn’t worked. Citigroup now needs another US $ 175 billion just to survive the next quarter. If Obama gives it to them, this would mean the US government will own more than 40% of Citigroup. Why not just take over Citigroup (and Bank of America and AIG while you are at it) temporarily?

This would mean that Citigroup would be forced to start lending again, which would then inject credit into the US economic system. Conservative Americans do not like the word “nationalization”, because it smacks of socialism. But what is the alternative? There is none. Go ahead, Comrade Obama, nationalize ailing US banks, at least for the next one year! Swami Recession-ananda is not alone in saying this. Many economists, including Nobel-Prize winning Paul Krugman are also saying the same thing.

Fire the current managements of these companies. Put temporary caps on salaries of top executives, at least till their companies become profitable again. Ensure that the top managements who gave themselves millions of dollars in bonuses when their companies were bleeding and begging for handouts are put in prison for defrauding investors and shareholders. Put their summer homes in the Hamptons and the Bahamas up for sale.

2. Consider re-enacting the Glass Steagall Act. This Act came into force in the 1930s, and ensured that depository institutions such as banks could not invest in stock markets. The pros and cons of re-enacting the Glass Steagall Act need to be debated before it is re-enacted.

3. Do not give General Motors and Chrysler the US $ 40 billion they are asking for, unless there is a complete overhaul of the top management of these dinosaurs. Use the bailout to force them to re-negotiate their pension contracts with auto unions. In fact, don't make it a bailout. Make it a loan instead, repayable to the US government in ten years. Force them to start investing in clean, alternative technologies. Make these conditions explicit before giving them the money. Twist their arms until they comply. If they don’t, break their arms. This may sound harsh, but it is the only way that American auto makers will become competitive. I would not have advocated a bail-out for US auto manufacturers at all, but one in ten US jobs depends directly or indirectly on the US auto industry.

4. Raise taxes for the rich. This is also going to be deeply unpopular, especially among the conservatives. But it will help pay for Obama’s stimulus package and also for healthcare reform, which is the next time bomb ticking away in the US. Bush’s tax cuts were only for the super-rich. Families earning less than US $ 250,000 a year are not going to sympathize if taxes on the super-rich are raised anyway. If you are rich, you can afford to pay a little more in taxes. It is not a drastic tax increase, and it won’t kill you. Other states are finding innovative ways to raise taxes. The state of California has a proposed legislation that will legalize the personal consumption of marijuana. If this happens, the cash-strapped state will earn an additional US $ 2 billion every year in tax revenue. Marijuana is a cash crop, it is non-addictive, it is less damaging than alcohol, and it is used by millions anyway. Please do not get me wrong. I am not advocating marijuana use in this blog. All I am saying is that legalizing it will bring in billions of tax dollars. If alcohol, a far more damaging drug, is legal and brings in billions of valuable tax dollars, why not do the same with marijuana? By all means regulate the sale of marijuana, just like alcohol.

In summary, do I believe in principle, that the government is better than the private sector in running the economy? No. I do not. I am a capitalist, and come from a country which has been ruined by wasteful and corrupt socialist policies for decades. I am not partisan - I am neither "conservative" nor "liberal". I am just another middle-class average joe trying to ride out tough times. I am not wealthy, and becoming rich is something I aspire to. But what we have seen over the last decade or so in America is the pursuit of wealth at the expense of everything else - regulation, equity, fair play. That is not right.

In normal times, I would have opposed many of the economic plans Obama has in mind. But these are extraordinary times. The stimulus package will have its flaws. There will be some wasteful, “pork-barrel” spending. But as long as the majority of the money is used for long-term beneficial projects, the US economy (and the world economy) will benefit. Put Vice-President Joe Biden to work. Make him accountable for the success of the stimulus package. If he needs help from a Project Manager who has considerable prior experience in managing and tracking tough projects, I am available!

Obama’s opponents, the ones who are criticizing him at the moment, do not have an alternative plan. Just reducing taxes for the rich, holding hands and singing “We Are the World” does not constitute an alternative plan and isn’t going to cut it, unfortunately.

I am not a blind Obama supporter. I do have objections to some of Obama’s ideas, such as his rhetoric opposing outsourcing and his proposal for more military aid to Pakistan, for example. But I do support his economic plan, because there is no alternative to it (at the moment anyway). He is also an intelligent man, who at least understands economics.

What are your thoughts, dear reader? Do post your comments on my blog. Thanks.

India: The Rise and Rise of Poverty Tourism

2009-02-03T00:05:00.000-08:00

There is an old brand of tourism resurfacing in India – “poverty tourism”. This brand of tourism was fashionable in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It vanished for a little while in the 1990s and the early years of this century. Poverty tourism involves highlighting and promoting the wretched condition of approximately a quarter of India’s population, for the benefit of tourists from other, wealthier nations.

In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, this elite group of tourists generally consisted of members of the Peace Corps, left-wing economists, hippies, eccentrics, do-gooders of all stripes and spiritual seekers who kept harping on India’s material poverty and supposed “spiritual” wealth. This Indian trend of promoting poverty tourism diminished in the last twenty years, as the story of India’s economic boom took centre-stage. It has now returned with a vengeance, possibly as a result of the global recession. Miserable people always feel better when they know that there are others who are worse off than them.

I will use two examples to explain the revival of poverty tourism. The first example involves our eternal political child Rahul Gandhi (better known as Rahul “Baba” despite his middle age) taking the British Foreign Secretary David Milliband to the rural, backward town of Amethi in Northern India. The idea, Rahul “Baba” said, was to show Mr. Milliband the “real India”.

The second example is the international success of the movie “Slumdog Millionaire”.

But first, let me illustrate the phenomenon of Rahul “Baba” as global ambassador for India’s poverty tourism. David Milliband, British Foreign Secretary was in India on an official diplomatic visit, ostensibly to show his support to India in the wake of the terror attacks in Mumbai. Rahul Gandhi, rich and privileged scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, saw it fit to take Milliband to a poor, backward village in his constituency of Amethi in Northern India. Mr. Milliband stayed the night in a village of “Dalits” (a supposedly backward caste tribe), without running water, plumbing or electricity, and slept in a poor Dalit’s hut for the night. Rahul Baba wanted of course, to show Milliband the “real” India.

The Indian media gave this “event” a great deal of publicity, gushing over what conversations Milliband and Rahul Baba had with the poor uneducated locals, and how admirably these two gentlemen coped with the hardships they faced for the night. Very little was said about the villagers who have been living in Amethi all their lives.

The one and only important question the media did not address was – Why is Amethi, the constituency of the ruling dynasty, still so poor and backward after so many years? What has the Gandhi family done to improve the wretched lot of the people living in this village? Surely, the constituency of the Prime-Minister-In-Waiting should have had running water, electricity, literacy, jobs and schools by now? If not, why not? But our media conveniently chose to ignore this all-important question.

The next day, as Milliband and Rahul Gandhi departed for Delhi in a private plane, the charitable organizations that had donated clean, warm blankets and bed-sheets for these gentlemen quietly came by and took these items back. The villagers had served their purpose, which was the promotion of poverty tourism. They were now forgotten, and welcome to go back to their primitive, poverty-stricken lives. The cause of poverty tourism had been promoted and publicized, and that was all that mattered.

The second example I would like to highlight is the phenomenal success of the movie “Slumdog Millionaire”. I have not watched the movie yet. I am told it is an excellent movie, which it probably is. Daniel Boyle, the movie’s director, probably made the movie because it was a good story worth telling. However, it has been received very differently by many members of the Indian media. Instead of treating “Slumdog Millionaire” as a good movie, they are somehow reading much more into it than there actually is. They are treating the movie as somehow representative of the country India is, which this film definitely isn’t.

One prominent South Bombay socialite waxed eloquent about the movie, about how it portrayed the struggle of the poor in India’s slums. While this may be true, I got the distinct feeling that she was somehow suddenly proud of these slums which she has probably never ever visited or talked about before. Somehow, these slums, that she would wrinkle her nose at in disgust on any other occasion, had become a symbol of India’s “pride”, “spirit” and “resilience”. Why? Only because a Hollywood director made a famous movie about them.

She would much prefer India to be a poor country which draws the world’s attention with its misery and poverty, than a quiet, staid prosperous nation with no poverty. Look at Sweden, she must be thinking to herself – it is rich and boring, nobody talks or makes movies about it.

I am sure Daniel Boyle (the “Slumdog Millionaire” director) did not mean to portray all the residents of Edinburgh as crazed heroin addicts living in squalor, when he made the movie “Trainspotting”. That is because Edinburgh, like Mumbai, is a diverse place, with own share of rich and poor, sublime and tragic. Just like all residents of Edinburgh are not crazed heroin addicts, all the residents of Mumbai (Bombay) do not live in slums.

The fact of the matter is Boyle was only making a movie. The image of India being a miserable, poor country is promoted by many Indians more frequently than anyone else. Why? Because our poverty becomes the source of international attention, a form of celebrity. And of course, it is better to be famous for being poor, than not being famous at all. Right?

To those overseas tourists who are planning to visit India, I would like to say this. India does have pockets of abysmal poverty. This is a shameful fact of Indian life, it cannot be ignored and it is not something most Indians are proud of. But India also has a prosperous middle class, good schools and education, good jobs and yes, many of us actually live in homes with running water, electricity and indoor plumbing. All of us do not defecate on the street.

We are ashamed of the poverty that afflicts many of our countrymen and women. It distresses us as much as it distresses our foreign tourists. We would like our politicians to provide proper homes, education and jobs to the poor, instead of promoting poverty tourism.

Observations: In Between Trains

2009-02-02T03:26:00.000-08:00

There are two sounds I love above almost everything else. The first is the sound of birds chirping. The second is the whistle of trains as they rush past, far away. Fortunately, my new home allows me to hear both these sounds every day. Every evening, after sunset, I sit out in my balcony, and listen to the mournful, lonesome wails of long distance trains as they rush through the night.

“Wooooooooaaaaaannnnnnnhhhhhh”, the long distance trains shriek, as they speed through the night. They sound like huge, metallic dinosaurs lost in the winter night fog, desperately trying to find their way back to the rest of the herd. The train lines are quite far away from where I live, about two miles, but the sound carries at night, when all is quiet. It is a sound that never fails to thrill me.

I have reasons for loving trains. When I was a small boy, air travel was nowhere near as ubiquitous or inexpensive as it is today. Every time my parents wanted to go on a vacation, we piled onto a train. We usually vacationed in winter, and travelled to places far away. This meant preparing for the train trip days in advance. My dad, with his usual precision and eye for detail, would make long lists of what needed to be taken along for the trip. For my mother and him, travelling anywhere meant days of advance preparation. It felt more like an expedition than a vacation. But that was all part of the experience. My parents are still amazed at how I pack for a trip (my packing takes no more than thirty minutes). For them, travelling involved a lot of preparation – material and mental.

Winter is the best time for travelling by train in India. The weather is great, and the early morning fog adds an element of romance and mystery to any train trip, especially if you are travelling in North India. Take a look out of your train compartment on a winter morning anywhere in North India, and you will feel like you have stepped into the pages of a Raj-era E.M. Forster novel.

I still have so many vivid memories of travelling by train in winter. Some of them are permanently etched in my mind. Watching the towering Howrah Bridge materialize out of thin air as the train pulled into Howrah Station on a Calcutta winter morning is one such memory. I guarantee you that the first sight of Howrah Bridge from the train will leave you speechless. It looks like a flawless structure, a shiny beast straight out of a science fiction movie.

Another such memory is that of the great Sanchi Stupa outside the little town of Vidisha in Central India. When travelling from Mumbai (Bombay) to Delhi on the Central Railway, you will suddenly see the “chhatra” or roof of the main Sanchi Stupa rising from behind the tree-line by the side of the tracks. The roof of the Stupa appears to float in mid-air, thanks to the heavy early morning fog. The Stupa is a marvellous complex of buildings dating back to the third century B.C. Its construction was started in the reign of Ashoka the Great – India’s greatest king. The Stupa is part of the living history of India, and in my opinion, should qualify as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The contrast of the Stupa seemingly floating in mid-air, with the emerald-green fields of Central India as a backdrop, is stunning, and is something that will stay with you for a long time.

Unfortunately, steam powered trains are a thing of the past. These engines were once the backbone of the Indian Railways and were very much in service until about twenty years ago, especially on the smaller and lesser known train routes. Watching several steam powered engines huff and puff their way into the railway sheds in Lucknow is another enduring memory of my childhood. When you travelled in a train pulled by a steam powered engine, you knew that travelling could be a pretty tiring and strenuous affair. You could sense the little engine giving it all it had, as the soot from the coal fired engine settled on your clothes. It took a long while for the engine to finally get up to high speed, by which time it was groaning and gasping for breath. When the train finally pulled into a station, you heard the little engine exhale, and take a break from its labours. It was truly fascinating stuff, in my opinion.

Steam engines are no longer in service on the Indian Railways. They have become extinct and gone the way of the dodo. There may be a steam engine heaven somewhere, where these sturdy engines built more than a century ago frolic and play. If so, I would like to go there when I die. The one steam engine that is still in service is the one going up to Himalayan mountain town of Darjeeling, in Northern West Bengal. This little engine, more than a hundred years old, is lovingly preserved and taken care of, and is still in daily use. Travelling on that train is one of the things I intend doing before I die. The sight of the world’s third highest peak, Kanchenjunga, wreathed in clouds as it first appears from the train, is something I would not want to miss.

Of course, Indian train stations tend to be unhygienic, crowded, chaotic places. Watching a crowd of travellers at an Indian railway station, writer Paul Theroux remarked that they looked like “a crowd of lazy refugees fleeing an ambiguous catastrophe”. That pretty much sums it up.

Apart from the real pleasures, sights and sounds of train travel, there is also another factor that is responsible for my love of trains. As a child, train travel for me meant vacations, a change from the mundane and routine. It meant pleasurable anticipation, and a chance to leave one’s boring and sometimes difficult life behind for the irresistible charm of new places and adventures. Like Jimi Hendrix once sang:

“I hear my train a’comin’
Comin’ to take me
From this lonesome town”

I know what Jimi meant. Trains were a way to reinvent oneself; a way to new adventures and a new life; a way to leave behind those parts of yourself that you did not like; a new start.

Air travel doesn’t have the same appeal. Even today, when I feel uncertain or apprehensive about the future, I convince myself that I am in between trains. Sooner or later, my train is going to pull into the station and take me away from this lonesome town.

Music: Why it means so much

2009-01-07T02:37:00.000-08:00

I was playing the first self-titled album by the band Traffic last night. For those who have not heard it, this album from 1968 is a classic. Alternately sombre and light-hearted, loud and melodic, it is a tour de force by Steve Winwood and the rest of the band. Winwood’s vocals never sounded so urgent. Dave Mason’s understated guitar work is brilliant, Jim Capaldi’s angular drumming is spot-on, and the lyrics are profound, yet self-effacing. It is rock, it is blues, it is folk, it is jazz. Like a lot of great music, it is hard to categorize.

Listening to the album had an entirely unexpected effect on my wife. Ten minutes into the album, I saw her sitting in a corner looking very thoughtful. I asked her whether she was bored by the music, since rock music for her is still an acquired taste (I do not blame her, considering the amount of taste she has had to acquire for it – I play so much of it). She said she wasn’t bored. In fact, she liked the album. She had another question on her mind entirely. What, she said, would the next generation of kids listen to, now that most modern music is so inconsequential and pointless?

I paused, with my glass of rum and coke half-way to my lips. I was floored. I did not expect the music to have that effect on her. I wasn’t prepared for the question, which was a very good one. “Well”, I said, “I am sure there still are some good new bands out there. Maybe we just aren’t aware of them, old fogeys that we are” (or I am anyway). Besides, in terms of my tastes in music and other references to popular culture, I am a throwback to the 1960s. I am hardly representative of my own generation; forget about kids who are much younger than me.

But the question was still a very valid one, and I started thinking of why exactly music has played such a huge influence in my life. I consider myself an expert on rock music – not just the music or lyrics, but what the music represents. For example, I can tell you what the Who classic “Won’t Get Fooled Again” means. Written and released in 1971, it is about the souring of the social revolution of the 1960s. Drugs, idealism and a naïve belief in loving everybody else on the planet isn’t going to work, the singer cautions; don’t get fooled again!

And then I realized that for me, music has always stood for a lot more than just a tune or a lyric. In many cases, it has captured my feelings in ways that I could not. Great rock and classical music reminds me of what my dreams in life once were. It reminds me of how I used to be before (like everyone else) I was forced to compromise and dilute some of my beliefs to get ahead in this world. It reminds me of everything out there that is still pure and free. It reminds me not to take anything at face value; to question everything. Rejecting easy answers to complex questions is the easy part. Sometimes (and a great art form like music tells you this), there just are no answers to the difficult questions life throws at us. Sometimes when life gets hard, there is no redeeming pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You just have to grin and bear it.

Of course, this was not always the case. In my youth, I thought the best way to deal with the blues was to listen to Led Zeppelin’s “No Quarter” at very high volume, preferably with my choice of intoxicants and stimulants close at hand. It felt great for a little while, but at the end of the song, my problems still didn’t go away. Much later, I realized that the music in itself gave you a high. You really didn’t need anything else to go with it.

The music itself can capture what you feel, your hopes, dreams and apprehensions; in many cases, music captures it better than you can yourself. Music is also that last free, pure, unadulterated place in my soul – that last piece of paradise within me. It is mine! I am very selfish as far as guarding that space is concerned. Dig it, baby.

Of course, music has also been responsible for me meeting and getting to know many of my closest and truest friends. An initial conversation would go something like this: Me - “What do you like to listen to, man?” Friend – “Well, I like Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Clash”. Me – “Really? Well, we should get together sometime and listen to “Guns of Brixton”. Friend – “Yeah, that sounds like a plan”. And that is how many of my most valued friendships have started. Recently, when a close friend of mine saw the Who in concert in Los Angeles and brought back a t-shirt of the band for me, I was ecstatic. Yes, band t-shirts still make me happy, ok?

Coming back to the question my wife raised; Will the next generation of kids have their own representative bands, making music that reflects their hopes and fears? I do not know. What I do know is for me, so many years later, the music I first heard twenty-five years ago as a boy still matters. And I have a feeling that I will still feel this way even if I live to be eighty.

I realise this has been a “heavy” blog. I promise that the next one will be a much lighter one!

Mountain Stories: When the Beatles Came to Town

2008-12-22T23:42:00.000-08:00

My wife and I recently returned from a lovely Himalayan vacation. The base I use for all my Himalayan sojourns is the town of Almora, tucked away at 5,500 feet in the Kumaon Himalayas. Apart from the spectacular natural beauty on offer in this part of the world, I have a deep emotional connection to this place. My grandfather was so taken in by the beauty and splendour of the Indian Himalayas, he decided to retire there in 1969. As a child, I made annual pilgrimages to Almora every October to meet my grandfather and soak up the atmosphere of the Himalayas. Most of my most vivid, important childhood memories are from the mountains, where as a child, I spent hours tinkering in my grandfather’s beautiful garden and watching the play of light and shade, cloud and sunshine on the deep, dark forests and snow-covered mountains.

Over the years, the town of Almora has grown exponentially. Like most Indian towns, the growth has been largely unplanned and haphazard. As a result, most of the town has become dirty and crowded. However, my grandfather’s neighbourhood has remained largely unchanged.

But this blog is not about Almora or even the Himalayas. It is about the legend of the Beatles coming to a little village above Almora back in 1968. That the Beatles visited the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in Rishikesh in 1968 is a documented fact. That they stayed in Rishikesh for three months is also well-documented. However, reliable sources tell me that three of the four Beatles (John, Paul and George) visited a little village above Almora now called “Crank’s Ridge” back in 1968.

Before I get into details, I need to tell you where Crank’s Ridge is. It is located about six kilometres above the town of Almora, at about 6,500 feet. The forested ridge is on the sunny side of the mountain, which means that it does not get too cold, even in the depths of winter. It has a truly spectacular view of the Himalayas, with the 25,600 foot high Nanda Devi peak dominating the horizon. It also has a reputation for being a place with a spiritual aura around it. Famous Indian mystic Swami Vivekananda lived and meditated here in the 1890s. Ever since then, it has seen a steady stream of famous artists, musicians, mystics and cranks (hence the name “Crank’s Ridge” – check it out on wikipedia).

American beat generation poet Allan Ginsberg visited here in 1962, and felt it was a “little like the Catskills in upstate New York, only more spiritual”. Sixties guru and University of California Berkeley professor Timothy Leary lived here for extended periods of time in the 1950s and 1960s. Singers Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens also visited here, as did noted Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman, father of the delectable Uma Thurman. In fact, the young Uma Thurman also probably lived here for a little while. Indian dance maestro Uday Shankar (brother of sitar player Ravi Shankar) set up a school for Indian classical dance here in the 1930s. Indian film-maker Guru Dutt also lived here for sometime in the 1950s. These are all documented facts.

Wikipedia also says that Crank’s Ridge is “a cult destination, it now has a small community of backpackers and ex-hippies settled there ever since the place gained the reputation of being a Power Centre during the hippie hey-days. This reputation is due to the alleged gap in the Van Allen Belt above the ridge, a perception arguably strengthened by the free and easy availability of hemp on the slopes. There is also a Buddhist meditation center on the ridge”.

All in all, Crank’s Ridge is a place worth visiting, and I go there every time I am in the mountains. And now, patient reader, I will come back to the question I raised a few paragraphs ago. Did three of the four Beatles visit here in 1968, or is this just another shaggy-dog story? An individual I know and respect has irrefutable proof that Timothy Leary was indeed a frequent visitor to Crank’s Ridge and the town of Almora. Leary was a very close friend of the Beatles. The Beatles were in Rishikesh in 1968. Rishikesh is also a town in the Himalayan foothills, about 250 kilometers away from Almora and Crank’s Ridge. I also have it from reliable sources that George Harrison made several trips to Almora and Crank’s Ridge in the 1970s. This is not surprising, since of all the Beatles, Harrison was the one most attached to India and was also a keen student of Indian music and Hinduism.

If indeed the Beatles made the long and winding journey to Almora and Crank’s Ridge from Rishikesh back in 1968, they would have followed much the same route we did this year. They would have traveled via Deoprayag, Rudgraprayag, Gwaldam and Kausani. Like us, they would probably have had a night-halt at the town of Rudraprayag, the confluence (“sangam”) of the Alakananda and Mandakini rivers, which together form the mighty Ganges. Here one road leads up to that holiest of Hindu pilgrimage towns – Badrinath. Another road leads towards Gwaldam and Almora.

Of course, Almora was a much smaller, more picturesque town back in 1968. Crank’s Ridge today boasts of several high-class resorts, an excellent multi-cuisine Continental restaurant and lovely cottages where old ex-hippies from all over the world live. The place has a real multi-cultural, laid-back feel to it. But back in 1968, it would have been just a collection of stone and slate mountain houses where villagers lived and eked out a living in the terraced fields below.

But could John, Paul and George have come here in 1968? It is not only possible, it is likely. John and George would definitely have been interested. I am not so sure about Paul. George was already sold on India, Indian mythology and music. At the time, John was sold on the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It is very, very possible that they came to Crank’s Ridge in 1968. If that is indeed the case, it is also possible that some of the songs on the landmark 1968 Beatles “White Album” were written here. The Beatles themselves have said that most of the “White Album” was written in India.

I find this whole hypothesis fascinating. Could “Across the Universe” or “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” have been written above Almora, Uttarakhand? It is possible.
Did the three Beatles visit Almora and Crank’s Ridge in 1968? What do you think?

Indian Heroes: The Mangal Deep School for the Mentally Handicapped

2008-12-11T02:39:00.000-08:00

The last few weeks, and indeed months, have brought us nothing but bad news in India. The economic slowdown was the first bit of bad news we heard about. Then the spate of terror bombings across the country, culminating in the mowing down of innocents in Mumbai two weeks ago. Our politicians seem too weak-kneed, incompetent and corrupt to deal with the situation.

Heroes seem hard to find in this day and age. But they still exist, as I found to my pleasant surprise. It is just that they are hidden and not easy to find. They quietly go about their business, saving lives one by one, against all odds.

This is the story of the Mangal Deep School for Mentally Handicapped Children in the mountain town of Almora, deep in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. On our recent trip to the Himalayas, my wife and I were taken to meet the founder, students and staff of this school. I was wary. Many Indian NGOs (non-governmental agencies) that are ostensibly set up to provide social welfare and justice are just as corrupt and inefficient as their governmental counterparts. Many of them use monies received from well-meaning donors to feather their own nests, instead of using the funds to benefit their intended audience. I am personally aware of two or three such NGOs that have duped me in the past.

So the Mangal Deep School for Mentally Handicapped Children came as a very pleasant surprise. Set on a picturesque ridge in a village below the town of Almora, the school premises commands a very impressive view of the Central Himalayan Ranges.

The school was started ten years ago, with a student population of only five children. Today, it has grown to cater to fifty children with special needs. The founder and staff of the school are extraordinarily dedicated. Over the years, they have learnt to cater to students with many different needs (the latest student to enrol is autistic). They have learnt this on their own, with little or no support from state and central governmental agencies (more on this later). The school was set up by a retired college teacher who used her entire pension and retirement funds to start the school. She must be nearly seventy years old, but she is indefatigable and always cheerful. I have not seen such positive energy in people half her age. She is also self-effacing to a fault. Over the years, this extraordinary lady and her staff have learnt to deal with students with varying kinds of special needs, indifferent, occasionally hostile parents, a sceptical and conservative society, and apathetic and often corrupt governmental agencies. And they do all this with a smile on their face.

But the real stars of the school are the students themselves. Each student is taught a vocation based on their talents, so that they become financially independent and help support their families, who are often poor. We were astonished to find the high levels of artistic ability that these children possessed. They make high-quality dinner and place mats, greetings cards, hand-woven carpets and gift bags, among other things. You and I would pay big bucks for these items in any big-city mall. The school has succeeded in making the students financially independent and gone a long way in helping many of them enhance their worth in the eyes of their families. The students are also taught to read and write And all of this is done with smiles and good cheer.

The less said about assistance the government is supposed to provide, the better. The number of approvals required to receive allocated financial assistance from the government are many, and frankly, quite ridiculous. Every governmental agency in the chain wants its own cut or bribe. It is truly shocking. I knew corruption in Indian government agencies was endemic, but the extent and the brazenness of it left me speechless, when I found out details. I know who these corrupt governmental agencies are, but I will not name them in this blog, because it may get the school into trouble. Suffice to say, the school authorities have squarely refused to pay bribes to obtain the financial assistance promised to them. Like in most other facets of Indian life, the government is an obstacle to overcome, and not a facilitator.

But let me come back to the school and its founder and staff. They work hard, against all odds, to cater to a forgotten and neglected section of our society. They ask for very little in return. They do this only because this is the right thing to do. They soldier on and prevail in the face of daunting adversity that would deter most other people (it would certainly deter me). In my book, this makes them true heroes. Forget our self-obsessed celluloid stars in Bollywood and our overpaid, over-hyped cricketers. What this school is doing is noble, it is real, it is right.

For many years, I have felt guilty of not even attempting to return a little bit to the country that made me – India. Now I have the opportunity to do so, in a small way. My wife and I intend contributing what we can to help the Mangal Deep School grow and flourish. At this point in time, modest financial assistance is all we can offer. If we choose to settle down and live in that part of the country some years from now (this is very much part of the grand plan), we will find other ways we can contribute.

If you are interested in finding out more about the Mangal Deep School, please contact me. Do something good, feel something real. Thanks.

Politics: In Defence of George Bush Jr.

2008-11-13T22:12:00.001-08:00

I expect this to be a deeply unpopular blog with plenty of adverse comments. How can you defend George Bush Jr, people will ask? Look at the mess he has made, especially in Iraq. Look at his approval ratings – barely 25% of Americans approve of his presidency at the moment. He is dyslexic, clueless about foreign affairs and policy and knows very little about macro-economics. His prior experience as a businessman and owner of a baseball team show him to be a failure. So how can you defend him?

To begin my defence, let us first list the facts. All of what I have mentioned in the previous paragraph is true. George Bush made a huge mistake going into Iraq, a country that under Saddam Hussein was a tyranny. However, it was a secular, reasonably moderate country in the Middle East. Crucially, Iraq under Saddam Hussein was an important counterweight to the other key player in the region – Iran. As long as you had these two countries balancing each other out, the world was a safer place. Now that Iraq is no longer a rival, Iran has aspirations of becoming a regional superpower and there is nothing the US can do to stop them.

There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq either. I agree that Iraq was Bush’s one big mistake. Because of that expensive error of judgment, the US became deeply unpopular throughout much of the Islamic world. Dubya’s father, the far more capable and intelligent George Bush Sr., did the right thing during the first Gulf War in 1991. He bombed the hell out of Saddam Hussein, destroyed the Iraqi Army and left, having taught Saddam a lesson for invading Kuwait. That war was won in days, it was inexpensive and the body count was low.

But if you take the Iraq War out of the equation, how would George Bush Jr. fare as a president? Would his legacy be viewed more favourably? Here again, it depends on your perspective. Bush did nothing to help in managing the two big domestic economic crises that an aging America faces – Social Security and Medicare. He refused to tackle the key problem of prohibitively priced healthcare insurance - a problem that deprives tens of millions of Americans from getting access to affordable healthcare. At the beginning of his presidency, he laughed off concerns about global warming, saying these fears were exaggerated. He did not encourage American automakers to develop alternative fuels.

But George Bush Jr. also did quite a few good things. The most important among these (for countries such as India and China) was that he encouraged and supported free trade. As a result, China became the manufacturing hub of the world. Its economy grew by leaps and bounds, and millions of Chinese were pulled out of poverty. India became the services and information technology hub of the world. The explosive growth of India’s services sector in the last decade owes a lot to George Bush Jr. He made it easier for qualified foreigners to live and work in the United States, by liberalising immigration policies. During his presidency, the U economy remained robust and grew faster than it had in decades, which created jobs for Americans, Indians and Chinese alike.

George Bush Jr went out of his way to work with India on the Indo-US civil nuclear deal. I do not claim to be an expert on this deal, but when people like former Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Indian National Security Adviser K. Narayanan support the deal, I assume that it is in India’s best interests. He stayed out of the Kashmir issue, and said it was a bilateral matter that needed to be resolved between India and Pakistan.

It is easy (and completely wrong) to blame George Bush Jr. for the current economic recession in the US. The fact is that he had nothing to do with it. The legislation to provide supposedly “affordable housing” to those who could not afford it was one that was passed many years ago, by his opponents the Democratic Party. This legislation was a populist one designed to garner votes. Dubya in reality, tried hard to nullify this legislation. The fact is that Dubya presided over the largest global economic expansion in history – one spanning six years from 2001 to 2007. Thanks to the economic policies of his government, the U.S, China, India and many other countries prospered.

It is possible that history will be a little kinder to George Bush Jr. From an American viewpoint, Bush started the Iraq War, and did nothing to combat global warming, resolve the healthcare crisis or reduce that country’s dependence on foreign oil. But he also ensured seven years of unprecedented economic growth. From an Indian viewpoint, he was a friend of India and his policies were consistently pro-India. Therefore, his legacy for Americans will be a mixed one. His legacy for India however, will be uniformly positive.

This does not mean that I have anything against Barack Obama. I wish him well. But there are a couple of areas of concern. The first is his view on outsourcing. He has said that he will find ways to penalise American companies that are “shipping jobs overseas”. This is like the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena saying that jobs in Maharashtra should be reserved for only Marathi speaking people. The fact is that all employers around the world will always find ways to reduce their costs of production. Lower costs of production means that consumers like you and me pay lower prices for goods and services. I sincerely do hope that Obama does not try and curb US outsourcing work to other countries, because this is something that is mutually beneficial.

The other warning sign is that Obama plans to appoint Bill Clinton as “envoy” to help “resolve” the Kashmir issue between India and Pakistan. This is being done in the mistaken belief that Pakistan will fight terrorism better if they had all their troops stationed on the Afghanistan border. Also of course, now that Hillary Clinton is no longer a candidate for US President, Bill needs something to do to keep him gainfully occupied. This desire to appoint an “envoy” to “solve” the Kashmir problem is worrisome. Kashmir is a bilateral problem between India and Pakistan.

But it is still early days. Obama is intelligent, charismatic and seems to be a unifier. He has overcome formidable obstacles to become the President-elect. He appears to be very serious about combating global warming. He has publicly stated that he will encourage research into alternative fuels and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. He appears serious about resolving America’s healthcare and social security crises.

But will he be a good friend to India? Only time will tell.

Observations: In Praise of Hybrids

2008-11-05T22:37:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama has won the U.S. Presidential election. Plenty has already been said about his historic victory, so I am not going to give you my take on it. Suffice to say, the challenges facing him are daunting. The most important and immediate challenge he faces is finding ways to resuscitate the U.S. economy. A normal remedy would include a massive increase in public spending, which is what Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) did during the Great Depression, seventy years ago. However, Obama will find this difficult to do since the U.S. federal deficit is already at an all-time high. Besides, any additional public spending would probably mean an increase in taxes as well as the potential threat of higher inflation. In a time where people are losing jobs, this will be an extremely unpopular thing to do. It will be interesting to see how he deals with the global economic crisis. A silver lining will be the fact that the Democrats have gained substantially in the races for the Senate as well as the House of Representatives. This should make it easier for him to introduce any legislation he has in mind to improve the world’s economic situation. Yes, it is the world’s economic situation that will be determined by Obama’s policies, and not just America’s.

But I digress. This blog is not about Obama’s victory. Instead, it is about something that many people do not know or consider important. The media all over the world has been waxing eloquent about Obama being the first “black/African-American” person to become the U.S. President. Actually, Obama is not black. He is of mixed race. His father was an African-American, while his mother was white. The media always needs to categorise whatever they report, so it is convenient to slot Obama as a black man. Like I said a little earlier, this is not a fact.

Obama (like Yours Truly) is a hybrid. He is a racial hybrid; while I am an ethnic hybrid (my father is a Bengali, while my mother is a Kannadiga). In my own small way, I have faced similar problems. Indians I meet always ask me my ethnic background. There is no simple way to answer this question. I either say “Bengali” if I want to give them a short answer. If I am in a chatty mood, I give them the long answer, which is: “My father is a Bengali who grew up in Mumbai. My mother is a Konkani-speaking Kannadiga who grew up in Karnataka. I was born and raised in a Roman Catholic neighbourhood in Bombay, so I frequently went to church. In the impressionable years of my youth, I spent six years living and studying in America, which made me very independent-minded and shaped my identity”.

This last encyclopaedic answer effectively shuts people up. It is also the correct answer. There are many people who find it difficult to categorise me. In their minds, I am a “Bengali”. This is incorrect, but I guess it works for them. Understanding the truth sometimes requires patience, the ability to listen and the realization that every question in the world does not have a neat answer which can be put into a box. Many people aren’t interested in the truth; they only need an answer that can be easily categorised.

I can vouch for the fact that there are plenty of positives about being a hybrid. For Obama, it is being able to reach out to people across races and classes, Democrats and Republicans, to develop consensus. He can relate to blacks as well as whites. He has enough of a perspective to understand the unique challenges and advantages faced by both races. In my own small way, I can relate. I can understand the Bengali language as well as its customs, traditions and rituals. I can also understand my mother’s language and heritage. Add to that the fact that I grew up in cosmopolitan Bombay, and lived and worked across cultures and countries, and this puts me in a pretty unique position.

There are narrow-minded Indians who feel that the ethnic group they belong to is somehow superior to other ethnic groups in the country. There have been enough instances of this in the national news lately. Frankly, I find this laughable. Obviously, these individuals and groups have their heads buried in the sand.

My advice to them is simple – pull your head out of your ass and take a look around you. The world is large and diverse. India is only a small part of what the world has to offer. Take the time out to learn and understand the various cultures and ethnic groups in India. You may be astonished to learn that many of your deep-rooted beliefs are inaccurate and just plain wrong. You may be surprised to find that some of the traditions and histories of other ethnic groups are actually richer and more interesting than your own.

For my outlook on life, I have my parents to thank. They brought me up to be an Indian and a citizen of the world. They taught me to be independent minded, to search for the truth, and to refuse to settle for easy, incorrect answers. Sometimes, the search for the truth can be a frustrating and unsettling experience. It can also be lonely. It requires the searcher to constantly learn new things, and to frequently challenge cherished long-standing beliefs. Each person’s search for the truth is his or her own, and there are no prefabricated paths for you to walk on. To quote the lines of an old song by Van Morrison; “No Guru, No Method, No Teacher”.

So I wish Barack Obama all the best in his quest to rejuvenate America, the greatest country in the world. He is faced with some formidable problems – an ailing economy, an unpopular war and an empty treasury. But he also has a unique set of qualities and a diverse background. He is neither black nor white; he grew up in the American heartland of Chicago, but also in Indonesia and Kenya, he understands the problems of poor inner cities in America, but also studied at Harvard. He is a hybrid, and like all hybrids, he can understand issues that many others cannot. He may or may not succeed in his quest. But as a hybrid, I am rooting for him.

Thanks for listening!!

India: The Bombay I Knew and Loved

2008-10-22T02:02:00.000-07:00

The Bombay I knew had clean, quiet, tree-lined suburban streets where on public holidays, we played hockey, football and cricket. If the ball went out in the middle of the street, you ran out to pick it up without a second thought. Today you would get run over in less than a nano-second by some brat driving around in his daddy’s luxury SUV.

In the Bombay I knew, there was no cable TV. Kids were encouraged to come out and play after school. If you didn’t play sports, your peers called you a wimp. There were no fancy gyms. If you wanted to exercise, you sweated it out in your building compound or on the street, just like all the other kids. On afternoons when you had time to spare, you went to “town” to watch Kanga League cricket matches at the Oval Maidan. Today, I do not see kids playing anymore. They are too caught up with computer games and homework, no doubt.

In the Bombay I knew, there was only black and white television, on which you watched “Chhayageet” and Sunil Gavaskar making one of his interminably long test match centuries. “Another innings of dedication, determination and application”, the commentators used to intone. On the way back from school, you stopped by the local paan-waala to listen to the latest cricket score on his handy, nifty transistor radio. You don’t see too many of those anymore either.

In the Bombay I knew, you tuned into Radio Ceylon at night to listen to all the latest American pop hits.

In the Bombay I knew, there were rows and rows of lovely cottages facing the sea. You wondered what it would be like to live in one of them. They are all gone now, replaced by matchbox style high-rise buildings, where you pay the equivalent of a lifetime’s income for a quality of life that is non-existent.

In the Bombay I knew, Bandra Reclamation was one huge field, where kids played all day long in the summertime. Today the place is one giant slum.

On lazy, hot summer days, you went to Bandra Fort to sneak a cigarette or satiate your raging teenage hormones by making out with a girlfriend. In those days, Bandra Fort was almost off-limits. There were rumours of smugglers landing there on dark nights with gold biscuits and counterfeit electronic goods. People said that jackals lurked in the ruins of the fort and howled at night. Today, it is home to a five-star hotel. The smugglers and jackals (if they really existed) are long gone.

In the Bombay I knew, you went to Jude’s Bakery in Bandra early in the morning to buy kadak-pav and ate it with maska, and a cup of hot steaming tea.

In the Bombay I knew, you learnt how to drive in your dad’s old stick-shift 1974 Ambassador car. You had never heard of air-conditioning, automatic transmission, power steering or power windows.

The Bombay I knew was the most diverse, tolerant and cosmopolitan city in India. Nobody asked you where you were from. Nobody called you an “outsider”. At school, nobody asked you your religion, your caste or your ethnic background. Nobody felt superior to you if they belonged to a different community. Nobody laughed at your community’s festivals and customs. All of us were from Bombay, and that was enough.

In the Bombay I knew, you went to Parsi weddings at Khusro Baug, where old Parsi men drank Sosyo raspberry juice, ate caramel custard made in Ratan Tata Institute and quarrelled with waiters about how small the chicken legs on their plate were. Everybody had a great time.

In the Bombay I knew, you spoke either English or “Bambaiyaa Hindi” with your friends. The language, like the city of Bombay, was a melting pot of several different Indian languages. You used words like “raapchik” and “pochaaoed” (the latter was an obscene Bandra special and possibly not in use in the rest of the city). When you saw your friend coming down the street, you yelled “Aey, yer bugger” (another Bandra special).

In the Bombay I knew, you celebrated Diwali with your Hindu friends. During Durga Puja, you pretended to be a good Bengali and went to the Pujo-Baadi in Shivaji Park, mainly to eat the delicious singhadaas and sandesh. On Christmas and New Years’ you went for midnight mass with your Catholic friends (my neighbourhood at the time was predominantly Catholic), partly to check out the pretty young women who attended in hordes. On occasions such as baptisms and funerals of neighbours you knew, you dressed up and went to church. On Christmas Eve, groups of young kids would come and sing Christmas carols below your window. In return, you gave them some money to enjoy themselves.

In the Bombay I knew, there were no expensive nightclubs and discos. Setting up a party was a project. There were no cell phones, and landline phones worked only sometimes. You partied on your friend’s terrace. You hired a stereo and listened to Eddie Grant singing “Electric Avenue” at full volume. You cringed when your friend with poor taste in music suddenly played “Funky Town”.

In the Bombay I knew, you went and bought alcohol from “Aunty’s” on “dry” days. Aunty was a woman who lived in Shirley Rajan village in Bandra, and sold liquor at exorbitant prices to desperate teenagers on “dry days”. She lived on the second floor. You whistled when you got to her building, and her assistant, a little boy, came running up to you. You told him what brand of whisky you wanted and gave him the money. He ran up the stairs and handed over the money to “Aunty” who then proceeded to lower the bottle containing the beverage of your choice in a basket attached to a rope. It was a very smooth operation.

On weekends, you went out for drives with your family and dog to places like Aarey Milk Colony in Goregaon (with the traffic, slums and pollution today, this must seem unimaginable). You ate vada-pav outside Churchgate Station, had a few beers with the freaks at Café Mondegar and ate huge lunches at George’s Restaurant in Fort. If you were in the mood for a steak, you walked down to Wayside Inn on Rampart Row, where doddering elderly waiters with bad attitudes served you the best steaks in Bombay. Wayside Inn is gone and in its place is a fancy, glitzy restaurant with no character or personality.

Yes, I remember that Bombay well, the beautiful city with the sea on one side and the rolling Western Ghats on the other, easily the most important and enlightened city in India.

In light of recent events, that Bombay is gone forever. Bombay represented the mess that was India, but also all that was good and great. It was a grand experiment which showed us what we could achieve as a nation if we put all our regional and religious divisions behind us. It taught me what being Indian really meant. It taught me to judge people based on who they were as individuals, and not on what language they spoke at home or which part of the country they came from. I miss that Bombay, I miss that India.

Politics: Will the Real Rahul Baba Please Stand Up?

2008-10-09T23:27:00.000-07:00

Imagine that you work for an old family-run firm. The firm has been owned and managed for generations by the same dynasty. Imagine also, that the firm is currently run by a matriarch. The matriarch is a very savvy, egotistical woman who projects the firm as being democratic, modern and progressive, whereas in reality, it is the opposite - traditional, autocratic and conservative. The firm has many faithful retainers like you. To keep herself in power, the matriarch brooks no opposition and often plays the faithful retainers off against each other.

The matriarch has invited you to her home for dinner. As someone who has spent his whole career with the firm, you definitely make it a point to attend. It is a signal honour, to be recognised and invited to her home for dinner. However, somewhere deep inside, you feel a sense of resentment. You view yourself as an intelligent and capable employee, who if given half a chance, would do a really great job of running the firm.

Once at the party, you mill around and talk to the other family retainers who have also been invited. You also deferentially greet the matriarch’s precocious young son. It is very clear to everyone present at the party that the son is being groomed for a leadership role, though his skills have never really been tested. On the rare occasions that the son has been given any real responsibilities within the firm, he has failed to perform. This fact is kept under wraps as the matriarch invariably finds a scapegoat when things go wrong.

The matriarch’s philosophy is simple – take credit for herself and her son when things go well, pin responsibility on others when they go badly. This deepens your sense of resentment and insecurity, but you are helpless. After all, many family retainers like you have been sidelined by the matriarch when things have not gone well for the firm. You have no choice but to bow in deference to the matriarch and her son. After all, who else can run this family firm? All your life you have been conditioned to believe that only the family the matriarch belongs to is capable of doing so.

This scenario pretty much captures the way things are run within India’s Congress Party. Sonia Gandhi rules with an iron hand. Manmohan Singh is the regent, keeping the Prime Minister’s chair warm for Rahul Gandhi or Rahul “baba” as he is still known. Rahul “baba” is now forty years old, and it is time for him to grow up.

He has been hovering on the fringes of India’s political scene for years now. The problem with him is that he appears to be well-intentioned, but has yet to demonstrate any leadership or administrative skills. He does not have any ministerial portfolio. The Congress Party carefully stage-manages his few public appearances. I can think of two or three such instances recently. The first was last year, when he went to meet the Prime Minister about the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). The NREGS was already being implemented nation-wide without Rahul baba’s help. But the Congress Party made it a point to send out several detailed press releases on Rahul baba’s meeting with Manmohan Singh. This stage-managed event was designed to show how much Rahul baba cared for the rural poor.

Another such event took place recently, where Rahul baba was photographed helping low-caste Dalit farmers build earthen dams. Here again, the press release and photographs focused on how Rahul baba’s heart bled for the poor, not what was being done to alleviate the miseries of the Dalit farmers in question. He is being projected as being well-intentioned and articulate. Unfortunately, that is not enough to govern a country. Every politician (including and especially the villainous ones), claim to have the country’s best interests at heart, and all of them say that all they want to do is “serve” the country.

There is nothing wrong with Mama (Sonia Gandhi) trying to project Rahul Gandhi as India’s next Prime Minister. This is the way “democracy” works in the Congress Party. But what the rest of the country needs to know is whether Rahul baba has the actual skills, intelligence and gumption to run the nation. His past record is not inspiring. He graduated from St. Stephen’s College in Delhi about twenty years ago. There were vague reports that he “studied” at Harvard University in the US. This means nothing, because anyone who is rich and well-connected can take a few summer classes for fun at Harvard University. The point is, he did not graduate or complete any degree at Harvard (or anywhere else).

He has never really worked or held a regular job in the last twenty years. Even within the Congress Party, he has never ever been directly responsible for conceiving or implementing any of the various public-works schemes the government has come up with. In terms of garnering votes for the Congress, his record is disastrous. He pulls in the crowds everywhere he goes, but these people never seem to vote for him. To date, every time he has campaigned for the Congress, the party has lost elections. This pattern has been repeated – in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat and many other places. Rahul Gandhi’s presence at campaign rallies are the kiss of death (at least so far).

Before I am accused of being a supporter of the BJP or any opposition political party, let me say here that I have nothing against Rahul baba in person. The point is – I have nothing positive to say about him either, because nobody seems to know exactly what he stands for. Being blandly polite is not enough. What are his views on the economy, and reducing poverty in India? How does he propose to deal with terrorism? How does he propose to handle India’s huge environmental problems? How does he plan to tackle an overstaffed corrupt bureaucracy that feels it is not accountable to the people of India?

It is possible that Rahul Gandhi is extremely intelligent, well-intentioned and capable. If so, this is India’s best kept secret. But for the rest of us to know what he is really made of, he needs to be plain-spoken and take up a position of real responsibility within the government. To paraphrase an old rap song – “Will the real Rahul Gandhi please stand up, please stand up, please stand up?”

Politics: Don’t Cry For Me, West Bengal

2008-10-06T00:45:00.000-07:00

I am only part Bengali, and I have never lived in West Bengal. I have visited Kolkata only three times in my life, and my only frame of reference of my heritage are ancient sepia-tinted photographs of an old, palatial ancestral house on the banks of the mighty Ganges River that I have never seen. How green was my valley. Well, I saw it when I was one year old, so that doesn’t count.

Still, I do have a soft corner for the state, and it saddens me to see how this once-mighty state is now one of the poorest and most backward parts of India. This was not always so. For two hundred years until the 1960s, West Bengal was India’s leading state in terms of industry, education and thought. The state played an important role in the freedom movement, and produced great writers, poets and intellectuals.

For a little while recently, it appeared that the state was finally making attempts to shed the stupor and anti-industry attitude that has characterised it over the last forty-odd years. The state’s Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is that rarest of politicians – a man who genuinely believes in the welfare and happiness of his constituency. He is a Communist, but he is one of the very few political leaders in India that I have great personal regard for. I disagree with his political ideology, but heartily endorse his concern for the welfare of the people of West Bengal. Unlike his fellow comrades, he is a pragmatist who believes fervently in change and he has scant respect for long-dead retrograde Communist ideologies. He stirred up a controversy recently when he said that strikes by workers were counterproductive, hurt common people and should be banned. His Stalinist colleagues in the Communist Party were not amused. India’s communists make careers out of encouraging and sponsoring industrial strikes.

So the decision by the Tatas, India’s most respected India’s industrial house, to set up the first Nano car manufacturing plant in West Bengal was a matter of great pride and honour for the state and its administration. The Nano car has gotten a lot of attention globally as the world’s first car priced below US $ 2,500. Many hoped this prestigious project would mark the turning point for Bengal’s fortunes and end the long darkness in which the state has lived for the last forty years.

Unfortunately, that was not to be, thanks to that shrill rabble-rouser, Mamata Banerjee. Like everything in India that can actually make a difference in the lives of its citizens, the project has become the victim of politics. Even politicians supporting the project suddenly reversed gears. Witness Information and Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi from the Congress Party calling Ratan Tata’s withdrawal speech (in which squarely blamed Mamata Banerjee for the pull-out) “arrogant”. I am not sure how Ratan Tata’s speech could be classified as being arrogant. He has a right to be upset because his company Tata Motors has invested millions of dollars in Singur. Indian politicians are always upset whenever someone is honest and speaks the truth, since they are so used to lying all the time.

Three months ago, when the Communists were part of the Congress led coalition government at the Centre, this same minister was scathingly critical of Mamata Banerjee and her destructive, intimidatory tactics at Singur. At that time, Das Munshi (nauseatingly fawned over and referred to as “Priyoda” by news anchor Barkha Dutt) was all for the Nano car project at Singur. Now that the Congress is trying to ally with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress party, suddenly the plight of a few farmers in Singur has become very important, and Ratan Tata is a villain.

That apart, what exactly is the ground reality in Singur? The truth has been obscured by political posturing, misinformation and lying by Mamata Banerjee and her cohorts. The truth is this - a total of 13,000 farmers were told to give up land for the Nano project, of which 11,000 farmers or 85% gave up their land willingly. All of this overwhelming majority of individuals and families were subsistence farmers who were living in near-poverty and realized that the Nano project gave them an opportunity to educate their children and get them skilled jobs in the industrial sector. A small minority (15%) of farmers opposed this project and did not want to part with their land. It is not clear as to whether they did not want to sell their land at all or whether they were holding out for greater compensation. Mamata Banerjee and her colleagues never gave us a chance to find out.

Once Mamata started her violent anti-Nano agitation, she was joined by many self-professed “protectors of the poor” – a motley bunch of individuals and groups who claim that they represent the poor, but whose actual objective is to keep people mired in misery and poverty. Chief among these was Anuradha Talwar, a fat, hairy aggressive woman in her mid-fifties, who looks like a frustrated housewife from Lajpat Nagar in Delhi. Once people like her got involved in the agitation, the truth about Singur was obscured, sadly forever.

Now that the Tatas have finally decided to move out of Singur, there is a sense of dismay and dismay among most residents there. Many of them were landless laborers who were depending on the plant to provide them with jobs and livelihoods. Now they have been left stranded – without either their land or jobs. Of course, Mamata Banerjee and Anuradha Talwar have pronounced this a “victory of the people” and left. Who will now pick up the pieces for the poor of Singur, now that they have been deserted by their “protectors”?

In a recent debate on Singur, a senior editor of one of India’s leading business magazines brought up an important point. Mamata Banerjee and Anuradha Talwar ferried in thousands of people into Singur during the anti-Nano agitation. These people were outsiders, brought in solely to spread chaos and destruction and prevent the Nano plant from functioning. A back of the envelope calculation revealed that feeding and housing these thousands of agitators for 25 odd days cost about Rs. 1.5 crore per day, adding up to about Rs. 40 crore for the duration of the agitation . Who was paying for this? Anuradha Talwar claimed she did not know who was footing the bill, which is strange since she was the one who organized the agitation. The journalist also went on to add that in fact, the agitation was paid for by “a leading two wheeler manufacturer who is also planning to launch a small car in the US $ 3,000 price range”. He declined to name this company, but the answer was obvious – Bajaj Auto. Rahul Bajaj is collaborating with Renault to make a car similar to the Nano at a similar price. Bajaj is one of India’s richest industrialists. However, one does not know whether he tried to sabotage the Nano car plant at Singur. Ratan Tata has also repeatedly said that vested business interests have tried to sabotage the production of the Nano car. He is not one to make such allegations lightly, so the allegation could be true.

So once again, politics has prevailed as an obstacle in India’s progress. It is sad, it is tragic. The only silver lining in all of this is that Mamata Banerjee is now rightly being vilified by the people of Singur. They have realized that she is solely responsible for their plight, and for the Tatas’ pullout from Singur. She will lose the next round of elections there. However, it is cold comfort.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is still determined to industrialize his state. He realizes that it is not possible for such large numbers of people to eke out a livelihood on such small amounts of land. 65% of India’s population is dependent on agriculture, which contributes only 23% to India’s GDP. This is not a sustainable situation, which Bhattacharya realises. I wish him all the best in his endeavour. We have so few politicians who genuinely care about their constituencies – he is one of them. More power to him.

India - The Enemy Within

2008-06-25T02:21:00.000-07:00

The current ruling coalition government led by the Congress Party is set to be humiliated internationally, because the Indian Communists (who provide “outside” support to the coalition) are opposing the India-US nuclear deal. The Indian Prime Minister has staked his personal reputation as well as that of the nation on this deal. This does not bother the Communists. The Communists say (falsely) that the deal will make India a vassal state of the US. They are well aware that with rising inflation and a worsening economy, the Congress will be loath call their bluff and call for an early general election. They have the Congress party down, and nearly out. Let us look at the facts and the track record of our Indian Communists:

• Communist China (a country idolized by Indian Communists) has signed an identical nuclear deal with the US. Do Indian communists feel that China is a vassal state of the US?
• Erstwhile communist state Russia is exhorting India to sign the deal, saying it will help in the development of the country.
• It has been established beyond all doubt that the deal will provide power and fuel starved India access to unlimited amounts of clean, inexpensive nuclear energy that the country sorely needs if it is to join the ranks of developed nations in the 21st century. Besides, China is now providing Pakistan with sophisticated nuclear technology. Can you imagine what will happen if Pakistan develops sophisticated nuclear technology and India doesn’t?

The Congress Party, dominant partner in the current ruling coalition government has been sleeping with the enemy for the last four and a half years. The Communists have taken every opportunity to embarrass, humiliate and denigrate their “allies”, the Congress.

• They have not allowed foreign direct investment in the country’s retail and insurance sectors. This would have created millions of much needed jobs in India’s hinterlands.
• They have not allowed the Congress to disinvest in chronically loss-making public sector enterprises, a move that would have brought in much needed funds for strengthening public education and enhancing India’s appalling road and port infrastructure.
• A recent international survey showed that India is a “soft target” for international terrorism. India is the country with the second largest number of victims of international terrorism – second only to Iraq. The current government has done nothing to curb terrorism – it is shameful. Yet our Communists believe that terrorism within our country is not something that demands attention and a solution. In their view, it is a mere “law and order” problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. Maybe our “comrades” should ask the families and loved ones of the hundreds who died in the horrific Mumbai suburban train blasts if terrorism is only a “law and order” problem.
• The Indian Communists are strong supporters of China. Over the last year or so, China has been flexing its military muscle by sending its troops into Indian territory in the north-eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim. The Chinese do not recognize the international border and claim the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh and upper Assam as part of they call “greater Tibet”. India’s response to these Chinese transgressions has been feeble, partly because the Communists have not allowed India to protest. It is important to remember that during the Indo-China war of 1962, the Indian Communists were the only party in India that celebrated when China won!! To date, Indian Communists claim that India was the aggressor in that war – a claim that has been proved wholly wrong by documented historical facts.
• Critics of the Indian Communists also claim that they support the destructive Maoist insurgency that has now taken hold of large parts of central and eastern India. I do not know if this allegation is true, but it is certainly a possibility. What is beyond dispute is that the Maoist insurgency has grown exponentially more powerful and threatening since the current ruling coalition and their allies (read: the Communists) came to power at the Centre four and a half years ago.

Matters have not been helped by a weak, timid Congress party. The Congress who have a much larger number of seats in Parliament, have been completely bullied into submission on every single issue by the Communists, who have not more than 11% of all the seats in the Indian Lok Sabha (Parliament). I am no great supporter of the Indian Congress party, but there is no doubt that it is one of the only two parties in India (the Bharatiya Janata Party is the other) that can lay claim to being a pan-Indian, progressive political party. The decline of the Congress, while self-inflicted, is still sad. The Communists have actively plotted and connived to wound the Congress Party over the last few years. And they are allies of the Congress in the current political dispensation. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Make no mistake about it. The biggest threat to India and our vibrant, diverse democracy comes not from Pakistan, China or religious fundamentalists. It comes from the Indian Communists – the enemy within. To make matters worse, Indian communists are not nearly as progressive as their Chinese counterparts. China today is a capitalist dictatorship – a communist country only in name. Thanks to extensive economic reforms in that country, China today has transformed itself into a powerful, developed nation. Our home-grown communists on the other hand, pine for the days of Stalin and Mao, men who impoverished their countries and murdered millions of their countrymen in the name of communism. Our comrades still use outdated, discredited terms in their speech – “capitalist roaders”, “imperialists and their running dogs”, etc. These are terms that have been discreetly eliminated from the vocabularies of their counterparts in China.

Our comrades would like to remodel India and make it like the China or Russia of the 1940s and 1950s, or the North Korea of today – an extreme left-wing totalitarian state that robs its citizens of their basic liberties and ships off dissidents to gulags (when it does not kill them). If you think I am joking, look at rural West Bengal – an Indian state ruled by the Communists for the last thirty years. Most Bengalis with an education and initiative to succeed have left the state to seek greener pastures elsewhere in the country, or overseas. The economy of West Bengal is in shambles, A similar situation would have prevailed in the other Indian state run by the Communists – Kerala, if it wasn’t for the vast amounts of money repatriated to that state by residents who live and work (largely in menial jobs) in the Middle East. Kerala’s economy is afloat in large part, due to the state’s “remittance economy”. Therefore, the economic track record of our Communists does not inspire confidence.

Mikhail Gorbachev and Deng Xiao-ping were visionaries, who realized that there was nothing romantic or desirable in keeping their countrymen impoverished and disenfranchised. They realized that communism as a political and more importantly, as an economic system was flawed and was not working. Thanks to them, Russia and China are well on the way to prosperity and power today. Russia has become a capitalist country with some degree of democracy. China has become a capitalist dictatorship that pays only lip service to communism. Somehow, these changes in Russia and China bypassed our home-grown communists, who still whole-heartedly believe in the old-style communist dogma propagated by Mao Zedong – it doesn’t matter how you come to power or who you have to kill to achieve it, as long as you rule, absolutely and totally. For them, “power flows from the barrel of a gun”, as Mao so succinctly put it. There is no room for debate or disagreement, and economic prosperity is anathema.

Educated middle-class Indians who now constitute 30% of the country’s population are often accused of not caring enough about India. There is a simple way to show that you care about this country of ours, which is on the verge of greatness. There will be a general election shortly – it is anywhere between three to twelve months away (depending on how political events unfold in the next few weeks). Make sure you vote.

On one side is progress and prosperity. On the other, is the abyss of despair and continued impoverishment – as embodied by India’s communists. I am not a believer in totalitarianism. The Indian Communists have a right to contest elections, just like every other political party out there. And you have the right and the duty to vote - for your conscience, and the continued progress of our great nation. Please do so – and send these enemies of our nation back to the political wilderness from where they emerged. Make sure you vote. Make sure your voice is heard. You deserve it. India deserves it.

Why Lawns Are Like Dogs (And Other Stories)

2008-06-23T01:59:00.000-07:00

You must be wondering about the title of this blog. Do not fear. By the time you get to the end of it (and I sincerely hope that you will be your usual patient self and read the whole thing), you will hopefully know what I am talking about.

Why exactly, are lawns like dogs, you ask?? Let me start at the beginning. I spent the first few months of this year searching for an apartment in the Indian city of Pune, the self-professed education and information technology hub of India (and it is actually). Making the decision to move to Pune from Babylon-like Bombay was not an easy one, I assure you. Having made that decision, I spent a few hectic days in February, scouting out potential homes in Pune. My search started in the desert-like surroundings of Kharadi, a far-flung corner of Pune that the real estate agent optimistically told me was “within the boundaries of the Pune Municipal Corporation”. His words offered me little comfort. Kharadi turned out to be a sort of rural India setting, dusty and in the middle of nowhere. There is a futuristic Information Technology (IT) Park coming up there, but it will take about three years before the place becomes habitable. Also, the nearest trees seemed to be about two kilometres away, a smudge on the distant horizon. I was reminded of my recent stay in the Middle East. And I wasn’t even sure that they were trees. It could have been a mirage on a hot afternoon. The place felt like a tropical version of Siberia.

Besides, I don’t think the real estate agent was too impressed by me. He showed up for our meeting wearing a designer suit and Armani shades, in a luxury air-conditioned sedan. I showed up in a frayed T-shirt and shorts, on the back of the wife-to-be’s trusty, dusty, beat-up old scooter. No doubt, he was expecting a hotshot NRI (Non-Resident Indian) with loads of petrodollars to spare. Instead, he got me.

The apartment complex I saw in Kharadi consisted of about ten tall apartment buildings each of which was nine stories high. The complex was euphemistically named “___________ Gardens”. I do not want to be sued by the builder, hence the “___________”. On close observation (actually even a cursory one would have been sufficient), I saw that the “Gardens” bit in the name was a complete misnomer. It was hot in the middle of February, and the only vegetation that approximated a tree was a stunted shrub in the huge, dusty parking lot. The proposed “garden” so prominently displayed on the real estate hoardings was about the size of a large postage stamp. The shrub itself looked lonely and traumatized and my heart went out to it. So Kharadi was no longer in contention as the dream home for Yours Truly.

To cut a long story short, we settled on a house in the upscale, lively Kalyani-nagar suburb of Pune, home to globetrotting IT yuppies and Bollywood femme fatales (or so I am given to understand). Here I must acknowledge the decisiveness of the wife-to-be, because without her making the decision, I would never have bought the place. She is well aware of my tendency to dawdle and overanalyze. Suffice to say that we are the proud owners of a bright, airy apartment that is quiet, dust free and yet very conveniently located. I have already discovered all the good bars and restaurants in the area. Also, liquor stores here deliver intoxicants to your doorstep based on just a phone call, just like at home in Bombay! Verily, my cup of joy overfloweth (literally, on weekends).

There is a nice “joggers” park nearby complete with a running track and a laughing club consisting of slightly demented senior citizens. Apart from getting my daily dose of exercise which offsets my less-than-healthy lifestyle, I also learn a lot from my daily visits to the joggers’ park, thanks to the loud middle-aged ladies who also drop by every morning. I sit on a park bench after my workout and eavesdrop on their conversations about the best recipes for “choley” (chickpeas) and the benefits of “katora” (push-up) blouses for older women. Because of my ability to discreetly eavesdrop, I have become a lot wiser in the last few weeks. Needless to say, the wife-to-be frowns on this tendency of mine to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations, but I do need my share of entertainment now, don’t I? I feel a smarter, better man for my eavesdropping. I often feel the urge to join these middle-aged housewives on their bench and contribute to their discussions (I am sure that my well thought-out views on push-up blouses and chickpea recipes are worth hearing), but I have been strongly dissuaded from doing this by the wife-to-be.

And now, finally, we will get to what you have been waiting impatiently to hear – why lawns are like dogs. You must remember that I was born and brought up in the city of Bombay (known now as Mumbai), which has one of the highest real estate prices in the world. Owning an apartment there in a nice neighbourhood is a luxury and beyond the means of even upper middle class people. Owning an apartment with a balcony (veranda) is unheard of. It is something reserved for movie stars and billionaire industrialists who have companies listed on the NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange. Imagine then my excitement, when I found out that the fourth floor apartment I bought in Pune had a balcony that measured about two fifty square feet, open to the sky and overlooking a vast expanse of flowering trees as well as a working women’s hostel (very important, that last fact).

The inner gardener in me decided that a lawn on this big veranda would be appropriate, little knowing the consequences of this landmark decision. The lawn looks great, no two ways about it. But it has become the apple of the wife-to-be’s eye, much to my chagrin. Just the other day, she returned from a long day at work. I of course am unemployed at the moment, and was expecting her to tenderly ask me how my day went (at the moment, my days are spent washing dishes and making sure that the toilet bowls are spotlessly clean). Instead, the first question I was asked was whether I had watered the lawn that day. When I feebly protested that my hectic cooking and cleaning schedule for the day had not permitted me the time to do so, I got an earful.

Recently, I suggested that we get away to a nearby hill resort town for the weekend, considering that the monsoon is here and the weather is just about perfect. Her reply was instantaneous and final. “We cannot do that”, she said. “Who will water the lawn?” It is obvious that the lawn has replaced me in the wife-to-be’s affections. She is Lord Emsworth to my Angus McAllister (for those of you familiar with that beloved creation of humorist P.G. Wodehouse). I am resigned to my fate. I have come to the conclusion that lawns are like dogs. They require constant care and hog all the attention. Now if you will excuse me, I have to go. The lawn needs watering.

Where Life Is Cheap

2008-05-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

Another day, another series of bomb blasts, another sixty innocent people lie bloody and dead on the streets of another Indian city. And yet again our nation’s Home Minister intones that “Indians are courageous and will never succumb to the nefarious designs of terrorists”. Sorry, it just isn’t enough anymore. Terrorist strikes on Indian civilians in public places (trains, temples, mosques, bazaars) have killed hundreds of people in the last couple of years. Last year alone there were four deadly terrorist strikes – in May, August, October and November. To my knowledge, not a single terrorist has yet been convicted.

Why is this? Indian opposition parties allege (with much justification) that this government is “soft” on terror. Unfortunately, this allegation is true. The country’s intelligence gathering machinery is in a shambles. There is no coordination between the police and intelligence forces in the Centre and the states. In such situations, “human intelligence” – agents on the ground, make all the difference. And these individuals are few and far between. There is no coordinated governmental strategy to fight terrorism – of any stripe. While terrorists from the failed states across our borders strike with impunity, the last few years have seen the ominous and swift rise of two new home-grown sources of terrorism – fundamentalists within the borders of India and the Naxalites (Maoists). The Maoists now rule about 15% of India’s territory – where the government’s rule of law is virtually non-existent. The territory ruled by Maoists is primarily in the poor Northern states – especially Bihar, Orissa, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand and parts of Andhra Pradesh. Lately, they have been spreading their tentacles into other “developed” states as well, including Maharashtra and Karnataka.

This government, which has been in power for nearly five years, has no clue about how to deal with terrorism – from across the border or the home-grown variety. They have had enough time to put in place a comprehensive strategy to deal with both. But they haven’t. Why? Apologists for the ruling governmental coalition say that a strategy to combat terrorism in India does not exist because the current government is comprised of a “rainbow” coalition of political parties, and the Prime Minister cannot put together a strategy because there is no consensus. The Leftists, for example, view terrorism merely as a “law and order” problem. It is not a law and order problem. Terrorists (both the fundamentalist and Maoist varieties) want to destroy the country and the very foundations and principles India represents – diversity, tolerance, justice, religious harmony, a thousand separate streams flowing into one mighty river. This is not merely a law and order problem.

The solutions are simple.

1. Put together a centralized Homeland Security type of program that concentrates on recruiting and training agents that can gather and act on terrorism related information before an attack takes place. This is not very difficult. Other countries across the world have done this successfully. The Indian Prime Minister sounded very petulant and ineffective yesterday when he said that such a centralized program was desirable, but “the states were not willing to cooperate”. This is not something he needs to build consensus on. Even opposition parties will agree with this (in fact, they are the ones who have been stridently demanding it). For a government that has shoved several controversial measures down people’s throats in the last few years (the caste-based “quota system” in higher education is the latest example), doing something positive and widely regarded as desirable should not be difficult. Even if it is difficult, it needs to be done, whether or not the states agree. Governing a diverse country such as India is a difficult job. If he does not want a difficult job, he should step down. Whining about it in public is an excuse and unbecoming of a man of the Indian Prime Minister’s stature.

2. Enact or bring back stringent anti-terrorist laws such as the POTA (Prevention of Terrorist Activities) Act that allows for the interrogation of those suspected of terrorist activities and makes it a non-bailable offence. Some human rights activists have claimed that there have been gross violations of human rights as a result of POTA. That is possible. However, what needs to be done is ensuring proper implementation of laws such as POTA, not discarding them. That is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. After all, laws prohibiting murder and theft have not been repealed because of the possibility of innocent people being convicted. The objective should be to ensure that no human rights violations take place, not the repealing of the law. The current ruling coalition cynically repealed the POTA law promptly after coming into power, in a bid to get votes from India’s minorities. The fact is that Indian minorities want the same things that India’s religious Hindu majority does – law and order, jobs, roads, education, healthcare. Terrorist bombs do not discriminate between killing Hindu and Muslim – they kill indiscriminately.

3. Set up “fast-track” courts to swiftly mete out justice to those convicted of terrorism. India’s judicial system is among the slowest in the world. Those terrorists accused in the 1993 Mumbai blasts were convicted only in 2007 – a delay of fourteen years, and this was a high-profile case in the full glare of the media!! This is simply unacceptable.

4. Get somebody who means business to implement the suggestions listed above. Our current Home Minister is an object of ridicule and contempt. He has no administrative skills or track record to speak of (can somebody name even one of his accomplishments after he has spent a lifetime in politics?), and spends his time reviewing police parades in far-flung rural districts and using the government airplane to visit his home-town when he gets homesick. His only qualification for the job is the fact that he has been a loyal Gandhi-Nehru dynasty sycophant for the last thirty years. The Home Minister is the second most powerful person in the country. The individual is entrusted with providing one billion people with internal security. It is a tough job and requires a tough, competent individual in charge. Surely, as Indian citizens, we deserve much, much better?

So why are these suggestions, which are so obvious, not being implemented? It is because in India, life is cheap. And it is not just our politicians to blame. All of us will forget last week’s Jaipur blasts soon. Unless, God forbid, someone we know or love is hurt or killed. We will forget it until the next time terrorists strike, killing another set of innocent people.

Do not forget. Hold your government accountable to do what is right by the people who elected them – the long-suffering citizens of India, Hindus, Muslims, Christians – all of us. India and its values, traditions and culture of religious diversity is unique. It deserves to be treasured and protected.

Literary Musings: Naipaul, The History of the Vanquished and the Search for Identity

2008-02-21T06:45:00.000-08:00

“Most of us know the parents and grandparents we come from. But that would only be a fragment of the truth. We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes, we can be strangers to ourselves”.

I have just started reading the V.S. Naipaul book “A Way In The World”, my first Naipaul book in a few years. As a reader, it is a pleasure to be back. Nobody writes quite like “Sir Vidia” Naipaul, though many try. Like quite a few of Naipaul’s books, this one too is concerned with ordinary people caught in a no-man’s land as far as their identities are concerned. Like Naipaul (who was born of parents of Indian origin in Trinidad in the West Indies, and who then left for England in his teens), the characters of many of his books face a similar identity crisis. Are they Indians, are they West Indians, are they English, or are they all of the above? These various identities all manifest themselves in Naipaul’s finely etched characters, often with tragic consequences. Naipaul has spent a lifetime exploring the search for individual and collective identity.

And in all of Naipaul’s books, there is always a suggestion of huge underlying tragedies lying just below the surface. In his book “A Turn In the South” published in 1989 for example, which dealt with his travels in the American Deep South, it is the enduring legacy of slavery and the way it continues to affect Southerners of all races a hundred and thirty years after it was abolished. In “Beyond Belief” (published in the 1990s), it was about how Pakistan had failed to reinvent itself after Partition from India in 1947. A five thousand year old common history and culture was forgotten (and indeed reviled) overnight, leading to tragic consequences and for want of a better word, an amputated state with people who were suddenly told that their ancient heritage was irrelevant and worth abandoning.

In Naipaul’s view, these nations and peoples have never recovered, and have lost their own identities in the bargain. They are “wounded civilizations”. When Naipaul was deservedly (and belatedly) awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, the Nobel Prize Committee said “Naipaul is (Joseph) Conrad's heir as the annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do to human beings. His authority as a narrator is grounded in the memory of what others have forgotten, the history of the vanquished”.

Of course, no writer I have read is able to write about such weighty topics and express these existential dilemmas as well as Naipaul. He has the ability to say so much with so few words. His writing style is economical, even sparse. Yet no one quite captures the essence of a person or place quite like Naipaul. A few writers, such as Paul Theroux (“Sir Vidia’s shadow”) have tried over the years. Theroux has his own compelling writing style, and it is evident that he is strongly influenced by Naipaul. However, Theroux’s sensibilities remain American and his perception and judgment of his environment is primarily from an American standpoint. Theroux also does not possess the historical perspective of the past that Naipaul does.

Naipaul is different. In his travel books, Naipaul is the eternal traveller, the observer, the perpetual outsider. He is a stranger to his surroundings and is yet intimately aware of them – an unusual combination. His knowledge of the past and local histories of the places he visits is astonishing. Being the perpetual outsider has its advantages as far as his writing goes. Also, his intelligence and perception of the reality he finds himself in (wherever he goes) is most acute. Combine this with his formidable writing skills, and you have an irresistible combination, a unique view of the world. While his writing is weighty and thought-provoking, it never comes across as self-important or presumptuous, maudlin or sentimental. There is no hyperbole or exaggeration, just a keen sense of the past and present and an eye for detail that is unsurpassed.

Naipaul’s skill and ability in describing a foreign place and its people runs in the family. His younger brother Shiva Naipaul was also a brilliant writer who wrote about travel and the search for identity in a very good book titled “Beyond the Dragon’s Mouth”. Read it if you get the opportunity. You will not regret it. Shiva died in tragic circumstances in 1985 at the age of only forty. After his death the British newspaper the Spectator established the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for "the writer best able to describe a visit to a foreign place or people...of a culture evidently alien to the writer". There are those who feel that Shiva would have surpassed his older brother as a writer had he lived.

But let me get back to V.S. Naipaul. His writing in many cases is prophetic – his 1989 book on India “A Million Mutinies Now” examines how India is almost always on the verge of imploding, beset as it is by caste, religious and linguistic tensions that are in some cases, thousands of years old. Happily, this particular prophecy about India has still not come to pass, though the recent riots in Mumbai bear evidence of what Naipaul writes about.

Of course, Naipaul swore never to return to India after his first visit there in the early 1960s, which led to the book “An Area of Darkness”. As a person of Indian descent, Naipaul was disillusioned with India and felt that India and its peoples had been traumatized by centuries of invasion and colonial rule. He thought of India as spiritually exhausted, an isolationist state clinging to the empty symbols and rituals of an ancient past whose spirit was dead. He swore never to return. But return he did, many times.

His subsequent books on India have turned out to be progressively more optimistic. He has admitted that in India, somehow the ancient past co-exists (sometimes uneasily) with the present. In no other country in the world has this happened. The “history of the vanquished” has still not been written as far as India is concerned. India is the only country in the world where the “pagan” past is still alive and well.

In his books, Naipaul often explores the idea of what can best be termed as ‘racial” or “genetic” memory. Possibly some ancient genetic memory was stirred in Naipaul on his initial visit to India. So though he was troubled and distressed by much that he saw in India and there was not much about his sensibilities that was Indian, could it be that some long-dormant genetic memory of the emerald-green fields and sugarcane plantations of his ancestors in Eastern Uttar Pradesh drew him back again and again to the land of his forefathers? Did Naipaul, the eternal outsider, finally get a glimpse of home? It is possible.

His ancestors moved halfway across the world in the late nineteenth century to escape the crushing poverty of the North Indian plains and to find a better life. It is possible that Naipaul came back a century later to the land his ancestors left and found home in the bargain. For a man who is an outsider wherever he is and whose world view was, is and remains bleak, it must have come as quite a surprise.

So if I wake up one morning from a vivid dream of sitting by the side of the Ganges River in Bengal, with the fog rolling up the river and the sky full of rain, with the smell of wet earth and vegetation and with fishing boats outlined in the hazy distance, if I wake up with the distinct feeling of intimately knowing a place I have never been to, I will remember V.S. Naipaul and his supposition of genetic inheritance and memory. Because home may be a place you have never ever been to before.

Getting Older: Caution!! Wrong Elephants

2008-02-18T06:04:00.000-08:00

You are wondering about the title of this blog. What has getting older got to do with wrong elephants? And what exactly are wrong elephants in the first place? Both your questions are very valid, dear reader. Congratulate yourself on your perspicacity and your ability to cut to the chase and ask the really important questions.

So what exactly are wrong elephants and what do they have to do with getting older? Allow me to elaborate. They say that it is easy to notice aging, except in one’s own mirror. I have been waking up every morning for the last few years and as I look at myself in the mirror, nothing about my appearance seems to have changed very much (except my receding hairline).

However, I would be fooling myself if I think that age is not catching up with me. It is. I feel tired if I drink too much and stay up late the night before. I ache if I work out a little more than my normal routine. My body does not respond as nimbly and promptly as it used to when my mind commands. This can sometimes be embarrassing. When I play tennis, I find myself about two steps behind where I used to be when I was twenty five. My mind thinks it can reach a service return on the far side of the court. My body meanwhile says “Hey, hold it!! What the hell do you think you are trying to do here?” When I play air guitar, my leaps and scissor kicks are not as high as they used to be. I get the sneaking feeling that I am no longer a serious contender for the next World Air Guitar Championships. My list of complaints is endless, and the depressing part is that it is only going to get worse. There is no remedy.

When is he going to get to the wrong elephants bit, you are asking impatiently (though I know that you are very polite and patient and will wait until I do). A year ago, I went to my local optometrist as I seemed to be having problems with my distance vision. The optometrist was a kindly bespectacled grey-haired man with crinkly eyes, about forty five years old. I was forty then, but somehow he seemed ancient. No way am I ever going to get that old, I thought to myself. Poor man, I thought, he is forced to wear bifocals. After my eye exam, he looked at me and said smugly, “You are getting older. You are going to need bifocals soon”. As I mentioned, he wore bifocals himself, and there was an air of immense satisfaction in his voice. Welcome to the club, he seemed to be saying, you didn’t think you could escape, did you?

Partly because I didn’t want to accept the fact that I am getting older, and partly because I didn’t want to give my optometrist the satisfaction of being right, I chose to ignore his advice. Of course, it has come back to haunt me. Last week I was in India, trundling down the Mumbai-Pune expressway at a hundred and ten kilometres an hour. Dusk was approaching, the sky was clear, the weather was perfect and I was enjoying the sight of a fiery sunset over the hills of the Western Ghats. As we passed one of the rest stops at dusk, a large signboard suddenly caught my attention in the gathering gloom. “Caution”, it said, “Wrong Elephants”.

I was naturally mystified and intrigued by the message on the signboard. For an instant, the sign seemed to make sense at a metaphysical level. I felt like I was reliving an acid flashback (though I have never “dropped” acid). I felt like I was in a drug-induced dream, though I was completely sober. Wrong elephants, I thought to myself, oh yes, that makes perfect sense. Then the rational part of my brain took over. No, this does not make sense. What are wrong elephants, and why are we being told to be careful of them on the side of a motorway? And taking that argument one step further, what are “right” elephants? Do we need to be careful of right elephants as well?

Pulling myself together, I squinted and took another look at the signboard. It read “Caution, Wrong Entrants”. It dawned on me that my optometrist was right. I am getting older. He is waiting for me at the entrance of the Bifocal Club, full of superficial sympathy and support on the outside, while chuckling to himself on the inside. I will probably have to take up his recommendation of bifocal glasses soon, and my days of spotting wrong elephants will be over forever. I am getting older, and like that line from a song in my youth goes, “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine”.

Sooner or later, I will be welcoming you to the Bifocal Club. It is inevitable. See you there.

Observations: “The Difference Between Being Admired and Being Loved”

2008-01-20T12:25:00.000-08:00

Let me start this off by saying that I am not a big cricket fan. I stopped watching test match cricket some years ago. I didn’t get sucked into the hoopla surrounding India’s big victory at the 20/20 Cricket World Cup last year either (though of course winning that tournament was a sporting triumph for the nation).

But I did watch India beat Australia in the Perth Test Match a few days ago. It was an interesting game. This blog is not about cricket, in case you are wondering. It is about human nature, and about how what we admire and what we love are often two different things. I will use the Indian test captain Anil Kumble to illustrate a point. As usual, I will take a bit of time to get to the point, so do be patient with me.

Anil Kumble is one of the world’s quieter people. As a test match bowler, he has tirelessly served Indian cricket for seventeen years. Quite frequently, he has won matches for India with his bowling. In fact, he is expected to win matches for India with his bowling. But you never hear about him off the cricket field. He is not viewed as sexy or glamorous. He is not a barrel of laughs and he is not the life and soul of the party. He is not a macho breast-beater in the mould of some of his more popular team-mates. He is not on the list of cricketers chosen to model clothes by Indian fashion designers. He doesn’t attend parties that are reported on Page Three of the newspapers. He is not photographed cavorting with Bollywood actresses. He doesn’t endorse soft drinks or car tyres. In fact, you rarely see or hear about him off the cricket field.

Why is this? It is because as cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle said at the end of the Perth test match – “He is not viewed as advertising material”. Kumble is widely admired – for his intelligence (he is an engineer by training), his command over the English language (witness the interviews he gave at the end of the Perth test), his bowling (for reasons already mentioned), his courage, professionalism and temperament (he once came out to bat in a test match in the West Indies despite having his jaw broken the previous day) and his dignity and maturity (his management of the Indian team and the hostile Australian media at the end of the acrimonious Sydney test match a few weeks ago).

On the face of it, these attributes should make him one of India’s best loved sports figures. But that is not the case. He is admired, but not loved. There is a difference. We love our wayward, dashing Yuvraj Singhs. Never mind that Yuvraj Singh performs well only intermittently. Never mind that he seems to have grown a double chin and that his attitude and temperament are often called into question. The fact remains that he is apparently loved even when he fails, and even when his attitude on the field and his team playing skills are suspect. Consistent performances on the field are apparently not a pre-requisite for loving Yuvraj Singh. However, such performances are definitely a pre-requisite for admiring Anil Kumble. We expect him to be reliable, to win matches, to be humble, intelligent, mature. Anything less and people start baying for his blood.

Why do we expect so much from those we admire, but so little from those we love? I have used Anil Kumble only as an example, but I hope that you get my drift. Kumble is the diligent, reliable honest husband forever being cuckolded for the dashing, untrustworthy flamboyant lover. This is not only applicable to the cricket or sports world. It seems to apply to all spheres of life.

Why is it so? I do not know. Could it be the relentless and fickle media and advertising industries that build up and pull down shallow temporary heroes, while ignoring or taking for granted the real ones? That could be part of the problem. The news seems full of trivial, titillating stories about cardboard celebrities, while the real news that we should know about is often drowned by useless chatter.

Is this a recent phenomenon or has it always been with us? I suspect that it has always been around, though it seems to have accelerated in recent years, thanks to the media explosion all over the world – 24 hour news channels desperately trying to manufacture “easy” news where none really exists. This is not just an Indian phenomenon, it exists everywhere. In the United Kingdom for example, the tabloids outsell the “respectable” newspapers by a considerable margin. The same is true in the United States.

What is unnerving is that the idea that we as a society seem to have stopped admiring (and loving) genuine heroes, because they are quiet and reliable and well, boring. Qualities that we were taught were good as children (honesty, modesty, strength, dignity and integrity) are often viewed as yesterday’s news. They are not sexy enough to warrant our sustained attention. Nobody wants to read about what a decent guy Anil Kumble is. But everyone seems very keen to know who Yuvraj Singh is dating. Someone recently said that this phenomenon was “Page Three moving to Page One”.

As a result of this phenomenon, glory and adulation is showered on those who do not deserve it, while genuine heroes languish in relative obscurity. I am not trying to disrespect Yuvraj Singh here (if you happen to be a fan of his). He is talented but has not done justice to his talent. Kumble on the other hand, is not the most talented bowler in the world. Yet he has relentlessly focused and challenged himself every time he has stepped onto the field. He has done the most with the limited bowling talent at his disposal. His stamina and mental strength are phenomenal, and he has often triumphed in the face of daunting odds. Surely, this (in addition to all his other considerable attributes) should inspire love on the part of Indian sporting public?

Of course, there are those people who are both admired and loved – in the Indian sporting world, Kapil Dev and Sachin Tendulkar come to mind. But they are exceptions to the rule.

Like everyone else, I have also fallen prey to this – expecting too much from the people I admire, and too little from the ones I love (as well as taking them for granted occasionally).

So this blog is dedicated to the people I admire – you deserve our admiration as well as our love.

Economics: An Open Letter to the Prime Minister

2007-09-01T05:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Prime Minister,

You must get many letters from people all over India. You are a very busy man, I am sure. I am just a fellow Indian citizen. I will not say that I am a “concerned” fellow citizen, because that would be hypocritical of me. Like most of our fellow citizens, I have been spending much of my time securing my own financial future, and frankly, I have done precious little to serve our great nation.

Much like most of our politicians, wouldn’t you say? The difference of course, is that I am a private citizen, and have not taken an oath to serve our nation. Our politicians have, and most of them abuse their sacred oath the minute they get into government office. But the purpose of this letter is not to remind you of such unpleasant facts, since you have to deal with these disreputable people every day. You know this much better than I do.

So what is the purpose of this letter, you may ask? I am getting to that. As a reasonably well-educated and socially aware fellow citizen, I feel I am entitled (and qualified) to make a few suggestions regarding how our country can be better governed. As a participant in our great if chaotic democracy, it is my right. I genuinely believe that I have something useful to say and that my views probably reflect those of the “silent majority”, those Indians who work hard, pay their taxes, and fervently hope that life will somehow get better for them and their families.

Over the last ten years or so, our country has made great strides towards prosperity. I read recently that the poverty rate has fallen from approximately 35% about twenty years ago to about 22% today. That is a very impressive achievement – not of the Indian government, but of the hard work and commitment of the Indian people who have seized the opportunity that partial economic liberalization presented them with. Of course, you were in some ways the architect of this, when as Finance Minister in 1991, you opened up the bankrupt Indian economy to the prevailing winds of globalization. Of course that decision was not made voluntarily, but under great duress, as the Indian economy at the time was tottering on the brink of collapse. Doomsayers (from your own party and of course from those “protectors of the poor” our leftist parties) said that Indian companies would not be able to compete. They said that Indian industry and entrepreneurs would be wiped out.

Fifteen years later, we can safely say that they could not have been more wrong. The Indian economy has been growing at a tremendous pace. Indian private sector companies have not only survived competition from their global peers, but in many cases, have beaten them. There are enough examples of this, as you are well aware. A new confident educated middle class has been created – people who study hard, work hard, pay their taxes and contribute immensely to the growth of this great nation of ours. I like to think of myself as one of these many millions.

However, there is much to do, as you are aware. Governmental reform is still non-existent. The government (which you represent) is still, lazy, corrupt, inefficient and unaccountable – a huge drain on our country’s resources. Why is that? As the Prime Minister, I strongly urge you to focus on governmental reform and not get diverted by non-issues such as how much Chief Executive Officers of private sector companies are making. I realize that this will not be easy – but then nothing worthwhile is.

One of five Indians still lives in abject poverty. A large proportion of the Indian population is functionally illiterate – they can sign their names, but that is about it. Our government-run primary education system (especially in North India) has ceased to exist. Our road, rail and port infrastructure remains in a shambles, obstructing economic growth. You must have noticed the pathetic state of the roads in Mumbai, our nation’s commercial capital, during your visits. A large proportion of our population does not have access to safe drinking water. The power situation in all our states is a disgrace. Apart from greatly inconveniencing us, it acts as a hindrance to economic and industrial growth, as many parts of our nation have to go without power for as much as eight to ten hours a day. I also know that despite this, electricity tariffs in certain parts of our country (my hometown Mumbai for example) are the highest in the world. Our forests and wildlife are vanishing at a rapid rate, many of our rivers are polluted and our environmental track record is a mess. Our judicial system is such that even the simplest litigation takes years (sometimes decades) to resolve.

The objective of this letter is not to blame you or your government. The objective is to suggest a few “high-impact” areas that you and your government could focus on to improve the living standards of a billion people. Of course, there are many vested interests involved who would not want this to happen – from politicians in your party and the opposition, our bureaucrats in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), and others such as your leftist allies. They are all part of the conspiracy to keep India poor and backward, because they benefit from it. By the way, I feel that our bureaucrats are much like the eunuchs in the ancient Persian and Roman empires. These eunuchs had no direct power and they fought no wars, but they had enormous influence on the way these empires were administered. They were “file-pushers” and the ones responsible for the downfall of these mighty empires. Sorry – as a student of history, I could not resist drawing that parallel. I am sure you see the similarity, dealing with stone-walling bureaucrats every day.

So what are the broad areas of policy that I request you to focus on? There are many. But I realize that it is not possible for you (or anyone) to focus on too many things. The three that make the most sense to me are: Infrastructure, Foreign and Indian Direct Investment and Primary Education. These are not radical suggestions and will not upset the apple-cart too much. But they will make a huge difference to our lives. They have been elaborated below:

1. Infrastructure: Here I request you to focus on and “fast-track” three things. They are:
a. Completing the “Golden Quadrilateral” highway system that was initiated with so much fanfare by your predecessor, Mr. Vajpayee. I also request you to find some way to improve the pathetic state of the roads in our major cities. I know that this is the responsibility of the municipalities involved, and most of them are extremely corrupt. However, there are ways that this can be done – by tying Central funds disbursed to actual results delivered on the ground, etc. You know how the governmental machinery works much better than I do. As a PhD in economics, I am sure that your grasp of economic history is very sound. You must know how the United States government introduced the “Food for Work” program in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. Millions of unemployed Americans were provided food and dormitory style housing in return for which they helped build America’s national highways. This highway network is still the most comprehensive one in the world – seventy years later. This “Food for Work” program provided food and employment to millions and also helped pull America out of the Great Depression. Why can we not start a similar program here in some of our more backward states?
b. Reducing power transmission and distribution losses - As you know, the business of providing electricity to consumers has two parts to it – power generation and power transmission and distribution. Adding new power generation capacity is a time-consuming and expensive business and will require much effort in attracting the necessary private direct investment. However, the second part – power transmission and distribution can be resolved much more easily. I have heard that about 30% of electricity generated in India is either stolen or not paid for. This is a staggering statistic. This is because of corrupt officials who take bribes from consumers who do not want to pay their electricity bills. How can this be stopped? Quite easily – turn over power bill collections to the private sector and pay them a small commission on the amount of money they collect. If Reliance Energy, for example was responsible for collecting outstanding power bills, I am sure that power theft (and distribution losses) would come down significantly. This would mean more money to invest in new power plants, building of new capacities, availability of uninterrupted electricity – a nice “virtuous cycle”.
c. Work is already being done on a “super-fast” rail freight corridor between our major cities, and that is a good step your government is taking. I know nothing about ports, so I will not venture an opinion on the modernization and enhancement of our ports. I am sure you have qualified experts in this area.

2. Foreign Direct Investment, Special Economic Zones and opening up the retail and insurance sectors:
a. Your allies in the ruling coalition government the leftists, have been fighting you tooth and nail on this. I am sure you are thinking – with friends like these, who needs enemies?? But the fact remains that if India’s economic growth is to be permanent, it needs to be all-inclusive and benefit people all across our vast land. The best way to do this is to set up Special Economic Zones in the hinterlands and offer companies tax breaks to set up shop there. Another way to ensure all-inclusive economic growth is to open up the retail and insurance sectors to private investment (Indian and foreign). This would create millions of jobs where they are needed most – in the Nandeds and Bhagalpurs of our country. It would provide a quantum leap to our economic growth and reduce the migration of millions of people to our large cities – which of course are already over-burdened, dirty and crowded.

Opening up the insurance sector would also provide huge sums of long-term funds that can be used for large nation-building projects such as irrigation, power generation, afforestation, etc. There is no down-side here; it is just a question of mustering the necessary political will to do it. Clear, transparent land acquisition policies need to be put in place as far as acquiring agricultural land for Special Economic Zones (SEZs) is concerned. The problems we have faced in this area are largely due to the lack of such a policy.

3. Primary Education For All: Most of us have watched with dismay as your government has repeatedly put its foot in its own mouth as far as education is concerned. We have watched with disgust as time and again, the topic of caste-based reservation has become a major political issue. If either you or your loved ones are ill, would you prefer to be treated by a sub-standard physician who shouldn’t have gotten into medical school in the first place? I do not think so. Reservations are valid – for economically challenged students, irrespective of caste, gender or religion. The caste system in India is a national disgrace and should be abolished, not perpetuated. It would be far better to focus time and money on overhauling the primary education system as it is currently exists. But you know the nature of the problem, I am sure. Even a layperson such as me has seen programs on the BBC and various Indian news channels showing how government-run primary schools (especially in Northern India) are bankrupt and without even blackboards or roofs on buildings. Many teachers do not even bother to show up at school.

How will our millions of young minds be educated if this is the case? How is the performance of these government-run primary schools currently being measured? As a taxpayer, I know that I have to pay something called an “education cess”. I have no problem paying this. But I would like to know how the money collected is being utilized. This is a reasonable request. This is also a problem that is easily corrected. The running of these schools in rural areas should be handed over to the village “panchayats” (councils). No parent would like to see their child illiterate. There should be financial incentives for parents to encourage them to send their girl children to school. I am sure you will hear howls of protest from the people currently responsible for running these governmental schools (the “eunuch” bureaucrats). But you need to cut the Gordian knot here and make a decision. It is also very important to focus on English being taught at the primary school level. 175 million Chinese kids (and adults) are learning English because it is the future as far as jobs and careers are concerned. This is true for India as well.

There is much more that can be done to benefit our great nation, especially in reforming state and municipal governments, since they are the ones ordinary people such as us have to deal with. That would be the subject of another letter. I realize that none of the changes I have mentioned above will be easy to bring about. But you have chosen to become the Prime Minister of our country and that job is difficult. You owe this to us – all one billion of us. If you can accomplish just these three things, we will be in your debt forever.

Also, I am not just an armchair critic. Show me evidence that you mean business in these areas – especially in primary education, where I feel I can contribute, and I will join you. I am not yet a parent, but I have friends who are, and I realize how difficult it is for young children to get admitted to good schools in India. If I ever choose to have or adopt children, I would want a better education system for them. So my decision is based on rational self-interest – just like the great economist Adam Smith used to say. I hope that rings a bell.

Sincerely,

Sandeep Gupta

Music: Your Favorite Beatles Album

2007-08-26T03:23:00.000-07:00

Which is your favorite Beatles album? Everybody in the world has heard of (and heard) the Beatles, whether you like them or not. And they came up with such melodious songs and “hooks”, that almost everybody loved them – from grandparents down to toddlers. That of course, was part of the problem. Rock purists often felt that the Beatles weren’t “rebellious” enough, and that they coasted along (at least initially), content to be popular icons, not taking risks.

Nothing could be further from the truth, which was that the Beatles were ground-breaking pioneering artists in every sense of the term. Even their early “boy band” albums, where four kids are staring out at you from the album sleeve, even those albums – these guys were taking chances to come up with music that was different. They were putting it on the line. There was rebellion aplenty – enough to keep young malcontents such as me interested.

Apart from the melodies and lyrics (which were uniformly great), listen to the sound on these albums. It is enormous. They are a four piece band that sounds like a four hundred piece band. And even back then, in the early 1960s, when they had teenage girls going berserk over them, they sounded different from everybody else. For one thing, they invented a large part of what we call rock ‘n’ roll music today. They did not play the blues or soul or a mixture of the two (like their near-contemporaries the Rolling Stones and the Who were playing at the time). They played rock ‘n’ roll – it was a new art form, because these guys were inventing it. And they were making up the rules of the game as they went along. They sounded fresh and unique, even in the very beginning. Certainly, they had their own set of heroes who influenced them – Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Elmore James. But they didn’t make any attempt to sound like these guys. They always sounded just like…well…themselves.

By 1965 of course, they were heavily influenced by another pioneer – Bob Dylan. Their albums started sounding far more mature, dealing with sex, love, drugs and politics in a whole new way. But just as Bob Dylan influenced them, they influenced Bob Dylan, who had initially started as a folk singer. By 1965, Dylan plugged in his electric guitar and a whole new genre of music was born – folk-rock. But I digress.

The Beatles were very different from the Stones and the Who. Initially, the Stones tried very hard to sound like their blues idols - Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, etc., with some degree of success. The early Who tried to sound like the Godfather of Soul himself– James Brown, and failed miserably. Instead, they sounded like what James Brown would have sounded like - if he had been born white, English and hopped up on amphetamines. The Who looked and sounded like a bunch of anarchists – at least initially. A bunch of menacing looking fellows, not guys you would encourage your teenage son or daughter to hang out with. But -it was all fascinating stuff anyway. Of course, both the Stones and the Who found their own distinctive voices by the mid 1960s, and forged what we call “rock” music today. Not heavy metal, but rock (I hate it when people confuse the two).

But the Beatles sounded unique, right from the very beginning. They are not my favorite band– the Who is, and will always remain so. But I still respect and love the Beatles enormously. They never rested on their laurels. They always pushed the boundaries of whatever they were doing. From late 1964 onwards, every album sounded different from its predecessor. No two albums sounded the same. They were taking chances. With every album, they were defining and redefining the boundaries of popular music, pushing the envelope. And every time, they took their audience with them. It was a leap of faith that millions of people around the world were willing to make. They created the notion that popular music could be much more than disposable noise. They proved that popular music could be high art and at the same time, easily accessible and understood.

So which is your favorite Beatles album? I am sure you must have one. For me personally, it is a toss-up between three albums – “Revolver” (released in August 1966), “White Album” (released in November 1968 after their return from Rishikesh , India ) and “ Abbey Road ” (their last album in the studio, released in September 1969).

“Revolver” is something else entirely. It is the first “drug” influenced album. You knew these guys were going where nobody else had gone before with the music. It was that fresh, that exciting, that exhilarating. Even if “Revolver” came out today, it would be an artistic breakthrough. It sounds new and timeless at the same time. Lennon’s songs like “Tomorrow Never Knows” are scary and he is taking you down a road where nobody (not even himself) has been down before. You know the ride is going to be very exciting, but unpredictable. McCartney’s songs exhibit a new level of maturity – songs like “Eleanor Rigby” and “For No One”. And you know that George Harrison is beginning to challenge the Lennon-McCartney songwriting combination. He is beginning to come into his own as a songwriter and a guitar player on songs like “Taxman” and “I Want to Tell You”.

The double LP “White Album” came out in 1968 and was the beginning of the end. It is a Beatles album in name, but in reality, it is three guys making their own solo albums using the rest of the members as their back-up band. They have different, incompatible personalities by this point. McCartney is still consumed by being at the top of the charts, and remains a supremely gifted songwriter and musician with a genius for knowing what will sell - a true music professional. Lennon by this point wants to be an artist – he wants to be avant-garde. Harrison is resentful that his songs are not being allotted space on Beatles albums, because of the domination by the other two. He is also getting impatient and more and more confident in his own solo abilities. And Ringo? Well, Ringo is just happy that the Beatles are still together. In terms of its musical vision and diversity, no album ever made comes close to “White Album”. Every single musical genre of the 20th century (and earlier) is present on that album – rock and its various derivatives – rock ‘n’ roll, folk rock, blues, heavy metal, art rock, psychedelia, ballads – even vaudeville. It is an encyclopedia of modern day music, and is awesome in its scope and ambition.

Pretty much every song on that album sounds like it has been made (and played) by a different band. It is impossible to categorize this album – it is beyond definition. How many albums in the history of music can you say that about? No other band in the history of the world could have made this album. Once again, the Beatles were redefining the very concept of popular music, including what constituted the word “popular”. And once again, the audience took their lead and followed them down that road. The Beatles’ confidence in their own abilities was supreme. Their audience’s faith in them was nothing short of miraculous – and touching.

“ Abbey Road ” was the last album the Beatles made in the studio (though “Let It Be” was the last album they ever released). By this point, it was pretty evident that these guys were not going to last much longer as a band. Both the Stones and the Who had also matured, and were snapping at the Beatles heels – in terms of musical and artistic ability. But “ Abbey Road ” still has its moments where the Beatles leave every single band in the world behind – from the shimmering harmonies of Lennon’s “Because” to the entire suite of McCartney’s songs on Side B of the album, which pretty much invented glam-rock and paved the way for David Bowie, Elton John and Queen later. And George’s guitar playing on Side B of that album - I could write a book on it, and it still would not do justice to his guitar-playing prowess. The man grew in leaps and bounds between 1966 and 1970. By 1970, he (rightly) considered himself the equal of Lennon and McCartney – as a songwriter and a musician.

“ Abbey Road ” was also the first rock album I heard when I was fourteen years old. I remember how intriguing and different it sounded. Unlike much of the disco stuff that was floating around at the time, it sounded like it had real value, real heart. It meant something. It sounded like it was being made by people who cared deeply about what they were doing. It engaged the listener’s heart and mind. It sounded like it could sustain the listener for a long time to come. I still dust that album off now and again and listen to it, more than twenty five years later, to remind me how and when I got introduced to great modern music. It stands up to the test of time.

And that’s all she wrote. August 20th, 1969 was the last time that all four Beatles were in the studio together, for the recording of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”. More than anybody else, they changed the world. The whole thing was a grand, audacious experiment that failed. But they changed the world anyway, and it was worth the effort. When John Lennon said in 1962 that the Beatles would be bigger than Elvis, he was right. When he bragged in 1966 that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, he was right. In 1970, when the whole thing collapsed like a house of cards, he said “We came out of the fuckin’ sticks to take over the world”. He was only telling the truth.

Thank you, John, Paul, George and Ringo, for the music that has always sustained us, and that even today, after all these years, still touches and enriches our lives in so many ways.

I will always love the Who, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Clash, Roy Orbison, Chrissie Hynde and many others. But - which is your favorite Beatles album??

History: The Golden Age and What Makes India Special

2007-08-25T01:25:00.000-07:00

The golden age was first; when Man yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew:
And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforc'd by punishment, un-aw'd by fear

- Ovid’s “Metamorphosis” (circa 8 A.D)

The ancient classical world dawned around the 8th Century B.C., when the great Greek, Indian and Persian empires were born. Of course, human civilization as we know it had been around for thousands of years before that. The Egyptian, Mesopotamians, Indians and Chinese had very evolved, sophisticated civilizations by 2000 B.C.

But the ancient classical world as we know it was born somewhere around the 8th Century B.C and lasted more than a thousand years. It was an era of great empires and philosophers, poets and prophets. Three great Indo-European civilizations were born – the Greek, the Persian and the Indian. In Greece, Homer wrote the “Iliad”, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle contemplated the human condition and philosophy was born, and Pythagoras proposed his mathematical theorems.

In Persia, Cyrus the Great created the first world empire – a mosaic of many cultures, religions and races, wrote the first Charter of Human Rights and Universal Law, and Zoroaster founded the world’s first monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianism, with its concept of duality – good and evil, heaven and hell. All modern-day Judeo-Christian religions have borrowed heavily from Zoroaster’s writings and teachings.

In India, the Vedas were recorded, the great epics the Mahabharata and the Ramayana were written, and the Buddha walked through quiet country lanes in Northern India preaching the principles of worldly renunciation and the concept of enlightenment. Ajatashatru and Chandragupta Maurya’s military campaigns created the first pan-Indian kingdoms. Ashoka the Great’s reign circa 220 B.C. ushered in India’s first “golden age”.

The ancient classical world represented one of the high points of human civilization – a time when humankind made great strides in science, philosophy, literature, poetry, music and military technology. It is a fascinating time in our evolution, and the explosion of ideas that took place then was unrivalled until the Renaissance, which came along nearly two thousand years later.

So was there ever a “golden age” of humankind as the Roman poet Ovid so beautifully writes about, or is this just romantic historical nonsense, propagated by those nostalgic for a past that never really existed? Was there ever a time when large numbers of people were at peace, prosperous and happy? Many different civilizations and countries proclaim that their own glorious past represents the “golden age” of humankind. I may be biased, but the Indian Empire of the Guptas was probably the most enlightened empire the world has ever known. Certainly, Indian history repeatedly refers to the Gupta Empire as the “golden age” of Indian civilization.

Why the Gupta Empire, you may ask (and you should). Because the Gupta Empire represented a near-ideal civilization that was strong yet compassionate, humane yet objective, traditional yet intellectually contemplative and curious. Accomplishments in art, philosophy, poetry, science, mathematics and astronomy reached new heights during the reign of the Gupta kings.

A brief run-down of the accomplishments of the Gupta Empire is warranted (to substantiate my claim). The Gupta Empire was established in 320 A.D. and lasted about three hundred years. It covered all of Northern India as well as modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh. The rulers of the Gupta Empire included Chandragupta, Samudragupta and the great Vikramadiyta (who became one of India’s three greatest rulers, along with Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka, both of whom had ruled the Mauryan Empire seven hundred years earlier).

The Gupta Empire excelled in the arts, literature, music, mathematics and most importantly for the welfare of their subjects, administration. They were no slouches when it came to defending their borders either. For three hundred years, they held off and consistently beat the Saka (Scythian Huns from Central Asia), their main enemies. The Gupta Empire’s army was very well organized, and they relied on the two instruments of warfare that stopped Alexander’s Macedonian armies in their tracks six hundred years earlier – the war elephant and the powerful Indian longbow. The Indian longbow, as I have mentioned in my blog on Chandragupta Maurya, was six feet long, and fired arrows that pierced the thickest body armor. The Gupta Empire’s armies also invented the highly tensile steel bow, which was the most powerful weapon of its time. The disciplined infantry bowmen of the Indian Gupta armies beat their marauding Central Asian foes – time after time. Of course, the trained war elephants and armored cavalry also played a part in their victorious campaigns.

In the field of arts, music and mathematics, the court of the Gupta kings had the “navaratna” or nine jewels – individuals whose contributions in their areas were outstanding. In the field of astronomy and mathematics there were Aryabhatta and Varahamihira, who invented the concepts of zero, infinity and the decimal system. The trading Arabs took the decimal system to Europe, where it replaced the existing Roman numerical system. Aryabhatta also calculated Pii to the fourth decimal. In the field of astronomy, he calculated the length of the solar year and the movements of stars and the planets. Nowhere else in the world was the study of mathematics and astronomy as specialized and advanced as at the Gupta Empire’s court.

In the fields of literature and poetry, there were legendary poets such as Kalidasa who wrote the play “Shakuntala” and Dandi. The exquisite rock sculptures and paintings at Ajanta and Ellora were also part of the rich cultural heritage left to us by the Gupta Empire. These are quite simply the most sophisticated, delicate and beautiful rock paintings and carvings in the world. They are now a UNESCO World Heritage site. In my opinion, they should be one of the seven wonders of the ancient world – they are that beautiful and exquisite.

The Gupta Empire’s trade with South-east Asia meant the spread of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy and culture to Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and beyond. The motifs used in the construction of the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia borrowed heavily from the concepts of the Gupta Empire’s artists and architects. The spread of Buddhism to Japan, China, Thailand and other countries can be directly attributed to the Gupta Empire.

The Gupta Empire kings were also humane and excellent administrators. They set up free hospitals for the poor across the empire. Many advances were made in the field of medicine – with doctors performing bone settings, caesarian sections and bone grafting. Many of these innovations in medicine were carried to the West by the Arabs, who traded extensively with the Gupta Empire. The major universities of the time at Taxila and Nalanda were also given grants and funding.

Last but definitely not the least, the “Kamasutra” or “Art of Love” was written and published during the reign of the Gupta kings. The Empire was known for its tolerance, open-mindedness and enlightened attitude towards sex.

The end of the Gupta Empire was part of the end of an era – the end of the classical world. Around the same time, the power of the Roman Empire was broken, as it finally succumbed to constant warfare on its borders. The Goths on the empire’s northern frontier and the Sassanid Persians on its eastern frontier battered away relentlessly, and the Roman Empire finally crumbled around the 7th century. A thousand years of history were at an end.

By the 5th century A.D., Rome had ceased to be an important city in the empire anyway, as the Goths under Alaric sacked and pillaged the city in 396 A.D. The Western Roman Empire ceased to exist in everything except name by the 5th Century A.D. The Eastern Roman Empire with its capital at Byzantium (also known as Constantinople and now as Istanbul) gained prominence, since it was the gateway to rich and populous Asia.

The Romans and the Sassanid Persians were mortal enemies for four centuries, and fought each other to a standstill. By the 7th Century A.D., the Persians were finished too. There was a new power rising to the South – the Arabs. The Persians were exhausted and fatally weakened by centuries of constant warfare with the Romans, and were in no position to withstand the Arab onslaught. The great Sassanid Empire collapsed suddenly without so much as a whimper, and more than a thousand years of Persian domination of the Near East came to an end. The Persians would never again be a dominant empire-building force.

The explosive growth of two new religions, Christianity and Islam, with their radical new ideas, saw the end of the classical world in the West. The new religions were proselytizing religions – a new phenomenon, since the pagan religions of the classical world were not. The zealotry of the early Christians and Muslims meant that some of their leaders were determined to wipe out all traces of what had existed before. This was a pity. Much that was great in the ancient classical world vanished forever, never to be recovered. However, sometimes great ideas never really die – they only come back in different guises. By the 10th Century A.D., Persia had a new set of poets and writers such as Rumi and Firdausi, who extolled the old Persian ways and heroes in his epic book “Shahnameh” (“The Book of Kings”). He wrote stories of Darius and Cyrus, Shapur and Khusrau – the forgotten heroes of another time – a time when Persia was great. Christianity also incorporated many of the principles of the old “pagan” religions into their own, such as the worship of the Holy Trinity and of saints (this was a substitute for the worship of the pantheon of gods in older pagan religions).

But the “Shahnameh” and other recollections of the classical world were only faint echoes of the true glory of an epic past. The past itself died forever everywhere – except in India. Only India was and continues to remain unique. Only in India does the ancient classical world continue to live, breathe and indeed flourish. While the ruins of Persepolis, Pasargadae and Ctesiphon (in Iran) and the Parthenon and the Coliseum (in Greece and Rome) are mute testimony to the greatness of the ancient classical world, the old ways and old gods are gone forever. The goddesses Anahita and Aphrodite no longer laugh and sport in the rivers and springs of the Persian highlands and Greece. The voices of Zeus and the Greek gods have been silenced forever. Delphi is a ruin and the Eleusian mysteries of Demeter no longer reveal the profound secrets of the after-life to eager seekers. The temples of Hermes and Helios have fallen into ruin and the smoke from a thousand sacrificial fires no longer obscure the azure skies of the Mediterranean. The ancient Zoroastrian fire temples in the snow-striped Zagros Mountains in Iran are in a state of disrepair.

The remaining monuments in these countries are just tourist attractions that draw people from all over the globe, reminding them of how graceful, beautiful and interesting the classical world really was, a time when our species was young, and the world was full of interesting discoveries and inventions, waiting for us to find them.

But in India, the ancient classical world continues to co-exist with the modern. Many of the symbols and monuments of “Golden India” are gone forever, such as the magnificent palace complexes of Pataliputra and Ujjain, Kanauj and Indraprastha. But the spirit of the classical world still survives and flourishes. Take a train ride from Mumbai to Delhi on the Central Railway in winter, and on a fog-bound morning outside the town of Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, you will suddenly see the “chhatra” or roof of the main Sanchi Stupa rising from behind the tree-line by the side of the tracks. The roof of the Stupa appears to float in mid-air, thanks to the heavy early morning fog. The Stupa is a marvelous complex of buildings dating back to the third century B.C. Its construction was started in the reign of Ashoka the Great – India’s greatest king. But this beautiful complex of buildings is more than just a dead monument. It is still home to hundreds of Buddhist monks who wake up with the rising sun and chant ancient Sanskrit “shlokas” (verses) in memory of the Buddha – just like they did more than two thousand years ago. It is a living testament to another time in the world.

The classical world still lives and breathes here and elsewhere in India, a link to a great and ancient past and to India’s first golden age. It is a reminder of the thoughts and ideals that shaped our modern world and thinking. Remember that, because it is what makes India special.

Happy Independence Day!!

Music: Album Review - Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska"

2007-08-19T14:08:00.000-07:00

Released in 1982, this is easily Springsteen’s most heartfelt and in some ways, bleakest album. It is also his least known album. Recorded at home with only an acoustic guitar and a harmonica for musical accompaniment, it is an American “dust-bowl” folk album in the tradition of Springsteen’s folk music heroes Woody Guthrie and the young Bob Dylan. The songs themselves are about ordinary working class people in tough situations in Middle America – a man who takes up a contract killing to pay his debts (“Atlantic City”), a policeman in a small town whose brother is a petty criminal (“Highway Patrolman”), a Vietnam War veteran who comes home to a dead-end job and a nervous breakdown (“Johnny 99”), a man remembering his dead father and his old home that no longer belongs to him (“My Father’s House”).

It is Springsteen at his most somber and earnest, and the songs are riveting. There are a few brutally honest albums in rock music. John Lennon’s 1970 “Working Class Hero/Plastic Ono Band” is one, the Who’s 1975 album “The Who By Numbers” is another, as is Bob Dylan’s portrait of a broken marriage – 1974’s “Blood On the Tracks”. This album falls into that category of honest, riveting albums.

There are no fist-pumping arena rock anthems here. Instead, in the tradition of Bob Dylan’s early work, Springsteen builds and breathes life into the gray, sometimes amoral characters in his songs. These are not just songs, they are short stories set to music. And like most well-written short stories, they can be mesmerizing. That is the beauty of folk music – it tells stories of ordinary people, folks like you and me.

The ambience is intimate, since Springsteen recorded all these songs at home without a back-up band. This album was released two years before his blockbuster “Born in the USA” album, which sealed his reputation as a superstar. Listening to this album, you feel that Springsteen is sitting in front of you on your living room couch on a cool fall night, with the fire roaring in the fireplace, singing his heart out – singing about hard times, ordinary people and the strength of the human spirit.

Sometimes, there are no easy answers to the horrors of life. The lyrics on this album are evocative, spare and sometimes chilling. On the title song “Nebraska” a murderer is about to executed, and is asked by the judge why he killed innocent people. He says:

“They declared me unfit to live,
Said into that great void my soul be hurled
They wanted to know why I did what I did,
Well, sir, I guess it’s just the meanness in this world”.

Springsteen may not be the best lyricist in the world, but he has always had a gift for capturing the spirit of working-class Middle America and its inhabitants. He builds a very convincing portrait of the quiet desperation that is the highlight of so many people’s lives. Most of his albums talk about hard times and redemption at the end of the road. On this album, he sings (quietly) about the hard times, but also about the fact that redemption is sometimes just not forthcoming. That is what makes this album compelling. Life can be hard, and sometimes, it just gets harder.

But human beings will always look for a reason to believe. And on the last song on the album, “Reason to Believe”, Springsteen is just like the rest of us in our vulnerable, weakest moments. He sings about the cycle of birth and death that is life and our never-ending quest to find meaning in our own lives and how we fit into the larger scheme of things:

“Take a baby to the river,
Kyle William they called him,
Wash the baby in the water,
Take away little Kyle’s sin
In a whitewash shotgun shack,
An old man passes away,
Take the body to the graveyard and over him they pray,
Lord, won’t you tell us,
Tell us what does it mean,
At the end of every hard-earned day,
We can still find some reason to believe”

We are all human, we are all flawed, and sometimes, in our darkest moments, when hope seems so hard to hold on to, we all need reason to believe – believe that life will get better, believe that the hard times and heartbreak will come to an end soon, that there is a grand purpose to our lives. Belief that there is a good future in store for us, belief that a kind hand gently guides our individual destinies. This song is a heartfelt yet ambiguous prayer to a deity that may or may not exist.

This is a beautiful, austere album, written and performed from the heart. Great art is always an unflinching reflection of the truth. The beauty of rock (and folk) music is its simplicity – great ideas, thoughts and ideals can be communicated in a simple way that makes it easy for people to understand, to connect. This is not true of many other art forms – even jazz and classical music are harder to understand, to interpret, to connect to. This is why I feel that rock music and its offshoots (folk music, blues music, even rap) tell stories in a way that are heartfelt and easy to understand.

Springsteen has always had a big heart and something interesting to say. He is not high-brow, he doesn’t try and impress you with his lyrical virtuosity, though his lyrics can be very well-written indeed. Over a long thirty year career, he has not just cranked out rock anthems for the sake of being popular. He believes that there is more to life than just being a superstar. He believes that in this day and age of instant (and often unworthy) fame and celebrity, good music can still make a difference and sometimes, save your soul. He is still willing to take chances and risks with his music, still willing to go out on a limb. He is a man with intelligence, character, grit and a conscience, and cares deeply about the world around him.

How many people in the entertainment business can we say that about?

Environment: Saying Goodbye To Us

2007-08-12T02:57:00.000-07:00

The latest issue of TIME magazine has an article on the probable extinction of the Yangtze River dolphin, one of the four freshwater river dolphin species in the world. This highly intelligent, human sized mammal was long considered auspicious by Chinese fishermen. Now it is gone, forever. It has the dubious distinction of being the first marine mammal to be driven to extinction solely because of humankind’s destruction of the environment.

Why is this so important? Why is the death of a seemingly unimportant species of river dolphin so important to us? The Yangtze River dolphin was a barometer of the health of China’s Yangtze River, a river that sustains four hundred million people or six percent of the world’s population. The extinction of the Yangtze River dolphin bodes ill for the survival of the river itself as well as the millions of people who live on its banks.

China’s phenomenal economic growth over the past twenty years has gone hand in hand with unparalleled destruction of that country’s environment and natural resources. The Yangtze River is now a river highway that resembles rush hour traffic – parts of the river have a boat density of sixty boats per kilometre. The Yangtze River is also highly polluted because of the discharge of untreated sewage and industrial effluents into the river. Industrial pollution combined with over-fishing has led to huge declines in the numbers and species of fish in the Yangtze – remember that four hundred million people depend on the Yangtze River for drinking water as well as food.

Old established methods of fishing have been replaced by those using sticks of dynamite. This “dynamite” fishing was one of the causes of the demise of the river dolphin. River dolphins are blind and rely on sonar to navigate the waterways. Dynamite fishing interferes with the dolphin’s ability to navigate the river. The confused and blind dolphins tend to panic, and get entangled in the nets of fishermen.

China is not the only villain as far as irreversible environmental degradation is concerned. India is also a culprit. The Ganges River dolphin is also at risk – it is listed as an endangered species and only four thousand are still left in the wild. The risks and dangers it faces are very similar to those faced by its Yangtze cousin – over-fishing, too much human activity, shrinkage of its habitat and pollution. The Ganges River, like the Yangtze, is dying a slow death, and water levels have reduced dramatically in the past few decades. The consequences of the death of the Ganges for India’s vast population are unthinkable – and very real.

The Indian national animal, the great and majestic Royal Bengal Tiger, is on the verge of extinction, with its natural habitat fragmenting and shrinking every year. Tiger bones are also a staple in traditional Chinese medicine, and the illegal market for tiger parts is a huge and lucrative one. Already, the Sariska Tiger Reserve in the Indian state of Rajasthan has fallen silent. The tigers there have been poached and hunted into extinction.

The Siberian Tiger, the most graceful and largest cat of them all, is also on the verge of extinction in Russia. Only three hundred Siberian tigers remain in the wild in a protected biosphere near Vladivostok. The biosphere is under threat, there are talks to construct a road though it to help revive the flagging Russian logging industry. This move would be an environmental disaster, to say the least.

It is not much different in the rest of the world, either. In the African country of the Congo, racked by poverty and civil war, the great African silverback gorilla is being indiscriminately killed and driven into extinction. Eating African bushmeat has become “chic” in the gourmet cafes of New York, London, Hanoi and Beijing. A total of thirteen thousand pounds of bushmeat (from animals illegally hunted and slaughtered) arrive in the US and Europe every year.

The American grizzly bear is hanging on by the skin of its teeth in Alaska and elsewhere. The world’s insatiable demand for petroleum products is putting increasing pressure to open up the Arctic Refuge in Alaska for oil drilling – this would be a death knell for the American grizzly. The world’s wild places are falling silent, in many cases forever.

And we have not even touched upon the effects of global warming yet. That is a whole different disaster waiting to happen.

Humans are the only species that play God with Mother Nature. We believe that humankind as a species is a measure of all things. This is what the ancient Greeks called “titanism” – equating man with God. Remember the old Greek legend of Icarus, the man who wanted to become like a god and fly? Icarus did fly, but he flew too close to the sun. His wings melted and he fell to the ground and died.

In our attempt to become gods, we are flying too close to the sun. Unless we stop now, we will soon be saying goodbye to another species – us.

Music: Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” (Symphony No. 9)

2007-07-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

This is my first attempt to review a piece of Western Classical music, so I am understandably nervous. Unlike rock music, where I consider my knowledge to be second to none, Western Classical music is a different matter altogether – especially when I have a family member whose knowledge and expertise far surpasses my own. I am talking about my father here. I better get this right, because if I don’t, he will never let me live it down. And don’t worry, gentle reader, I will not bore you with stories of the intricate details of E-flats and B-major notes, since that is beyond me. I will also not bore you with details of what different movements in a composition mean – these I understand, but they are not relevant to our point of discussion here. What, you ask, is the point of our discussion here? The point of discussion here is how Western Classical music has the unexpected power to move the listener in unforeseen ways. How it has the power to catch you off-guard, and rake up emotions and feelings you thought were long extinct. Allow me to explain.

The older I get, the more I am drawn to Western Classical music. Rock music (good rock music anyway) still appeals to the rebellious teenager in me. Give me a freeway in the Rocky Mountains (the Mumbai-Pune expressway will do just fine too), some great tunes, a cool, sunny day, and (hopefully) a beautiful woman by my side, and you could not ask for a happier camper than Yours Truly. But the older I get, the more my own mortality gets in the way – I know for a fact that I am not immortal, something I did not realize till about ten years ago. Someday at a time and place of his choosing, the Grim Reaper will walk up to me, tap me on the shoulder and say, “Let’s dance”. In the springtime, a middle-aged man’s thoughts turn to his own mortality and the nature of the legacy (if any) that he will leave behind.

So the older I get, my thoughts turn to more “spiritual” things, if that is the right word to use, without getting pretentious about it. And Western Classical music has that peculiar ability to move the listener in ways that sometimes cannot be anticipated. Some classical music pieces such as the one I am writing about have the ability to move people to tears, unexpectedly. And I am not an overtly emotional man. These are not tears of sadness, they are tears of contemplation, tears shed because someone (in this case the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak) has the ability to capture and interpret the human experience so beautifully through music. Without saying a word, using only the medium of music, he can suddenly capture what I am thinking and feeling at a particular moment. Truly amazing.

I have been listening to Western Classical music ever since I can remember. When I was very young, my father had those precious LPs that are still part of the family collection. I would not sell them for all the money in the world. They are part of my heritage and a family heirloom. I can remember listening to Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto at the age of four, and being mesmerized by the wonder and beauty of it all. It is a defining memory. I will write about the feelings that particular piece inspires in me in another blog.

So now that I have introduced you to this particular blog in my own inimitable, roundabout fashion, it is time to get to the point. Antonin Dvorak (pronounced “Vorjak”) was a Czech composer who was born in 1841. I will spare you the details of his life, since they are not particularly relevant and may bore you, gentle reader. Suffice to say that he was already moderately famous before he went to America in 1892 at the age of 51. America of course, is the new world in the “New World Symphony”. He had already composed the famous classical piece “Slavonic Dances”. In America, he landed in that great melting pot of cultures, New York City and took up a job as a teacher of composition and artistic director at the recently established New York National Conservatory of Music. He spent three years in America, and it changed him in ways he never expected. Coming from the comparatively cloistered, insulated Old World city of Prague, New York City in all its cosmopolitan glory must have taken him by surprise.

In New York, he must have met people from different social, economic, racial and ethnic backgrounds. He was exposed to American blues music, what in those days, they called “Negro spirituals”, songs such as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”. He also heard for the first time, the other-worldly yet hypnotic Native American chants. From this bewildering mosaic of musical styles, Dvorak fashioned the epic New World Symphony. The music captured the optimism of a young country, where the opportunities seemed limitless and where the constraints of Old World Europe did not apply. America was all about optimism and the freedom of the open road, where everything seemed possible if only one tried hard enough. The stifling conventions of Old Europe did not exist here. The New World Symphony reflects that.

But there is an underlying element of sadness here. We do not know Antonin Dvorak’s position on slavery or racial segregation. Although slavery had been abolished almost thirty years earlier at the end of the American Civil War in 1865, racial segregation was still strictly enforced, and the treatment of African-Americans and persons of other non-white races was still appalling. Dvorak must have had an opportunity to listen to those beautiful “Negro spirituals” with their yearnings for a just and better world in the after-life. He also must have had the opportunity to listen to the chants of the Native American tribes, whose last desperate attempts to save their own cultural heritage and civilization took place in the 1890s. Indeed, part of the symphony reflects Dvorak’s attempts to put American poet Longfellow’s epic poem “Hiawatha” to music. These songs and chants must have moved him immensely, because he incorporated them into his new composition.

What Dvorak paints then is a picture of America as a flawed paradise – a Garden of Eden, a land of plenty where the image of perfection is only skin-deep, and where tragedy and suffering lurk below the seemingly perfect surface. It is a compelling portrait that is happy and sad, realistic yet dreamy and yearning, optimistic yet somber, all at the same time. It is a masterpiece. America left a deep imprint on Dvorak. Listening to the New Word Symphony brings out these conflicting emotions and feelings in the discerning classical music aficionado.

Listening to the New World Symphony also reminds me of America – a country I love next ony to my own – India. The country is still young, it is still optimistic because it is not burdened by thousands of years of history. Everything is still new, and everything can still be looked at from a fresh perspective. It seems possible to make a fresh start to life, no matter how old one is. And there still is the promise of eternal youth and glory when you drive down the freeway in the Colorado Rockies on a sunny, summer day in an open-top convertible, with Dvorak’s New World Symphony blaring from the speakers on your car stereo.

History: Chandragupta Maurya - India's First Emperor

2007-07-14T01:30:00.000-07:00

In my last few ancient history posts, I have written about Hannibal (the great Carthaginian general), Cyrus the Great, Darius I and Xerxes (the great Persian emperors of the Achaemenid Empire) and briefly about Alexander and Julius Caesar. What about Indian kings, someone asked me? What about our own glorious history and heritage? Why are you not writing about that? All very valid questions – and they are right. India’s ancient history is at least as glorious and noteworthy as that of the Persians, Greeks or Romans. After all, we have produced such great spiritual leaders and philosophers such as the Buddha, Mahavira and Shankaracharya as well as great emperors such as Bimbisara, Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka the Great and Vikramaditya.

H.G. Wells in his book “A Short History of the World” observed that Ashoka’s rule circa 250 B.C. was the true age of enlightenment. Ashoka was an enlightened ruler, especially after he embraced Buddhism. The Mauryan Empire that he ruled has been compared to the Athenian Golden Age under Pericles (circa 440 B.C). The difference is that Ashoka ruled over many more people, and his reign was compassionate and benign. The Mauryan Empire ruled by Ashoka was also far larger and richer than the Athens of two hundred years earlier.

Sadly, no magnificent ruins of Pataliputra remain to remind us of the Mauryan Empire’s greatness, like Persepolis or Pasargadae in Iran or the Parthenon in Greece. In addition, western historians (propagandists actually) such as Strabo, Plutarch and later Livy and Virgil painstakingly documented (and greatly exaggerated) the achievements of their own Greek and Roman monarchs. Alas, no such detailed accounts exist of the Indian empires of old. But that does not mean these empires did not exist. So I will try and recreate the splendor and glory of what was ancient India in this blog.

So apart from the ancient Indian epics the Mahabharata and Ramayana, what is a good starting point to begin understanding ancient Indian history? A difficult question. The Magadhan kings Bimbisara and Ajatashatru circa 500 B.C. could be a good starting point. But even more interesting (and easier to write about from my point of view, since more documentation exists) is Chandragupta Maurya. Why Chandragupta Maurya? Because he was the founder of the first Indian Empire – a huge empire that stretched from Burma to eastern Iran, from Central Asia to South India. This empire was quite as large as Alexander’s empire, as culturally diverse and as rich. Chandragupta also was a hero, a great administrator and only twenty years old when he created this empire. His empire also lasted two hundred years, while Alexander’s broke up within a few years of his death. Chandragupta Maurya lived in very interesting times – circa 340 to 298 B.C., when the Western world was undergoing a seismic geo-political shift. What seismic geo-political shift, you may ask, and why is he using such big words? I am using big words because major world events justify their use. Allow me to elaborate.

In 333 B.C. Alexander the Macedonian invaded Asia and took on the Achaemenid Persian Empire. He beat the Persians at Issus in what is modern-day Turkey. In 331 B.C. he beat them again at Gaugamela in what is modern-day Northern Iraq. The Persian Achaemenid dynasty had established the first world empire more than two hundred years earlier, under Cyrus the Great in 560 B.C. Unfortunately, their last king Darius III (not to be confused with Darius I who is also called Darius the Great) was a coward and fled the battlefield at both Issus and Gaugamela. Because of his cowardice, he lost to Alexander when he should have won. Alexander inherited a stable, rich, enormous world empire that stretched from Northern India to Greece. To give you a modern day comparison of the changes this brought about in the ancient world, imagine if the United States went to war with say, Venezuela tomorrow - and lost. The world was turned on its head. The old established world order was abruptly destroyed and new power equations suddenly emerged.

After beating the Persians and consolidating his hold over the Persian heartland of Iran, Alexander decided to pacify the troublesome Central Asian Scythian tribes to the north and east of Iran. He got hopelessly lost in the mountains of the Hindu Kush (modern-day northern Afghanistan) where many of his soldiers died of frostbite and starvation. He finally emerged in Northern Punjab on the Indus River, sometime in 326 B.C. Here his army was challenged by the local king, the brave Porus. Alexander and Porus fought a series of closely contested battles. Alexander was impressed with the military abilities of Porus’s small army.

With a modest army of twenty thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry, Porus managed to beat off the much larger Macedonian army twice. The Macedonians were demoralized by the presence of war elephants (which they had never seen before) as well as the powerful Indian longbows. These longbows were six feet in length, and fired arrows that were capable of piercing even the thickest Macedonian body armor. Porus finally lost only because he was ambushed by the Macedonians on the Indus River. Porus (I will call him by his good Indian name Paurava – I am Indian and he was someone we can be proud of) was a giant of a man in both physical stature and courage – he was nearly seven feet tall. When his massive war elephant was brought down by the Macedonians, he dismounted and continued to fight. He continued fighting when his entire army was cut to pieces around him, and refused to give up, standing alone on the battlefield, sword and shield in hand, badly wounded and bleeding profusely. It is said that Alexander was impressed by Paurava’s bravery and that after the battle, they became friends.

Exhausted after a bitter winter in the Hindu Kush and so much fighting, Alexander’s army refused to press ahead into the rich and prosperous Indian Gangetic delta. Alexander was distraught but could do nothing about it. The reason the weary Macedonians were reluctant was because they heard that the king of the Nanda Empire (Dhana Nanda) awaited them across the Ganges, ready for battle, with a huge army - 100,000 infantry, 50,000 cavalry and over 300 war elephants.

The Macedonians were terrified of elephants which they saw for the first time in their battle against Paurava. They had no desire to fight and lose their lives in what was probably a lost cause - fulfilling Alexander’s desire for world dominion. They also had a healthy respect for the fighting abilities of the Indians, since they had fought against them in their battles with Paurava, as well as the Persians. A large Indian infantry and cavalry contingent had also formed part of the Ten Thousand Immortals – the elite bodyguard of the last Persian king Darius III. They had fought Alexander fiercely at both Issus and Gaugamela and had remained undefeated until Darius III decided to flee.

Why is he giving me so much of a background and when is he going to get to the damn point, you ask. Be patient, gentle reader! I am giving you such a detailed background because it has a great bearing on my story of Chandragupta Maurya – the founder of the Mauryan dynasty, and the first ruler of all India (and beyond).

And now to Chandragupta Maurya. His origins are shrouded in mystery. Who was he and like so many great men, how did he emerge from obscurity to create an empire that encompassed all of modern-day India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and eastern Iran? There are many different accounts. The one believed to be true is that he was a bastard son of the last king of the Nanda Empire (Dhana Nanda) and a palace maid whose name was Mura – therefore his name became Chandragupta Maurya. He was probably born in 340 B.C. He was a very intelligent, charismatic young man and as a child, had a hold over his playmates who treated him as if he were a young king. At a very young age, he attempted to usurp his father’s throne. He was exiled from Pataliputra and sent to Taxila on the north-western frontier of the Nanda Empire.

Here he met the famous Chanakya (also known as Kautilya), author of the world’s first comprehensive treatise on politics and statecraft, the “Arthashastra”. This was a fateful meeting. Chanakya spotted the young Chandragupta’s “empire-building” potential. He also realized that he could become powerful himself and Chandragupta was a willing instrument who would help him succeed. Chandragupta for his part, realized that Chanakya was a man who could help him take revenge against his father and gain control of the Nanda Empire.

The relationship between Chanakya and Chandragupta was similar to the one between Aristotle and the young Alexander. Chanakya was teaching at Taxila University in northwestern Punjab when Alexander arrived there. Worn out by his crossing of the Hindu Kush and his battles with Paurava, a weary Alexander stayed longer at Taxila than he had originally planned. This gave Chanakya the opportunity to introduce Chandragupta to Alexander. What an important and historical meeting that must have been!! Chandragupta tried to convince Alexander to go to war with his father Dhana Nanda, the ruler of the Nanda Empire. But he failed. Alexander’s army was exhausted, and they had no desire to fight Dhana Nanda’s army. Their attempt to conquer India had been unsuccessful. Since Chandragupta had been exiled and could not go back to his father’s kingdom, he decided to stay in Taxila with Chanakya.

History has it that Chandragupta quietly studied and learned the secrets of how Alexander had overrun the Persian Empire. The young man must have spoken at length to the Macedonians and understood their military strengths and strategies – the power and cohesion of the heavily armored Greek phalanx, the battle gear of the Macedonian Companion cavalry, the use of siege towers and engines, etc. All of this knowledge was to come in very useful later. This meeting between Alexander and Chandragupta probably took place in 325 B.C., right before Alexander finally gave up his dream of conquering India and headed west back to Babylon, where he died two years later, probably of malaria. Alexander’s death and lack of a successor caused a power vacuum in the Old Persian Empire.

When Alexander died in Babylon in 323 B.C., his Macedonian lieutenants gathered around him like vultures, all hoping to be anointed his successor. Legend has it that when Alexander was asked who the chosen successor to his empire was, he raised his head from his deathbed and whispered in his fevered voice “krateros” – which meant “to the strongest”. This story may or may not be true. What is true is that Alexander’s young empire, inherited from the Persians, fell apart just ten years after his conquest because of Alexander’s poor administrative skills and the lack of an appointed successor.

The power vacuum created by Alexander’s death meant a mad scramble for power among his lieutenants (“satrap” in Greek, “kshatrapavan” in old Persian). One of Alexander’s satraps Seleucus (known later as Seleucus Nicator or Seleucus the Victorious) wrested control of the eastern portion of the Alexander’s empire – from eastern Iran to the Indus River in the Punjab. Seleucus was a very capable and fascinating man in his own right and established the Seleucid Empire in Iran and Iraq, which was later overthrown by the second Persian Empire of the Parthians.

But back to Chandragupta!! By 325 B.C. Chandragupta had an able guide and mentor in Chanakya. Having failed to convince Alexander to invade India, Chandragupta and Chanakya resorted to an alternate plan. Together, they planned and schemed to take on Chandragupta’s father, Dhana Nanda, the king of the Nanda Empire. Chandragupta was still a teenager. He was resentful that his father had exiled him to Taxila. He considered himself the heir to the Nanda throne, though he was a bastard son. Over the next few years, Chandragupta planned meticulously. He built an army of his own. He also formed strong alliances with powerful enemies of the Nanda Empire, including Paurava’s successor, the Himalayan king Parvatka. Your enemy’s enemy is your friend, remember? One of the basic cornerstones of politics and statecraft. Guided by the clever Chanakya, Chandragupta finally put together a formidable army and a powerful alliance of his father’s enemies. Then he proceeded to go to war with his father – the ruler of the Nanda Empire. Here, unfortunately, historical accounts are hazy and unlike in Western history, there are no clear accounts of the battle that took place between Chandragupta and his father’s army.

What is known is that Chandragupta beat his father’s general Bhadrasala in a series of battles, the last one ending with the siege of the city of Kusumapura on the Indo-Gangetic plain. We also know that Chandragupta beat his father Dhana Nanda and killed him. He had gained his revenge. He then became king and ascended the throne at Pataliputra in eastern India (modern-day Bihar). He supplanted the old Nanda dynasty and founded one of his own - the Mauryan dynasty. This was in 320 B.C. Chandragupta was only twenty years old, and the ruler of a large, rich empire that stretched more than a thousand miles from east to west, and eight hundred miles north to south.

Chandragupta then proceeded to pick off the weaker states in southern India. By the time he was twenty two years old (about 318 B.C.), he was ruler of all India – the first ruler of India, our first Emperor. Chandragupta was an excellent administrator as well (most warriors are not). Crime was almost unheard of in the Mauryan Empire in his reign. The empire was prosperous, and Chandragupta’s penal system was harsh – evasion of taxes meant a death sentence and perjury was punished by maiming. The empire was divided into three provinces, each managed by a viceroy. A palace guard comprised of well-paid foreign mercenaries guarded the royal presence. This ensured that no disaffected local elements tried to kill him. Chanakya set up a secret police agency and an excellent intelligence network that protected the empire from enemies, within and outside the empire.

How prosperous and stable was the Mauryan Empire under Chandragupta? We have to rely on accounts from visiting Greeks here. Megasthenes, Seleucus’s ambassador to the Mauryan Empire had this to say about the power and opulence of Pataliputra, the capital of the Mauryan Empire and the royal palace there - “It has wonders which neither Persian Susa in all its glory nor the magnificence of Ekbatana can hope to vie; indeed, only the well-known vanity of the Persians could imagine such a comparison”.

At the time of Chandragupta Maurya, the city was surrounded by a wooden wall which had slots from which to shoot arrows. This wall had five hundred and seventy towers and sixty-four gates. Beyond the wall was a deep trench which was used for defense and as a sewage system. The city was mostly built of wood. This changed when Chandragupta’s grandson Ashoka the Great ascended the throne. He converted the city from a wooden one to a city of stone and granite (much like Augustus did with Rome two hundred and fifty years later).

The royal palace at Pataliputra is reported to have covered an area of four square miles. Ashoka also built universities and monasteries. Pataliputra was the largest, richest and most civilized city in the world in its time. No Greek or Persian city could match it. Sadly, very little of this great city remains to remind the modern visitor of its splendor and magnificence.

Chandragupta now turned his attention to the west in a bid to expand his empire. As a teenager, he had spent several years studying the military strategies and tactics of the Macedonians. This knowledge now proved to be very useful. He decided to take on Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the Seleucid Empire, the man who had taken control of the eastern portion of the erstwhile Persian Empire. While Seleucus Nicator was a great empire-builder in his own right, he was no match for the young Indian conqueror.

Chandragupta went to war with Seleucus in 306 B.C., a man he must have met nearly twenty years before, when he was a young exile at Taxila. Chandragupta adapted Macedonian battle tactics to suit Indian conditions and comprehensively beat Seleucus in the field. Again, no accounts of the battle survive, so sadly no details are available. But it must have been one humdinger of a battle!! Seleucus was forced to cede huge territories east of the Indus River to Chandragupta. All of modern-day Pakistan, Afghanistan and eastern Iran were handed over to Chandragupta as part of the peace treaty after Seleucus lost.

Chandragupta now ruled over the largest empire in the world – from Burma (Myanmar) in the East, to Iran in the West, from Sri Lanka in the South to Uzbekistan in the North. This empire was quite as large, rich and culturally diverse as the erstwhile Persian Empire conquered by Alexander the Macedonian.

Chandragupta Maurya abdicated his throne in favor of his son in 298 B.C., and died shortly after. He was only forty two years old.

Like most conquerors, Chandragupta was intelligent, ruthless, opportunistic and charismatic. But he was India’s first emperor, and founder of a great empire and a great lineage. His grandson Ashoka the Great expanded the boundaries of the Mauryan Empire even further, and became the greatest king in India’s history. Let nobody belittle India’s history and heritage. It is quite as great as the history of Greece or Rome. I hope this blog has in a small way brought alive the first man who united India under a single banner, the banner of the great Mauryan Empire – Chandragupta Maurya, India’s first emperor.

Economics - Physician, Heal Thyself !!

2007-07-11T04:20:00.000-07:00

In the book “The Name of the Rose” (set in 14th century Italy ), a character makes a very interesting observation. He is part of a mob that is killing Jews in Italy because the Jews are supposedly exploiting poor Italian peasants. This is untrue. The fact of the matter (as revealed in in the book) is that economic opportunities are being taken away by the King and the representatives of a corrupt clergy, both of whom are exploiting the landless peasants and getting rich in the bargain. When asked why he is attacking Jews when they are innocent, the character says “When one’s true enemies are too strong, one has to find weaker enemies”. This is a truly profound observation.

Which now brings me to this particular rant. As usual, I will take some time to get to the point, because I will first lay out my facts and build my case. So bear with me, gentle reader. There was a very interesting headline in the Times of India some weeks ago, where the Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh expressed "concern" about the high salaries being paid to the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of some Indian companies - he probably had Sunil Mittal and Mukesh Ambani in mind. Yes - it is true that some Indian CEOs are now paid very highly.

But why is that a "concern" that the Prime Minister needs to express? In a democratic country, the industrial private sector has a few social obligations to the government - they are:

(1) Paying taxes on profits generated

(2) Abiding by the regulations of the land - environmental laws, developmental laws, and so on.

(3) Not discriminating in their hiring and recruitment practices

So why this "concern" about rising CEO salaries in the private sector? And what business is this of the government? The answer is simple - it is not the government's business. CEO salaries should be dictated by market forces and more importantly, shareholders of the company in question - because CEOs are responsible for company performance to shareholders, who as the name implies, are owners of that company.

Dr. Manmohan Singh (a man who I do like) is playing to the so-called "social justice" gallery here. This is a legacy of the old "socialist" days where the Indian government felt an obligation to tell its citizens what to do, where to go, how much to earn, etc. It smacks of a "Big Brother" attitude that we don't need, an attitude that stunted our economic growth for fifty years - a huge tragedy. What if we had adopted the right economic policies in the 1970s instead of the 1990s?? We would have been a world economic power by now. The lives of a billion Indians would have been transformed.

The government's attitude assumes that we, as Indian citizens do not understand what is good for us and that we need a patronizing, condescending government to treat us like little children and tell us. In a democratic, progressive country, salaries that CEOs (or anyone else for that matter) earn is none of the government's business.

The Prime Minister would be better served by reviewing the pathetic condition of the public sector companies that are run by the government - basic infrastructure services such as water, electricity, law and order and so forth. Let us take a status check on these, shall we? Sixty years after independence, a majority of our citizens do not have access to clean drinking water. Sixty years after independence, a majority of our citizens are not assured of guaranteed, uninterrupted electricity. Sixty years after independence, the roads of my home city Mumbai (a city I will always love) resemble cratered lakes every time it rains. Sixty years after independence, wide swathes of India are lawless and in certain parts of North India one feels like one has stumbled onto the sets of an old Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, since no law and order worth the name exists. Large areas of the country are controlled by extreme left-wing "Naxalites", a group similar to the Maoists in Nepal, who set up parallel governments and terrorise the locals.

Remedying the above mentioned things is what the government should be focusing on, not because they are doing us a favor, but because it is their job. On the issue of governmental reform, all we get from the Prime Minister is useless hand-wringing and vague hopes that things will get better in the future. As an economist, the Prime Minister should look at the average Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) from the public sector units run by the government (many of which are monopolies, inefficient and corruptly run) and compare that to the average ROCE earned by India's private sector, which is growing more confident by the day and is at last living up to its potential of becoming a world beater. He will know the answer.

Do not kill the golden goose that is delivering the nation a 9% GDP growth rate, Mr. Prime Minister!! Focus instead on governmental reform and accountability. That is why we have voted you into power. Tell us that you are taking concrete steps to provide us with safe drinking water, uninterrupted electricity, good road and rail infrastructure and an efficient law and order system. Tell us you will provide every Indian child the opportunity to get a decent high school education. Tell us you will open up the retail and insurance sectors to foreign investment. This will generate millions of jobs in rural areas, answer forever the question of why the nation's economic growth is not "all-inclusive" and add at least a percentage point to the nation's GDP growth rate. Tell us that these are your priorities, not how much private sector CEOs are making.

Why are you targeting the private sector, Mr. Prime Minister? Could it be because your true enemies – the corrupt unaccountable Indian bureaucracy, are too powerful for you to take on? Is it because you need weaker enemies? Diagnose and treat the ailment that is destroying the Indian body politic - corruption, lack of accountability and the sheer wastefulness of the governmental sector. Physician, heal thyself!! I am angry, and if you are an Indian citizen, you should be angry too. We have been shafted by our politicians and bureaucrats for far too long.

History - Hannibal Ad Portas !!!

2007-07-09T11:38:00.000-07:00

“Hannibal ad portas” !! (Hannibal at the gates !!). The Roman Empire was arguably the most powerful empire in the Western world in the centuries before Christ. However, there was one man that made the Romans quake in their sandals. His name was Hannibal Barca, son of Hamilcar Barca and the city of Carthage on the North African coast in what is modern-day Tunisia. Even centuries after his death, Hannibal’s name continued to inspire fear across the Roman Empire.

This piece is not so much about the Carthaginian Empire (which was a great power in the Mediterranean for several centuries before the birth of Christ) but about Hannibal, an enigmatic, quiet, intense man who many believe was the greatest military strategist of all time. Hannibal remains a mysterious figure in history. He had none of the flamboyance or megalomania of an Alexander, Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte (by the time he died of malaria in Babylon in 323 B.C. at the age of thirty-two, Alexander was convinced that he was a god.). He was also monogamous and faithful to his only love, the Spanish princess Imilce, daughter of an Iberian (Spanish) chieftain. This of course was rare among ancient monarchs and emperors. Both Alexander and Julius Caesar were pederasts (an unpleasant fact many history books prefer not to tell you about) and bisexual. You may remember the old ribald ditty the Roman legions sang about Julius Caesar when returning home from the conquest of Gaul:

“Home the bald whoremonger we bring,
Romans, lock your wives away”.

Hannibal did not have the gift of oratory that Alexander and Julius Caesar possessed. Julius Caesar’s ribald platform oratory on the eve of battle was legendary. Before the conquest of Gaul (France), Caesar stood on a tree stump with a half-eaten radish in his hand and addressed the Roman legions. Did he try to motivate them with tales of the glory and power of Rome? No, contrary to what historians such as Livy say, he did not. He made obscene gestures with the radish and told the legions about the riches of Gaul and the beauty of the Gaulish women, and how they were theirs for the taking. “Tell me that does not motivate you”, he told his troops as he threw the remains of the radish to the ground, “you damned fornicating dogs, you !!" How the legions roared their approval!!

But I digress. As far as personality went, Hannibal was much more like Cyrus the Great, the ancient founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire – a quiet, dignified, natural leader of men. He slept on the plain earth, ate hard soldier’s bread and drank brackish water with the lowest of his foot-soldiers. He treated them like his comrades and shared in their hardships, which made them love him even more. In battle, he put himself at the head of his infantry, where the danger to his own life was the greatest. A noteworthy feature of Hannibal’s army was that it was multi-cultural and multi-ethnic comprising of North Africans, Spaniards, Celts and indeed Italians. He commanded a group of mercenaries from across Southern Europe and North Africa, and they were loyal to him to the end.

Apart from being a military genius, Hannibal spoke several languages, including Greek and Latin, understood Roman culture, history and their gods, and most importantly, the Roman mind. He knew how the mind of the enemy worked and that was why he was so successful for so long. He was a scholar and a master of philosophical discourse. Late in life, during a philosophical discourse on the duties of a general by a Greek philosopher named Pharmio, Hannibal was asked his opinion. Hannibal stood up and said, "I have seen during my life many an old fool; but this one beats them all." But much about the man remains unknown. What is known is the fact that he crossed the Alps via North Africa and Spain in winter with an army that included African war elephants– surely the most audacious and inventive war strategy of all time.

Before we talk about Hannibal, we must understand where he came from. Hannibal Barca was born into a powerful family of nobles in Carthage (part of modern-day Tunisia). Carthage was the principal city of the Carthaginian or Punic Empire, on the shores of the Mediterranean in North Africa. “Punic” is derived from the word “Phoenician”. The word “Carthage” comes from the old Phoenician word “kard hadast” which meant “New City”. Carthage was founded by Phoenician seafarers sometime around 820 B.C. However, it became an important city sometime around 575 B.C., when the nearby Phoenician sea capital Tyre fell to Babylonian monarch Nebuchadnezzar. The location of the city at the tip of North Africa on the shores of the Mediterranean along with its proximity to Sicily, Spain, the North African coast as well as the African continent meant that it was an important city.

Between 575 B.C. and 265 B.C, the city grew in power and importance, bringing it into inevitable conflict with a growing force across the Mediterranean – the nascent Roman Empire. Carthage’s growing power and influence especially in Sicily and Southern Europe meant rivalry with Rome. Carthage with its navy was a sea power, while Rome with its large disciplined infantry was a land power. Inevitably, Rome’s ambitions of expansion meant that it started eying Carthage’s provinces in Southern Europe – in Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica in Spain. I will not bore you with dates, but there were three wars fought between Rome and Carthage, the three “Punic Wars”. The first one between 264 B.C and 241 B.C, the second (and this is the one we will focus on because it involves Hannibal the Great) between 218 B.C. and 201 B.C, and the third and final one between 149 B.C. and 146 B.C.

Hannibal’s father Hamilcar Barca was a Carthaginian general in the first Punic War. Carthage lost that hard fought war, had to cede Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica to Rome, pay large sums of money to Rome as war reparations and sue for a humiliating peace. As a young boy, Hannibal learnt the stories of the first Punic War at his father’s knee. He swore that someday, he would help Carthage regain the empire it had lost to the Romans.

And here our story of Hannibal begins. Hannibal became Commander-In-Chief of the Carthaginian armed forces in 221 B.C. at the age of twenty-six, a few years after his father Hamilcar Barca died. He spent the next three years of his life consolidating Carthage’s possessions in Iberia (Spain), much to the alarm of the Romans. Hannibal realized that if Carthage was to be safe, he would have to take the war to Rome. Attack was the best form of defense. He also knew that the Roman navy had blockaded Carthage and that he would have to find another way to fight the Romans. He also knew that the Roman infantry was formidable, but their cavalry was weak. For three years, he trained his Iberian (Spanish) infantry and elite Numidian (North African) cavalry.

Then he did the unthinkable – he crossed the Alps via Northern Spain and entered Italy. The Carthaginian army crossed the Alps in 218 B.C. For a long time, the Romans did not believe that this was possible, and dismissed it as a rumor. But it was not. Hannibal began his crossing of the Alps with 38,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry and 37 African war elephants, through unexplored routes. Along the way, he had to contend with war-like mountain tribes. He offered them two choices – join him or fight him. The ones that fought him lost. The ones that joined him became his allies in his battle against Rome. He had to face innumerable hardships on this epic journey. He was struck by snow-blindness and lost an eye. His North African and Iberian allies were not used to the cold in the Alps and many of them died. Of the 37 war elephants that started the journey, only 12 survived the crossing of the Alps.

But cross them he did, landing in what is now the city of Turin in modern-day Italy. The Romans did not know what to make of this, and sent out several armies to battle Hannibal. Without going into too much detail about the battles fought, it is enough to know that with a much smaller force at his disposal than the Romans had, Hannibal won every time. At Trebea, Trasimene and many other places in Italy, Hannibal overwhelmingly defeated much larger Roman armies.

One battle in particular, deserves mention – the Battle of Cannae in 216 B.C, where the elite of the Roman army was comprehensively destroyed. Hannibal was camped with his army of about 40,000 men on the banks of the Aufidus River in southern Italy. He had his back to the river with no apparent means of escape. Here he was challenged in battle by the Roman generals Varro and Lucius Paullus and a huge Roman army numbering more than 100,000 men. On the face of it, Hannibal’s position was indefensible – a much larger army in front of him and a fast-flowing river behind him. However, Hannibal’s military genius came to the fore again. As he faced off with the confident Romans, he placed his weakest, light-armed infantry in the centre in a crescent formation, with his formidable Numidian cavalry out on the flanks. As the Romans charged, the disciplined Roman legions broke through the weak Carthaginian center – just as he had planned. The Romans broke through the Carthaginian center and found themselves in the Aufidus River. In the meanwhile, the powerful Numidian cavalry circled around the back of the Roman legions and caught them in the rear. It was a masterstroke. The Roman legions were either driven into the river and drowned, or fell like ninepins in the face of the charge of the heavily armored Numidian horse. By the end of the day, 70,000 Romans were killed or captured. It was the single greatest loss the Romans had ever faced. The strongest Roman army ever fielded lay dead or wounded on the banks of the Aufidus River.

And here, at his most triumphant, is where Hannibal made probably made his only mistake. The Roman armies were destroyed, the Roman Empire in a state of panic. He was viewed as invincible. Hannibal marched up to the gates of Rome after Cannae, but he did not enter the city. Why? One reason could have been because he did not have the necessary siege engines and towers that he would have needed to besiege the city. Nobody knows for sure. Whatever the reason, Hannibal lost his one chance to occupy and conquer Rome. As time went by, the Romans got an opportunity to regroup and train new armies. The size of Hannibal’s army remained the same, and though he was victorious, he lost men in his battles with the Romans, and he was unable to replenish his supply of soldiers. Though he continued beating the Romans on the battlefield (when they agreed to give battle and not retreat) and captured the Italian cities of Capua, Sagentum and Tarentum, the tide was turning against Hannibal. His pleas for more troops from his parent city Carthage fell on deaf ears. Politicians and members of the ruling oligarchy in Carthage were resentful and jealous of his success and refused to send him the aid and resources he needed to deliver the killer blow.

His last opportunity came in 207 B.C. when the ruling Carthaginian oligarchy finally consented to send an army from Iberia (Spain) commanded by Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal, a very good cavalry commander in his own right. The Romans were terrified at the prospect of another Carthaginian army in Italy. However, by this time, the Romans had a war hero of their own – the great Scipio Africanus, a young general who grew up studying Hannibal’s war strategies and applying them on the battlefield himself. Scipio had the highest regard and admiration for Hannibal.

When Hasdrubal rode out of Spain and met Scipio Africanus in battle at Metaurus, he was defeated by the Romans who used the same “enveloping” tactics employed so successfully by Hannibal at Cannae and elsewhere. Hasdrubal knew all was lost and made one final charge. He died in glory, but was defeated and beheaded by the Romans. It was the beginning of the end for Hannibal.

Hannibal’s attempts at defeating the Romans in battle were successful, but his goal of destroying the Roman Empire remained unfulfilled. He was recalled to Africa by the Carthaginian oligarchy, and fought his final battle at Zama in North Africa in 203 B.C. Most of his veterans of the Italian war were dead. He was left with an inexperienced army, and this time he was facing a rejuvenated Roman army that had a much stronger cavalry contingent, marshaled by the one man who had studied and understood his own battle tactics – Scipio Africanus. The battle was hard-fought and at one point, it looked like Hannibal would prevail yet again. But luck favored the Romans and Scipio. Hannibal lost.

And thus the second Punic War ended, with Rome as the victor. Many expected Scipio Africanus to raze Carthage to the ground, but he did not. Instead, he laid down reasonable surrender and war reparation terms. Hannibal returned to Carthage and began rebuilding the city. He was so effective that fourteen years after Carthage’s surrender in the second Punic War, Carthage was becoming a power to be reckoned with once again. The Romans were getting nervous again. Carthage was pressured into exiling Hannibal. He spent the last few years of his life traveling from court to court across West Asia. He debated the finer points of philosophy in Syria and helped Antiochus build an army to fight the Romans. He helped King Artaxes I of Armenia design and build a new capital city. He became a man without a country. But the Romans kept pursuing him relentlessly. The end came in 183 B.C. at Libyssa on the shores of the Sea of Marmarra in modern-day Turkey.

History has it that the young Roman centurion and soldiers who were ordered to capture Hannibal alive and send him to Rome in chains were in complete awe of their legendary foe and could not bring themselves to arrest him. The centurion responsible for his arrest was struck speechless in the presence of this sturdy, battle-scarred old oak of a man who in his youth had brought the mighty Roman Empire to its knees and almost destroyed it. In the end, it did not matter. Hannibal was not one to be taken prisoner. He consumed poison and so for one last time, eluded his arch-enemy. He was sixty four years old. Ironically, his nemesis Scipio Africanus died in the same year.

What would have happened if after the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal had stormed the gates of Rome? Should he have done it? Why didn’t he? Would he have won? The fate of the Western world was changed because of that one decision.

Hannibal’s death brought about the end of Carthage’s dominance. The vengeance exacted by the Romans within fifty years of Hannibal’s death was terrible. The Romans tricked Carthage into a Third Punic War, attacked the enfeebled city and put it to the sword. Of Carthage’s 700,000 inhabitants, only 50,000 were left alive and even they were enslaved. It was the largest massacre of civilians until the Second World War. Interestingly, the one man who had consistently opposed the destruction of Carthage was Scipio Africanus – the only Roman to ever defeat Hannibal in the field.

But the Romans never forgot the one man who defied them for sixteen years and almost accomplished the unthinkable – the destruction of the Roman Empire. Hannibal came close, very close, and like most lovers of ancient history, I sometimes wonder what would have happened if after the battle of Cannae, the victorious Hannibal had taken the high road to Rome at the head of his Numidian cavalry and Iberian infantry. The history of the known world may have been changed forever.

The ruins of Carthage still stand at the northern tip of Tunisia. Today, it is a pleasant suburb of the city of Tunis. But this unremarkable suburb was once the first capital and Queen of the Mediterranean. On a clear day, you can still see the Sicilian coastline in the distance, the gateway to the Roman Empire, where as a young boy standing beside his father, Hannibal must have looked out across the purple waters of the Mediterranean and dreamt of conquest and revenge. “Hannibal ad portas!!”

History - Top Ten Places of Historical Interest (Part I)

2007-06-28T04:20:00.000-07:00

I had mentioned in my last Blogmaster address that I would soon be posting a piece on this. However, as I have been writing it, I have realized that I have enough material for several blogs as far as places of historial interest are concerned. So this is Part I, where I cover the top three places of historical interest, which are Persepolis (Iran), the Parthenon (Greece) and Angkor Wat (Cambodia). There are many other places of historical interest I want to write about, and I will soon. They include Hagia Sophia (Istanbul, Turkey), Vijaynagar (Hampi, India), Carthage (Tunisia), Machu Picchu (Peru) and several others. Hope you like this one.

These are places that I have read a great deal about and would love to visit before I am summoned to that Great Gig In the Sky. So here goes:

• Persepolis (near Shiraz, Iran): Twenty-six hundred years after it was built at the foot of the Mount of Mercy in the Persian highlands and twenty-three hundred years after it was burned to the ground by the drunk Alexander the Macedonian, the mighty pillars of the Hall of a Hundred Columns still stand, bearing mute testimony to the greatest and richest empire the world has ever seen. The name still inspires awe among lovers of ancient history. Persepolis (Old Persian name ‘Takht-E-Jamshed” or “Throne of Jamshed”) was the center of the largest and powerful empire on earth – the Persian Achaemenid Empire (named after a mythical ancestor Hakamanush). It was the capital and nerve-center of an empire that stretched from the banks of the Indus River in modern-day Pakistan, to Thrace in modern-day Greece, from the Volga River in the Russian steppes to the Nile in Egypt. The King’s Royal Roads spread out from Persepolis to the far corners of the empire – to Taxila in India a thousand miles away in the East, and to Byzantium on the shores of the Mediterranean, a thousand miles to the West. The King’s Peace ensured that traders and travelers traveling across this vast empire were unmolested by bandits and thieves.

The first World Empire was not Roman, contrary to what most people think. It was Persian, and Persepolis was its capital, located high in the Persian highlands of the Zagros Mountains, in the south-west corner of modern-day Iran. It was built by Darius the Great and his son Xerxes, successors to the founder of the empire, Cyrus the Great. The palace complex on the mountain was quite simply an architectural marvel – the most magnificent collection of buildings in the world in its time (and for a millennium after that). The showcase of the complex was the Apadana Palace with its’ Hall of a Hundred Columns – a breathtakingly impressive building. The Apadana had a grand hall in the shape of a square, each side sixty meters long with seventy-two columns, thirteen of which still stand on the enormous platform. It was the only building in the world to have a portico on all four of its massive sides. The Parthenon built by Athenian leader Pericles on the Acropolis in Athens is but a pale imitation of the Apadana Palace, which was just one of many splendid buildings at Persepolis. Some of the other great buildings on the platform were the palaces of Darius and Xerxes and the Tripylon or Debating Hall.

Each of the seventy two columns of the Apadana Palace was nineteen meters high with a square Taurus and plinth. The columns carried the weight of the vast and heavy ceiling. The tops of the columns were made from animal sculptures such as two headed bulls, lions and eagles. The interiors of the palace were decorated with glittering jewels, silk curtains and intricate wall hangings.

And in the center of the great Apadana Palace, in the Hall of the Mountain King, sat the Great King himself on the Lion Throne, facing the rising sun and guarded by the Ten Thousand Immortals, receiving ambassadors from Mesopotamia and Egypt, from Sparta and India and dispensing justice to the subjects of his far-flung empire.

Unfortunately, the successors of Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes were not great philosopher warrior kings like their ancestors. When Alexander fought the last Persian Great King Darius III at Gaugamela in 331 B.C, he won when he should have lost. Darius III panicked just when the tide of the battle was turning and the formidable Persian cavalry led by the elite Ten Thousand Immortals was besting the Macedonian Companion cavalry. Darius III fled, Alexander suddenly became heir to the largest and richest empire in the world and in a fit of drunken rage and egged on by his prostitute friend, Thais of Athens, burned Persepolis to the ground.

And so the greatest and most sophisticated city in the world was destroyed by a bunch of drunken Macedonian goat-herders. Alexander was a great military tactician, but a poor administrator. The empire he inherited disintegrated into chaos and confusion within just fourteen years of his conquest, until the second Persian Empire of the Parthians came along a century later.

The Achaemenid Persian Empire bequeathed the world many things, including great engineering works, art and sculpture, an administrative system that was copied by the Romans right down to the last detail, a system of governance that was based on religious tolerance, the first Charter of Human Rights, a sophisticated irrigation system that is still used today, and the first monotheistic religion in Zoroastrianism – a religion from which the Old Testament borrowed heavily. Zoroastrianism played a significant role in the evolution of Judaism, and later Christianity and Islam.

But the ruins of Persepolis including many of the towering columns of the Apadana Palace still stand, a reminder of empire and greatness. Someday, I would like to walk through the Persian highlands and upto the gates of Persepolis.

On a cool spring day in the highlands when the skies are blue and the wildflowers are in bloom, I would like to sit at the foot of the Mount of Mercy and try and imagine what it must have felt like to watch Darius the Great seated in the Great King’s Sun Chariot on the ceremonial New Year’s Day of the spring equinox (“Navjot”), passing under the monumental Gateway to All the Lands at the head of the Ten Thousand Immortals, their lances raised in salute, their armor glittering in the sun, the trumpeters heralding the approach of the Awesome Royal Glory, and the Palace Guards Commander Hydarnes announcing “All hail the Achaemenid, the King of Kings, Lord of All the Lands”, with the Golden Eagle Standard of the Empire catching the sun and fluttering in the spring breeze.

The Awesome Royal Glory (as the Achaemenid Persian line of Great Kings was known) is gone forever, but faint echoes of its majesty and grandeur can still be found in the ruins of Persepolis, that most magnificent of ancient cities.

• The Parthenon (Athens, Greece): It is not possible to talk about the Persians without mentioning their ancient rivals - the Greeks. Of course, the term “the Greeks” is something of a misnomer since there was no single Greek state at the time (circa 560 B.C to 330 B.C). There were several different Greek states such as Athens, Sparta, Thebes and Thrace who were usually at odds with each other, except when it came to battling the old enemy – the Persians. The Greek speaking population that lived in Europe were called “Dorian Greeks”. The part of the Greek speaking population that lived in what is now coastal Turkey (Asia Minor) were called “Milesian Greeks”. The Milesian Greeks were richer and more civilized than their Dorian counterparts. Also, they willingly became part of the ever-expanding Achaemenid Persian Empire because for them, it meant political stability, security and access to huge markets for their goods and services.

Eventually, this caused increasing tension between the Persian Empire and the European Greeks, who kept stirring up trouble across the Aegean Sea (that divides Europe and Asia). Finally, in 491 B.C, the Persian Great King Darius I (Darius the Great) had enough and ordered an invasion of Greece. The Persians crossed the Bosphorus at Byzantium and entered European Greece. The campaign went well at first as the Persians advanced step by step towards Athens, subduing the various Dorian Greek states in their way.

The Athenians and their allies were in a state of panic. The Spartans refused to come to their aid. The Greek oracles at Delphi and elsewhere predicted a complete Persian victory. The Athenians and their allies the Thebans made one last desperate stand at Marathon, 26 miles from Athens (now you know why the marathon race is so named). The Athenian forces had a natural advantage over the advancing Persians – they were camped up on a hillside and higher ground is always a critical advantage in any battle. Higher ground in this case also meant that the Greek hoplites (heavily armored infantry) could negate the Persian cavalry who were lower down on the slopes. The Persian cavalry was a formidable military force, but their infantry (kardachi) was lightly armored and equipped.

The Athenians charged and while the Persians broke through the Athenian center, they got caught on ground unfavorable for deploying their cavalry. The Athenians outflanked the Persians, circled back in a pincer move and caught them in the rear. The Athenians won, though not by the margin that so-called ancient Greek “historians” talk about. It was a hard-fought battle, not a rout. This battle also highlighted the contrasting fighting styles of the Greeks (and later the Romans) and the Persians. Whenever the ground conditions suited cavalry warfare, the Persians usually won. Whenever the conditions suited infantry warfare, the Greeks (and later the Romans) won. The Persians were superb horsemen, while the Greeks and Romans were excellent infantrymen (the heavily armored hoplites and later the Roman legions).

For the next two centuries, the Dorian Greek states and the Persians fought many famous battles with no clear victor. The Greeks staved off the Persians in Europe, and though the Persian Great King Xerxes sacked Athens twice during the second Persian campaign, he could not hold the Greek mainland for any length of time, as the Greeks repeatedly attacked his long supply lines leading back to Asia. The Greeks in turn were unable to break the Persian stranglehold on the Greek states in Asia Minor (Milesian Greece) and Egypt.

But what the Persians could not win through military conquest, they won through diplomacy. By the time the Peloponnesian War broke out in 430 B.C or so between Sparta and Athens, the Persians had become the chief power broker in the region, playing off one against the other and ensuring that Asia Minor remained a Persian province.

Now coming to the Parthenon (finally, you say). The Parthenon is a temple dedicated to the pre-eminent Greek goddess Athena – the mother goddess of the city of Athens. The temple was built after the Greco-Persian wars as a token of gratitude to the goddess for having saved the Athenians from Persian domination. The original Athena temple on the Acropolis (the hill on which the Parthenon stands) was burnt to the ground by Persian Great King Xerxes during the second Greco-Persian War in 479 B.C.

The new Parthenon was built in approximately 447 B.C. by the famous Athenian general Pericles. The Athenians signed a peace treaty with the Persians in 449 B.C. Having beating back the Persians over the last fifty years, the Athenians were confident and believed that they were the leaders of the European Greek states. The Parthenon represents the high point of Athenian and indeed ancient Greek civilization. The temple itself stands on the Acropolis, a hill from which the entire city of Athens is visible. Twenty-five hundred years after it was built, it still dominates the skyline of the city.

The sculptures and friezes inside the Parthenon signify the high point of Greek art. While the Persian art at Persepolis is very classical in nature, the Greek art on display at the Parthenon is very individualistic in nature, signifying the supposed triumph of individualism over monarchy. The relief sculptures on the sides of the temple illustrate various stories from ancient Greek history, myth and legend. The reliefs on the south illustrate the battle between the Greeks and the Trojans. Those at the west end depict the contest between Poseidon and Athena for the right to be the patron deity of Athens. The eastern friezes show the birth of Athena from Zeus' head. This structure suffered badly when the Parthenon was hit by a Venetian shell in 1687 and the powder magazine inside exploded.

Over the last two thousand years, the Parthenon has been witness to the rise and fall of empires and religions in Greece. In the 6th century AD it was converted into a temple. In 1456, Athens fell to the Ottoman Turks and was converted into a mosque. The Ottoman rulers were respectful of the monument’s history and heritage and left it untouched.

The Parthenon still stands, a testament to a time when Athens and Greece shaped Western thought, ideals and civilization.

• Angkor Wat (Cambodia): Even ardent lovers of history sometimes forget that South-east Asia has plenty to offer. Countries such as Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia have their own ancient Buddhist and Hindu history, culture and architecture that is fascinating. Tucked away deep in the jungles of Cambodia lies one such treasure – Angkor Wat. The word means “City Temple” in old Cambodian, which is similar to Sanskrit.

Imagine yourself as a character in an Indiana Jones movie, walking through a dense, thick, humid tropical forest only to suddenly chance upon a near mythical city full of exquisite art, sculpture and buildings –a magical ghost city deep in a tropical forest with bright eyed monkeys in the trees and many-colored tropical birds flying overhead. That is Angkor Wat. Would be fun, wouldn’t it?

Angkor Wat was designed as a temple complex dedicated to the Hindu God Vishnu. The construction of the temple complex was started in the middle of the 12th century A.D by the great Cambodian king, Suryavarman II, a member of the Khmer Dynasty. Unfortunately, the word “Khmer” has acquired an evil reputation because of the Khmer Rouge, a violent ultra-left political group that ruled Cambodia in the 1970s. The Khmer Rouge was headed by the psychopath Pol Pot, who in a decade of misrule, tortured and killed a quarter of his country’s population.

But the Khmer Empire itself was enlightened, erudite and sophisticated. The Angkor Wat temple complex is a feat of very sophisticated engineering. Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple mountain and the later galleried temples. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the gods in Hindu mythology. Within a moat and an outer wall nearly four kilometers long are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. At the centre of the temple stands a phalanx of towers.

One of the first Western visitors to the temple was Antonio da Magdalena, a Portuguese monk who visited in 1586 and said that it "is of such extraordinary construction that it is not possible to describe it with a pen, particularly since it is like no other building in the world. It has towers and decoration and all the refinements which the human genius can conceive of". It is generally agreed that the architectural design of the temple complex at Angkor Wat is as good as or even better than the ancient temples at Athens or Rome or the Sistine Chapel.

Unfortunately, in the last two decades, many of the exquisite sculptures have been plundered and sold to rich art dealers in the U.S. and other countries. Angkor Wat is a now world heritage site and a reminder of a great civilization and culture. A walk through a jungle to suddenly discover a magical, near mythical city that could keep me entranced for days? Oh yes, I could definitely do that.

Music - Third Top Ten List

2007-06-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my third Top Ten music list. The first two were such a hit that I was under tremendous pressure to come up with a third!! Of course I jest, but yes, a few people did like the first two and said so, so here is the third. And yes, there will be some love songs in this list as well (for people who think that I don’t like love songs) – unconventional love songs perhaps, but love songs nonetheless. Not weepy sentimental stuff, but songs that have real intelligence, power, emotion and meaning.

This list will have songs by some artists you have heard of – such as David Bowie with his “weary android” voice (my patent – this description of old David’s voice), the Beatles and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. You may not have heard of some of the other artists or songs. Some songs are just a year old, others are fifty years old. Let nobody say that my musical tastes are anything less than eclectic. I also have enough stuff for a fourth Top Ten list which will be released soon.

So where do I start? Ah, yes –the Clash.

Maestro, drum roll please:

• The Guns of Brixton – The Clash (1980): The Clash who formed in 1977, were the biggest punk rock band after the Sex Pistols and they lasted a lot longer. They were a product of their environment – the turbulent and depressed England of the mid to late 1970s. The late 1970s were a particularly bad time for the UK – high unemployment, an economy in shambles (the UK was labeled “the sick man of Europe”) and race riots on the streets between extreme right-wing white youth on one side and the West Indian and South Asian communities on the other. Disillusionment and anger reigned. Race riots in depressed areas such as Toxteth and Brixton were routine. The punks, led by the Sex Pistols reviled the music of older bands such as Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, dismissing them as irrelevant, “corporatized money grabbers” and “boring old farts”.

The Clash were a little different. Their musical influences were some of the British bands of the previous generation (especially the Who) and reggae. By the 1970s, the West Indian community in the UK was making their musical and cultural influence felt far beyond the confines of their community.

The Clash wrote mostly political songs – they were left-leaning and supported the left-wing governments in the world at the time, including the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. They also tried to build bridges across races and communities in the UK, and wrote about South American dictatorships and rebels in the hills. The Clash were the only punk band to make it really big in the United States – punk was largely a British phenomenon.

This particular song is about one of the more deadly race riots in Brixton. The song condemns the riots and has a hypnotic, snaky reggae backbeat. The lyrics are pretty chilling too.

“When they kick at your front door,
How you gonna come
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun,
When the law break in,
How you gonna go,
Shot down on the pavement,
Or waitin’ in Death Row”

• London Calling/Brand New Cadillac – The Clash (1980): Staying with the Clash for a moment, these two songs are also great. “London Calling” is a pounding rocker that paints a picture of an apocalyptic future, where the Third World War has broken out and a nuclear bomb has been dropped on London. “Brand New Cadillac” is an amalgam of American Tex-Mex, rockabilly and Jamaican reggae musical styles and is irresistibly foot-tapping, with a sudden explosive guitar solo right at the bridge of the song.

• Because the Night – Patti Smith – (1976): When punk crossed the Atlantic, it influenced singers like Patti Smith. Unlike other female rockers at the time, Patti was not seductive or pretty. She did not sing weepy love songs about sad romantic relationships. But she had a great bellow of a voice and was a great songwriter. She was one tough broad. This song was originally written by Bruce Springsteen but Patti made it her own. Her version is about a woman obsessed with a man – her obsession is complete and frightening. The song is a great rocker and enjoyable (though a little scary) to listen to. The woman in the song has got a real bad case of the hots for the guy she is singing about. You may heard the version by the 10,000 Maniacs a few years ago.

• Turn, Turn, Turn – The Byrds – (1966): This song was originally written by folk singer Pete Seeger in 1962. The version by the Byrds came out in 1966, and quickly became a huge hit and a cry for peace and reconciliation during the divisive Vietnam War. The Byrds were the first super-group in the 1960s. They sounded very different from everybody else, thanks to Roger McGuinn’s ringing rhythm guitar that sounded like chiming church-bells. Actually, their songs sounded like poems put to song, sung by choirboys. Like one reviewer said, the Byrds brought Ecclesiastes to the charts. They pretty much invented folk-rock along with Bob Dylan. The tunes and arrangements to their songs were gorgeous, lovely to listen to. The incarnations of the band kept changing. Many esteemed talents played in this band, right from Roger McGuinn to David Crosby to the late, great Gram Parsons. This is such a beautiful song.

• Love, Reign O’er Me – The Who – (1973): This song makes one want to believe in romantic love again. It is one of the few love songs by the Who. Part of the band’s 1973 magnum opus “Quadrophenia”, it is about a confused young man growing up in mid 1960s Britain. His name is Jimmy. By the end of the album, Jimmy does not know where life is taking him. He is depressed and at the crossroads. The song is a desperate cry for someone to love, someone to care. The album was made into a movie in 1979 starring Sting as Jimmy, and launched Sting’s acting career. The movie and the album were a huge British hit, since both chronicled growing up working class in mid 1960s Britain – a country and world poised on the brink of a social revolution.

Roger Daltrey’s impassioned vocals, combined with superb lyrics and unusually lush musical arrangements by Pete Townshend make this song a classic. The song was also covered by Pearl Jam this year and has featured as part of the soundtrack for several movies. Eddie Vedder of course is a huge Pete Townshend fan, like me. The song is delicate, thundering, emotional and ballsy – all at the same time. A very rare combination indeed.

“Only love can make it rain
The way the beach is kissed by the sea
Only love can make it rain
Like the sweat of lovers
Laying in the fields.

Love, Reign o'er me
Love, Reign o'er me, rain on me

Only love can bring the rain
That makes you yearn to the sky
Only love can bring the rain
That falls like tears from on high

Love Reign O'er me”

This song can still move me to tears so many years after I first heard it.

• Blackbird – The Beatles – (1968): Anybody who thinks that Paul McCartney did not write intelligent, meaningful songs should listen to this song as well the whole of Side B of the “Abbey Road” album. Paul always gets a bad rap as the one who sold out, while John gets the credit as someone who maintained his artistic integrity. Rubbish. Paul could write songs with beautiful lyrics and lovely tunes, as this song demonstrates. Actually, this whole album ("White Album") is great – a glimpse of the Beatles fragmenting – artistically. They are preparing for the solo careers. The estrangement between John and Paul is becoming increasingly evident. John’s songs sound completely different from Paul’s. By this point, they are no longer collaborating but writing separately. George is coming into his own as a songwriter and guitarist and developing his own identity. By 1968, the Beatles were well along the way to breaking up. This is more than a song – it is poetry set to music.

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free.

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night”

• Heroes – David Bowie – (1977): Tired of being labeled the father of “glam rock”, the relentless glare of celebrity, depressed and battling a crippling cocaine addiction, Bowie checked out of Southern California in 1975 and headed to Berlin, to get his mind, body and life back together. There he released three relatively low-profile albums which turned out to be the best in his career. The three were “Low”, “Heroes” and “Lodger”. These albums came to be known as his “Berlin trilogy”. The song “Heroes” (from the album of the same name) is about lovers separated by the Berlin Wall yearning to be together and willing to confront death to do so. The song also features Bowie’s trademark “weary android” voice and superb spacey, spidery synthesizer playing by the great Brian Eno.

“I can remember
Standing, by the wall
And the guns, shot above our heads
And we kissed, as though nothing could fall
And the shame, was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever
Then we could be Heroes, just for one day

Though nothing, will keep us together
We could steal time, just for one day
We can be Heroes, for ever and ever”

• Desecration Smile – Red Hot Chili Peppers – (2006): These guys have passed the longevity test. They have been around for twenty five years. Through singer Anthony Kiedis’s long, nearly fatal heroin addiction and guitarist John Frusciante’s mental breakdown and institutionalization, these guys have kept battling away. John Frusciante, in my opinion, is the finest guitarist of his generation. He has the “yaargh”, the creativity and imagination to come up with astonishing guitar riffs and licks. Check out the opening guitar riff to this song – delicate, haunting, simple and unforgettable. Kiedis has matured a great deal as a songwriter over the past decade. He is fit, happy and healthy and his voice sounds very good on the last few albums.

And what can I say about bass player Flea? He is one of my all-time heroes. He is just the best bass guitar player in the world apart from being a disarmingly honest, simple, unaffected human being who lives to make music. This man doesn’t do things in half-measure. He is the heart and soul of this band. Like Pete Townshend, he gives it everything when he plays – and nobody could ask for more than that. The 1990s were a bad time for this band. However, they look and sound like they are having fun again, which is very good news for the rest of us.

“Never in the wrong time or wrong place
Desecration is the smile on my face
The love I made is the shape of my space
My face my face”

• Under the Bridge - Red Hot Chili Peppers - (1991): I clearly remember when this song came out. I was living outside of Denver, Colorado. I guess that dates me. The Peppers were a fixture on American college campuses and a cult favorite before this song out. This song along with “Give It Away” which was also released in 1991, made them superstars. The song is about being alone, homeless and a heroin addict in Los Angeles. It is about feeling abandoned and completely bereft. It reflected Anthony Kiedis’s physical and mental state at the time. Pretty powerful stuff. Haven’t we all felt like this sometimes?

“Sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner
Sometimes I feel like my only friend
Is the city I live in, The city of Angels
Lonely as I am, Together we cry”

• Running Scared – Roy Orbison – 1962: Here is a real old gem. What a voice Roy Orbison had!! That soaring falsetto could and still does shivers down my spine. A simple, plain-spoken man with a great gift for conveying emotion through that voice. This song is a classic – you must get hold of this song – beg, borrow or steal it. It is about a woman who is torn between two men. The protagonist is one of these two men and he is sure that she will leave him for the other. Listen as Orbison builds the tension in the song – you do not know what is going to happen. And as that falsetto soars through the roof at the end of the song:

“Just runnin' scared, feelin' low
Runnin' scared, you love him so
Just runnin' scared, afraid to lose
If he came back which one would you choose

Then all at once he was standing there
So sure of himself, his head in the air
My heart was breaking, which one would it be
You turned around and walked away with me”

Don’t you love happy endings? I do.