Feminism

I recently read this post by Desi Diva. The post was about a guy who had posted online instructions on how to choose a proper Indian girl ... Extremely male chauvinistic and quite distasteful.

No man with even some amount of sense would subscribe to the expressed views and would likely consider it a somewhat funny bad joke.

Some of the comments on the post started bashing men - Huh ?! Where did that come from ?

Why can't women be more positive about men and talk more about men that are doing the right things, so we have a role model, rather than wax negative about some random dude and give men an anti-hero role model ?

BJP Split

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is going to split very soon. Its going to the the young Turks + Vajpayee against the RSS/ideologues.

This is how it could look like:

Camp I
Jaitley, Mahajan, Sushma Swaraj, Jaswant, Vajpayee, Venkiah Naidu, Ananth Kumar, Shourie

Camp II
Uma Bharathi, Murli Manohar, Jana Krish, Kashiram Rana, Maneka & Varun Gandhi, Narendra Modi

However, most of Camp II will reintegrate with Camp I quickly, with Uma Bharathi becoming a Madhya Pradesh figure, rather a national one.

SMS Forwards and Live Strong bands

Man, there are a lot of SMS forwards floating around in India !! Jokes, puzzles, riddles, news, fake news of every kind ... It keeps people entertained no doubt, but my cynical mind thinks that it must be the cell phone service providers that are feeding these messages into the system in order to boost their SMS revenue.

And don't even get me started on these Live Strong bands ! Every kid I see has about 8 of them. Some enterprising guy has gotten them made in China and is selling them at 25 bucks a pop. And of course not one rupee is going to fight Cancer or Poverty !

I don't make enough rupees ....

I don't know whether anybody else has experienced this, but going shopping in Chennai after having lived in the US is absolutely a scary experience. In a way, its the inverse of what I used to experience in my first few days in the US ....

My very first day in the US, at Raleigh, North Carolina, a guy from my alma mater (BITS, Pilani) took me to lunch - At Subway. I bought a 6" inch sandwich for $5 (or so) and just struggled to convince myself that it was okay to eat something that cost Rs. 250 !

However, quickly I got used to spending in dollars and as I passed the "starving grad student" stage, five dollars soon got to seem like pocket change.

Now, when I am back in India and actually living here (I have my own apartment etc.. unlike previous visits where I just visited and stayed with my parents), I am just shocked by the prices !! Grocery shopping, buy some juice, soda and some corn flakes and its 1,000 rupees !! Now, I am at the other end of the spectrum, back to my stingy Indian best ! I could convert the 1000 rupees to dollars and should be quite unconcerned about the cost, considering that its only 20 dollars, but that doesnt happen !

There is something quite unnerving about forking out Rs. 150 for a bottle of shampoo.

I guess I will get used to it, but until then, I really dont think I make enough rupees !

Manual Windshield Wiper

Last week, I landed in Chennai from Coimbatore in the midst of torrential rains - As is my usual habit, I headed for the pre-paid taxi counter. There were two counters there - One seemed to a bit cheaper, with the black and yellow Ambassadors and the other one was more expensive and had Indicas (I think).

I chose the cheaper option and this is the story of my trip from the airport to Kilpauk (which is where I live in Chennai).

Firstly, the car looked like it had been in an accident just a few days back. There was no paint on the whole of one side. Aside from the driver's door, the only one that opened was the one on the rear right. I tried opening that door from outside - No luck, the river tried opening it from inside - No luck. He then tried rolling the window down - Nothing happened. He then physically pushed the window down ! And then brought out a length of wire and did some jiggling and finally got the door open. I jumped in and we were off !

So, the guy speeds off (down the wrong direction of a one-way road), which is quite normal behavior for a Chennai taxi-driver so I wasn’t too perturbed. But then I realized that the car didn’t have headlights ! Of course, there was no point even wondering if brake lights and indicator lights were working ... :-)

So we get onto GST Road (the arterial road that leads into Chennai). At that point the rain had stopped, and I was hopeful that it would stay away until I got to Kilpauk. Ha, fat chance !

So, this guy is speeding down GST Road when he suddenly pulls over to the left hand side of the road and jumps out. He opens the bonnet and curses – He then proceeds to get a can of engine oil from inside the car and pour some into the engine. This brought back fond memories of how I used to have to pour oil into my Camry (which had a bad oil leak) !

We were off again, and then it started to rain …

The driver cursed again.

And then I realized what the problem was – His wiper didn’t work !! The rain was pouring down in torrents and his wipers didn’t work. And then he did something truly hilarious ! He opened his window, took out a single wiper blade from the recesses of his seat and proceeded to perform a wiping motion on the windshield !! All this, while driving like a maniac through heavy traffic !!

And what was amazing was that his manual windshield wiping was almost as good, or even better than the real deal !

We drove 20 kms (13 miles or so) like this !!

Truly an interesting experience. But I think I might pay more next time and take the more expensive option.

Musical insult ..

Today, I was listening to some music online. One of the songs I listened to seemed extremely familiar. I racked my brains trying to think of where I had heard it before. It then struck me ! - It sounded very similar to one of the ring tones that came standard with my Nokia phone :-)

Would'nt that be the worse insult one could give to a musician - "Dude, your song's great, it sounds just like a ring tone I have on my phone !"

Charity begins at home.

India is a poor country and there is drastic disparity in the country. There are several individuals and corporations that perform awesome social service through NGO's or charitable foundations.

There is the Tata foundation, Birla foundation, Mahindra foundation etc.. each of which is formed with a large, generous budget to take up developmental activities. And I laud their efforts.

However, sometimes I wonder whether one shouldnt look closer to home ... I have a servant at home who comes in for 2 hours a day and sweeps, washes, cleans etc ...

I pay her the widely accepted Chennai standard (Rs. 750/month). 750 bucks !! Thats so, so low. How can someone survive on that ? I do contribute to some charities, but I wonder whether I shouldnt just pay my servant double and improve her quality of life rather than improving the quality of life of someone miles away from me ...

Why is it that industrial groups spend crores on charity and underpay their own workers ? And why do I contribute to charities and underpay my worker ?

Car donation services are great
ways to donate money to charity and even if you do not have an old car to

give to charity you could also
donate something
else like donating your
boat or donate
an RV.

National Health Service

A continual debate in the US is on whether the current model of private healthcare, with partial governmental reimbursement is the best system as compared to the government administered healthcare systems of Europe.

While the European system provides every citizen with coverage, often there are long wait times for certain surgeries - 8 months on average for non-emergency surgeries.

In the American system, although wait times are drastically lower, costs are so high that in most cases, the uninsured (40 Million of them) are restricted access to the healthcare system.

The subject of this post, however, is not about comparing the relative merits of these two systems.

I was talking to my uncle yesterday about "Health Tourism" in India, where Americans and Europeans come to India to take advantage of the decent healthcare infrastructure and the lower costs.

He said that there were hardly any British who came to India, largely because the National Health Service (NHS) would not cover the cost of treatment.

I believe that the best thing for Indian hospitals to do would be to approach the NHS and get themselves approved as an NHS-off shore center. British citizens would have the option of a 8 month wait or a free holiday in India ! And, even with the cost of travel thrown in, the costs for the NHS would be dramatically lower.

Wonder if this is feasible ? One issue would be the quality of care, confusion on what drugs can be administered (because some drugs approved by India are not approved by the UK and vice versa) and also the reaction of the British doctors who already resent the large number of Indian doctors in the UK.

Bose.

The first three results on Google when I searched for "Bose India" was the Bose Audio India home page. Subhash Chandra Bose was relegated to fourth place.

Of course, Bose Audio was what I was looking for ;-)

Landmark ...

Landmark was certainly a pioneer among retail stores in Chennai. It was started by an extremely dynamic woman called Hemu. She used to work in the Taj Coramandel bookstore for a few years before she took the plunge and set up her own bookstore - "Landmark"

I have spent many a day happily browsing through the books there. The store then expanded from their initial store in Nungambakkam, Chennai to Coimbatore, Kolkata and a second store in Chennai - at Spencers Plaza.

Hemu recently sold her chain for 104 crores !

Yesterday, I went by Landmark and I was struck by how poor the overall shopping experience was.

• The books were in poor order, with several books out of the alphabetical order.
• There are random products scattered across the store with no real logic - Glass bowls next to CD's next to cell phones.
• Horrible method to leave outside bags - You have to collect it on another floor
• Only one billing point
• Staff generally clueless about books

Landmark has drifted very far from their initial focus - Books. Now, they sell anything under the sky with a good profit margin. And the lack of maturity in the Chennai retail market enables them to do this without a well-planned shopping experience !!

Blink

"Blink" has to be one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. It ranks right up there with "Phantoms in the Brain" by Dr. Ramachandran, in my opinion.

One of the coolest things that the book talks about is the relationship between facial expressions and emotions. It talks about a 7-year research project which studied all of the various facial expressions (chin dropping, forehead knitting, brows raising etc ...) and their combinations and mapped each of these expression combinations to a human emotion.

What they found out was that by looking at the expressions, one could, with a high degree of accuracy predict the actual emotions running through a person's mind. For example, a combination of expressions 1, 4, 9 and 22 (I made these numbers up) might be a feeling of joy.

However, what was immensely surprising was that if a person was forced to make the expressions 1,4,9 and 22 together, he or she would feel joyful simply through that act !! In other words, the relationship between facial expressions and emotions is a two way street, with the face not just being a "mirror of the soul", but the soul sometimes being the "actor-out of the face".

Whenever I was glum as a kid, my mother would come and sit with me and keep pushing me to smile. Not by making a joke, but simply by asking me to smile. And usually I finally did, and I would feel better. We Indians have figured everything out :-)

Political ? Me ?

Marie Antoinette is one of the better political bloggers I have come across.
He/She has my blog linked, and my blog is classified under the "Political" section.

Has this blog swung so much from being an "ideas" blog to one that could be classified as political ?

To a wedding in a Volvo !

Off to a wedding tonight. The wedding is in Karaikudi and the bridegroom is a friend of mine from school.

Two things have me excited ... Firstly, the fact that this is a Chettiar wedding. The Chettiars are one of the most prominent clans in Tamil Nadu and their weddings are a truly amazing spectacle of ostentation and organization.

And secondly, one a humbler note, I am going to Karaikudi on a Volvo bus. Having travelled every weekend between Bangalore and Madurai on an "Air Bus", I know how horrible bus journeys can be. However, now with KPN Travels introducing Volvo-made luxury buses on several routes, including Chennai-Karaikudi, bus travel has apparently joined the rest of India in its ascendance to the next level.



Feedback and photographs tomorrow !

The best shoppers ...

Indians analyze things to death, and nothing more than a purchasing decision. Whatever the product, be it a car or a pair of scissors, endless analysis and comparison goes into the choosing process.

And Indians somehow unerringly get the best product (in terms of value for money) and the best place.

Which got me thinking - Would'nt this be a perfect advertising concept ... "The Patel family bought this rice cooker. Enough said !"

Don't give up on me !

Will be back online soon (As soon as Airtel connects me !)

Mike Easley

Mike Easley is the Democratic Governor of North Carolina. The day I was leaving from the US, I heard him on WUNC talking about the recent decision by Lenovo to hire 400 people in the Research Triangle Park (RTP) area.

He was crowing about how these were all high-paying jobs at an average of $70,000 each. He said that this was the future for North Carolina, with low paying textiles/furniture jobs on their way out !

Sounds great doesnt it !

The only problem is, Easley neglected to mention the subsidy the state was giving Lenovo - 9 Million dollars (22,500 Dollars per employee).

And what does the 22,500 represent ?
The difference in pay (roughly) between a skilled IT worker in India and the US.

Oops.

Oh India ...

Its amazing, my heartbeat is slower by about 8 beats per minute here when compared to my US heart rate. I am so relaxed here.

Also, no blogging for a few days. You can survive, cant you ;-)