United, at last

Through a combination of chance and circumstance, the following individuals came to occupy berths 1 to 6 of a II Class compartment of a train that left Chennai Central for New Delhi. These berths, as you are aware, are usually inside a separate, closed cubicle and the occupants found themselves in constant company of each other, right through the 36-hour journey.

‘A” was male, Tamil-speaking, Hindu, belonged to the so-called forward community and was a non-vegetarian (to use that quaint Indian expression)

‘B’ was male, Kannada-speaking, Hindu, came from a backward community and was a vegetarian

‘C’ was male, Marathi-speaking, Hindu of forward community and was a vegetarian

‘D’ was female, Bengali-speaking Muslim (minority community) and a non-vegetarian

‘E’ was female, Hindi-speaking, Catholic (minority community) and a non-vegetarian

‘F’ was male, Hindi-speaking, Muslim (minority community) and a non-vegetarian

Back to the II class compartment. In such long-distance trains, conversation tends to flourish and becomes quite animated at times. Heated arguments and fist blows are not uncommon.

When dinner was served at Sulurpet, B whispered to C, a fellow vegetarian, that he found the smell of non-veg food quite overpowering and wished that the Railways would serve only vegetarian food. Hearing which A, D, E and F exchanged glances that clearly indicated that B and C should keep their abnormal preferences to themselves and not try to pass judgement on the dietary habits of the majority.

When it was time to sleep, D who had been allotted an upper berth requested F if she could take his lower berth, obviously appealing to his sense of chivalry. F gave in reluctantly but commented that when women these days sought equality in all other fields, why did they seek special treatment when it came to queues, lower berths, etc? A, B and C nodded in approval. But E, the other female in the group, came to the support of D and rebuked C, A, B and F for lack of elementary consideration to a person who belonged to the same gender as their mothers and sisters.

When the train reached Kazipet, ‘A’ who knew no Hindi wanted to buy something from a vendor who knew no Tamil or English. This irked A who commented aloud that Hindi zealots were shoving Hindi down the throats of South Indians and wondered what had happened to Nehru’s assurance in Parliament that it would not happen. B and D supported this view, but E and F felt that this was ridiculous and that anybody who called himself an Indian should be proud of the national language which was Hindi.

Near Nagpur, the conversation turned to the over-crowding of Mumbai and C, who was a Shiv Sena supporter, observed that the only practical solution was to ask all non-Marathi people who came in after 1990, to leave Mumbai. A, B. D. E and F pounced on him for his parochial views and reminded him that Mumbai belonged to the whole nation.

At Bhopal, while buying a bottle of mineral water, A accused B of belonging to a state that unreasonably withheld Tamilnadu’s rightful share of the Cauvery water. C intervened and asked both to hold fire, stating that the whole issue was overblown by the politicians and enlightened citizens shouldn’t get carried away. D, E and F nodded approvingly. B, supported by A, then trained his gun on C and asked him to lay off, as the latter came from a state that was making a completely illegitimate demand on a territory (Belgaum) that had been an integral part of Karnataka for ages. D, E and F nodded approvingly, while C argued vehemently that Marathi being the dominant language in Belgaum, it was foolish to keep it in Karnataka.

At Gwalior, discussions turned to the recent comments made by the Pope on Muslims and D and F expressed their displeasure to E. Butting in, A, B and C felt that both the Pope and the Muslims should apologise to each other and take a few lessons in tolerance from Hinduism. This drew derisive sniggers from D, E and F united in their Abrahamic faiths.

At Agra, A was heard talking on his mobile phone to his son studying at Pilani. He kept down the phone and explained that because of the shameful policy of reservation in Tamilnadu, people belonging to the forward community were forced to admit their sons/daughters in institutions in far-off places. C was quite empathetic but B.D.E and F took umbrage at this statement and argued that unless affirmative action was taken, the minority would remain suppressed for ever.

So many different issues had been dissected during the journey. Each of them, A. B. C. D. E and F had taken up strong positions on each issue and found himself/herself forming part of or pitted against different groups comprising different individuals at different times, demonstrating yet again that India was a fascinating country which could be divided in so many different ways.

As the train neared Delhi, the TTE informed them that the train would be delayed by one more hour, due to a derailment that had happened a few miles ahead.

A. B, C, D, E and F were finally united and unanimous in their criticism of the Indian Railways, the Indian Govt and the Indian bureaucrats. “Will things never change?” they cried in unison.

The feathered visitor

I was with two of my colleagues yesterday at the open-air restaurant of the Taj Garden Retreat, Madurai, when this magnificent creature descended from somewhere, looked in our direction, quickly sized up our potential, ruled us out as prospective mates, decided against a display of its full plumage and majestically settled down on the railing close to us.

One colleague concluded that Lord Muruga was making a pit stop while gallivanting on his ‘ vahana’ to bestow special and customised blessings to his loyal devotees, not to mention devote loyalees. So, the said colleague closed his eyes, folded his hands, and bowed reverentially, chanting “ Muruga, Muruga”, much to the bemusement of some foreigners in the adjoining table.

The other colleague, being of a more practical bent of mind, reached for the bowl of peanuts and threw out a handful to the bird which accepted the offering without too much of a fuss and conveyed through its authoritative body language that it was rightfully entitled to the meal.

And I? I had the presence of mind to go a few steps nearer and take a quick snap on my mobile phone, before the bird took off gracefully, continuing on whatever noble mission it was engaged in.

Same situation, but three different responses from three different people.

The death of the salesman

Different professions boast of different core competencies. Doctors, for example, are extremely proficient in looking busy and walking at a brisk pace without their stethoscopes falling off their necks; they undergo years of training before they get this right. Architects cannot be matched when it comes to rolling tracing-paper and sharpening pencils; lawyers have that special gift of being able to rattle out a volley of inane expressions like “My Lord”, “ Your Honour” and “Prosecution rests its case” without spitting even once.

But, what about the traveling salesman? Yes, the wheeler-dealing, smooth talking, oily salesman? What special skills does he have in his armoury, you ask. Can he hold a candle to these stethoscopic docs, sharpening architects and filibustering, unsalivating lawyers, you snigger and ridicule in a tone dripping with unalloyed sarcasm and unadulterated contempt

Long, long ago, before you techies, nerdies, yuppies and other assorted puppies in the blogosphere were born, envisaged or even dreamt of, Uncle Raj began his illustrious career as a salesman and will therefore proceed to silence you critics.

What marks the traveling salesman from lesser professionals is the amazing ability to track down the best eating joint in any of hundreds of towns and cities in his territory. He alone has the trained nose to locate the roadside joint famous for its biriyani or that shop near the bus stand where the best masala milk is available after 9 pm.

Starting out as a salesman in Tamilnadu, I therefore knew where to pick up the best halwa in Tirunelveli, the cashew macaroons from Tuticorin (local legend had it that only the Fernandos knew the right mix of egg white, cashew, sugar, etc to give the macaroons that magical texture), peanut candies from Virudhunagar, Ooty vegetables from Coimbatore, mangoes from Thathachariar gardens in Srirangam, bananas from Namakkal, and hundreds of such rare delights.

Promoted and in charge of entire South India, the repertoire extended to mango jellies from Rajahmundry, banana chips from Cochin, pickles from Kovvuru, jackfruit papads and cashew supari from Mangalore (not to forget the Gadbad ice creams there), Kundas from Belgaum, the Maddur Railway station vada (such was the brand image that even when an outlet was opened on the highway, 3 km away from the station, the vada was still referred to as Maddur Railway station vada), the large-sized Tatte idlis of Tumkur, the mirchi bajjis from a roadside vendor in Bagalkot, pink sweets ( I have never bothered to ask what its called) from K.C. Das in Bangalore ( Strangely ,when I look for the same sweets in the many K.C.Das outlets in Kolkata, I don’t spot them).

As my canvas widened and I had the whole of India to cover, unimaginable goodies could be spotted in every nook and corner of the country. India, trust me, is a culinary cornucopia and is truly an epicurean’s paradise.

Later, foreign trips meant the mandatory duty-free shopping for Toblerones, Lindts and the Ferrera Rochers.

The salesman when he returned from a tour was welcomed warmly into the house by members of his family, his baggage quickly ransacked, the ‘eatable’ instantly removed and devoured. The salesman, therefore, was highly valued by society at large and his important role acknowledged and appreciated. He walked with his head held high.

Alas, times have changed, the world is flatter and the planes and trains are faster. Tirunelveli halwas made the previous evening reach Chennai the next morning and are sold out of Maruti vans as fresh stock; jackfruit papads can be procured from Nilgiri’s departmental stores round the corner, banana chips are ubiquitous, Ooty vegetables can be picked up in most vegetable shops, rossogolla tins of reputed brands can be spotted in many shops, and Toblerones and Ferrera Rochers are sold in paan shops.

Sadly, the salesman is therefore an unwanted species today, his skill set having become anachronistic and irrelevant. The notice that one sees today on the gates of apartment complexes ( “Sales people not allowed”) bears grim testimony to the fact of the death of the salesman.

Waves

Continuing with my series on the mobile phone……..

A colleague who was on a flight from Delhi and I (on a flight from Chennai) arrived in Mumbai airport at around the same time and were to meet up and take the same car to go to the other end of the city.

To locate him in the crowd, I sent an sms to his mobile phone, which was on ‘roaming’ mode in Mumbai. That meant that radio frequency signals from the transmitter of my phone had to reach the closest base station, get beamed to a satellite through a dish antennae, on to some switching station in Delhi, get re-routed to Mumbai over the satellite again and reach the receiver of his mobile phone through the closest base station. It all happens in a jiffy, but it has to take such a circuitous route. At least, this is how I believe it works.

He then dialed back my Chennai number. As I too was on ‘roaming’ mode, the voice signal from the transmitter of his phone had to be transformed into a code to reach the closest base station, get beamed to a satellite through a dish antennae, log on to a switching station in Chennai, get diverted to Mumbai and reach the receiver of my phone through the closest base station.

It so happened that the said colleague was about twenty feet away , had spotted me and was signaling to me with his right hand,even as he was talking over the mobile phone held in left hand.

Like me and my colleague, there were tens of people in the airport, hundreds in Santa Cruz cell area, thousands in Mumbai and millions of people in the world trying to connect and were jamming all frequencies and bandwidths and generally cluttering the atmosphere with electromagnetic radiation or whatever it is these things work on. If human beings had been provided with an additional sense organ to detect such microwaves, each of our brains would have suffered instantly from information overdose and blown its fuse.

The comedian George Carlin wrote in his book, “Brain Droppings” :

"Think of how much information, in the form of radio energy, there is flying through the air, all around us, all over the world, right now and all the time. AM, FM, UHF, VHF, shortwave radio, television, walkie-talkies, cell phones, telephone, satellites, microwave relays, faxes, pagers, taxi calls, police, sheriff, hospitals, fire departments, telemetry, navigation, radar, military, government, financial, legal. medical, media, etc, etc, etc. Trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of electronic information flying around the world at all times. Think of that. Think of how busy the air is.

Now think of this. A hundred years ago there was none. None. No radiation at all. There was silence all around.."

Think about it.

11/09/2001

How and when did the terrorist attack on September 11th in the USA, come to be referred to as ‘nine-eleven’? I tried to google for information on when the expression was first used and by who, but couldn’t find any leads. Does anybody know?

Terrorist attacks and other human tragedies are usually referred to in terms of the location of the incident- as in Mumbai blasts, Bali killings, London bomb blasts, attack on Indian Parliament, Munich massacre, Bhopal gas tragedy, Godhra train massacre, etc. How many of us remember the exact date on which any of these incidents happened?

An article in Time magazine (sometime in 2002) had reported that the American Dialect Society had voted ‘nine-eleven” as the ‘term of the year”. Linguists felt that there was a kind of aura or mystique to the date, as 911 was also the number for emergency calls in the US. Also, as more than one place was involved in the attack, it was difficult to assign a single geographical name to the incident- such as 'New York building crash'. Another explanation was that ‘9/11’ being a number made it sound as unemotional and impersonal as possible. Referring to the horrific incidents as the ‘events of 9/11’ somehow seemed to help in distancing one from the tragedy.

The term may have been coined by TV journalists, because it was catchy and fitted in easily in headlines and ticker tape crawlers. But not all terms and words coined by journalists become popular or find ready and universal acceptance. CNN had tried to create a buzz around the words, “War on Terror’, but it didn’t catch on .

A better explanation is that the term appealed to the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ and stayed on. It is the ‘crowd’ that intuitively seems to know which expression describes the incident best; should it be called a ‘tragedy’, ‘massacre’, ‘ killing’, ‘carnage’, ‘blasts’ or simply by the date ?

One Sunday morning, when the doorbell rang.....

I was absorbed in a nice juicy chitchat with a friend on my mobile phone, when the doorbell rang. Continuing with the conversation and holding the phone between my ears and shoulder in the manner guaranteed to give one a sprained neck, I opened the door.

It was the Cable TV guy who had come to collect his monthly subscription. He too had a mobile phone in his hand and was carrying on quite an animated dialogue with some other customer of his. Tilting his head as I had done, parking his mobile phone on his shoulder and barely making eye contact with me, he continued to talk on the phone, while pulling out a card from a folder, with his right hand.

I signed the card, took out my wallet from my trousers and handed him a five-hundred rupee note, while laughing over something my friend told me on the phone.

Now, the monthly subscription, for some reason, comes to Rs 355/- . So, the cable TV guy signaled to me with the five fingers of his left hand that he would like to have five more rupees from me, so that he could return Rs 150/-. All this while, his irate customer on the mobile phone continued to engage his attention.

He collected the five-rupee coin, handed over Rs 150/- to me and walked across to the next house to ring the bell – still mumbling something on his mobile.

I closed the door, returned to my sofa and carried on the conversation with my friend.

Much later I realized that the two of us had been talking continuously, yet not exchanged a word between us, while a transaction worth Rs 355/- had taken place.

A metaphor for our techno-obsessed times? Or a tribute to our multi-tasking capabilities?

The confessions of a cured hypochondriac

In the opening page of his classic, “Three Men in a Boat”, the author Jerome K Jerome, describes the turmoil he had to go through whenever he read anything relating to diseases.

“It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch--hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into-- some fearful, devastating scourge, I know--and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever--read the symptoms--discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it--wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's Dance--found, as I expected, that I had that too,--began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically--read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.”

Exactly the kind of thoughts that race through my hypochondriac mind whenever my attention is drawn to one of the many articles that appear in newspapers and magazines, describing, in painstaking detail, the symptoms of the latest virus fever raging in the city or some other ailments affecting the heart, brain or the liver of the upwardly mobile. I need to pause and check out if the symptoms described do not correspond exactly with some of the sensations that I had felt in the recent past. The thing about hypochondria is that you cannot treat it; once you acknowledge that it is a disease that merits treatment, you validate and reinforce the hypochondriac’s belief that he is ill and start a self-perpetuating doom loop.

I therefore steer clear of these articles and make sure that I don’t even make any eye contact with them. Far better to stick to the cartoons, trust me. I may be guilty of escapism, but at least I can be assured of good health.

The uncaring world.

The humble crow. Black all over. Doomed to this achromatic existence, when every other creature on earth is resplendent in multiple colours. Did its early ancestor fall into a cauldron of ink or tar and pass on the darkened genes to its descendants in a Lamarckian manner? Does this shade of minimum light and maximum darkness infuse the species with a higher survival value? Or was it just a case of selective and black comedy perpetrated by the Maker?

The elevator in my building. All day long it goes up and down. Hundreds of people get in and get out and move on. But the elevator? Imprisoned in that lonely shaft for its entire lifetime. Condemned to its vertical movement. Horizontally challenged. Quietly serving. Up. Down. Up. Down. And yet uncomplaining.

The perfume bottle. 200 ml capacity. Each day I use it, the drop in level inside the bottle is hardly noticeable. Even after a month. Will the perfume last for ever? Is the bottle like the Kamadhenu, I wonder? Alas, no. In three months, the perfume is completely used up. Evaporated. Gone. Never to come back. For ever. Vanished into thin air while spreading its sweet fragrance. Like the candle which self-destructs while providing light.

This keyboard. Quickly converts finger strokes to bytes and words. Is this ability only unidirectional? Can it convert words and bytes from the monitor into finger strokes and push them intra-nervously from my hands into my brain? So, that I can instantly download volumes of data and imprint in my memory? Or can it, with the Backspace key remove memories of unsavory incidents of my life. No, it can’t.

What a cruel, nasty, brutal, uncaring world!

The terrific twenties

David Bodanis, a popular science writer, in his book E= MC2, says that one of the many similarities between Newton and Einstein was that both produced their best output before they turned thirty.

Newton achieved much of his success, in his mid-twenties. Back at his mother’s farm after his University had been closed because of the Plague, in an incredibly brief period of about eighteen months, he did fundamental work on developing calculus, conceiving the law of universal gravitation as well as working on key concepts for a study of mechanics that would apply throughout the universe.

Einstein, in a period of under eight months in 1905, again in his twenties- and while putting in full days at the Patent office where he was employed-came out with his first theory of relativity, the equation E = MC2, as well as his work that helped lay the path for lasers, atom bombs, space travel, computer chips, key aspects of modern pharmaceutical and bioengineering industry and all Internet switching devices.

Mozart in his teens had performed in many countries, but it was in his twenties that his composing talent blossomed. He started writing operas in German, a novel innovation as the tradition up to then was to write in Italian. He was keen on new instruments - he wrote major works for the early piano (which was smaller than the 19th C piano by at least two octaves). In his twenties, Mozart also composed horn and clarinet concertos for musician friends who specialised in these instruments but had no music to show off their skills. They are still the definitive concert works for horn and clarinet.

In my twenties, I became skilled at whistling in the bathroom, discovered that I could grow a beard if I didn’t shave for ten days in a row, managed to drive an Ambassador car up to third gear, started using spectacles, figured out the difference between billiards and snooker, learnt how to wear a tie and still breathe and as a traveling salesman was a storehouse of knowledge on the hundreds of railway stations and bus stands in South India, especially with respect to the location of the toilets in each of these places,.

So, as you can see, there is a definite pattern. So many creative geniuses have been most productive and prolific in their twenties.

One Wednesday evening on a flight from Dubai

He was the last passenger to board the plane at Dubai. Armed with two large shopping bags that had been picked up in the duty-free shops at the last minute and a suitcase which should never have cleared the weight/volume criteria laid down for hand baggage and got past security, he puffed and panted his way in. All overhead luggage space was taken, but as he was blocking the passage and being a nuisance, a flight attendant put him out of his misery and accommodated his suitcase and packets somewhere.

He settled down in his window seat, in the row just ahead of mine, and asked the flight attendant to get him a glass of water. He gulped it down and asked for some more, still struggling to recover his breath.

The flight was taxiing down and about to take off, when he rang the bell again and asked for an English newspaper. And for a magazine, soon after.

Once air-borne and the drink trolleys were sighted, he ordered a glass of red wine. A packet of peanuts came along with the wine. He polished off the peanuts in record time and asked for one more packet... and one more. Also, another glass of red wine.

Food was served. His came last, as he had ordered some special meal. As the food was being kept on the folding tray, he asked the attendant to give him some extra bread. And, another glass of red wine, if she didn’t mind.

Half way through the meal, he decided he needed to have another portion of the rice and the curry. The attendant managed to locate this somewhere and had it brought to him. Clumsily, he dropped one of his forks on to the floor and rang the bell again. A replacement fork was soon delivered free-on-board his seat.

At this point in the proceedings, he realised that he needed to use the toilet. He put his tray under his seat, and then forced the aisle seat passenger to get up and make way for him. He returned in a few minutes, made the aisle seat passenger get up again (the latter holding the food tray in his hand, in both instances) and got back to the unfinished task of eating.

He asked for one more glass of red wine to wash down his meal. And when coffee was offered, he asked for an extra packet of cream and sugar – to fetch which, the attendant had to walk back to her cabin with the coffee jug in one hand and tea jug on the other. Having finished the coffee, he enquired if cognac was available. The attendant obliged. A repeat order was placed soon and the second glass of cognac was also supplied.

The meal over, he pushed his seat to the ‘fully reclined’ position, took out his pillow and blanket and was about to doze off, when he decided that he must have an extra pillow for his back. By now, the attendant had realised, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls. The bell rings for thee” and, presently, the second pillow materialised.

All this while, he had the ear phones on, listening to the in-flight music. Suddenly, he woke up from his sleep, rang the bell again and told the attendant that the ear phones were not working and could she please bring him another set?

Thirty minutes before landing, he asked for the Customs Immigration Form, filled it up and tore it in disgust realising that he had made some mistake. A fresh form was sought from the attendant and this was soon brought to him.

After gulping down two glasses of water which the attendant was thoughtfully passing around, he felt the urge to go to the toilet again, just when the captain announced that ‘we would be landing in Chennai shortly”. The process of the aisle seat passenger getting up, making way, getting up again was repeated.

When the plane landed and was moving to the parking bay, he jostled his way to the front to pick up his suitcase and duty-free packets and was the first to get out of the aircraft. He was gone with the wind.

He had made sure that he had got good value for his money; the flight attendant could have a restful sleep that night with her conscience applauding her for putting in that extra bit more effort to justify her fat salary and I could go home with the feeling that I had never before been so well entertained on a 4-hour flight. Win-win-win situation.

The Plutonic Dialogue

This has been an action-filled week. The sequence of events so far.....

Aug 22, 2006: At a meeting in Prague, the International Astronomy Union adopts guidelines that downgrade the status of Pluto, from a full blown planet to a mere ‘dwarf-planet’.

Aug 23, 2006: The School of Phenomenal and Powerful Memory swiftly responds with a resolution de-recognising the trusted mnemonic to remember the order of the planets in the Solar System (My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas). The new mnemonic is "My Very Exasperating Manager Just Served us Notice".

Aug 24, 2006: The Institute of Phonetic Fanatics issues press statement that the silent ‘m’ in the word ‘mnemonic’ will no longer remain silent and the word will be pronounced as ‘menomonic’.

Aug 25, 2006: The Association of Dyslexic Orthographers lodges protest with Press Council on the complicated and muddled spelling in the statement issued by the Institute of Phonetic Fanatics, the previous day. The Press Council rules in favour of the Orthographers and changes spelling as “The Institute of Fonetic Phanatics”.

Aug 26, 2006 : The Fonetic Phanatics and the Dyslexic Orthographers together take on the International Astronomical Union and ridicule the members for meeting in Prague- a place mispronounced as “Pra- ha”, in a country called Cizech Republic misspelt as Czech republic.

Aug 27, 2006 : At a meeting of the Grand Council of Inter-Galactic Matters, held at ZZzvt ( pronounced Swaha), a star located several hundred light-years away, astronomers decree that the insignificant little fireball in ‘ the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy’ referred to as Sol by some primitive, ape-descended inhabitants of the little blue green planet that orbits it- will no longer qualify as a star, as it fails to meet certain basic criteria..

The power of the brand

In his e-book, The Diamond Invention, the American investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein says that for over a hundred years, a single company, De Beers, has been artificially propping up the price of diamonds, by creating an illusion of scarcity, when in fact, plentiful supplies are available. He writes

“…. The aura of the diamond has survived for over a century because two critical conditions were satisfied: the production of diamonds from the world's mines was kept in balance with world consumption; and the public restrained from attempting to sell its inventory back onto the market…. De Beers ensured the first of these conditions by owning and controlling the major sources of diamonds and the second of these conditions by fostering the illusion in the public's mind that diamonds are forever, even though diamonds can be shattered, chipped, discolored or incinerated to an ash.”

In other words, what De Beers has been doing successfully is creating and sustaining the brand of the diamond.

Marketers say ‘a brand image is a perception created in the mind of the target audience. A brand also stands for the immediate image, emotions, or perceptions people experience when they think of a company or product. A brand represents all the tangible and intangible qualities and aspects of a product or service. A brand represents a collection of feelings and perceptions about quality, image, lifestyle, and status. It is precisely because brands represent intangible qualities that the term is often hard to define. Intangible qualities, perceptions, and feelings are often hard to grasp and clearly describe.’

So what De Beers set out to do was to create a mass mentality in which men and women would perceive diamonds, not as precious stones that could be bought or sold according to economic conditions or fashions, but as an inseparable part of courtship and married life.

What Nike, Coca Cola, Starbucks and others do is founded on same principles- create a differentiated brand image that is perceived by the customer as something much larger than the cold functionality of the product.

I was somehow reminded of this when I read Atanu Dey’s recent posts on Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and his Art of Living (AOL) movement. Atanu concedes that the AOL is doing useful work, but is critical of the personality cult that it promotes in its gullible followers.

I have been quite disapproving of the methods followed by the likes of Sai Baba, Sri Ravishankar and, Mata Amritanandamayi, though, admittedly, they have channelised their resources into useful projects that serve the public cause. But, I now realize that they are no different from and no more guilty of manipulation than the aforementioned corporate brand-builders.

If Sai Baba had to draw attention and create a mass following, he naturally had to differentiate himself from other mortals and create a brand identity of his own. The flowing saffron-coloured robes, his distinctive hairstyle, the hype and the hoopla over his ‘magical’ powers to pull out watches and gold rings out of thin hair, his Bhajan sessions which would send his followers into a trance- all went into the creation of the unique Sai Baba brand . Without this brand pull, he wouldn’t have enticed his followers to come into his fold seeking mental peace and serenity.

So, how is this any different from an advertiser luring you into a make-believe world and leading you to imagine that by procuring a certain type of talcum powder, you would be transported to a sanitized world of blue skies and green grass , where you would have a wonderful spouse, a lovely home, a cute little dog and a smile on all the time ?

For several decades, De Beers and their advertising agency N.W.Ayer carefully cultivated the romantic image in the public's mind that a diamond was a unique manifestation of nature and the rarest of all precious objects in the world. What Sai Baba and Ravi Shankar do is to carefully create the spiritual image in the public mind that they are specially chosen by God to lead them out of their miseries and to deliver happiness and joy.

Same difference.

My secret love

All over the blogosphere, poems on love are being churned out with effortless ease and at an amazing frequency . Some bloggers even narrate details of the special circumstances and the precise moment in which romance had first entered their lives. So, what does a poetry-challenged and romance-starved guy like me do when he feels left out? Head for the trusted, Romantic Love-poem generator, of course, to produce this mother of all love poems.

My Love

Your skin glows like the jackfruit,
and blossoms thorny & prickly
as the cactus flower
in the purest hope of spring.

My heart follows your
deep pipe-organ voice
and leaps like a crocodile
at the whisper of your name.

The evening floats in on
the wing of a great hungry vulture.
I am comforted by your dupatta
that I carry into the twilight of incandescent beams
I hold next to my gall bladder

I am filled with hope that
I may dry your tears
of concentrated sulphuric acid.
As my ears fall from my monkey cap,
it reminds me of your non-stop chatter.

In the quiet, I listen for
the last shrill howl of the day.
My heated nose leaps
to my handkerchief.

I wait in the moonlight
for your secret goodbye
so that we may depart , back to back,
in search of the magnificent beyond
and mystical absence of love.

Update 24/08/06 : If you type 'love poem'in Blog Search, this post actually shows up in the top 10.That makes me a Crooning Casanova uh?

Wanted : Better role models

Two achievers, in two different fields, have revealed the secrets of their respective success.

Ms. Indra Nooyi ( on being appointed the CEO-designate of Pepsi) : Simple. I realised early in my career that, to make it big in life, I had to work twice as hard as the others did. That’s exactly what I have been doing all these years.

Mr Abdul Kalam ( on Independence Day, replying to a student who wanted to know how he too could become an Abdul Kalam): Simple. hard work and sweat.

This is simply terrible. I am dismayed. Must Pepsi-Nooyi and Presi-Kalam attribute their success to Perseverance and Perspiration? And make lesser mortals like me squirm in shame and wallow in guilt because we haven’t been slogging our butts or sweating our skins out?

Instead, if only the indefatigable Kalam had said that his entire success was due to the fact that he was always laidback, never missed out on his 12 hours of sleep a day (“When India stayed awake, I slept on to my destiny”), never bothered to cut or comb his hair and never missed a cricket match or a vacation, I would have had a role model after my own heart. But that was not to be…

Eminently unreadable

As per this Readability Test, my blog scores 11.19 on the Gunning Fog index- which means it is as easy to understand as the Wall Street Journal.

The Flesch Reading Ease is 64.03- which is approximately the midpoint of the 60-70 range that authors must aim for.

And, the Flesch Kincaid grade level is 7.95, which is the number of years of schooling required to understand the content.

Out of the 15335 words that I have written, 10124 are mono-syllabic.

The verdict is out. Striving to be an author, I write in mono-syllables, churn out content suited for 8th grade kids in school and manage to sound like the editor of the Wall Street Journal. Sigh!

High stakes

I remember a story that I heard a few years back on BBC about a punter from London, who sold his entire assets for something like 200,000 pounds, flew to Las Vegas without disclosing his plans to anybody, walked into a casino and staked the entire amount on a spin of the roulette wheel. The ball settled on his number and he walked away with double the money.

I love such stories involving interesting bets and high stakes. The Mahabharata was, of course, a famous example. So was Jules Verne’s “ Around the world in eighty days”, where Phileas Fogg would stake his entire fortune to demonstrate that one could travel around the world in – you guessed it- eighty days.

P.G.Wodehouse has spun several tales where his hapless heroes would get drawn into high-stake betting encounters. In one of the golf stories titled “High Stakes” in the collection, “Heart of a Goof“, two millionaires play out a game of golf which would decide who gets to keep the butler, with the outcome having serious implications on their respective married lives.

In Roald Dahl’s classic short story, “ The Man from the South”, an old man draws a young American cadet into a bet, that the latter would not be able to light up his cigarette lighter ten consecutive times without failing even once. The stakes? If the cadet would do it successfully ten times in a row, the old man would gift him a Cadillac that was parked outside; if he missed even once, the cadet would need to chop off the little finger of his left hand and give it to the old man. (This episode was ‘borrowed’ in a Tamil film. Aficionados will remember the hilarious exchange between Rajnikanth and Poornam Viswanathan in the ‘80s film, ‘Ninaithale Inikkum’ of K.Balachander. )

Interesting bets, high stakes, high reward-to-risk ratio help in spicing up one’s bland and dull life, what say?

Does God exist?

An argument, put forward by those who hold creationist beliefs, goes like this. If, some aliens were to visit Mount Rushmore and see the colossal sculptures of the US Presidents carved out on the mountains, common sense would tell them that it was created by design and did not evolve from sand and rock spontaneously or through random mutation. An extension of this logic reveals to us that the entire earth, the flora and the fauna therein and the intelligent human species were surely created by a Supreme Being as part of a grand design.

Evolutionists debunk this theory as nonsense. They believe that natural forces, without any intervention or machinations of a Master Designer, aligned themselves in such a way as to trigger the process of creation and the evolution thereafter.

This ‘evolutionists vs. creationists’ debate has been raging on for several centuries. Consider this old example discussed in a book called “Philosophy Gym” by Stephen Law:

Believer: God is the greatest being.
Non-believer: Who said that?
Believer: The Bible says so
Non-believer: Who wrote the Bible?
Believer: God.

What Microsoft Excel would have pointed out as “circular reference”. But, the believer clings to his position, while the non-believer remains skeptical.

Julian Baggini, who writes regularly for The Guardian, discusses in his latest book, the gambler’s logic propounded by Blaise Pascal, the mathematician-turned-philosopher. Based on Pascal's theological work titled “Pensees” written in 1670, Baggini analyses the various scenarios on a Joharis window as follows:

1) If Goes doesn’t actually exist, and you believe in him
2) If God doesn’t actually exist, and you don’t believe in him
3) If God exists and you believe in him.
4) If God exists and you don’t believe in him.

In Scenario 1, there is no upside; the minor downside is that that you need to invest time and effort when you are on earth, in going to church, in prayers, etc

In Scenario 2, there is no upside; there is no downside either

In Scenario 3, the upside is that, upon dying, heavenly bliss is yours for eternity; the minor downside, as in Scenario 1, is that you need to invest time and effort in going to church, in prayers, etc

In Scenario 4, there is no upside; but there is a terrible downside- eternal damnation in Hell awaits you

So, if you gamble that God doesn’t exist, the best is a short, carefree, life on earth, but the worst is eternal damnation. If you gamble that God exists, the worst is a short, devout life on earth, but the best is eternal heavenly bliss.

So, if you need to gamble, you are much better off believing that God exists.

But, as Woody Allen said, “If only God would provide clear evidence of his existence, for example, by depositing a few million dollars in my Swiss account…..”

Who said this?

Famous sayings get famous in the first place, not because they are worthy of fame, but because they are uttered by famous people……………Ralph Waldo Emerson

As you must have guessed, I made that up. But Ralph Waldo Emerson was perfectly capable of mouthing such pedestrian stuff, by the dozens. Flip through any of those self-help books and you will find a quote by this character, things like “As we grow old, the beauty steals inward” or “A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as unsupportable as any other dullness” and other such mind-blowing nonsense. I suspect that his name “Ralph Waldo Emerson” had such a nice musical ring around it that it lent a stamp of authority to the banality.

Question: When does an ordinary utterance become a ‘saying” and when does it get elevated to the exalted status of a ‘quotation”?

Answer: It doesn’t depend on what has been said. What matters is who has said it.

Take Edmund Hillary. Or was it George Mallory? One of these guys was asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest and he replied, puffing and panting, “Because it is there”. And this one-liner got reported all over the world. Also, Picasso’s when he said, “Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.” What pomposity!

Picasso, the famous artist could pull it off. Imagine that I am tapping away on my keyboard and my wife asks me, “Why do you blog?” and if I were to reply, “ I have seen what could be and asked why not I write?”, she would pack me off to the psychiatrist before I can say, “Sigmund Freud”.

And that smooth-talking Nehru. All that drivel about, “At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” which gets quoted ad nauseum. Didn’t’ anybody have the elementary sense to tell him, “Old man, there can never be a midnight hour when the whole world can sleep together. There are longitudinal differences and various time zones. So, will you skip this rhetoric and move on with it?”

Don’t get me started on Gandhi. At one time it used to be fashionable for any shop in the country to display the words, “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him” and attribute this to Gandhi. Why should Gandhi have said this? What were his credentials to act as the mouthpiece of all customers? Gandhi, as far as I know, did not purchase a single thing in his life. Even his simple dhoti, he is said to have spun it himself. So, when did he get to see the customer’s perspective? Bah.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson didn’t say, “It is human nature to be carried away by the halo effect- and look for hidden wisdom where it doesn’t exist”

The killer serials

In his book titled, “The Pig that wants to be eaten”, author Julian Baggini provides this thought experiment, a modern version of the allegory of the cave found in Plato’s “The Republic”..

“Members of the bizarre Weatherfield sect lived a very secluded life at St.Hilda Hogden House. All but the leader were forbidden any contact with the outside world and were taught that reality was the world portrayed in soap operas- the only television programmes that they were allowed to watch. For the Weatherfieldians, as they were known, Coronation Street, The Bold and the Beautiful, EastEnders and Neighbours were not works of fiction, but fly-on-the-wall documentaries. And since most of the members had been born in the commune, the pretence was not hard to maintain.

One day however, disciple Kenneth, who had always been a touch rebellious, decided to leave Hogden’s and visit the places he had seen so often in the altar box. This was, of course, strictly prohibited, but Kenneth managed to escape.

What he found amazed him. ….When he returned to Hogden’s and told his fellow disciples what he had discovered, he was dismissed as a lunatic. “You should never have left”, they told him, "the mind plays tricks on you” “

What struck me was that this need not be a mere thought experiment. It is actually played out in cities and towns all over India, with millions glued, for several hours every day, to the various serials that are telecast in Hindi and in different regional languages. I know that it is unfair to paint them all with one broad sweep of the brush, but I am convinced that each episode casts an evil spell on the viewers cutting across age groups, subtly manipulating their emotions, irreversibly retarding their intellect and, inevitably, eroding their value systems. The entire TV-viewing populace revels in this fantasy world and is completely lost to reality.

In a famous short story called, “History lesson” by Arthur C Clarke, a group of aliens from Planet Venus visit Earth- that had been submerged in ice, 5000 years back- looking for some evidence or clue on how life must have been here. They manage to find a videotape of a movie and take it back to Venus. Running the tape and analyzing the content, they learn quite a lot – that Planet Earth had been inhabited by a resilient, tough species capable of incredible feats and amazing speeds. The videotape comes to an end with the words, “That was a Walt Disney Production”.

If 5000 years from now, the human species is extinct and some aliens were to take back a CD of a Tamil film or a serial, no prizes for guessing what their conclusions would be.

Earth : A failure report

Earthlings had known and enjoyed the effect of hallucinatory substances for a long time. But serious research on this subject began only in the ‘year 1920” (note: this was the unit of time as followed by the earthlings). This was the sequence of events that followed:

1920: Psycho-analysts discover that children do not acquire the capability to distinguish between reality and fantasy till they reach the age of five. When children listen to stories and folklore, they get completely absorbed in the fantasy world, these analysts point out.

1920-80: Desperate attempts by adult earthlings to find any means to be transported back to the world of fantasy they had experienced as children. This deep urge finds outlets in movies, roller-coaster rides, theme parties, juvenile sports, etc

1980: The birth of the personal computer and video-games.

1995-2002: Scientists at the University of Washington's Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HIT Lab) introduce a device called VirtuSphere. With it, a person wearing a head-mounted display (HMD) inside the sphere could be transported to an entirely virtual environment with an awesome 3-D effect.

2003: Cyber-philosophers raise the profound question, “When one is inside the VirtuSphere, is one living in the real world and looking at the virtual images or is one actually in the virtual world and staring at reality?”

2004: Scientists at the University of Berkeley carry out painstaking calculations to determine the amount of information that the human brain processes in a life time. Adding up the bytes involved in exposure to books, movies, newspapers and other experiences, the study concludes that ‘in 70 years of life one would be exposed to around twenty gigabytes of ASCII. Less than the storage capacity of a disk drive.

2008: Computer scientists at Bangalore working along with bio-technologists and neuroscientists manage to digitize the entire information in a human brain, by implanting a bio-chip inside the skull and transferring the contents to a hard disk through the USP port of a computer.

2010: Microsoft comes out with a Unified Operating System (UOS) that integrates the work of the computer chips and the bio-chips of the brain.

2015 : Pakistani hackers ( grandsons of Amjad Farooq Alvi, the person who introduced the first computer virus into an IBM PC) find a way to reverse the process – memory from hard disk can now be transferred to the human brain in a split second, artificially inducing various experiences.

2020: Microsoft comes out with an advanced version of UOS, called AUOS that becomes the standard operating platform for these two-way systems

2025 : Cyber-libraries now sell packaged ‘life-experiences’ of famous personalities in 100 GB pen drives, that can be instantaneously downloaded into the human brain. Humans can now live the life of any personality that they may have admired or had been jealous of. They are now liberated from the tyranny of leading a mono-life.

2035: All humans and computers are now connected to one central server running on AUOS- ver 5.0. The entire human population is now on artificial and virtual support, with everybody leading someone else’s life.

2040: AUOS-ver 5.0 system encounters slight difficulty and begins to reboot.........

( Extracted from “ Earth : A failure report” that was prepared by the fact-finding committee at Planet ZZtrys, Proximo Centauri, investigating into the mysterious extinction of the primitive bipeds on the third planet of the adjacent solar system)