Preening myself

When I was in Chennai last month, I visited my previous organization. I have a big gang of friends there, and pretty close they are to me.Nearly 2 years have passed since I quit. It's a home like thing to me still. I know almost eveybody there, even now, after so many changes.
I stroll in. It's a six storey building and I used to work in the fifth floor. I walk to the lift. A group forms waiting for the lift to come.
A person suddenly smiles at me. I don't know him. I smile back at him.
"Are you not here anymore?", he asks me.
"No".
"Have you been transferred to any other place?", he asks.
"No, I quit", I say.
Again we trade smiles, and we are on our way. He is a customer, who has been attended to, by me. A long time ago, and I don't even remember him. Well, it's a service organization and scores of customers come daily. But it's a big organization and the staff also, are considerable in number.
I was happy inside, thinking somebody remembers me even after such a long time. It seems I am good at CRM, after all!
Ofcourse, customers remember you even better, if you are bad at service.
The guy wasn't scowling at me, though.

Makaan ka talaash (or whatever they say in Hindi for house-hunting)

I am stressed this week. Not because of any work load. I have to find an apartment to move in, as I can stay in hotel, for only one more week. I began looking for one. My friend K advised me to go for a shared accomodation, as that would be cheaper. And I faithfully started following the Indian websites where classifieds are the staple diet sorted by cities. And my research resulted in several findings but not a suitable acco for me.
1. If the ad is for the area you are looking for, then it would have been taken already.
2. If the rent is very low, then it would be far away from the place you want to move in.
3. If it's your area that's advertised and the rent is fabulously low, then it would invite only females! Infact men are almost a minority, I felt, going by the ads.
And I started hunting for apartments on individual sharing basis too. There too, I became experienced enough to write a thesis.
1. If the place comes up to all your expectations like affordability, accessibility, then the owner would reveal that there are already people who have shown an interest. Infact only if the background checks on them reveal a lurid past, you'd get a chance.
2. If there are no takers for the apartment you are shown, then it is sure to have some faults.
Here I am, searching in a far western suburb of Chicago (infact it's almost another town) and yet there is enough competition.
Next week would reveal how I fared in my hunt for a home...

Food to the hungry; Friends to the lonely!

I've seen pictures of pythons after a meal. A monstrous bulge in the middle of their slithering body indicating the size of the creature they have swallowed. How the python must be feeling! It can't move, the prey weighing in like an anchor. How it must have been for the python to starve for a long period and suddenly having to stuff itself with so big a meal at one go!

I can understand its feelings. After going without a leave for more than 8 months, I managed to finagle a leave of absence for a princely 7 days. In those seven days I was to catch up with my friends and relatives for the past months that I've not seen them. Too little time to achieve that. And I end up feeling guilty towards everyone for not devoting enough time. I was like the python gobbling up whatever I could manage, boning up on all events that I missed out, enjoying the camraderie as much as I can. Not with anyone, I spent as much as I wished!

And now I'm back at work, far removed from my friends. Only the memories are with me, still to be dwelt and digested. And the next meal is far away, beyond the time horizon!

Art in my heart

Last weekend of my business trip, I thought I'd catch a glimpse of history of the city. So I contacted the Chicago cultural center who arranged a volunteer to give me a 2 hour walking tour. It was a nice experience. Learnt about some of the important buildings of the city.


I saw the Hay Market memorial where a violent end to a labour meeting gave rise to May 1 being observed as the Labour day the world over. At the end, I thought going to the art museum would be a better way to spend the hour I had before catching the train back to suburbs.Called the Art Institute of Chicago,it's a veritable treasure trove of art, from the world over.

They have a hall for Indian art, where scultures from Karnataka, Tamilnadu,Rajasthan and AndhraPradesh were displayed. Mostly they were donated to the museum by people whose ancestors were in India during the British occupation.

There is a special sculpture showing Shiva and Parvathi with Muruga in betweeen. The uniqueness is Lord Muruga is in a dancing position, normally never in such a position in any temple. And it's not in our country!


There are rare paintings, sculptures, artifacts ranging from very old to Modern abstract ones. One day won't suffice. I did it in hour! Just 2, 3 halls. That's all.



A sculpture by Rodin in the foreground. Claude Monet's paintings in the background.



P.S: The volunteer who accompanied me in the morning walk till my museum visit, had been to many places in India than me. He embarassed me saying that he'd even been to the Andamans!!

Environmentally yours!

My city, Chennai, has been again beset by torrential rains. The good thing is that government is in damage control, full swing. Prompt disaster relief and elections next year maybe beyond happenstance. Anyway I don't want to nitpick as long as something good is done. The bad thing is the poor, the homeless bear the full brunt of the Nature's fury. At times as these, it's hard to find justification of uneven distribution of material wealth through the society.
It seems in recent times the climate is going haywire, world wide. A slew of hurricanes have blasted the Central and North America. They have come in such huge numbers that the meterologists ran out of conventional allotted names and resorted to Greek alphabets. In India too, Mumbai had its share of rains and a lot more. For that matter be it rains or drought, they hit us severely.

For some time, I've been thinking whether these phenomena could be a result of man-made causes such as the green house gases and stuff. Global warming and such stuff are gobbledygook for me. Recently in US some liberals (or whatever such people are called) got together at Vegas, conducted a show called, "Earth to America". It was a two hour skit kind of thing. Stand-up comedians like Wanda Sykes, comedy show men like Ray Romano, Larry David, actor Tom Hanks, country singer Tim McGraw and other assorted entertainment industry people got together to garner support for environmental consciousness. They went bashing Dubya Jr., bigtime. The show was humourous and I liked it. They wanted everyone to logon a web site and click to show support. It was like a virtual march in support of environment protection. I never got to do it. Later I bought a Tim Mcgraw CD, though! At the end of the programme there was a brief mention of the Kyoto protocol. It seems even though the US is not a signatory to it, many US cities, around 40, have adopted it. Seattle was the first.

It was then I decided to bone up on the Kyoto protocol. Kyoto protocol is basically an agreement committing 38 countries to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2
percent from 1990 levels, by 2012. Greenhouse gases are carbondioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and Hydrofluorocarbons. US and Australia are the only developed countries not to sign it. And now,there is a Montreal protocol too.

The Kyoto protocol is peculiar in that it is valid only when countries that agree to the protocol, account up to 55% of worldwide emissions or more. It very recently came into force(Nov '04) when Russia ratified it. Developing countries like India, China and Brazil are not required to sign up, for now. The world's largest polluter US has refused to join, on the one hand saying that it's too costly to implement while on the other maintaining that developing countries too should be made to join. I guess it's cheaper to implement for the developing countries!

Ofcourse, it's a moot point that just by agreeing to control emissions, whether a country will overnight become 100% safe to breathe.Infact the signatories themselves are actually facing increasing emissions year over year! And there's a big club of nay-sayers who pooh-pooh the theory that the gas emissions harm our earth's climate. There are some prominent men like Michael Crichton, who wrote an entire book, not just a blog post, to denounce it. "State of Fear" became a best seller, infact.

Generations to come will vindicate either of the side. Hope they don't do it at their own cost.

Work of love!

I was on a drive to NY last week. Driving through snow covered landscape was an enjoyable experience. Pennsylvania and NewJersey are beauties. On the way, through Penn, I was idly gazing around while my friend was at the wheel. Suddenly something caught my eye. It was some graffiti in an Indian language, complete with the heart and arrow symbol!! Even in desolate places, my countrymen, diehard romantics they being, strive to declare their love. One must be a complete whacko to take out a paint tin and brush to a remote place, just to scribble his love.I naively assume here that Indian females are not given these tendencies. Now I'd like to visit Everest, just to know whether any Indian who had gone there, has proclaimed his love, thousands of feet above sea level! What all a love lorn guy is driven to!!

Hairy tales!!

After well over two months, I finally got my hair cut last week. Having no time to get the hair cut, I let it grew, and grow it did like wild weed. Curly, unkempt hair is not a great advertisment for your company when you're visiting a client. And I was getting looks too. Afraid of being mistaken for a rock star, I decided to go to the saloon. The poor lady at the saloon had her clippers break trying them on me. I was a bit embarassed.My friend whom I went with, helpfully suggested her to go for a lawn mower. There's nothing like a lady to make one take snipe at even friends! :-( It took a whole 10 minutes for my Delilah to figure how to get at my hair. "You should have come earlier", she told me primly. I mumbled, "Didn't have time", my eyes bleary having pulled an all nighter just before. Then she doused me with water and then managed to do her work. The next day, I got appreciated for the hair cut, at office. Lotsa ladies and a few men too!
While I was there, I got reminded of my first hair cut at Indore. It was a hilarious (not to me, then) episode. I was new to the Hindi heartland and had a very small vocab. I sat on the swivel chair, and the barber went to work. He asked me something. I just nodded, proud to let him know that I didn't understand a single word of what he asked. After 10 minutes, I was shorn and was about to get up, he fired away another question. I made some undecipherable sound. He poured a cool oil on my head and started practising tabla. I realised, albeit a bit late, that I was asked about having a head massage. In my mind, I started counting the money I had, to give him for this extra. Then he again enquired something pointing at my face. I should have atleast got up then. Proud I am, I did some more affirmative sounds. I forgot whatever Hindi I had known till then. Not a single Hindi word came to my mind and said, "I'm here". To my horror, the barber took some cream applied on my face. He took a mallet sort of thing and went about hammering my face. I couldn't have been any stupider then, though my friends contest this. This went on for some time. Enjoyed at the opportunity to practise all his skills and apply all his concoctions, the barber started talking to me about something again. This time, I managed to croak out a "nahin" and got off. The good thing at the end was all of them, the massage, facial or whatever he did to my face, came at a very low cost. For that money, I would've got just a plain vanilla haircut in Chennai. Even after that, my repertoire of Hindi words didn't increase. But I started rehearsing what to say, before going for trimming my mop.

Chink in the armour!

Since I came to the US I am fascinated by one thing. Whatever store I go to, I see products with the "Made in China" label. And this is not a stray occurence. In stores like WalMart which caters to the middle class, almost all the products sold, are from China. I saw some clothes with the "Made in Bangladesh" tag too, never a "Made in USA"! But ofcourse, sodas are the obvious exception.
Amused, I started a game to myself, to find an article which has the words, "Made in USA". I searched and searched. Finally I found Zippo lighters carrying that etching.
USA, it seems to me, is a large consumer economy than a manufacturing one. In general, all products for the high end market come from Europe and for the rest down below the affluency line, it's the Chinks! It looks as if China has bought the manufacturing rights to all sorts of consumer durables!!
No doubt, the Chinks are leveraging their population as an asset.It is a controlled labour market as well. Important of all, China's exchange rate is artificially pegged down to the dollar, making it's exports to the US dead cheap.
I made an hypothesis. Let any US president restrict the imports from China.
Effects: 1.He will see a raise in prices.
2.It will result in public unhappiness and complaint over the prices.
3.Ratings down for the incumbent in the endless opinion polls they conduct.

That is why, No US president offends China. US will preach the whole world about signing NPT. They'll demand that all markets should be open to them. But when it comes to China, it is at the decision and timing if its own, does it relent. All the South East Asian tigers got plundered because of having their currency at free float. China and India as well, escaped then because of their relatively insulated economies.

US may be known as the super power but I wonder what will happen if China lowers the boom either through its currency rate or making its exports a bit costlier!! It'll hurt US badly. So who's the actual super power?

To be a big daddy, a country has to do two things.
One, create market dependencies. you control a nation's market, you control the nation!
Second, Go Nuke! It's the Insurance!!

Shooting Bull!

Today I had 110 calories worth of Carbonated water, Sucrose, Glucose, Sodium Citrate, Taurine, Glucoronolactone, Caffeine, Inositol, Niacinamide, Calcium-pantothenate, Pyridoxine HCL, Vitamin B12, Artificial flavours and colours, and managed to stay awake through the day!!


P.S: I had a Red Bull Energy Drink.
P.P.S: Too much of fine print is injurious to health!

A tough question!

It's winter and cold has started its regular nocturnal visits. And my city, is known for its winds sweeping through. The winds shiver your timbers, while forcing the temperature down south. I quiver inside three layers of clothing. But what never ceases to surprises me are the raiments of the womenfolk. I see them still coming about in skimpy dresses, tank tops, sliver straps, and what not! And every dress fights shy of reaching the navel, leaving the midriff to the mercy of cold winds and having the men at their mercy. It defeats me how they manage or why they should torture themselves such!
I am no male chavunist, or atleast I think so. But what seems to me a 10,00,000 dollar question is, when the men, fully clothed, could sweep the opposite gender off their feet, why the femme fatales have to indulge in such masochism just to get our attention? Your two cents please.