It Could Happen to You !

1.       Nighttime ......... location.......... Doddenakudi village, Bangalore

2.       Status – Tired, hungry and penniless (only electronic money available)

3.       Environmental condition/resources at disposal – Balmy weather, just a hint short of chilly, all restaurants closed, even hole in the walls, no transportation excepting 11 number bus(for the uninformed it refers to walking)

It is difficult to sleep on a queasy feeling in your tummy, particularly when you believed you have earned the right to un-quease it. I knew a Domino was somewhere close to the Marathalli bridge and decided to trudge along to it.

In enter...... the dregs of society, the riff raffs and all........gaunt...........skeletal...........bearded and stinking...........alternatively of sweat, and booze.

With the laptop slung across my shoulder and in Friday casuals I was a sure shot picture of a techie, often confused for the financially well endowed.

One glance at the three told me this is going to be ....easy.... !!

I am no Dharmendra, but they were all puny, and under water at various levels.

A shove by the most inebriated. It was hard and I fell down.........heavily on the bag.

Another one aimed his feet at my face but missed. The third however landed one nicely on my back, and it was some pointed shoes this one was wearing so it hurt. Meanwhile the first picked up a stone and was making a swing.

In this mess the laptop bag had split open from the front, which is a very rare thing. A hint of metal caught my eyes from the tumbling baggage and I ....................for a moment froze.

It was my Ram Baan.............my constant companion of the lost years............... it was a Punch.

I had found it tucked away in some remote corner of my cupboard, in Delhi and I had just put it in my bag and promptly ............forgot about it.

I slipped it into my fingers. Its cold feel reminded me of the countless warm liquids that it once used to see. I made an uppercut motion towards one face and stopped midway.

Never use a punch on a face …makes it too messy and too identifiable.

I delivered one with full force on his upper arm; it nicked some of the skin away. The guy howled and started of some kanaada words.

A razor sharp pain course from the back of my leg it was a short knife, like the pen knife , but very pointy, the back of my leg started feeling very warm and I knew the cut was deep.

A brawl, followed as the animal brain took over the rational one. I just forgot about all the pain in my back...........the hunger in my stomach ..............and the tiredness in my body.

A punch in one and the other bare knuckled, I started wild swings. Two of them went down, thanks to two blows at the leg and the arm and one for good luck in their guts.

The third one was slightly nonplussed by this; after all it was sheer numbers, one against three.

I stared at him, with no expression and then motioned him to go away. He hesitated and then walked off, that what the drink does, it shows who you really are, and he was a coward.

The other 2 were whimpering, I picked up my bag, transferred the spilt contents to the center slot of my bag and surveyed the damage.

A deep cut on my lower leg.............. a developing bruise on my back........... and small cut on my butt. Thankfully it was all internal ............no external visible damages.

To eat ………..or to trudge back………… clean and sleep?

The smell of baking cheese reined powerful than the smell of dripping blood. Dusting myself, I cleaned the cuts with some water from my bottle. Twenty minutes later, a vegetable extravaganza inside it was dawning on; the pain was coming back with a vengeance. I needed a drink to numb it, but then I could not touch alcohol.

I walked out, and paid 250 bucks for a 30 minute ride in an auto.

A warm bath, and two Flexons later, I hibernated…….

Come morning I thought about the night.

You are walking towards a hotel hungry and tired and someone kicks you in the shin…could it happen to you??

It could happen to you!

It is a Commodity ...Everything

In recent times I have noticed something strange, and I am sure many of you would be concurring as well.

Everything is becoming commodity, even intangibles like services.

Let me start with education, a bachelor’s degree these days is akin to high school. It really does not add any value, in terms of work or growth. I would say that as a graduate I would not have hired myself, into any work/organization. The basic skills, are lacking, and today I saw the same with a new with a new recruit I had to spend some time with.

Disheartenment and disillusionment are the first things I notice in someone fresh out of college. I would say less than 1 % of your technical knowledge is actually used in engineering setups, at least in manufacturing and production, electronics I am told is different, at least ST Microelectronics work needs some good knowledge of chip design.

For instance, piping needs you to be just a good visualizer, and some common sense as to how you can or cannot put a pipe. Materials, operations and inventory, are all to do with people handling (I can hear the SCM team across, shouting some choice words, typical)

Enter post graduation, most opt for business, with only a few going more technical. It is normally perceived that a business education open a lot of doors (Banks, and more banks!!).

But unfortunately, post graduation is also passé, as banks have shifted from their basic function. The traditional source of revenue for a bank, is borrow low lend high, and make money on the differential(credit).

Alas, now most banks are resorting to quickie profits on the stock market, I heard most of the foreign banks major chunk of profits comes from, well some form of trading.

So when you enter the market, there is a lot of data, and of course lots of whiz kids with advanced degrees in mathematics, who are trying to automate everything, even arbitrage opportunities.For instance consider algorithmic trading - a nice description I read for it somewhere is that it is the same, as cooking an exotic dish but with the chef as a Robot, everything is technically correct, but the taste isn’t there.

But obviously there is a limit to automation, all fancy terms and ratios can be generated but you need someone to physically do that, so in enter analysts.

No names, but some people working as analysts have resorted to counting the number of hits of ctrl+c, and ctrl+v, in their present work, 600, is what I am told is the average daily count for these two functions.

Ye Ignoramus...................... if it is stock market for business......... it have to be Wall Street, and........... if it has to be Wall Street it has to be ………..more malai on the milk.

And now comes the malai……… CFA, FRM, GARCH.

My acquaintances pursuing these courses say that most of the knowledge or learning is the same, it is just a rehash for someone who has done masters in finance, but all the same you have to do it. Because when you meet a potential client it would look good if you have a Mr. X - B.Tech, MBA, CFA, FRM ...ding and dong.

From a service providers viewpoint the differentiation is additional degrees on its human resources……… and now look at most of the banks…. they have the same engineers, same MBAs, and now the same CFAs and FRMs.

So, now a service also has been commoditized. What next…? Where is the differentiation?

Answer – People……..and relationships!!

Seduction , Romance and the Madrasi !

Some forwards are really great !! This is one such :) , 

It talks about the relatively low success rate of south Indian men , in the art of wooing or seduction and finds rather an earth shattering reason for it !! 

" I have gathered many insights into the endless monotony that is the love life of south Indian men. What I have unearthed is most disheartening.

Disheartening because comprehension of these truths will not change our status anytime soon. However there is also cause for joy. We never stood a chance anyway. 

What loads the dice against virile, gallant, well educated, good looking, and good living, sincere mallus and tams? (Kandus were once among us, but Bangalore has changed all that.)

Our futures are shot to hell as soon as our parents bestow upon us names that are anything but alluring. I cannot imagine a more foolproof way of making sure the child remains single till classified advertisements or that maternal uncle in San Francisco thinks otherwise. 

Name him "Parthasarathy Venkatachalapthy" and his inherent capability to combat celibacy is obliterated before he could even talk.
 
He will grow to be known as Partha. Before he knows, his smart, seductively named northy classmates start calling him Paratha. No woman in their right minds will go anyway near poor Parthasarathy. His investment banking job doesn't help either. His employer loves him though. He has no personal life you see. 

By this time the Sanjay Singhs and Vishal Bhattis from his class have small businesses of their own and spend 60% of their lives in discos and pubs, full of leisure. The remaining 40% is spent lip locking and dindonging with leather and denim clad muses in their penthouse flats on Nepean Sea Road . 

Business is safely in the hands of the Mallu manager.

After all with a name like Blossom Babykutty he cant use his 300000 salary anywhere. Blossom gave up on society when in school they automatically enrolled him for Cookery Classes. Along with all the girls.

Yes my dear reader, nomenclature is the first nail in a coffin of neglect and hormonal pandemonium. In a kinder world they would just name the poor southern male child and throw him off the balcony. "Yes appa we have named him Goundamani..." THUD. Life would have been less kinder to him anyway.
 
Of course the south Indian women have no such issues. They have names which are like sweet poetry to the ravenous northie hormone tanks. Picture this:

"Welcome, and this is my family. This is my daughter Kanchana (exotic!!) and my son Ponnalagusamy (er.. hello..).." Cyanide would not be fast enough for poor Samy. Nothing Samy does will help him. He can pump iron, drive fast cars and wear snazzy clothes, but against a braindead dude called Rudra Pratap Singh  he has as much chance of getting any as a Benedictine Monk in a Saharan Seminary.

Couple this with the other failures that have plagued our existence. Any attempt at spiking hair with gel fails miserably. In an hour I have a crown of greasy, smelly fibrous mush. My night ends there. 

However the northy just has to scream "Wakaw!!!" and you have to peel the women off him to let him breathe. In a disco while we can manage the medium hip shake with neck curls, once the Bhangra starts pumping we are as fluid as cement and gravel in a mixer. 

The women love a man who digs pasta and fondue. But why do they not see the simple pleasures of curd rice and coconut chutney? When poor Senthilnathan opens his tiffin box in the office lunch room his female coworkers just disappear when they see the tamarind rice and poppadums. The have all rematerialized around Vishal Bhatti who has ordered in Pizza and Garlic bread. (And they have the gall to talk of foreign origin.)

Sociologically too the tam or mallu man is severely sidelined. An average tam stud stays in a house with,  three grandparents, three sets of uncles and aunts, and over 10 children. Not the ideal atmosphere for some intimacy and some full throated "WHOSE YOUR DADDY!!!" at the 3 in the morning. The mallu guy of course is almost always in the gulf working alone on some onshore oil rig in the desert.

Alas dear friends we are not just meant to set the nights on fire. We are just not built to be "The Ladies Man". The black man has hip hop, the white man has rock, the southie guy only has idlis and tomato rasam or an NRI account in South Indian Bank, Ernakulam Branch. 

Alas as our destiny was determined in one fell swoop by our nomenclature, so will our future be. A nice arranged little love story. But the agony of course does not end there. On the first night, as the stud sits on his bed finally within touching distance and whispers his sweet desires into her delectable ear, she blushes, turns around and whispers back "But amma has said only on second Saturdays..." "

Disclaimer - This is copy/paste( not strictly.........rather it is incremental innovation !)......But a good read :)

Food for Thought

First weekend in Bangalore, after a lost week and a weekend of rather, futile house hunting. I temporarily resigned myself to a hostel like existence for some time to come, and wait till about Dipavali. I am tired of looking at matchboxes for houses and eager agents ready to palm off any place as just 10 minutes from KR Puram.

Weekends, it seems are worse than weekdays in Bangalore for traffic, the same cars packed one after the other, with the only difference being in the clothing of its inhabitant(s).The blue shirt , black pant combo is replaced by a jean, a glare and fancy trophy wife with a cutie kid to complete the picture. I spent 2.5 hrs navigating an 8 km trip. Finally, fed up of seating on my butt I decided to make use of the portion below it, so I got down and walked for about 30 minutes. The weather is good so no major deal and I am glad I can still pull off such walkathons.

Enter evening, met D at his place which is kind of accessible from my remote inhabitant. After a week of survival on fruit juice, bread and jowar rotis, I wanted some fiery flavor on my palette or rather some junk in my system. Pizza Hut, was zeroed on and as usual I was hungry, my hunger much fueled by the 30 minute walk.

"A mushroom soup, a palette of garlic bread with cheese, one serving of cheese tortillas and a fresh garden salad ",  I said without glancing at the menu.

D what about you??

D was still lost in the menu, अब्बे क्या कन्या की तरह घूर रहे हो , double कर दू क्या यही आर्डर ?

" Who else is joining us? ," D looked up briefly from the menu.

No it’s just us; it was not one of my crowd days.

" You ordered all that just for you?!!! " D asked with just a tad bit of surprise. Having been in consulting for a long time, nothing really surprised him anymore. He once told me, that consultants become so hardened, so slick in their appearances and acts, that they could murder someone in cold blood early morning and carry on with their routine work without a hair out of place, and come back and sleep as though nothing happened.

" Yea..... I am hungry, ….you can taste too… " , I added a little mollified, " Of course we will share the pizza it is more value if we order a large one than 2 small ones".

साले इसके बाद पिज्जा भी खायेगा  ?? ,  queried D , with the curvature of his eyebrows increasing slightly.

This conversation was making me hungrier, I nodded to the waiter, " Just get a tomato soup for him, I will order later"

" This salad is good, something nice for grass eaters like us" ,  said D.

He made way for some of the tortillas, and after a bite, and gulp looked at me with a distraught expression.

"
क्या हुआ खाने मैं कुछ गड़बड़ है क्या ?? ", having paid a bundle for something available just across the road for a fraction, I expected quality if not anything else.

" No man, it is navratri and we are eating onion "

Ding!!

At my place, only Amma did her ritual 9 day fast and all. I however could not eat food without the pungency of onion or garlic, having been bought up on a diet of roadside hole in walls, in UP and Delhi

" Hey, you know the rational behind avoiding onion??,  It is just that anything that did not smell good was not considered bad for health, but onion is actually good"

No it is not that, it something more, said D now munching contentedly through the remaining tortilla. He seemed to be deciding that after a sin committed there is no turning back, now you got to do justice to the sin.

His subsequent explanation was very enlightening much like a myth, so here it goes.

Hindu Dharma divides food consumables into three categories

1. Satvic – peace, calm inducing

Any food item that is easily grown, and regionally common. It is cooked without oil or spice but with sparing amounts of gee and salt, eaten sparingly. Such food is said to induce calm, peace in mind. Rice, basic dhal, lentils, region specific vegetables

Discovery - My, entire gang of roommates used to hibernate after a healthy dose of my culinary favorite of Pongal !

2. Rajhsi – Ambition, ego boosting, satisfying

Exotics like milk, khoya, dry fruits, and difficult to grow and procure food items. These are cooked, in lavish dose of butter, ghee(no oil) spices and eaten lavishly as well.The spices are generally exotics like kesar,cardamom, which do not induce any burning sensation,post consumption. They are said to fuel a sense of ambition, well being, growth and ego in an individual.

Discovery -  Two back to back helping of Bourneville I did experience a sense of well being unlike contentment and very unlike the advertisements that show “Lost in ecstasy kind of morons” !

 3. Tamsic – Greed, envy, and anger boosting

These include items such as onion, garlic, non vegetarian items and (some other which I forgot!!), cooked in oil(no ghee) with a mish mash of spices, that cause subsequent burning sensation.These, fuel a sense of greed, hate, and envy in an individual.

 Discovery - Not sure if the subsequent burning sensation, after pyaaz parathas was due to acidity , or envy ;)

The tortilla was now done as well as the salad, with garlic bread on its way to extinction as well.

" So, now we are having Rajhsi and Tamsic materials. In the worst case scenario, you would be ambitious in addition to being envious of someone hence would show anger towards him, and maybe snuff him out; " , I said mimicking my finger at the neck for more clarity.

"Nopes, I would cool off your system, post this with a meetha paan, with extra gulkhand to sweeten your mind" ,  he said as he finished the last of his garlic bread, "Our Dharma gives a lot of loopholes to exploit",  he said adding with a smile. In a flash, I remembered the pile of books on his desk, and realized that this was not a leg pulling session at all.

 PS- We did order Pizza which I ended up finishing, and true to his word the paan was awesome, it melted in my mouth at the counter itself so I had a second one. And, a 30 minute walkathon session later, hunger as well as this gyaan emerge simultaneously( Fruit Juice ...where are you my dear !!)