Novelty

What we need to keep us going is something new. According to guys like Osho, everything is evolving all the time, and therefore when you see it tomorrow it is different from what it was yesterday. This applies to everything- from a leaf on a tree to your wife, or for that matter, yourself (the mirror will vouch for that!). But everyone is not Osho. So we make valiant attempts to find variety in our lives. At least I do, sometimes with good results, sometimes with terrible ones. For example, I have tried almost all snacks available at airport counters, and they are equally bad! Ditto for food served inside the aircraft. Maybe when it is airborne, an idli has its way of getting "airy", and therefore tastes like tissue paper soaked in something. I have also tried flying all the domestic airlines now, and they all come across as callous. Just one example. If you know that the plane takes 2 hours, why put it as an hour and a half on the schedule? It fools novices into thinking they may get somewhere on time, but others by now know that they will get to know the sky at 30,000 feet a lot better while circling over the packed airports. So much for novelty. Now what is it that I need to try next? Maybe, Lalu's Garib Rath.

International Marketing

I just published a book on international marketing from an Indian perspective. It was an interesting theme to explore- writing about the emerging Brand India and the case studies of Indian companies engaged in international marketing, acquisitions, and building of brands. I also won a prize in a contest run by Revenge Ink publishers of UK for fiction writers from India. I had written a small piece called "My Conversations with Anopheles" where I talk to a female mosquito about many things, and discover there are uncanny similarities among "them" and "us". All in all, an interesting past few days.
The rain is also picking up, annd since I am traveling a lot, I might get to enjoy it in different places- Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Pune to name a few. Each would add a unique twist to the raindrops, I am sure.

Parenting in India

Are you admission-savvy? This is a million-dollar question to which you have to answer a "yes" if you want to be a successful Indian parent. From K.G. to P.G and beyond, you have to learn to be a submissive moron with a generous bent of mind, to be able to succeed in the eternal quest for admissions for your kid, something like the fired-up Knights of the Round Table of ancient times. New times, new avatars! Also, a strong belief in God helps, coz otherwise, whom do you curse in case the quest fails?
Therefore, to find out if you have what it takes, answer the question above. And thou shalt know.

Silicon Valley of India

Sitting in Electronics City, Bangalore, pretty close to Infosys, I do not feel too thrilled about the state of our state (Karnataka). If this is what every info-techie has to go through on a daily basis- just getting here and back is hellish- GOD help the future tech employees, coz their lives are going to get worse, not better. The mess with the Bangalore airport will make common citizens who had taken to flying run back into the waiting arms of Laloo and his railways, or the bus service. And the Metro seems like a never-reachable dream right now. When will we start planning ahead of population booms? Well, many such questions are only rhetorical, and have no real answers! Let's hope that the elections don't throw up another hung assembly. Then we are well and truly HUNG!

House-hunting

House-hunting is a mixed feeling. Only the desperate feeling of otherwise becoming homeless keeps you going. And shows you a varietyof characters that you otherwise may not meet-both realty brokers and home-owners. Having gone through a recent experience in Bangalore, I would rather build a hut once and for all, and settle down, never to move again. But then, building anything (even a hut) is said to be traumatic. So why not enjoy the (mixed) feeling, hunt till you drop, and settle in for a while, if only to rest until the next one. Being peripatetic (job-hopping) has its downsides, I suppose! Oh, well.....

Power and Greed

That is the title of a book I read last weekend. Very nicely critiques the wars fought by Europeans for colonizing and similar other reasons. Does not spare the other war-mongers (Asian, African, and other types), and likens the global corporations to old war mongers with acquisitive ambitions. Changes your perspective completely, from the currently fashionable Islamic-terrorist perspective of the media moghuls on almost all TV channels. It shows there are no saints in this business. That power and greed are universal. That only the ancient Greeks and a couple of modern countries with democracies modeled on the Greek system have been able to keep the greedy from taking over. Though the chapter on Napolean is a bit sympathetic to (him), the rest of it is fairly in-the-face and deserved criticism of all the powerful and the greedy along the millennia. A balanced history lesson.

Re-viewing movies

I am into watching old Hindi movies. I just saw Inquilab, starring Big B, from the eighties. In an otherwise ordinary formula movie, one thing stands out. The name of a smuggler, played by Shakti Kapoor. His name is Khoya Khoya Attache. I think that is brilliant, whoever thought of it! The end is quite innovative, with a chief minister (the Big B) shooting his entire cabinet to death, because they are all corrupt people. Not a bad idea, but there is no guarantee the next lot will be any better. Politics, thy middle name is corruption. Voter, thy middle name is cynicism.