The Ostrich, the Dog and the Driver!!

The Times of India website was staring at me with the news of the Mangalore air crash when I switched on my PC today morning. Immediately, I went to the television and found the television channels showing the gory details, interspersed with the images of Babu(Clergy) and Neta(politician) footfalls and of course the mandatory analysis of what happened, could have happened. Finally there was the routine game of blaming something or the other.

A friend of mine from Connecticut has send a mail quoting a news item from New York times where some self styled Air Safety expert has blamed the the administrators and the politicians behind the fiasco. And another one has woken up and debated that this is nothing to do with them.

It is always perhaps easy to pass on the blame to anybody else, while we ourselves refuse to take ownership of anything we do wrong. This is in all walks of life, whether it’s in a family situation or in the work situation. The worst part is that we thrive on it. We are like dogs who bark inside his own territory and nothing outside can poke our intellect and ability to do something.


So any calamity occurs we will quickly sort of analyze it with some heavy dose of preconceived notions and peppered with some over or lack of knowledge and irresponsible mental attitude. Then we will pass the verdict. We are all judges sitting inside an environment of emotion clogged evidences and clueless warped idea of common sense.

This is the system we thrive in, do well(!!) or disappear into oblivion, etc. There are a few for sure who do maneuver themselves above and out of this screwed up environment and get some nirvana. Unfortunately theirs is a tribe so small that it does not matter.

So we live on, like ostriches waiting for the disasters to strike us in various ways. I am distressed. Inspite of the scientific, economic and management developments, somewhere we are falling back. We seem to have already stepped on the accelerator pedal of our vehicle that’s going to drive us into the Black Hole. Sphere: Related Content

The Weaver, the Princess and Goldman Sachs

A friend forwarded this story to me. I thought I should preserve this!!

Everyone knows that we Indians invented the zero. Without zero and the decimal number system, writing and calculating really large numbers would be very difficult.

This would be awful for people in the financial industry, whose work depends on having really big salaries. Fortunately Brahmagupta came to their rescue.

Another thing which is crucial to the financial services industry is the concept of being too big to fail, which has been put to good use by Citigroup, Bear Stearns, and Goldman Sachs over the past few years in sucking money from American taxpayers. This beautiful concept was also invented by an Indian - Vishnu Sharma, the author of the Panchatantra, in the story of the Weaver and the Chariot Maker.

The story of the weaver and chariot maker is one of the Panchatantra stories that usually doesn't make it to primary school textbooks or Amar Chitra Katha, mostly because it's full of sex, war, and moral hazard. Since you probably haven't read it, here's a quick summary.

A weaver sees a princess during a festival and falls in love with her. As a weaver, he has no chance of marrying her, so he sinks into depression. His friend, a chariot maker decides to help him out. He designs a flying chariot in the shape of Garuda, dresses the weaver up as Vishnu, and tells him to fly the chariot into the princess's room, tell her that he is Vishnu and wants to marry her Gandharva style. That is, the wedding is kept a secret from everyone except the princess and the faux-Vishnu. The princess agrees, and the weaver comes back every night to consummate the marriage.

Eventually, the maids notice that the princess is spending her days in total bliss, suspect that she's in love, and tell the King. The King asks her what's going on, and she tells him that she's married to Vishnu himself. The King is absolutely delighted, and decides that there's no point in paying tribute to the Chakravarti now that Vishnu himself is on the kingdom's side. The next night, he catches the weaver as he enters the princess's room and asks him to fight the Chakravarti' s army.

The weaver is horrified. Pretending to be Vishnu was fine when it allowed him to make sweet, sweet love to the princess, but taking on the role of Vishnu to face an imperial army single-handed is another thing altogether. On the other hand, if he confesses to the King that he is not actually Vishnu and has been boinking the princess under false pretences for the past month, he will have his head chopped off. So he decides to get on to the battlefield and do the best job he can, while the King is whipping up enthusiasm in the population by telling them that Vishnu himself is going to do all the fighting.

By this time, Garuda (the real one, not the mechanical one) has tipped off Vishnu about what's going on, and warned him that if the fake Vishnu doesn't win the battle, the people of the kingdom will lose all faith in him. Vishnu doesn't want to see this happen, so on the battlefield he enters the weaver's body and annihilates the Chakravarti' s army. The entire army. Every single soldier. After this, the weaver marries the princess, everyone goes on worshipping Vishnu, and the king becomes the new Chakravarti.

The moral is that you should conduct your affairs in such a way that if you fail, it will lead to someone or something even bigger or more powerful failing too. This lets you get away with anything. The weaver got away with having sex with the princess on false pretences (this is rape under Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code), pretending to be a god (awesomely enough, this too is a criminal offence under Section 508), and annihilating an entire army that was fighting a just war - after all, it was the king who broke the treaty (you could make a case for this being genocide under Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide).

American banks and financial institutions were very good at absorbing this lesson, and leveraged themselves up to such an extent that if they failed they would take the global economy down with them. And just as the weaver lived happily ever after with the princess, banks have lived happily ever after with taxpayer-funded bailouts.

But no matter how hard American investment banks try, Indians still remain the masters of this art. If the whole truth surrounding Lalit Modi is revealed, big politicians might be trapped. Modi is, thus, likely to get away lightly -- as is A Raja, who might have given away spectrum at bargain basement rates, but whose sacking would lead to the government collapsing. All this goes to show that no matter what the anguished elderly gentlemen who write letters to the editor feel, Indians are still in touch with our ancient and glorious culture Sphere: Related Content

Negative News frrom back Home - from India

Some rather disconcerting events have occurred in the last fortnight back home in India. The Khap panchayats are still getting good amount or publicity and they seem to be enjoying the coverage. A khap is a village and a panchayat is a socio-political structure present in these villages which could even settle small time social disputes. The Khaps as a concept are prevalent in the state of Haryana(In Northern India0 and they have strict rules in terms of marriage and other social customs. Given that, the problem lies when they murder innocents in the name of Khap Law going against the Indian Constitution. In order to know more about the disgraceful Khaps you could refer to http://www.azadindia.org/social-issues/khap-panchayat-in-india.html.

What was appalling was when Navin Jindal the famous “National Flag” MP supported these guys but later started giving varied clarifications in the media. An educated, young, modern Indian has let us down.


Then came another piece of worrisome news in the media. The Allahabad high court has held that a non-Muslim girl must convert to marry a Muslim. Isn’t it ridiculous in these modern age and times of so called civilized societies we have these judges dishing out such unfortunate judgments for the society to follow. This is against our constitution and I am sure there will be some reverse appeal against the judgment.


The third piece was when some Muslim Priest issued a fatwa saying that women cannot work. I fail to understand as to why the press had to give this fellow so much publicity.


All the same, it was a week where as an Indian I was not proud of my country and hope as the days pass, life would become better and not regressive. Sphere: Related Content

The Quiet Monarchy

In most countries if you open the morning newspapers unless there is a major natural disaster or a major terrorist activity you would normally have at least one headline where the country’s head would have made some comment. The comment could be either about the economy or political situation or what-have-you. This is true for most countries and when I came to the gulf it was more so. In Dubai surely every day morning you would get to know what Sheikh Mo has said or done.

Here in Kuwait, strangely things are different. You hardly read about what the Emir has to say, The press has hardly anything to talk about them. In fact the press coverage of the monarchy is extremely limited. I am not sure whether this is by chance or by design. Not that it affects me but sometimes I do wonder if the local countrymen need direction from the leadership, who would they look up to? In India we of course could land up having enough debates about our Political Kings and that’s healthy. Here we don’t seem to talk about them at all. Neither do they!! Sphere: Related Content

Mitsupishi Bajero

Accents and the way we speak is an evolutionary process. From childhood you hear sounds from your surroundings and your vocal chords and mouth organs act accordingly to produce similar sounds. Long back I had written about the T and D when I was in Korea.
(Ref: http://wordventure.blogspot.com/2006/03/t-or-d.html).

When I came to the Gulf I found similar issues with people who speak Arabic. For example all Ps would become Bs much like the Koreans. When I went to opt for a car, the leasing company gave me an option between the Toyota Brado and the Bajero. That’s purely because in Arabic there is no P alphabet. But why can’t we learn the new sound P. Is it biologically impossible? Perhaps - doctors could answer that!

I know we face the same problems when pronouncing Khan or any of the K sounds in Arabic. I am told that it is not a straight forward K sound. It’s from within, from the epiglottis I am told.
In Korea they had a problem with my name. Typically an average Korean cannot pronounce a R sound if its at the beginning of the word. They would produce a strange sound somewhere in between a L and a R. However this problem is absent if the R is in between a word. For example, Korea!!!

In India we have many issues in accents. The Bengalis typically use rounded vowels and since the logic is understood only by him, the others in India just cannot fathom and produce the correct Bengali pronunciation. In the South you have the budget word where D is pronounced and is not silent. Who knows why?

It’s a strange world!! Sphere: Related Content

Death and Propriety - Death Penalty for Kasav (26/11 Mumbai Terrorist)

Last week Kasav (26/11 Mumbai terrorist) was given the death penalty by a special Mumbai court. We perhaps, in fact did know the outcome and when the actual judgement came out it was just some sort of a validation of our thoughts.

Undoubtedly we hate him and we hate all the others too behind the crime. But given the nature of our species I am quite disgusted with us that we do not know how to respect and honour the judgement. I would have thought. Dancing in the streets, lighting fireworks was no way to celebrate the conclusion.

We should have rather held candle marches or prayers or somber functions that would honour the death of the innocent that would honour the trial and its judgement that would honour the families affected by the death of innocent civilians.

The judgement does not celebrate the death of Kasav. The judgement upholds our rights to justice and also sends a message to society. We should rather pay our homage once again to the men, women and children that we lost.

We keep losing propriety on issues at regular intervals and that’s sad. Sphere: Related Content

Mughal Mahal - Fahaheel Branch, Kuwait - Indian Restaurant

An occasion to be celebrated is always an important event in our otherwise mundane life in Kuwait and therefore an opportunity like that where I could try out some Indian Food in a renowned restaurant of Kuwait was to be grabbed without a question.

Fahaheel is a place I had visited earlier when we had visited The Hilton for some Bank function. A rough idea was available but accessories like maps were always helpful and on request I did get them too. I also called up the restaurant and got detailed directions. So when Chaitali asked me regarding journey time estimates I was reasonably confident of our STD and ETA.

There are these highways and Ring Roads that criss cross Kuwait and divide the city into four sided polygons. So you have parallel roads running north to south and east to west dissecting each other at planned intersections. From Jabriya I took the 40 Expressway and turned right at the 212 intersection and landed up straight at the Coastal Road. Another right turn, a bit of traffic jam and then I could see Centrepoint on my right. Mughal Mahal was situated just behind it. We were getting a bit late and Chaitali was already getting a bit tense. But then God willing, we just made it before the hosts and that was that.

The group was a motley crowd of 13-14 people and we were allocated the Divan-I-Khas the size of which an Emperor would blush at. It barely accommodated us and actually it turned out to be cozy little place for a close group function where decibel ranges could go up and not annoy the other guests in the restaurant.

Buffet was the decision, after the scouts inspected the spread and convinced us about it. The spread was indeed elaborate. The salad section had at least 12 verities catering to both Indian and Arabic tastes including hummus to Russian salads to typical Indian versions. There was a Lentil Soup and a Chicken Sweet Corn and I picked up the latter. I also picked up some dry items like the Fried Prawns, Fried Fish, The Iranian Mutton Kebab (basically kaftas or seekh kababs) and some Chicken Tikka. They were all good except I thought that the Tikkas were a bit dry and the Mutton Kebab should have been spiced up a bit. The fish and prawn were both excellent.

It was a buffet and therefore any number of visits to the food station would not raise eyebrows and therefore off I was for my second round. The Noodles were average but the both the chicken teriyaki and schechuan chicken were quite positive for the palate.

I switched over to the India selections next. We had ordered some Garlic Nan. The Dal (Thick Lentil preparation) was fantastic and the other items like Kofta (Gourd Balls in Curry), and Rogan Josh (A Kashmiri preparation with lamb) were good too.

The Dessert section had a number of items and I personally proffered the Baklava and the Khuya Barfi (Sweetmeat made from evaporated and solidified milk). The Gulab Jamun was average and so was the Ras Malai.

Over and all the food was good and if you ask me If I was willing to traverse the distance yet again the answer would be yes. It’s difficult to get good Indian food and I somehow liked the fare here even against their other branches in Kuwait. If you are thinking about Indian Food and then if the Mughal Mahal chain interests you, then a visit to the Fahaheel branch will surely sort of elevate your experience if not maintain it. Sphere: Related Content

Gypsy Passion –Kuwait Little Theatre (April 30th) – An afterword!!

Performing Arts interests us a lot, so when the Kuwait Little Theatre announced that there would be a program on Flamenco dancing by Ana Utero; I quickly booked a few tickets for the family. The synopsis in the website was quite self-explanatory in the sense that the evening would consist of Poetry, Music and Dance.
The theatre was a small affair with a motley crowd that largely knew one another making us sort of the odd men out. In time, the lights were dimmed and the guitars came alive. There were two guitars and a bongo for percussion. The lady came in and we did see some moves. There were 12-13 items on the show. The recitals of poetry were without passion and mediocre. The saving grace was the music because the subsequent dances failed to impress the crowd – what with the same moves et al.

To be honest, this was a bad investment of time against what I had thought it would be. The overall rating would be a 4 out of 10. I only hope that this performance was an exception.


For those of who are not inclined towards my thoughts and want to know more about Ana - the website is given below.

http://anaoterodance.blogspot.com/ Sphere: Related Content