Confusio Linguarum

Business ideas

2010-02-10T18:18:00.004+05:30

Businesses establishments that I've recently observed have come up in my neighbourhood

* A 'unisex spa and salon' - A kinky enough name to make any homo sapiens take an evolutionary downgrading and become homo erectus.

* A 'dental spa' - Makes me think what exactly is a Spa anyway?

* A restaurant named 'Yoras'!, just kidding, it was 'Mayas' in fact.

Land of opportunities

2010-02-01T16:04:00.002+05:30

When experts say India has become a land of opportunities, I totally agree with them. You have plenty of opportunities here now - to get beaten up by some or other regio-religio-linguistic-chauvinists.

Points to ponder

2010-01-21T10:54:00.001+05:30

* Today's breaking news - No flights delayed due to fog at Delhi airport

* New movie - 'Karthik Calling Karthik' - I'm confused. Shouldnt it be Kalling?

Global warming - hoax/nohoax

2009-12-09T11:55:00.003+05:30

Like any other human earth-dweller with below average level of knowledge on the subject, I always wondered what if the whole climate change thing is a hoax.

In This Thomas Friedman column I found the answer, quoting the most important paragraph from the article here,

"If we prepare for climate change by building a clean-power economy, but climate change turns out to be a hoax, what would be the result? Well, during a transition period, we would have higher energy prices. But gradually we would be driving battery-powered electric cars and powering more and more of our homes and factories with wind, solar, nuclear and second-generation biofuels. We would be much less dependent on oil dictators who have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs; our trade deficit would improve; the dollar would strengthen; and the air we breathe would be cleaner. In short, as a country, we would be stronger, more innovative and more energy independent"

Food for thought

2009-12-02T10:50:00.002+05:30

Thought of the day - Whoever framed the proverb ‘an idle mind is devils workshop’ is a corporate guy, who else can know both about idle minds as well as what goes on in workshops for devils.

Business idea of the day – If you know how to make noise by pulling a steel string – Start guitar classes for corporate guys.

Travel tip of the day – Kingfisher airlines, also you will know whether you are suffering from Stockholm syndrome

Pandemic paranoia

2009-08-19T19:13:00.001+05:30

I think we Indians are the only species in this planet that are still growing in number, that too despite being attacked by a myriad of killer forces like terrorists, viruses, goons, rapists, police etc constantly. This is primarily because we can adapt quickly to any environmental changes unlike other species that are more conservative when comes to change. For example, a polar bear will die within hours if we move it to a new environment like a room having TV news running, whereas we Indians can live in any such hostile environments for days together without any problem, look at our railway stations and airports with hundreds of TV screens, we can wait any long in these places for our perpetually late trains and planes without dying.

The biggest reason that I see why we Indians will survive dreaded pandemics like H1N1 is also the same - we are ready for any changes our experts are advising us to make these days. People who never wanted to become surgeons or nurses only because they hated wearing surgical masks are now wearing them as if they are just some new type of lipstick. I’m sure designer masks will be introduced soon and we will see India Mask Fashion Week where models take up catwalks wearing transparent masks, pink masks, glossy masks, minimalistic masks and at times even without masks.

Also luckily for us Indians, we don’t have to depend only on what allopathic doctors are advising for protecting us from the attack of H1N1 virus - or any virus for that matter - we got yoga and ayurvedic experts as well to seek advice from, which I think will increase our chance of survival twice compared to people in other parts of the world. Being a conservative society, our frequency of kissing and embracing is also less compared to other more liberal countries; hence we need not worry about the virus being spread through the said activities as well.

The only thing that we need to be cautious about the virus in our country currently is the media hype about it. Every day hundreds of people die in our country in road accidents and even thousands die due to seasonal flu etc, but our media make all of it look nothing compared to the few deaths that happen due to H1N1. For them each H1N1 death is equivalent to a hundred deaths due to other reasons. The only way I see how this media virus can be stopped from spreading is by deviating media’s attention from H1N1, one good strategy for achieving this is make more from our Bollywood Khan-daan to travel to the United States so that the media will also go behind, hoping to get frisked.

Strategic thinking

2009-08-14T10:49:00.006+05:30

If somebody ask me what is the one Chinese product that we should not buy anymore, my answer will be – Strategy. Here is why – A Chinese ‘strategist’ says China should break up India into 20-30 states . This strategy is an expired product because long before the Chinese strategist cooked it up, Sardar Patel has already created the said 20 – 30 states out of India, with the help of three other capable people - VP Menon, Mother Nature and Lady Luck.

Swayamvara Parva

2009-08-04T19:27:00.003+05:30

Now that history has been made over the last weekend, you can relax and go back to deal with your mundane, routine, unimportant things like your work, family matters, terror attacks, price hikes etc. No, I’m not talking about the release of the 1 millionth love story in Bollywood, I’m talking about the successful completion of first high-profile swayamvar of our times, and by our times I mean Kaliyug; that too done in a way that fully justify the ideologies of the owner of the era – as a TV reality show ‘item’. Now it’s just a matter of time that this new age episode also turns into an epic.

We had many famous swayamvars in the past if you recollect, with Sita’s swayamvar of Treta Yug and Panchali’s in Dvapara Yug etc. But I would say none of them had this uniqueness of being watched by the entire aryavart because in the past only those with divyadhristi could watch them remotely from the safety of their drawing rooms. For the common men and women, the only option was to travel to the venue, which had its own risks as well. They could be eaten by wild animals on their way or they could get hurt by flying metal pieces coming out of the breaking bows or fast moving arrows used to test the aspirants’ skills. Barring the spiritual aspects and the charisma of the brides and grooms, I would say the modern day swayamvar was far ahead of the ones in the past, in terms of glamour, publicity stunts, suspense, item numbers, popularity, drama etc. In future if somebody ask me to describe it in one word, I would say – “stup-endous”(hyphen unintentional).

Couple of factors I see played key roles in making this truly kaliyugaic swayamvar a success, though on the face of it propaganda and ‘items’ looked the reason. Firstly because this time around gods where contractually forbidden from interfering because that’s the agreement between them and Kali. So the producers of the show could go to any extend they wanted to provide maximum voyeuristic pleasures to its viewers. Secondly, to deal with any mere mortals who attempted stopping it by raising such legal issues, the produces have appointed enough lawyers(again an advantage other yugas didn’t enjoy) to deal with them.

Next to some of the consequences of this highly successful swayamvar. If you look at history, all such high profile swayamvars of the past had their own special reasons to happen and all of them later lead to the defeat of the evils that affected mankind as per the expectations of the owners of the respective yugas. That means this current one also will sure lead to incidents that will help Kali achieve his goals I’m sure. One of the things that I see happening is by having more and more of such reality swayamvars, more and more of our young men will get addicted to them and will get their very manhood questioned episode after episode and finally become unproductive to nourish their family trees any further.

And for all of you who have not watched the climax(so far) of the swayamvar over the weekend, I would say it’s the second such once in a lifetime spectacle you are missing after you missed the eclipse couple of weeks back. In that sense I would even question the worthiness of you living any further, but I would not recommend anything here because persuading somebody to commit suicide is still criminal offense.

Zen and the art of lawmaking

2009-07-31T07:54:00.008+05:30

If somebody asks what the 3 pillars of our democracy are, even a supermodel will know that it’s the judiciary, legislature and safari suits. This bermudaic-triangular structure also implies that we are still one pillar less to make it a stable table. Now if you are a politically unaware person, you may ask why ‘people’ are not considered a pillar. The answer is, people’s job in upholding the democracy is negligible - just a tap on the voting machine – hence they are as shaky a pillar as that of Delhi metro and cannot be employed to guard our hard earned democracy. However, nobody can deny the role of our legislature(From Latin Leg and Greek Slaughter which stands for "amputate’em all!"), especially that of our state assemblies because they are not only just upholding our democracy, but also are taking law making to a different level altogether. This post is a tribute to this particular pillar for all the services it’s doing for making us a future-proof democracy.

I think our state legislatures are the most vibrant of all law makers hitherto known to humanity - in terms of the diversity of nation building activities they perform every day, starting from humble verbal abuses and allegations to de-garmentation to breathtaking, desk-breaking martial arts performances. Now those of you who are educated, voting, ignorant, uncivilized, tax-paying, arrogant, pessimists may ask whether this is what we have elected and pay them for, the answer is a big “Yes" and my rationale behind this is not just a "So that they won’t perform these activities elsewhere and hurt innocent civilians", the reasons are many.

Firstly, I think they are seeking unique and novel methods to enable our assemblies capable enough to make any new laws and break any existing ones, required in our journey towards becoming a democratic center of excellence. More of such pioneering efforts should be recognized, rewarded and repeated to boost the morale of our elected men and women. This move from the Karnataka assembly sure is a laudable one. We can also supply some of the state of the art equipments to our state assemblies that can accelerate lawmaking, such as slingshots, water/air guns, chilly-sprays etc. It will also make sure that tax payers money spent on procuring furniture and communication equipments will not come in the way of lawmaking as well.

Secondly, we are far ahead of other countries in our journey to build the so called 22st century-ready, legislature 2.0s because our assemblies are professionally (and literally too) very rich and advanced with capable men and women who can not only do politicking but also indulge in socio-economic activities such as wealth creation, land acquisition, uplifting of women and children etc .

Now it's only a question of how our leadership efficiently taps these skills and utilizes them for the noble cause of nation building. And I think we are improving day by day, for example earlier if somebody say "Opposition attacked the government on xyz issue", it would just mean that some old, good-for-nothing-else, khadi-clad men did sound pollution, but now things are changing. If the opposition is going to attack a minister in the assembly, he/she better come equipped like a cricket batsman or a hockey goalkeeper. I wish mother nature bestow something like Karna's Kavach-Kundal for the next generation of our politicians so that they can be born parliamentarians and follow their parents footsteps safer.

It makes me proud when I see how different we are from the murky, mundane, monarchic lawmaking bodies of other countries..Jai Ho!(Btw, why we say this? Ho I thought is from Vietnam?)

Uncultured cultivation

2009-07-25T10:25:00.004+05:30

There are many funny ways to react to this news item which says girls were made to plough fields naked for rain, so that the rain gods will be embarrassed and will ultimately come down.

I can joke "Ok, so that means weather gods are all women?" Another more effective idea I can suggest here is to arrange few big screens in the drought hit areas and play some of the Bollywood 'numbers' instead where item-girls do un-garmented mowing and plowing, it can virtually embarrass anybody, let alone rain gods. Or on a second thought, what if the rain gods commit suicide unable to bear the embarrassment, so let’s not take such extreme measures.

However, those of us who joked on it might not have noticed that it's a perfect image of many things that are wrong in our country.

We still lack education and awareness which makes people become more and more superstitious.

Our women still are treated second-class citizens – why didn't the organizers think of making men do so?

We still are incapable of providing basic facilities like irrigation to our farmers that they go to such extremes.

Not just that much, it also shows how our law enforcement is not capable of stopping such atrocities done against women

Our perpetually-concerned, hypocritical culture-guardians are so worried about filthy, fifth-rated TV shows but they have nothing to say about such things. May be these kind of things are not against ‘our values’

Why I’m superstitious about the eclipse

2009-07-23T19:30:00.010+05:30

All you so called rationalists who were trying to play down the impact of eclipse , make any of these people agree with you, then I'm on your side.

Orissa legislatures

Those who were at Varanasi ghat during the eclipse

Parliament Members

Continental Airlines

Air travelers in India who read this

Uttarakhant Men

Shameless minority vote-bank chasers

Rainbow is the colour

2009-07-22T19:28:00.002+05:30

Gay-rights activists in India sure deserve a Nobel peace price or two - nobody ever have achieved something as remarkable as what they have accomplished - bringing all the religious leaders together under one umbrella, fighting for a common cause. Real religious harmony stuff...

Gastric Trouble

2009-07-21T08:15:00.002+05:30

Here is a story of two brothers who are fighting for nothing but gas. A minister who got involved says "People of India own Gas". I think is he has a point, they do.

Marianismo índico

2009-07-18T10:45:00.005+05:30

As an aware person you might have already observed that more and more women are becoming successful politicians in our country unlike earlier where it was a profession reserved for mighty men such as loaded landlords, mutilated maharajas, bar-less barristers, unskilled unionists, treacherous traders, non-Gandhians, known-Gandhis and the likes. I think the future of Indian politics is going to be in the hands and handbags of our women leaders. This is not accidental or due to the influence of the so called Feminist Senes as many people thought wrongly, it’s because they have many natural and social advantages over their male counterparts. Here are some of the reasons why I think our political future is feminine.

Behind every successful man there needs to be a woman or two. But no such constraints apply for women.

They have more chance of getting into high posts as a successor of their father/mother/husband/boyfriend where as for men it’s limited to parental promotion.

They can wear colorful sarees and elephant-foot bindis that help them stand out everywhere.

Such verbal attacks can help both the attacker and the attacked get equally good political mileage only if it happen among women.

Their male opponents will have to think multiple times before politically attacking them, these days virtually anything one do with women can be interpreted as harassment(Including this write-up)

They are more practical. How many of our male politicians can think of such strategies ?

They can never be blackmailed with molestation charges; ok, at least in the prevailing social order.

They are born orators unlike men for whom it’s an acquired skill.

They are very good managers compared to men; they had been running the world’s most chaotic and complex organization for millions of years successfully – it’s called ‘The Family’.

Above all, they have a better future as well, unlike men who are going to be an endangered species soon.

Ministerial birth control measures

2009-07-12T08:25:00.002+05:30

The union health minister has come up with a one of a kind solution for population control – Watch more TV. He says if people spend more time watching TV, their appetite to indulge in activities that lead to population growth will reduce. I totally agree with him, the reality shows and soaps in Indian television sure are capable enough to make any productive men and women who watch them impotent, ‘unseeded’ tennis players in no time.

Budgetary bewilderments

2009-07-10T19:20:00.008+05:30

Union budget analysis is one ritual that news analysts(of all sizes and shapes) in our country perform every year because it’s a tradition that we follow for many centuries though we don’t exactly know why we do it. Legend has it that this has been observed by news analysts from the time the first budget was presented by Kautlia when he was the finance minister in Chandragupta Maurya’s ministry in the 2nd or 3rd (or it could be 4th also) century B.C.

This author too is a big believer of the power of union budget because it’s the only thing powerful enough to increase the price of cigarettes and reduce the price of LCD TV at the same time. Unfortunately, this time around I missed the budget presentation and the entire pre and post budget tele-poisoning due to some other engagements and will not be able to give you a detailed impact analysis here. However, from my years of experience in analyzing budgets, I can do a quick review anytime, anywhere - even without any prior knowledge of the budget in discussion as well, here is how it goes.

Traditionally, budgets are events where some taxes will be cut while some others will be introduced so that the overall tax-weight of the country is balanced. This year also the tradition is followed, which you as an ‘aam aadmi’ would have already noticed. Also one key factor to note about budgets in India is that they are always pro-poor, growth-oriented and forward looking for you if you are a supporter of the ruling party, but will always lack ‘substance’ if your loyalties lie with the opposition. Though no economic theory explains this phenomenon, my conclusion is that it’s because nobody else is interested in it. Otherwise a third opinion sure would have been floated by now.

The most important factor you will notice about the union budget is that the finance ministers always carry the same brown suitcase when they come for budget presentation. This is also one of the reasons why opposition always say there is nothing new in this budget. I recommend the FM change the suitcase next time to a back-pack or something that’s more contemporary so that you can bring the opposition on your side to some extent. Else they will always keep shouting and screaming like a ‘responsible(for all the noise) opposition’, no matter how many benefits you announce for parliamentarians, ex-parliamentarians, their kith and kin in the budget.

Another main item(no number though) in any budget’s agenda will be to reduce the number of people living under the poverty line. The measures towards achieving this include a budgetary proposition to lower the line further so that more poor can jump to the other side. In the past also many poor who tried jumping over the line have broken many national records in that process, some even broke their own necks as well. It’s also worth noticing that this time the FM aims inclusive development, unlike earlier where we were looking for exclusive development. This in my opinion is a good move because a change is always good, look how Obama won the presidential election hands down.

Agriculture is one sector that will always get a higher amount set aside in every budget, I recommend we stop this because our agricultural production is always inversely proportional to the amount set aside Y-O-Y. Though this could be explained economically that the more money you set aside, the more will be ‘consumed’ by the babus and middle men, I would like to go superstitious on this because after all our entire agriculture sector depends on the divine intervention of rain gods. I suggest we set aside less money and more rain-pooja equipments for the agriculture sector next year on, and to ensure more religious coverage, set aside few Mullas and Pastors as well.

Then next big topic of budgetary discussion will be the amount set aside for uplifting our under performing Public Sector Undertakings or PSUs. I assume this year also the FM has followed the tradition of pumping more and more tax money into them because only then they can live up to their name – of being Undertakers of Public’s money.

I’m forced to wind-up this analysis here for two reasons. One that I’m an economically weaker science graduate to analyze it any further, secondly I’ve a solitaire game going on parallel and I find it much more amusing at the moment. But one thing that I would say is that this is not an inclusive budget as the government proclaimed, the FM missed out setting aside funds for many of the emerging weaker classes in our society such as homo-bi-a-trans-sexuals, young MPs, Ex-terrorists, LokAyukta victims, Left party general secretaries, Sania lovers…the list is long. That’s why I say this is not a complete, inclusive budget at all.

Newsweak

2009-07-09T09:18:00.000+05:30

I had been a regular reader of Newsweek, initially by subscribing hard-copies and later through web because I turned green environmentally and red financially by then. I chose Newsweek because Fareed Zakaria was making a lot of sense most of the time irrespective of what the rest of America and the East thought about each other.

But this one article that appeared in Newsweek website recently surprised me, which presents us "The Fifty Books of our times" . I went and browsed through the list, eager to find some of the greatest works in world literature. The authors started with 'We know it's insane', 'no one needs another best-of list etc', and I was wondering then what are they up to. But on reading the list, I got why they are taking an advance bail. I think a more apt title could have been "34 American books of our times and 16 others to make it 50". So the conclusion is that literature doesn’t exist in any other parts of the world. Sartre, Camus, Chomsky, Kafka, Marquez… such names simply don’t belong to our times, may be they are all too futuristic? Or I’m too dumb? Yes, you guessed it right, the answer is - both.

The pink panther show

2009-07-05T17:44:00.002+05:30

This report says dozens of National ‘Panthers’ Party members protested against a court verdict that legalizes homosexuality. Good to know that there are still dozens of panthers left in the country and also that they are all heterosexuals because if such endangered species turn homosexual, it will be a big concern for the conservationists and the wild-life department.

Racial nuts

2009-07-03T08:44:00.013+05:30

It’s high time the United Nations declare racism against Indians as a pandemic I think, its spreading faster than all the other flues put together. Here is another victim, a town councillor of Indian origin in the U.K whom a fellow councillor called “Coconut” . Your question obviously will be can inanimate things like nuts have race, well the answer is that anything that can symbolically represent a race can also be a racial thing. Since coconut is 'brown outside and white inside’, it perfectly resembles a person of Indian origin living like a white in the West, hence coconut is a racial nut is the theory.

Now if we extend this theory further, we can associate many other human groups with fruits, vegetables, nuts etc. Here are some that comes to my mind right now,

Onion – Layers of skin, nothing inside – Politicians?

Castor beans – Black outside, poisonous inside – Lawy...ok, I don’t want to get sued, so let me stop imagining further, you can continue.

Majority, minority and the rest

2009-07-01T08:39:00.003+05:30

I’m a strong believer of democracy because I don’t have another alternative to strongly believe in. But that doesn’t mean I’m in agreement with majority bullying minorities, I value rights of minorities of all types, as long as they don’t hold hundreds of neutrals* hostages in traffic jams by conducting rallies in cities to score over their majority counterparts. This post is on some of the challenges our country is facing today because of having too many kinds of majorities and their corresponding minorities with many unfortunate neutrals getting caught in between.

As I stated earlier, I respect minorities, be it the religious, racial, trans-racial, cultural, trans-cultural, genderal(a better word than ‘sexual’, which makes me feel ‘harassment’ follows), trans-genderal, linguistic, professional, physiological, psychological, habitual … the list goes on which means I got to respect almost anybody because everybody is some or other type of minority in our country. Now that more and more of these minorities are coming out of the closets where they claim the majority had hitherto locked them in, I think the government should take a strong stand on their rights and wrongs to avoid majority-minority tussles.

What is the most essential thing a typical minority needs? Freebies? Job reservations? Educational concessions? Or is it constitutional equality? All these can be arranged easily by amendments in the law, which is easy. But if the problem is the attitude of majority towards them (neutrals are neutralized, they have no attitude, no emotional attachments, no particular affinity towards anything anyway), then we got to plan better because that involves a lot of work. We might have to try all four ancient political methods - Sama, Dana, Bheda, Danda (in the reverse order as we always do) – to stop the majority’s discrimination against the corresponding minority. Let me explain why this is difficult with a scenario study(Please note that the scenario is fictitious, any resemblance to any majority/minority living or dead could be because you are a pervert).

Say you are a member of majority who think men are men and women are women, and children are of both, by both, for both is the only possible ‘genderal’ orientation. For argument sake let’s call this majority as ‘the shortsighted’. It’s not that easy to educate you that among other groups of people things are not that simple, there men can be either men or women and women can be either women or men and some men and women can be both while some others can be neither, depending on what the situation demands. This many permutations and combinations are simply too much for (majority) shortsighted to accept because they are all bad in math.

Now the question is how do we educate them? Can we have school text books changed? That means Kabil Sibal and his team got to do hell a lot of rework on the present education system that they are already planning to mess-up, especially places where we teach morality, religion, physiology, anatomy and stuff like that. Now even if we decide to educate the younger generation of ‘shortsighted’ against discrimination, what about their adults? Mr.Sibal has no control on them, he cannot bring them back to school except for the usual Parent-Teacher pandemonium, unless of course somebody sues all the ‘shortsighted’ adults and hires Mr.Sibal as the attorney.

Now let us look at the possible ways to influence adults. One option is by using Mr.Chidambaram and his forces to force them to accept the minorities, but this is 21st century and we are a democracy, Mr.Chidambaram will not do anything that will get his party voted out in the next election, public is simply too aware these days. The other option is to hire Amitab Bachchan, Rajani Kant and the likes to run ad campaigns. Again a lot of adults are not fans of movie stars, who will influence them? Can we hire Bollywood item-girls to do the job? I doubt because there is a limit to how much flesh somebody can eat, also what about ‘shortsighted’ adult women? Bollywood’s Chest-nut item-boys look too dumb to influence their own girlfriends, let alone somebody else.

Now, there is another future problem as well. Say somehow we managed to play a lot of cards – Mr.Sibal, Mr.Chidambaram, Mr.Bachchan, Miss.Fleshly, Mr.Chestnut etc – and somehow managed to make the majority accept the minority. Then what if the majority transform to minority - like what happened in the case of religions in the past - seeing the privileges, freedom etc that the minority enjoy? Don’t we have to again start from scratch (our own backs I mean) to safeguard the majority who now became a minority? That’s why I say the majority-minority equation in our country needs a clear strategy to handle; it’s a very complicated problem, more complicated than even Rakhi Sawant's Swayamvar I would say.

Unfortunately, I’m not a philosopher, political thinker/tinker, think tank, water tank or not even a tv-expert to suggest a solution to this ever prevailing problem, all I can say is this majority vs minority is an issue that needs more government attention, it needs a permanent solution that takes care of the interests of both minorities and majorities of all kinds, at the same time protect the neutrals who just want to live their lives, pay their mortgages, bring up their children and die.

*Neutrals - those who enjoy neither majority, nor minority status and privileges.

Why nobody thought about this earlier?

2009-06-29T14:40:00.002+05:30

The Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP) believes that Meira Kumar was made Speaker of the Lok-Sabha just to keep her away from people, and also that, in this position she will not be able to do anything for the welfare of her community according to this news report

Since I’m also equally ignorant on the Constitution and the above constitutional positions like the BSP, I agree with them, we shouldn’t appoint people from any type of minorities to such toothless and sluggish roles because that will hamper the uplifting of the community they belong to. However, we don’t have to abolish these positions, we can effectively use it for handling terrorists and mafia - catch hold of all their masterminds and appoint them at these posts, since they cannot do anything from there for their ‘community’(the terror-groups and Mafiosi I mean), the community itself will soon die without leadership. We don’t have to spend those millions on intelligence, arms and ammunition also. Yes! I think I’ve found a solution to all our problems! Thanks Team-BSP, you are welcome to join my government whenever I form one, let’s build a new nation together; one full of statues.

Intra-racial racism

2009-06-27T16:00:00.012+05:30

Racial problems are still haunting us Indians, I think it's becoming the second biggest social issue; after reality shows. What concerns me is that the racial attacks are taking new dimensions - with Indians starting to racially abuse their own countrymen and countrywomen. The first known victim of this intra-continental racism is a VVIP who complained about it in an international conference on water resources. He says people from other parts of India racially abuse him by asking whether he is an Indian. You might be wondering how that is racist, my question is not only that, I also want to know what’s the connection between water problems and racism - unless of course the water in discussion here is of a different ‘spiritual’ level altogether.

Whatever that is, the point is that whether enquiring about somebody’s nativity/nationality is racial abuse. Even if you agree with those who think it is, the question that remains is whether an Indian asking another fellow Indian his/her nationality can be racial or not. Now that a lawmaker himself says it is, I got to agree. Now I remember, a cab driver in Delhi once asked me whether I was from the south. The cabbie got away with that since I was not this informed a person at that time. Else I could have dragged him to the nearest police station and would have ended up bribing the cops for getting both of us out.

Be careful - is what I want to say to my readers. Hereafter if you meet a person and want to check on his/her nationality because you cannot deduce it due to the artificial hair color or the made up English accent or both, don’t inquire on the nationality directly, you can get into trouble because that’s a racist question. Instead, – supposing the person is from Nepal - ask “Are you related to Madhav Nepal”. Since this is a family related question, it cannot be racial. If it’s a Nepali woman whom you are trying to ‘nationalize’ without hurting her racial sentiments, ask whether she is related to Manisha Koirala, she may even buy you a coffee, let alone being upset about racial abuse. Now, if the person looks like having a Dravidian origin, you can check on their kinship with Rahul Dravid and if that sounds too stupid, ask about his/her favourite dish/film star, you will get some clue easily.

This intra-subcontinental racism brings in administrative problems as well, compared to its inter-national equivalents. Because currently there is no ministry in-charge of ‘highly condemning’ these domestic racial abuses. Hitherto we only had trans-national racism; hence we had that job split between ministries of External and Overseas Indian affairs, depending on who grabs the mike first. The National Human-Rights Commission that we have itself is violating human rights(as reported here ), so no hope there. I recommend setting up a Ministry of Racial Abuses, that way couple of more coalition partners can be bought without horse trading as well.

Before I take leave, I’ll leave you with a question – The question is whether a person buying a fairness cream/ hair color is racially abusing herself/himself as well, because essentially what he/she is stating is that dark skin/hair is bad and is trying to become fair-skinned, fair-haired, harebrained etc, isn’t that racist too?

Reincarnations revealed

2009-06-25T18:51:00.005+05:30

Those who are hungry for some real news, I mean other than the usual murky stuff like recession, sarkozy, burqa, Barkha, bakra etc, here is some solid meat(ok, paneer if you are veggie) - a researcher has found that "Gandhi has been reborn, and his name in the current incarnation is Van Jones" .

According to the said researcher, Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam was Tipu Sultan as well. Though the write-up don’t say how he deduced that except for the rocketry connection, I think he is right because there are a lot of similarities between the two if you look closely. Both are men - which also means both are not women and children, both are connected to Bangalore airport(Dr.Kalam worked @HAL,ADE near old Bangalore airport, Sultan was born @Devanahalli, near new Bangalore airport), both are connected to weapons, both became heads of states…now if somebody confirm about the Sultan’s hairstyle as well, the hypothesis can be proclaimed completely accurate.

Hang on…I have a feeling I was Abraham Lincoln. Here is why - both of us agree slavery is a bad thing, both our first names don’t start with Z, both of us got a mouth exactly below the nose, gosh! Lot of similarities, so hereafter address me Mr. President, else I’ll ask my ghost to spook you, even if you live outside the Whitehouse.

What if the fence starts eating the crops?

2009-06-24T13:45:00.001+05:30

The national human rights commission has been fined by the court for doing human rights violation . I’m worried now because we also have national commissions for Women, Child welfare etc as well.

Essential Indian middleclass vacation planner

2009-06-22T09:07:00.007+05:30

If you ask what is the fastest growing organic structure in the world, even Bush will answer that it is The Indian Urban Middleclass. There are a lot of challenges that new members of this fast growing class face due to lack of awareness - on middleclass etiquettes, middleclass social behavior, middleclass purchasing power/limits etc. One such issue is how to plan and execute a yearly vacation that was hitherto a privilege of only the upper class in India. This post is a comprehensive vacation planner that can be used by anybody who is an urban Indian middleclass family head(gender could be anything), on how to plan and execute an annual vacation successfully, because studies show that many Indian urban middleclass vacations get spoiled due to lack of planning.

First challenge is finding an agreed upon location with your spouse(Kids will be ok with any place, as long as they don’t have to do home works there). Fortunately, India is an incredible(Antonym - credible) country with a large number of choices and you got Goa, Shimla and Kerala to choose from. Now remember, you are still middleclass and all the above are becoming unaffordable for middleclass, shortlist all hill stations and seashores that are at a drivable distance and come up in Google search. One thing to remember here is that this is not that annual pilgrimage that you used to go with your parents in childhood, so don’t chose the nearest temple-town as your parents used to do, choose a place where you can relax and enjoy the crowd, pollution, bad food etc.

Next, narrow down to two choices by conducting a lunch time exit-poll among your office friends. Once you got the choices, submit it for spousal approval (always submit two choices, anything below that will make you a victim of domestic violence and anything above an indecisive person), he or she will again repeat the exit poll in his or her friends circles and come back with two other places, go for any one that he/she choose for two reasons 1) laws on domestic violence 2) If the place turn out to be a disaster, you know exactly whom to blame – the government for making laws on domestic violence.

Next, start on the logistics such as finding accommodation, transportation. The best way to find a middleclass accommodation is to look upward, I mean look at what the rich are doing, because psychologically, middleclass think they are at par with the rich, so even if it costs you an additional couple of thousand bucks, go for a place that promises a ‘spa’*, swimming pool, a gym, a bar and couple of restaurants; again most of these are virtual-realty, just to give you a psychological feel-good factor for the money you are paying, most of them will be dysfunctional in actual-reality.

Call up the resort/hotel identified, it will be booked fully for the next 999 years by the rest of the middleclass, so you have two choices now 1) Choose an alternate holiday spot and repeat the process 2) Settle down for a not so up market, yet minimalist place. Go for choice 2 as the holiday season is just few weeks away. Ensure that the following are available in the place booked 1) A room with 4 walls and one roof, one floor 2) A bathroom with same number of walls, roofs and floors 3) A TV and cot 4) A socket for mosquito repellent 5) AC and fan. Note that both AC and fan are necessary as the AC will never work and in the likely event of your trip not going well, you can take all your frustration on the hotel staff on this, your spouse and kids will be spared.

Next on the travel. Though you would be tempted to hire an MUV, it’s much safer to take your own car out for the very reason that these MUVs come with in-built device drivers who just returned from another trip and had not been sleeping for the last 48 hours and chances are that you will become a page 3 celebrity in next day’s papers, along with the wreckage of the MUV. For driving guidelines, read this post.Keep a print of Google map of the route, will be useful to wipe your hands after food on your way. For directions, ask people at every junction, who will direct you to other people who know the directions.

Before any vacation, ensure that you have an overall awareness on the various attractions at the place, which will typically involve a supposed to be ancient temple/fort, a waterfall, a dam and a pathetically maintained park, couple of dirty beaches/lakes etc. There will be excellent websites detailing the attractions, read them couple of times and draw a daily plan, because that’s one activity you will enjoy in this trip(I mean working out a plan, not executing it).

Now you are all set to go. Buy and keep some snacks, aerated drinks etc a day in advance, make sure you forget to carry them because you won’t want to reach your holiday spot with a bad stomach. Another essential middleclass vacation equipment is a digital camera, (don’t carry your old video cameras, you are not going to use them) because a middleclass vacation is not about enjoying places, it’s about the snaps you take that will make you feel like being the best photographer in the world.

Always start your vacation journey early morning, because then you will have enough time to stop at every junction for directions and still reach the place by evening. Also studies have proven that driving at day time is safer in Indian roads as potholes become blackholes at night and will absorb your car, unless you are travelling at a speed higher than escape velocity. Ensure you carry water from home, because again there are studies that shows bottled water is harmful to health, especially when they are duplicates(imitations) of known brands.

Now after reaching the hotel, first thing to do is ignore your daily plan, check with the hotel staff on the places around. They will give you which ones are suitable for visit during which season, go ahead, choose them and re-adjust all your daily plans accordingly and execute. Execution is a simple process – reach the spot, click snaps, start back. Ensure your kids are safe, it’s not their fault that you chose to spoil their entire week in the name of a vacation. At the end of the trip, return back, no special advice/guidance needed here because I’m already tired with this post. Go ahead, enjoy your vacation!

* Author is ignorant on what exactly this thing is, but it’s a mandatory middleclass vacation doodad.