Bangalore Diary: Curtains on the Trip

Towards the end of my stay my friend, Kitty, asked me how I was feeling about the city as my visit was drawing to a close. The novelty had worn off, somewhat, and a little fatigue was setting in. However, unlike the previous times I had visited India this time it no longer felt like I was living out of a suitcase. I was comfortably ensconced in an apartment, I had mobile phone and internet access, I had privacy, and I had my mother to keep me company. There are things I have never had in the U.S. that I enjoyed in India -- in particular, the feeling that I was well-plugged into society.

But, I have lived for over twenty years in the U.S.. The isolation and solitude that I have lived with, I have grown accustomed to. India is a 24-hour bazaar -- bustling, and continually in-your-face. On occasion, I missed the dullness and quietness of U.S. life. I also missed my home -- my sanctuary for over a decade --, and my family and friends. But most importantly, throughout my stay in India I was actively in touch with my children. I have to admit that I am an over-involved parent, and even eight thousand miles of separation can't keep me from being that way. I spent hours on the phone talking to my girls, in what I regarded as counseling (who knows how they perceived it!). Eventually, I felt it was less effective doing this long-distance, and I grew anxious to return home.

So, in a sense, I was happy to return home, but only because I held the hope that, going forward, I will get to spend some time every year in India.

Terror in Mumbai

I am attaching below an open letter to the Indian Prime Minister written by an unknown (to me), anguished Mumbaikar. I find it interesting to contrast hawkish opinions, many times from people of Indian origin in the U.S., in response to past and present crises, with articles like the following, several of which are emanating from India. The former are asking for "hot pursuit", to "nuke Pakistan", and to "stop pampering minorities". The latter are saying that what we have at the root of such events is a problem of venality, corruption, politicization of the civic and security apparatus, and utter incompetence.

In principle, I have no problem with military action -- only, that it should not be an emotional reaction but a carefully crafted strategic one. India, unlike some of our neighbors, will live on for many millennia, and that's the kind of policy response that the people of India deserve.

Another theme I hear -- and have myself articulated -- is PIO/Indian anger at U.S. insistence of restraint even as the Bush administration has repeatedly surpassed itself for thuggery and bullying. India's strategic concerns, however, are for India to address and see through. Realpolitik demands that these be coordinated with other military powers, but in the end if it makes strategic sense to carry out a decisive, military action, we should see this through. Sunil Khilnani, director of South Asia Studies at Johns Hopkins, has argued this point in a piece in the Financial Times today.

But India will also need to defend itself and its principles from those who threaten it. It needs to make clear to the one country most closely involved with Pakistan -- the US – that there are things that Pakistan must do; or which India may otherwise have, with prudence, to do for itself.

However, Khilnani also points out why a bombed-to-rubble Pakistan might be more trouble for India in the long run.

Now for the letter from the Mumbaikar:

LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER

I am a typical mouse from Mumbai. In the local train compartment which has capacity of 100 persons, I travel with 500 more mouse. Mouse at least squeak but we don't even do that. Today I heard your speech. In which you said 'NO BODY WOULD BE SPARED'. I would like to remind you that fourteen years has passed since serial bomb blast in Mumbai took place. Dawood was the main conspirator. Till today he is not caught. All our bolywood actors, our builders, our Gutka king meets him but your Government can not catch him. Reason is simple; all your ministers are hand in glove with him. If any attempt is made to catch him everybody will be exposed. Your statement 'NOBODY WOULD BE SPARED' is nothing but a cruel joke on this unfortunate people of India.

Enough is enough. As such after seeing terrorist attack carried out by about a dozen young boys I realize that if same thing continues days are not away when terrorist will attack by air, destroy our nuclear reactor and there will be one more Hiroshima.

We the people are left with only one mantra. Womb to Bomb to Tomb. You promised Mumbaikar Shanghai what you have given us is Jalianwala Baug. Today only your home minister resigned. What took you so long to kick out this joker? Only reason was that he was loyal to Gandhi family. Loyalty to Gandhi family is more important than blood of innocent people, isn't it? I am born and bought up in Mumbai for last fifty eight years. Believe me corruption in Maharashtra is worse than that in Bihar. Look at all the politician, Sharad Pawar, Chagan Bhujbal, Narayan Rane, Bal Thackray , Gopinath Munde, Raj Thackray, Vilasrao Deshmukh all are rolling in money. Vilasrao Deshmukh is one of the worst Chief minister I have seen. His only business is to increase the FSI every other day, make money and send it to Delhi so Congress can fight next election. Now the clown has found new way and will increase FSI for fisherman so they can build concrete house right on sea shore. Next time terrorist can comfortably live in those house , enjoy the beauty of sea and then attack the Mumbai at their will. Recently I had to purchase house in Mumbai. I met about two dozen builders. Everybody wanted about 30% in black. A common person like me knows this and with all your intelligent agency & CBI you and your finance minister are not aware of it. Where all the black money goes? To the underworld isn't it? Our politicians take help of these goondas to vacate people by force. I myself was victim of it. If you have time please come to me, I will tell you everything.

If this has been land of fools, idiots then I would not have ever cared to write you this letter. Just see the tragedy, on one side we are reaching moon, people are so intelligent and on other side you politician has converted nectar into deadly poison. I am everything Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Schedule caste, OBC, Muslim OBC, Christian Schedule caste, Creamy Schedule caste only what I am not is INDIAN. You politician have raped every part of mother India by your policy of divide and rule.

Take example of former president Abdul Kalam. Such a intelligent person, such a fine human being. You politician didn't even spare him. Your party along with opposition joined the hands, because politician feels they are supreme and there is no place for good person.

Dear Mr Prime minister you are one of the most intelligent person, most learned person. Just wake up, be a real SARDAR. First and foremost expose all selfish politician. Ask Swiss bank to give name of all Indian account holder. Give reins of CBI to independent agency. Let them find wolf among us. There will be political upheaval but that will better than dance of death which we are witnessing every day. Just give us ambient where we can work honestly and without fear. Let there be rule of law. Everything else will be taken care of.

Choice is yours Mr. Prime Minister. Do you want to be lead by one person or you want to lead the nation of 100 Crore people?

Bangalore Diary: DTEA Reunion

Six of us from my high school had planned a reunion in Bangalore the evening of November 9. The event was organized by Venky. Venky -- the guy in the middle on the right -- is a former army colonel, and has a membership at the army club RSI (Rajinder Singhji Institute). RSI is located in an attractive enclave off of M.G. Road.

Ganesh had traveled from Chennai to join us for the meet. Raj Narayan, Killi and Raghu were also there (Pic below: anticlockwise from right end: Ramesh, Venky, Raghu, Raj, Ganesh and Killi).

I love clubs in India. On previous visits I have been to the Bangalore Club, and the Gandhinagar Club in Chennai. RSI may not be as well-known as the Bangalore Club, but the food was far better. It's certainly a much cooler place than the Gandhinagar Club.

We started the evening at 7 sitting in the lawn tables for drinks. I haven't seen any of these guys for 30+ years. In a couple cases my memory of the person was foggy. But we had a blast! We were able to connect as though we meet every week. We spent nearly 2 hours over drinks reminiscing, and talking about movies, cricket, business and societal change in India. It's amazing to me that I can connect far, far better with 5 guys in India who I haven't seen, talked to or even thought a lot about for 30 years, than many of the people I see everyday in the U.S.. I suppose I may have left India but India refuses to leave me. This sort of thing has happened before in a few cases with friends from other stages of my life. It never ceases to amaze me that reconnecting is such a snap.

Banaglore Diary: First Impressions

November is a great time to be in Bangalore. The weather is made in heaven. I drove along the
wide Bellary Road expressway from the new airport well to the North of the city. Once we entered the city the traffic thickened, and the ride got bumpy. I was so sick I had to ask the driver to let me get out of the cab and retch. I reached my brother's house in Padmanabhanagar, and spent almost all of the day recovering from a splitting headache. It has been five years since I last visited India, and in his simple but nice house I relived the hospitality and care and fussing of family elders. It reminded me of what it felt like visiting my parents when my father was still alive.

Padmanabhanagar gives you a flavor of the 21st century Indian city. You can see the
juxtaposition of the newly affluent urban India, and the less affluent past. The 2400 square foot vacant site across from my brother's house is being quoted at Rs 2 crore ($500000+), and people who have stubbornly held on to their modest houses are now millionaires as land prices have soared. The upwardly mobile young set have bought attractive flats, and enrolled in
neighborhood gyms. On the other side, the street with the Rs 2 crore lot is not paved, and there
is dust in the air raised by vehicles moving on the sandy road. On Saturday morning a religious mendicant made the rounds collecting alms, and a woman tugged around a holy bull and people offered money. There were half a dozen teams of kids playing cricket with makeshift equipment in every available playground.


The next day I moved to a service apartment in Koramangala. I will spend the rest of my time in this apartment with amma. I will work U.S. trading hours at a desk here; I will start work at 7 p.m. local time and end work at 3 a.m. My nephew Aravindh, working for Infosys, will do likewise at his office.

Koramangala is a posh locality in Bangalore. My apartment is across from a well-known Bangalore college. The roads are lined with restaurants and stores. Many are stand-and-eat shops catering to college students and twenty-somethings. Many of these people work in the software and BPO companies and have a lot of money to burn and lots of desire to indulge. There is energy and laughter and chatter as these young people tuck into their food and drinks. What a contrast from the near-dead suburbia of the American Midwest! Just watching these people makes me feel so alive.

Being a vegetarian takes away most of the fun and nearly all of the choice in suburban America. But here in Bangalore, dining is bountiful. We walked through the fancy Forum Mall in Koramangala. It was Sunday afternoon, and the food court was packed. There were at least a dozen stalls -- each serving a different cuisine. The chaat place I went to had nearly a hundred dishes on the menu. The food quality was great. I paid a little over two dollar-equivalent in Indian rupees for a lot of food.

Bangalore Diary: Tea Pavilion

The staff at the apartment have been very helpful and accomodating. The manager went out of his way to help me get set up with a direct wired internet connection. The kitchen staff are making wonderful food, and going out of the way to make items at our request.The staff also provided me with tea to help me stay up in the night.

I have been going out for frequent walks outside since it gets quite boring staying in the room. Now that is one thing I don't enjoy very much. Traffic is heavy, crossing roads is painful, the dustiness is bothersome, and garbage is liberally strewn on the sidewalk.

But the charm of India -- especially when you live in a city -- is not in the environs, but in the people. We went for breakfast this morning, and met, for the first time, the new people who have moved in. Unlike in America where I can't imagine saying more than a superficial hello -- at best -- it was so easy to fall into a fun and pleasant conversation. This is why India is so special to me.

The Last Mughal

I am reading William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal which chronicles the closing years of the reign of Bahadur Shah Zafar, and the Sepoy Mutiny (from a Delhi vantage point). Very vivid, well-researched, and insightful. I should warn though that many sacred cows are slaughtered, especially those pertaining to the Sepoy Mutiny: this may cut some people the wrong way. For instance, the sepoys were viewed by the people of Delhi with great disdain. They were an unruly crowd, and rampaged through the city looting and committing other atrocities. Also, though Zafar is widely, and correctly, regarded as a weak monarch, I never knew that he presided over a culturally brilliant court: Ghalib was one of his courtiers, and the sitar player at his court, Himmat Khan, was of the calibre of Tansen.

Tulsi Tanti

The article below describes the wind turbine business of Tulsi Tanti.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a9B6qZ11iwwc&refer=home

The business has been going through major problems lately because of technology issues, but consider the the following points about the man:

• How lightly his success sits on his head. Someone once told me about this Chennai bigwig who would buy two seats each time he flew (first class, need you ask?) so he wouldn't have to sit next to someone.

..remembers attending an annual gathering of Suzlon's managers and workers at the InterContinental hotel in the state of Goa by the Arabian Sea back in October 2004. The 5-foot-8-inch (1.7- meter), casually dressed Tanti mingled and laughed easily with a few hundred of his employees, Dhawan recalls.

• The simplicity of the man, and his sense of perspective about wealth, even as he sits on a large pile of wealth. Did you read the details of Mukesh Ambani's billion dollar Mumbai home?

The Suzlon chairman lives in a four-bedroom apartment with his wife in Pune's Koregaon Park neighborhood, where 4,000-square-foot (370-square-meter) units sell for about $1.3 million.

• Nepotism anyone?

When he retires, he's not going to hand Suzlon to either his son, Pranav, 23, or daughter, Nidhi, 22. Pranav works at Merrill Lynch & Co., and Nidhi works at Credit Suisse Group, both in Hong Kong.

Water Crisis

Ganesh recently sent me a very chilling presentation by Abdul Kalam -- Earth in 2070 -- on the devastating impact of water unavailability in 2070. It sounded a bit over the top, but the issue is very real, I believe.

Once we revert to some degree of normalcy after the credit and commodity crises, I think we will find ourselves concentrating on the frightening water crisis. Some regions will be impacted more than others, but the shrinkage of fresh water resources is a reality in most regions of the world.

I was reading recently reading a book on water scarcity (when Rivers Run Dry: When the Rivers Run Dry: Water--The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century by Fred Pearce). Two points from the book stick out in my memory:

1. Water scarcity is a global phenomenon . Even a water-rich region like the U.S. is experiencing serious water resource shrinkage in some of its water lifelines. This may not be news for the residents of western states, but this is beginning to happen in other parts of the country as well.

2. Many of the products we consume use up an unbelievable volume of water. This measure -- water consumed per unit weight -- is called the virtual water measure. Here is a sample drawn from wikipedia:

Agricultural products

• the production of 1 kg wheat costs 1,300 L water
• the production of 1 kg broken ricecosts 3,400 L water
• the production of 1 kg eggs costs 3,300 L water
• the production of 1 kg beef costs 15,000 L water

Household Products

• Jeans (1000g) there is 10,850 liters of embedded water
• Diaper (75g) there is 810 liters of embedded water
• Bed Sheet (900g) there is 9,750 Liters of embedded water