Heard on the radio

Delhi has this (well deserved?) reputation of being an aggressive and violent city. Today I heard a jingle on the radio which captures this nicely and along with Delhi, pokes fun at itself -

Man: Shooting, wrestling, boxing...
Woman: (disgusted) zaroor Dilli wale honge
Man: Arre, these are our Olympic winners!

I like it

Why so serious?

So much has been written about The Dark Knight that saying anything else about it would be cliched at best and plagiarism at worst. However, having just seen the movie, I feel compelled to spread the word. The movie is - not to put too fine a point upon it - SUPERB. It is the best comic book movie ever, and I dont think there can be a better one. I was always a Batfreak, and I am always wary of things that other people praise, but this movie has exceeded my wildest expectations.

Without further ado, here is a list of the things I loved about the movie -

The characters:

1. The Joker - the guy is a genius, evil personified, who is always one step ahead of Batman, the police and the District Attorney. The freak without a plan, a disciple of chaos, the single most powerful character of the movie had me hooked. Heath Ledger, with his nervous flicking of the tongue, really lives as the Joker. The 'irresistable force' more than matches Batman's 'immovable object'
2. The concept of Batman as menacing - I always thought of Batman as a good bloke, but after this movie, I can see why he is a menacing presence to all
3. Two Face - the ultimate rational being, who gives everything a 50-50 chance. Also, a victim of fate

The ideas:

1. That Batman is unique in that he need not be a hero, and so can do what is right. This special quality makes him transcend the usual crop of (now seemingly) daft superheroes
2. That chaos is more menacing than the most scary 'plan'
3. That it is ok to burn down the forest to get the rogue bandit

The gadgets:

1. The Batbike - uber cool. What else can I say?
2. The brightly blinking 'parachute' that flies up
3. Two Face's coin

The dialogue:

1. Why so serious?
2. One must die a hero, or live long enough to become a villian

The technique:

1. The fast pace and buildup of suspense in the screenplay
2. The background music - haunting and enticing

This is the third Christopher Nolan movie that is in my list of all time greats - after Memento, The Prestige and The Dark Knight, what will he come up with next?

Thoughts from the spectacle

I watched with great amusement the (in)famous trust vote in Parliament on live TV. Must say it was more engrossing than any of the K-soaps (not that I have, or ever would want to watch the damn things). It had all the elements - drama, suspense, passion, intrigue.

At the end of it all, the primary thought that struck me was that there is a silver lining in all this muck - no, I was not at all disgusted by the sight of wads of money being waved around - lets face it, how surprising was it? Everyone - bar none - knew that large scale buying of votes is pretty common in our polity - it has happened before, and will happen again. So why go all hypocritical and apoplectic about the 'sanctity' of Parliament or the 'damage to the integrity of the nation'? In fact I think this is a good thing because it at least lays out the rules of the game clearly - jiske note uska vote.

But to return to the silver lining - and that was that among all the cacophony and noise, the speeches by Rahul Gandhi and by Omar Abdullah stood out - for being sensible, rational, and (dare I add?) ethical. I was an ardent opponent of Sonia Gandhi being offered the PM's post, but I have revised my opinion about Mr. Gandhi Jr. For one, the guy spends a lot of time actually visiting far flung places and seeing how things are happening on the ground. For the other, even for his (incorrect?) prescriptions to problems - remember the famous Rs. 70,000 crore farm loan waiver? - at least he has in his target the correct problems. Not stupid cliches like 'communalism' or 'communism' but a much more real and practical war against poverty. That is the real scourge that needs to be eradicated, and that is what our esteemed lawmakers should spend their time thinking about. Whether you choose Medicine A (i.e. fiscal grants, loan waivers etc.) or Medicine B (i.e. spreading education, enabling entrepreneurship, upholding basic human rights and restoring individual dignity through capitalism) is the next step. But the basic step is to recognize the problem.

I have hope that Rahul Gandhi and Omar Abdullah and their like have recognized this problem. The King is dead - long live the King!!

Quotes on fear (thank you Wikipedia!)

Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Part VI, st. 10 (1798)

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, ch. 12 (1894)

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild- mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread. Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you. The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you
Yann Martel, "Life of Pi", (178-9)

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Frank Herbert, Dune - Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear (1965), pg. 8.

Fear

There is nothing to fear but fear itself - Franklin D Roosevelt

Oftentimes the fear of the unknown cripples me. A dark gnawing shadow grips my very heart and paralyzes my brain. I become helpless and freeze. Such is the power of fear.

At such times, I draw inspiration from stories of other peoples' overcoming great obstacles. I remind myself that life is a series of arbitrary events that even out in the end. I reassure myself that I can take the rough with the smooth.

I read this statement again. I am no longer afraid.

Jaane Tu? Not really...

Saw the mega-hit and much appreciated Jaane Tu yesterday. And came away with mixed opinions. The movie is overall ok, though only because of 3 positives. The negatives, per me, are 2 (but really big ones!).
Ironically, 2 out of the 3 positives are probably the shortest parts of the movie. And they are: 1) Naseeruddin Shah's character 2) Bhaloo and Bagheera and 3) the hero himself

The negatives are 1) The heroine: all she does in the entire movie is sport a very supercilious expression. The lady tries to be "sweet" but ends up looking like a class A candidate for punishment. Her accent is also pretty thick and should have been worked upon.
The 2nd negative is the story itself - somehow it does not seem feasible in the least (not least the rigmarole and hurry-scurry during the climax). What are mobile phones for, if I may ask?? And how about PCO booths?

All in all, I think the problem was that I went in with expectations that were higher than warranted.

Communist bashing

For a change, this is not me ranting away, but more measured opinion :-)
Check it out here

Some excerpts:
There is a long history of such conduct, going back to the Communist hostility to the Congress-led freedom movement and the willingness to act as agents of the British imperialists (because both Soviet Russia and Britain were on the same side in World War II). That was followed by the denouncing of Independent India as a bourgeois sham, leading to armed insurrection against the lawful government. And when the Chinese attacked India on the northern borders, the Communists once again did not take a clear position with the national mainstream

As for economic issues, when the Green Revolution was achieved, the Communists criticised it as a phenomenon that would displace labour and help only big farmers — whereas it is the Green Revolution that helped India become self-sufficient in food. Indeed, in Punjab which was at the heart of the change, there has been a growing labour shortage, and not the creation of surplus labour. The Left was also critical of the induction of computers, organising strikes to stop computerisation and thereby condemning office workers and whole organisations to manual processes long after they should have computerised and achieved quantum gains in productivity. Once again, the war cry was that workers would be displaced, whereas it is the computer age that has created huge employment in the country — with the Left Front-ruled West Bengal now struggling to reap some benefit by inviting the computer software giants to come to the state. And, of course, the Communists were bitterly critical of the "IMF-World Bank-dictated" economic reform programme that got launched in 1991; ironically, it is this very programme that has given the country freedom from IMF conditionality and also from the need to borrow from the World Bank

For many years, the Communists have also criticised those not of their ilk as being foreign agents, compradors and such like. Yet, as Soviet documentation has established, it is the Communists who were busy taking money from a foreign country, even as they pointed fingers at others. And coincidentally or not, the Left's opposition to the nuclear deal happens to tie in quite nicely with the interests of Communist China, which would like to see India remain in a nuclear straitjacket

Screwed!!

A friend recently had a windfall and landed some good money. He (being a saving type) does not want to splurge it on consumption goods, but wants to use the corpus to ensure financial security later in life. He is a worried man!
He narrated his logic to me thus:
1) if he keeps the money as cash, inflation erodes its value very quickly
2) if he invests in stocks, going by his recent experiences, he could see the value of his windfall decline 30% in a week
3) the amount is not large enough to buy any real estate. Moreover, he does not want to take a loan and buy property in these times of rising interest rates
4) if he keeps it in a fixed deposit, negative real interest rates screw him
5) he would like a new car, but he thinks rising oil prices will make running costs prohibitive

Not being entirely sober at that time, I suggested he roll up the entire amount, and throw it 'on the toss of a coin' (as Kipling would have said, rather written) on crude oil futures. Alternately he could punt on a short position on the US dollar.
That is the only certain thing in these bedevilled times!!

Thought for the day

I met a hugely successful person (by all conventional standards) today. Though he had a tendency to speak in rhetoric, one good thought he left with me -
'Don't run after money, because then you are only running along with everyone else. Follow your principles, do what you do best and let money run after you'

Not reproduced here verbatim, but substantially to similar effect. I love it!!

Powerful

I saw Aamir yesterday, and was blown away by the movie. It is gripping, hard-hitting and powerful. One needs a strong stomach to watch the thing. Although it evoked very mixed reactions from the people around me, without giving anything away, a few things that really stood out for me in the movie:

• The humanity of the protagonist - the guy is an everyday joe, doing what anyone would in his situation. What he does at the end, when he takes charge of his own destiny, is something that requires great courage. The alternative was quite easy to do, and putting myself into his shoes, I probably would have taken the easy way out - I could not have done what he did
• The depiction of Bombay - very real (brutally so!)
• The taut script - no needless subplots, no (melo)dramatic dialogue, good background score, good acting. The name itself - Aamir - which means a leader of men - is very apt
• The thoughts it provoked in me - the essence of the movie is that everyone is responsible for their own destiny, and that there comes a time when (to express it most beautifully) a guy's got to do what a guy's got to do. An individual is a trifle, insignificant and immaterial. There comes an opportunity to transcend oneself, to become greater than the sum of your existence and the society around you. The one who grabs that opportunity is Aamir

Day dream

Malvinder Singh is a guy I envy right now. The dude is all set to pocket approximately $2.5 bn (or Rs. 10,000 crores - the number of zeros in that number has me reeling :-) from selling Ranbaxy to the good Japanese at a hefty premium to market.
Without going into usual debate over whether he did the right thing or no (suffice it to say I approve of the transaction), the more interesting debate in media right now is - what the blazes is he going to do with Rs. 100,000,000,000 (thats 11 zeros folks!)?? Mr. Singh still has a job (he will continue to lead Ranbaxy), and he has made some noises about making Religare a bank (though I dont think he is very serious when he says that), but all this does not prevent me from fantasizing about what I would do if I ever laid my hands on such moolah.
Of course my initial thoughts run to tropical islands, decadent living and luxury homes, but then I decided to find out what use better minds than mine have figured out for money.

• Till recently Mr. Rich Man #1, Bill Gates has decided to give away all his money to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which will use it to prevent AIDS, and organize social initiatives in poor economies like India / Bangladesh etc.
• Mr. Rich Man #2 (and God to legions of investors), Warren Buffett will give away his entire fortune to (surprise surprise) the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• Not too long ago India's richest family, the Tatas, use all the profits from the Tata companies (via Tata Sons) for charity...

I begin to see a pattern. And it gives me ideas. What I would really do with Rs. 9,990 crores (I have put away 10 crores in the bank, remember?) is

a) build a huge university. The university will operate on a pure capitalistic model, with extremely high standards of admission, the best paid faculty, and the best hostel infrastructure, and a market driven fee strucutre. However, the poorest 30% students would get scholarships which would cover their tuition fee (the funds for this would come from interest from an allocated amount). (I will need to devise some smart way of figuring out the real deserving poor students vs. rich kids whose parents get their income through 'unofficial' means)

b) build a huge hospital, extremely modern and efficient, with the best infrastructure, the best paid doctors and nurses, and market rates for treatment. However, the poorest 30% patients will get diagnosis, treatment and medicine for free (funds to come out of interest on an allocated amount)

While I actually have no clue if this would cover the amount at my disposal, I have an idea it would be enough. Anything left over I will hand over to my wife to invest in equity markets and multiply manifold, the proceeds of which I will use to buy my decadent island :-)

Greener grass

After an intense week (and weekend) spent furiously working away, including an entire weekend spent in office, minimal sleep (it is now 1:15am and still a couple of hours to go before i can call it a day) and lots of stress, clarity emerges on some key issues -

1. Family is your most precious asset - without loving and caring family one is finished
2. Better work somewhere you really like - otherwise every challenge beomes a huge burden
3. There is no free lunch - there are trade-offs in almost everything in life
4. Living today is the only way to live - who has seen tomorrow?
5. The grass is always greener on the other side
6. Sleep is the most under-rated luxury

Fuel prices - the strange truth

Another fuel price hike is imminent within a couple of days. While I had always argued for de-regulation of retail fuel prices, I recently came across some interesting information on oil price dynamics in India.

I always assumed that fuel prices are artificially low in India. Let us test this hypothesis. The US (where gasoline ie petrol prices are market driven) retails petrol for $3.6 - 4 per gallon. One gallon = 4.5 liters and 1$ = Rs 42.6. Doing the math, we get Rs. 34 - 37 per liter of petrol. In Delhi (which I believe has the lowest fuel price in India), it retails for Rs 43 / liter. So how can it be under-priced??

The interesting answer is that petrol is underpriced in India from the point of view of oil-marketing companies only, not from the end-consumer point of view. And the guy who keeps all the cream is (no surprises here!) the Government of India.

Here is how it works (all numbers for example only) - petrol price (at international prices): Rs 100. Landed cost in India: Rs 105 (price at which the oil cos refine / buy the stuff). Taxes paid by oil companies (like IOC, HPCL and BPCL) to the Govt (incl. excise, customs and sales taxes): Rs 40. So oil companies' cost: Rs 145. Retailing price: Rs 120. Loss to oil co: Rs 25. Loss to consumer: Rs 15. Gain to big brother GoI: Rs 40.

GoI is a well meaning guy. He wants to make sure that he gets votes. So he takes this Rs 40, and distributes it as largesse to various deserving sections. The only hitch - his agents (the political honchos and bureaucrats - guys in charge of making sure it reaches the right people) - keep Rs 39.5 out of this Rs 40. So they can stash it under their mattresses / maintain their multiple mistresses / send their kids abroad etc etc.

Nice scheme.

Also another reason why oil prices in India will never be de-regulated (at least not while the Congress and their brethren in bed the Communists are in power). Hopefully this will change one day!

A happy end to a long saga

The Bharti - MTN story has finally had a happy ending. First, a disclaimer - Bharti Airtel has been (and remains) one of my favourite stocks, so anything I say here is obviously biased :-)

While in my humble opinion, the deal would have been good for Bharti had it gone through (it would have given Bharti the chance to replicate its low-cost model elsewhere i.e. MTN has much lower margins than Bharti even though it gets much higher ARPU or revenue per user), it is better that Bharti decided to put its foot down when the MTN board reneged on agreed terms and wanted a reverse merger. I think this is a story that MTN has played out multiple times in the last few years - it has dallied with every large mobile operator you can think of - but has always gone back on its word when the rubber hit the road. It would be tough for anyone to take MTN seriously from now on.

Except our dear friend, Mr. 'Power' Ambani, who will gladly jump in and do anything to see valuations rise as he huffs and puffs to demonstrate his victory in sibling rivalry. Anything except improve his companies' operating performance, that is. Even then, tough to see how he would agree to make RComm a subsidiary of MTN.

I think this also demonstrates the high quality of management at Bharti, who were able to walk away from a deal which they could have done, because it went against their desire to make Bharti a truly global company, instead of merely making themselves richer. I think they have done the right thing! All the best to them...

Flicks on a flight

Come to think of it, most of the really good movies that I see are on Jet Airlines flights from Europe to India.

I saw Paris, J'taime last time around.
This time, I started the flick feast with 'There Will be Blood'. In one word - mind blowing. Daniel Day Lewis creates such an intense character that it is tough to rivet your eyes away from the screen. There is blood, of course, and oil, and religion, and greed. Extremely intense and dark movie - a must see.

Next up, I checked out 'I am Legend' (only for Will Smith). Not impressive at all.

And finally, when it was almost too late, I started watching a movie that I have been wanting to for a long long time - Manorama, Six Feet Under. I liked the movie tremendously, especially Abhay Deol's believeable character. However, great tragedy struck, since just 20 mins from the end of the suspense thriller, the plane began its descent, and the movie was turned off :-( So till now I am festering in curiousity about whodunnit.

Anyone who has seen the movie, please call me up asap. Otherwise I may have to go to Europe again!!!

Scrambled thoughts...

I met up with some friends in Venice. These are very nice, educated, intelligent people. What they had to say about what they hear about India left me feeling weird - I didn't know whether to laugh or be concerned about the massive ignorance about my country. Sample a few gems:

1. The main newspaper in Verona (a small Italian town, with a population of 300,000 - about the size of Dwarka in Delhi), carried a full front page article on the "moral outrage" that IPL cheerleaders have caused in India
2. A lot of people believe that all 5 star hotel gyms in India have a sign over treadmills saying "Please do not run over 10km / hour because that will cause a power cut in our hotel"
3. Indians do not like sports. They do not exercise, and they do not lead healthy lives
4. India is a bad country to do business in - the Four Seasons hotel in Mumbai had to get 201 govt. permits to install 201 taps in their 201 hotel rooms

I feel great anger at these perceptions. No one talks like this about China - this is because China performs while India only promises. I want my country to perform as it is capable of. I want people to talk with awe and envy when they speak about my country. I am proud about my country and I will refute anyone who thinks otherwise.

This is why I feel inordinate anger at Manmohan Singh. He is criminally wasting the energy of a billion people. He is harbouring Arjun Singh, whose sole ability is that of licking his master's (or mistress') heels, and a gift for screwing up a billion people. He is harbouring Anbumani Ramadoss, who is worried about what Mallika Sherawat is doing on screen, instead of who is manufacturing spurious medicine. He is advocating salary cuts for CEOs, so that his cohort can make more money as feudal overlords of licenses.

I would rather have Mayawati as PM. At least she says what she means.

Fantasies for beating the merciless summer sun

1. Swimming in cool, originated-from-melted-snow waters of the Jhelum river in Manali
2. Sipping absolutely chilled beer in a cool, dark room with the TV playing a light romantic comedy in the background
3. Showering for 2 continuous hours in cold, underground tank stored water (slipping into a tub full of the same water while reading a nice book also merits the same rank)
4. Putting ice cubes in the air cooler tank, darkening the room, and lying on a straw mat on the cool floor
5. Making lots of money speculating in the stock market / winning a huge sweepstakes, and buying yourself a month long luxury holiday to Switzerland with the same
6. Sitting under a leafy huge peepal tree in a huge garden with bright green grass, on a hammock, and sipping cold nimbu paani
7. Wearing an ice-vest (idea courtesy Australian cricketers)

Other ideas welcome...

Paisa Vasool? Maybe not...

Yesterday I saw an India Premier League T20 match for the first time (first time? I hear you exclaim... the reason why I did not watch any match earlier are too complicated to be dealt with on this post), and walked away un-impressed. The match between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Mumbai Indians (what kind of name is that??) did not hold out too much promise in any case. But my reasons for not liking it are different.

Most important, I was not rooting for any team. It made not the least difference to me if one side was winning or the other. I dare say it would have been exactly the same had the Delhi DareDevils been playing (again, a name I do not sympathise with!). This robbed the match of any kind of excitement.

Next, the players themselves seemed kind of ho-hum about the whole affair. Ricky Ponting is the last guy I would want to be against if his national team is on the backfoot. But in this match, he seemed quite casual. In fact, I probably should not name names, because even the Mumbai players seemed to lack any kind of bonding. It was just a game to everyone (probably as it should be!)

Third, I did not like the garish golden/ugly blue helmets and pads that the players had on. It looked like a blooming circus show

Fourth, the match itself was pretty one-sided. Right from the first over. So much so, that I gave up after the first six overs, and returned for a very brief interlude towards the middle of the 2nd innings

Maybe this is a litany of negatives without reason. But I certainly do not see what makes it so attractive for everyone else. Apparently the whole nation watches little else on TV. Not that I disapprove - if this is what they want, this is what they should get.

Theatre of the Absurd

I always suspected that we are moving inexorably towards a police state in India, given the bleeding hearts not only in Government, but alas, among general society, who think that laissez faire is a concept best left to academia. They have all the answers, and they know best what is good for you, me and everyone. They are the proponents of the communist state!

I suspected it, and now I have evidence. Sample this, sourced from today's Economic Times. It first made me slack jawed in disbelief, then exceedingly angry, and finally just numb and confused. Am I reading this right? Is there something that I am missing?

(italics are mine):
Ban on pvt school teachers on investing in stock market mooted
20 Apr, 2008, 1041 hrs IST, PTI
MUMBAI: Teachers in Maharashtra's private schools may be banned from investing in stock market if a proposal by the Education Department is implemented. Reason? The Department considers such investments as gambling. A proposal mooted by the education department says that the teachers in private schools in the state could invest only in cooperative banks and credit societies.

The Government has come up with a 'code of conduct' for secondary school teachers, including those in private schools. The draft code of conduct has been circulated among the teachers' unions. The proposal also puts restrictions on investments and business by family members of the teachers. If any member has an insurance policy, or is involved in insurance business or any other business, it needs to be reported to the Deputy Director of education, according to the proposal.

It also stipulates that teacher should not marry a person whose ex-partner is alive and also bars teachers from entering into a marriage contract sans permission from school management. The proposal also adds that marriage to a foreigner should be reported to the management.

The proposal also puts restrictions on teachers' participation in social or political movement and asks them to convince family members to do so. They would also be required to inform the management if a family member wants to contest election.

Connaught Place in pictures

Photos from walk described in earlier post (move mouse over photo to see label):