An argument on FDI in retail

This weekend I was in Delhi at my parents' place. Had gone to the city for a business trip, and stayed back a day to dig into some of Mom's yummy chaat. 

Chatting about this and that, the conversation came to the opening of FDI in retail, and whether it would be any good for us. Being a dyed in the wool reformist, I played out the usual arguments about how large format retail would increase efficiencies in the value chain, help farmers and producers get better prices, and reduce prices for consumers. Additionally, they would help allied areas like real estate, employment etc. For good measure, I added that any sector that has seen foreign money come in (telecom, airlines, insurance, automobiles, white goods etc etc has all improved product quality exponentially and driven prices down so significantly that it would have been unimaginable a decade ago. 

My mom's experience had been that large format retail (think Big Bazaar or Reliance Retail) initially had low prices which caused the local kirana folks to buy from them and on-sell, but over time prices moved up and the kirana shops applied a mark up on the higher prices. Also, the large stores usually stocked sub standard produce (cold storage potatoes, stale veggies etc) which cannot be good for health, generally speaking. In dad's opinion, large format stores would drive out small shopkeepers from business, and with less competition, prices would begin to rise. While I agree with some of these points, I think they miss the wood for the trees. 

I do not think that it is imperative for India to have Wal Mart stores. However, I think it is imperative that we get the intellectual property that these chains have and apply them to Indian supply chains. As for collateral damage, such as loss in livelihood of middlemen or mom and pop kirana stores, creative destruction is unavoidable. As an example, politicians in the state of UP shut down Reliance Fresh stores there, while other states have welcomed them. I do not think UP is any better off than before, or than its alternative. In the welcoming states, on the other hand, at least a large chunk of people have got gainful employment, and consumers low prices.  

I am all for opening up the economy even more fully to foreign money and expertise. Long live liberalization!

Sherlock Holmes - the new TV series

I was given the new BBC Sherlock Holmes series by a colleague, and saw the first episode today. Frankly, I was just blown away!

Not by the story, which was fine, if a bit gimmicky. But by the actors and the development of the characters. Benedict Cumberbatch is a masterful, if impish, Holmes. He starts off being aloof and superior, but by the end of episode one, you can't help but like him. The real hero though is Martin Freeman as Dr. Watson. Starting fragile and ginger, he 'grows up' quickly and in the end, quickly becomes a peer rather than an appendage. An ally, not a flunky.

The dialogue is sharp and crackling, and the humour very British. The 21st century elements - iPhone, blogs, nicotine patches etc. etc. add to the story without taking anything away from the core of the books.

All in all, a fantastic production. Pity there are only 6 episodes made thus far. I'm planning to watch all the remaining 5 over the weekend. 

The death of cash

In the past week, we have seen co-ordinated and unprecedented action by global central bankers.

First, Mario Draghi, chariman of the European Central Bank, said that he would buy short dated government bonds from any Eurozone country that asks for his help. Effectively, he is saying that he will unleash a flood of liquidity and force yields downwards, making it easier for governments to fund their spending or repayment programs.

If this was uncharacteristic of the Europeans, what came next was the biggest bazooka of all. 'Helicopter' Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US central bank (so called because he once said that if throwing currency out of a helicopter to people below could help the economy, he would do it), laid out QE3. How much is he willing to spend? No limits at all! He says he will spend $40bn each month - for ever, if required, buying mortgage bonds till the US job market improves. This is the stuff of superhuman comics and real epoch making events.

What this means is that currencies are racing against each other to debase themselves, so that borrowers have to return less (in real terms) than they had borrowed. Lenders (savers) are going to get shafted. But hey! no one said capitalism was benign.

The markets are celebrating wildly, because this means that the global currency taps are open without limit. However, I think we need to be a bit circumspect - because after this, central bankers have no more tools left. They have done all they could (and maybe more than they should). Now it is up to the politicians to deliver - austerity / increased productivity in Europe, and spending in the US.

Whatever happens, one thing is sure - these events will be discussed and debated in history books many many decades from now. All I can hope for is that these gentlemen are looked upon by history as heroes, and not villians who blew up the world as we knew it.

As for me, I am going to move all my meagre cash savings into gold or land! The reign of cash is over, the era of assets has begun!

Praise for the Batman.... again

Just happened to stumble across this piece when trawling the web over the Anish Trivedi cartoons episode. The author is Vir Sanghvi, a guy whose views I usually like to read.

So now we know how it ends. Batman retires and Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, which began with the magnificent Batman Begins, draws to a majestic close. I’ve been a Batman fan almost from the time I learnt how to read and have loyally followed the character through good (Frank Miller’s re-invigoration of the legend; the first Tim Burton movie; Nolan’s Batman Begins; the death of that nasty little creep, Jason Todd who was the second Robin etc.) and bad (the 1960s TV show; Batman and Robin, possibly the worst movie in the history of cinema; and the introduction of Aunt Harriet as a character in the Wayne household). But never has the myth of The Batman seemed as potent as it does now, after Nolan’s trilogy.

Spoiler alert: if you have not seen The Dark Knight Rises and intend to see it, then you should stop reading here lest I give away too much.

There are broadly two kinds of Batman fans: those who know him from the comic book and those who knew him from movies and TV. Even within those categories, there are subdivisions. If you liked the Batman TV show, then you are probably not considered cool by fans of the later movies. If you liked the Sixties and Seventies comics when Batman and Robin came across as a pair of boy scouts (or like scout master and scout), then ‘real’ comic fans don’t see you as cool. If you like the graphic novels that have populated the Batman universe over the last two decades, then you are so cool that you might as well be a nerd. (The line between fanatical graphic novel fans and geeks is a thin one.)

I’m not sure which of these categories and sub-categories I fit into. I got into Batman through the Sixties comic books and though they seem pretty lame now (at one stage there was a whole Batman family of Batwoman, Batgirl, Batmite and even Bat-Hound), they appealed to kids of my age. And many of the elements that we thrilled to: Batman’s secret identity as playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne, the Batmobile, the Batcave and such villains as the Joker and Catwoman have stood the test of time.

What I did not know, when I first read the Sixties comics was that they were sanitized takes on the original Batman. Created in May 1939 as a masked avenger along the lines of Zorro and the Phantom (who predates Batman and was clearly an inspiration), the character was first called The Bat-Man, tended to appear only at night, was on bad terms with the cops, wore a mask as much to avoid the police as to protect the people he loved, and had no hesitation in dispatching criminals to their death.

But within a year, DC Comics, had begun to soften The Bat-Man by giving him a young sidekick called Robin. And soon, when Batman’s original creator Bob Kane failed to come up with enough comics, a platoon of new writers and artists, each of whom had his own vision of the character, took over: Dick Sprang, Carmine Infantino, Mort Sheskin, Jim Mooney etc. Almost as influential as Kane himself were writer Bill Finger and artist Jerry Robinson who created the Joker. Kane, however, insisted that his byline always appear and was reluctant to share credit.

Even in this softer form, Batman went on to become an international rage, was featured in two movies in the 1940s and got his own hit TV show in the 1960s. The dark Bat-Man of the original comics was more or less forgotten for over 40 years till Frank Miller wrote The Dark Knight Returns. This was a series of comics set outside the normal continuity which imagined a future where a middle-aged Batman came out of retirement to fight crime. In Miller’s world, the public had turned against superheroes, TV was full of the same idiots debating the same issues every night. And corruption had seized control of society.

Almost all retellings of the Batman legend have drawn from Frank Miller’s version of the character. The idea of a dark and dangerous Batman intrigued Hollywood and a Dark Knight movie with Mel Gibson (playing Batman as an anti-Semitic midget, presumably) was planned but never got off the ground.

Eventually the project went to director Tim Burton, known for his weird and fantastic view of life. Burton took a dark Frank Miller-like Batman and placed him in an imaginatively designed Gotham City which was described in the script as looking “as if hell had erupted through the sidewalk.” Because the studio was not sure that Michael Keaton (who Burton cast, against type as Batman) had enough star quality, Jack Nicholson played the main villain, the Joker, and stole the movie.

Burton made one more Batman-in-a-weird-Gotham-City movie, costarring Danny DeVito as a depraved, sewer-dwelling Penguin. By then the comics had also decided to focus entirely on grown-up themes and a much darker Batman. Bane, a muscle-bound villain, was introduced and in 1995, in the long-running Knightfall series of comics, he actually beat Batman, breaking his back across his knee.

Even as the public thrilled to a darker Batman, the movies lost the plot. A new director, Joel Schumacher, made the comic book-like Batman Forever (with Val Kilmer as an excellent Batman) and then followed it up with the disastrous, campy Batman and Robin which even the casting of George Clooney as Batman could not save. That movie, as Clooney often admits, sunk the franchise.

When the Batman movie series was revived, the British director Christopher Nolan agreed to direct only after he could start afresh, wiping out memories of the last dud picture. The studio agreed and Nolan’s reboot of the franchise Batman Begins starred another Brit, Christian Bale as Batman and told the story in a more realistic, matter-of-fact manner. (The movie was packed with Bit and Irish actors: Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson etc.). But Nolan went back to the idea of a Dark Knight, abandoning the comic book persona of the last two Batman pictures.

Batman Begins, a terrific movie, was followed by a film actually called The Dark Knight which most people (except me: I thought it went on for too long) regard as the finest Batman movie at least partly because Heath Ledger played a Joker who was as dark and dangerous as Bale’s Batman. (Jack Nicholson had gone over-the-top with his portrayal).

But Nolan also introduced topical themes. At many levels, the Dark Knight was an allegory for the American of the post 9/11, era fighting a battle against terrorists whose motivation it could not understand. The end was morally ambiguous: Batman beats the Joker but pays a terrible price. And serious contemporary subtext kept cropping up.

The Dark Knight Rises begins eight years after the events of The Dark Knight and freely borrows from the Frank Miller series and from Knightfall. Batman has retired. He has not been seen for eight years. The villain is Bane who wants to take over Gotham and who releases all of the city’s criminals. Bane is in league with Ra's al Ghul (as in the comics), the villain from Batman Begins. There is even a reprise of the famous scene where Bane breaks Batman’s back across his knee.

From my perspective, it is the best comic book movie ever made partly because it is tightly plotted, well-acted, (Anne Hathaway almost steals the picture) and well put-together. And once again, Nolan taps into America’s current concerns: Wall Street is bad; Bruce Wayne is cheated out of his fortune through bogus futures trades. America is no longer the land of opportunity and the cracks beneath the surface are coming to the fore --- in this movie -- literally, right after the Star Spangled Banner is sung at a football game!

I won’t give more away. But even if you have no previous interest in Batman, go and see this picture. For once, every element in the Bat pantheon is brilliantly integrated. And the end has an emotional power that is unusual for comic book pictures.

What a pity it is the last movie in this trilogy!

For the survivor

Often life hands us lemons. Only a few of us use this lemon to make lemonade. I am lucky to have one such friend, who, in a recent conversation, only half-jokingly referred to himself as the 'Survivor'.

It is true - this dude, who I have known for close to a decade now, is indeed a survivor. He survived b-school, a couple of jobs lost, a horrific accident which laid him low for almost a year, and finally the great financial crisis.

He lives life king (ok, maybe prince) size, without attachments, and in style. This style goes beyond just a set of hot wheels and a cool pad, it includes himself, his looks, his body (recently he has started running 8-10 kms a day).

Dude, keep surviving :-)

The Dark Knight Truly Rises

First, a confession. I am a Bat-freak. When I was a kid, I would fervently wait for Batman cartoons to show up on good 'ol DD Metro on Sunday evenings. I hated the earlier set of criminally-badly made Batman movies (with the Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy et. al), but even then I watched all of them faithfully. When I finally laid eyes on Batman Begins, I thought finally here is a movie that does justice to the most amazing superhero of all time. The Dark Knight was, in my eyes, the best movie ever made.
It was with great expectations, therefore, that I trudged in to watch the last part of Christopher Nolan's trilogy on the Batman. Trepidation, too. For I thought from the trailers that Batman finally meets his comeuppance in Bane.
(Aside: Bane! What a guy! A legend to match every bit of the Batman's own. A hulk who is pure evil. I thought that the Joker was the last word on villains. I still do, but I will always remember Bane with respect and admiration)
The Dark Knight Rises was everything I expected, and much more. A fantastic cast of characters (everyone is here, including Ra's Al Ghul, the Scarecrow, Catwoman, Talia Al Ghul, Robin), epic action set pieces (the first scene is going to live forever in action movie lore), honest and precise explanations for all the back stories (League of Shadows, Bane's origins etc) and contextual, big picture questions (has capitalism gone too far?, do the ends justify the means) take this movie up to the top 5 of all time list. I particularly loved the way the movie ended, on dignity and hope.
The irony is that I would rate the Dark Knight as a grander epic, precisely because it ended without hope, as a gritty and depressing tale of life as we know it.
The Dark Knight Rises, on the other hand, tells us that there is a better life out there. We only have to Rise!

Elina's current favourite

This is a song I first heard in 2002 in Germany. These days my daughter loves this song (only the song not the video. She says 'Don't Like It' when I play the video!)

Optimism

I find I generally blog when I'm worried or pensive. No blogging happens when things are flowing smoothly. This is a good time to change that!

My little one has taken nicely (much more than I expected, honestly!) to school. My wife is doing well at work, and has made friends at work. My own work is going through a patch of good work, where results seem to be following efforts. My parents and in-laws are both super supportive for us and happy to get time with their grand-daughter.

I was worried about a close friend who was struggling for close to 6 months. However, now he is fine and back in action and that gives me great pleasure and relief. Other friends are happy, nursing new babies or preparing for them.

I have begun (surprise, surprise!) getting up early in the morning frequently to knock off the old squash ball. AND follow it up with some swimming and lounging in the pool. I'm trying to eat healthier (though the same cannot be said about drink, unfortunately), and seem to be moving slowly (make that glacially!) towards my weight target.

I took my little one to Delhi to her grandparents' place for a few days. This was the first time she was away from her mamma, and yet the only one worried or grumpy during those 4 days was me! The daughter was an angel, and enjoyed thoroughly with her grandparents.

In short, life is swimming along. 

Rage

Today I went for my first ever parent - teacher meeting (as a parent, that is!). Being the only dad in a room full of young moms was a bit embarrassing, but also entertaining. After the perfunctory introductions were done, I crept away to watch how my little angel was doing among her new classmates.

What I saw brought a smile to my lips and a lump to my throat. My little baby was playing, busy with herself, in the sand, as were most other kids. However, when the teacher asked the kids to tidy up, she was the ONLY one who immediately brought not only her own toys to the designated basket, but also the other kids'. The teacher though was least bothered about this little assistant, and went barrelling about here and there. The kids were then put in a line for washing hands, and my little one got jostled about to near the end of the line, while the teachers / ayahs went about mechanically going through the motions.

This kept bugging me the whole day. What is it that I really am upset about? Is it that my little baby is obedient and angelic to a fault? Or is it that her shining light is not really immediately discovered by others. I suspect it is the latter. Being a back-bencher to a fault, I have never really sought out the limelight. In fact, I have gone to great lengths to avoid it all through my life. But when the same happens to my daughter, it brings out in me a desire to grab people by their throats and shout at them "LOOK AT HER. IS NOT SHE MARVELLOUS?"

I guess I better loosen up. My little one is growing up in a world that is going to hurt and avoid her, and be cruel to her. The sooner she toughens up, the better it is for her and for me.

But she really is a darling :-)

Money and Me

I have been dreaming of a big car for years now. Three, maybe four. Each year I would tell myself that if I saved just that much more this year, I would buy a fancy car next year. Each year I found a reason to delay gratification.

This year finally my old car has begun giving trouble. I am compelled to buy a new car. I test drive all the fancy ones I can think of, analyze financing options, read all reviews I can google. Finally I go ahead and buy - the most value for money car. The vehicle for the mass market. Effectively postponing my dream for a few more years. Why is this? Buying a reasonably expensive car won't put me in penury. It won't make me think twice before living like I already do - buying the stuff I do or eating at the places I want or going for the holidays I do. Why then this hesitation to splurge?

I think I define security by the money I have been able to salt away. Not for me confidence in my abilities to struggle along. Not for me a belief in tomorrow. I live and die by my excel sheet which tracks, super methodically, my finances. This is pathetic. Unfortunate, but true. I know of few people who are as systematic about this thing. Perhaps this is good. Perhaps my future will be nice and comfortable, or my kids will live well.

Or perhaps they won't care. Perhaps they won't want my money. Perhaps I will be too old to enjoy anything but sunlight and free television. Perhaps I will die reasonably young. All this will be for nothing. A waste.

Can I change my thinking? Or is it too late?

A New Find

I recently read Alexander McCall Smith's 'The Right Attitude to Rain'. A beautiful book, describing a beautiful world. This was after I had read a book from the #1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by the same guy.

I particularly liked The Right Attitude to Rain's protagonist, Isabel Dalhousie, and the world she inhabits. Her problem (if it could be called that!) is that she thinks too much, and is a philosopher. A very gentle, benign, warm and moral person, in a world inhabited by similar such people, she often has deep and honest conversations with other people, and in the process discovers something new about herself or the world we live in. As a reader of these books, one often has epiphanies into one's own life and times.

At the end of the book, one cannot but feel a bit wistful about the world we inhabit vs. the world we could have inhabited! Here is to a lot more books by Alexander McCall Smith!

Movie in Chennai

Generally speaking, it is very difficult to watch movies in Chennai. For one, local movies are more popular so English / Hindi movies get taken off very quickly (if they are exhibited in the first place). Also, there is a great shortage of movie screens in the city. I can count a grand total of 3 multiplexes within reasonable city limits, so getting tickets is always going to be a challenge. But the final icing on the cake is the fact that the multiplexes do not allow one to book a lot of seats online - for some inexplicable reason, they release only a very limited inventory of seats on their online booking systems. More than once, I have found the site showing no seats available, only to find the hall half empty when I actually got there.

Not surprising therefore that the wife and I have not watched too many movies in Chennai. It was a welcome surprise for me when I managed to get seats for Vicky Donor last weekend (ok, I cheated! I booked the tickets something like 10 days in advance!).

The movie is refreshingly different from most other movies I have seen recently (and I haven't seen a whole lot for reasons mentioned above). Funny, not in a slapstick / laugh riot kind of way, but in a make you think kind of way. I particularly liked the social messaging within the movie, as well as the lead actors. The end made me smile a lot, as well as leave a lump in my throat.

If for nothing else, watch the movie for Annu Kapoor's brilliant and entirely believeable take on Dr. Chaddha from Daryaganj!

My day is made...

Recent events have forced me to stay away from the little one for 4-5 days at a stretch. I arrived today in this foreign land, without sleep and jet lagged. Straight to work from the airport, with a full day of meetings, analysis, socializing and the usual caboodle.
But all that is trivial, because I spoke to my daughter on the phone for a full 5 minutes, had a complete conversation with her. At the end, she said "I love you" for the first time ever.
It is indeed a beautiful world :-)

Lame duck

I was surprised that in the Railway Budget yesterday, the honourable minister chose to raise passenger fares. This happened after a gap of 8 years. The quantum of the fare hikes was 18-30%. I am sure fuel, wage and maintenance costs in the past 8 years have gone up more like 100%.

Even with the revised fares, the Indian Railways will lose money for each passenger that travels. So far, they have been subsidizing this by hiking freight rates. However, now things have come to such a pass that any freight hikes will make road transport more viable for freight. This is a travesty, since rail transport for bulk goods is much more efficient, eco-friendly and quicker than road transport.

The resultant hullabaloo was a sight to behold. Mamata didi, that venerable and wise lady, threw a tantrum and decided to chuck out the poor fellow who had dared protect the Railways from bankruptcy. She had done her best to run the Railways to the ground when she was the Railways Minister, and felt cheated that her successor was actually trying to improve safety and modernity of the institution.

It makes me think that there is no future for economic growth in India. Everything is viewed from the prism of entitlement. All is well as long as everyone is equally poor and equally deprived. The current government believes in the dictum: Don't teach a hungry man how to fish. Instead, announce a huge free fish distribution program, where the distributor is a crocodile who sells all the fish he cannot eat in the black market and pays for the government's next election campaign. The hungry man buys the stale fish in the black market and votes for the government because he thinks he is relatively better off since everyone is getting stale fish from the black market, since fresh fish is in short supply. The crocodile supports the economies of Switzerland and France by propping up the banking systems / luxury goods industries in those countries.

And so life moves on in this wonderful country.

Illegitimi non carborundum

I came across this phrase while looking through a book of Latin phrases. Literally translated, it means 'Don't let the bastards grind you down' :-) though I am told that the phrase is really not Latin, but a tongue-in-cheek remark invented by a Brit soldier during WWII.

Whatever the origin, I fell in love with the phrase immediately, and have made it my status message on gmail. Carborundum, as some of us would remember, is another name for SiC a.k.a silicon carbide, which is the stuff that abrasives are made of.

Whenever I am pensive, feeling low or banal, I look at this phrase and perk up immediately. It inspires me to believe and hatch my next plan for world conquest :-) Ha Ha Ha

A good book after a long time

I am currently reading Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru. While I am only 60% through the book, I am quite pleased with it. Perhaps because I had very low expectations to begin with. Whatever the reason, the bottom line is that it is after a very long time that I am reading a work of fiction that I really liked.

The novel is structured somewhat similar to David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. It is a collection of incidents across time, from 1760 to 2008, all linked by a certain place in the desert in Nevada. The characters are all delightfully real, and eccentric to boot. The stories range from the painfully real, to somewhat kooky. However, all enjoyable.

Clearly a work of great imagination. I actually found it much more believable and contemporary when compared to, say, Salman Rushdie's magic realism.

Won't divulge the plot too much, since a lot of the pleasure I get from the book is in the unlayering of the events that happen, without following a linear pattern. Recommend that you read the book too, and hope you enjoy it as much as I have!

Delhi

Delhi is one place I always feel happy to go to. Surprisingly, a lot of this has to do with the airport. And the roads. I feel optimistic and happy whenever I am in Delhi - perhaps one day the rest of the country will also be like this? I like Delhi because it is prosperous. And improving. All the time it moves forward.

Obviously it also helps that my family and all of my close friends are in Delhi. My daughter was born in Delhi. The wife and I romanced in Delhi before marriage and set up home together there after marriage. I love the chill of winter and the searing heat of summer in Delhi.

This visit, it took me a long time to travel within the city. I witnessed a few traffic jams. And the weather was unseasonably cold. I was not able to meet my usual gang due to the short trip. Still, back in Chennai, I look back fondly on the visit.

In my heart, Delhi is always home. I cannot but pine for a return to Delhi

Things I am looking forward to

I am not on Facebook (yet!). I probably never will be, at least not till I'm forced to get on to be in touch with my (then) college-going daughter. However, this does not prevent me from getting swept in the hype of the proposed mega IPO for Facebook, supposed to launch as soon as this week; with the listing in a few months. The media is already calling it the biggest IPO in history (and perhaps future as well). Let us see how the markets take to this mega company, which in all probability does not make any money, but will be valued more than Walt Disney, Bank of America and much more than Reliance Industries or ONGC

One thing I regularly do when abroad is to visit Starbucks. Both the wife and I (the wife perhaps even more than I) love the coffee there. Therefore I am excited to learn that Starbucks will open its first store in India in a few months from now. I just hope they are able to keep quality consistent. The Baristas and Cafe Coffee Days started with promise, but have degenerated to extremely patchy consistency. I hope Starbucks is able to avoid the franchisee route and offer the same QoS that one gets in the US, Europe or Singapore

A routine Saturday

I wake up to a cuddle from my daughter. She has been up for 30 minutes now, and is happy to see papa wake up. "Papa! Come! Toy room", she shouts, in a voice that will brook no opposition. She does part of her puzzle, part builds a tower and speed reads "The Monkey and the Crocodile". Then she grows restless, and goes off to look for Mamma, who is pottering around in the kitchen.

After a while, Papa has to go and see what the car cleaner is up to. She jumps at the opportunity to go down. Once down, she takes off towards the swimming pool, reminding her guilty father about his promise to take her swimming the last evening. The swimming pool has not been cleaned yet, but she wants to shower in the stalls next to the pool. Papa explains that she cannot shower because she has all her clothes on, and if she showers, her clothes will get wet. She finds that a good reason to not shower.

She is happy that papa is down with her. She opportunistically tugs me into the main road. She is very careful, watching out for big cars that come our way. She pulls me along into the by-lane next to the society. The by-lane has people squatting on the road and using the hand pump to wash clothes, utensils, themselves. She walks right past the squalor - her target is the rooster that lives there. She sees a brood of hens and is delighted. "Cluck cluck", she tells them. She looks for the goats, but cannot find them. "Goats sleeping", she tells papa.

Mamma has gone for grocery shopping when we return. She looks around for her mother, then settles down with papa. She demands a boiled egg. She won't eat the yolk. "Green", she instructs again, pointing to the white of the egg. Papa and baby sit together in the verandah in companionable silence. After the egg, she wants an orange. I peel one carefully and feed her the pieces. She feeds me in turn. Wipes her hands on my freshly worn t-shirt. We both sit and look out at the cars below.

This is a Saturday like every other Saturday. Doubt seizes me. Will she remember all this? Will she love me when she grows up? I think about it for a minute, and tell myself that I don't really care about tomorrow. I ask her "Where is papa's favourite laddoo?" We both grin, as she points to herself. This is the best Saturday ever!

Unconquered

Saw this on a wall in the kid's section of Crossword, and googled the lovely poem. For those who like this sort of thing, 'Invictus' means unconquered.

Invictus William Ernest Henley Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.