a hard choicE

As the sun climbed the skies, over my head and a little further to the other side, i lay in contemplation in my tonsillitis-induced-fever-antidote-medicine-induced lucid dream, i was thinking what every man,woman or child in my position at that time would think of; food. i was cleverly moving my checker pieces across the various mains and crosses of my locality in search of that place that would have the honor of quenching my "thirst" for food. as  they say, dreams last only a few minutes when we actually have dreamed about ages passing by; since the decision was made in a lucid dream it took me only a few minutes. not because i outsourced that work to compress-years-to-minutes phenomena of dreams but because the choice was limited.

if i take a left stepping out of my abode, i would see a Bombay chat center, of course the noon choice is not chat. then what else do they have - they have parotta, biriyani, chicken biriyani, fish biriyani, egg biriyani, and what-not-else-biriyani, as if they were all different dishes (if they are different, then i will say 5 polar bears and their parents make up 15 kinds of animals in north pole). if i go further left, i would reach a place where they are supposed to serve food from my home state and has a name synonymous with a food storage. but the horrid taste of that food (i know them better), which made me puke the last time i had it, immediately forced my legs to take the right turn from my house instead. and there i was walking that hot stretch of road to some Andhra restaurant on the way (another state-eatery where i tried my luck yesterday, was as horrendous as always). on the way I saw a pizza hut delivery boy whoosh by. that made me thinking about the so called food connoisseurs paradise; Bangalore. In reality Bangalore is a paradise for people who cant recognize taste or food. either you have the posh star hotels with all the fancy roof high priced cuisines and  all-you-can-eat buffets or you have the mediocre darshinis, sagars and messes that bloat the place with the same kind of food. if your idea of different dish is 4 kinds of sambhar prepared in 4 different ways, i wouldn't blame you- you are made for India by India. people here are so traditional even with food - they cant taste anything different on which they were bought up. vegetarians remain so their entire life eating rice, curd, rasam and papad their whole life not out of choice but out of compulsions and the way they are bought up; the marginally better non vegetarians get to eat chicken as part of biriyani or as kebab and remain chikki-tarians or eggi-tarians.

i know the choice in Bangalore is limited because i was out of this shit-hole thank God, for once. I've been to Dallas,Tx for almost 3 months where i was almost alone and i didn't felt it because each days food was its own adventure and a discovery. a varied cuisine there means having a platter of Japanese, Chinese, Indian, American, English, Mediterranean, Italian, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Thai and everything under the sun that's imaginable. i was not limited by beef or pork, in fact i first tasted pork in my life during this stint in the US. the barbecued pork that my uncle served me was so delicious that i almost ate a pound of it. and i had the opportunity to taste turkey and cranberry on the foodie day of the hemisphere, "Thanks Giving". the sheer kanjiness of the Indian cannot be described better when some people I know who where in other parts of the world (not India) were busy preparing the usual "kanji" for their breakfast, lunch and dinner. Oh God, thanks for delivering me from those predicaments.

i would give anything to have such a choice here. that's why even though a little hard on the valet, i enjoy going to places like Pizza Hut, Thulps (these guys in Koramangala have the best beef burger in Bangalore) or Barbecue Nation once in a while. to many of my friends who were seeing Bangalore for the first time i remark, the only choice for a real food connoisseur in Bangalore is whether to have it or not.

PS: i know and recognize that for a lot many Indians, having some kind of food is a choice of yes or no; my views are harsh transgressions upon the reality faced by many of my countrymen. in no way do i mean to hurt their feelings; all i want is a nation where everybody can worry about the cuisine rather than about the yes/no aspect. I AM A HYPOCRITE!!!

India is a SupErpowEr! Huh? u mEan rEd Indians? Part-3

The third and last part of a myth-busting.

Finally the political power which is more of a soft power or rather a soft skill. I think it is developed more as a combination of the previous two powers. A nation with no military or economic power cannot exert any political influence; although strategically used it can deliver more than it promises. The power that Cuba exerts in the World or atleast amongst its neigbors is a wonderful example. Political power is the soft power which we exert through diplomatic and international decisions which can turn the tide in our favor. I don’t see when we have ever applied a well thought about political decision since the Nehruvian days. But even then political blunders committed by Nehru ensured that Kashmir will always be a sore point in all international matters pertaining to India and Pakistan. Also his Hindi-Cheeni bhai bhai rhetoric was no hindrance to the Chinese juggernaut in its path for attaining what the dragon wanted. When it loses its decision making powers to external influence we loose our political power too. We kindly bend down to any pressure point in international relations and deliver others what they want. We always fail to see what India as a nation wants in the long run. Politicians are ready to sell their nations for petty political interests. We shrug off our economic might just as an elephant does not understand its might. The e way in which we favored American companies in all agreements with them, by limiting their liability in case of nuclear accidents, the immunity with which Dow chemicals and its subsidiaries still continue to operate in India, a non-aligned nation like India providing support for a nation (that too almost a military base for them in Indian territory) that was altmost single handedly responsible for all major world conflicts after Second world war and the conversion of this country to almost that of a dominion of the United States; I wonder with who/what the allegiance of the political elite of India lays.

And as long as we remain so dumb and driven by short term political and vanity reasons we never stand to make it in this world as any kind of superpower. And we Indians sooner realize the fact the sooner will be out of this matrix of illusion.

India is a SupErpowEr! Huh? u mEan rEd Indians? Part-2

Part 2 of a myth-busting.


In the olden days, military might should have augmented all other short comings but in the present, omnipotence comes closely associated with Economic might. Concept of an economic superpower emerged during the the renaissance period and gathered steam during the industrial revolution. Nations were looking for lucrative markets for selling the excess goods churned out because of the improved productivity bought along by the industrial revolution and also to buy cheaper raw materials for their industries. Britain emerged the clear winner during this period as it laid its hands on vast portions of territories all over the world and fortified these holdings with its military and cunning. That kind of economic might saw a change after the World wars with the US emerging a clear winner as European economies were shattered and US economy soared by selling war to both sides. Americas, with its abundant natural resources, a daring political leadership guided mostly by capitalist interests and the only strong economy after the WWII, made sure that it will create a new economic order in the world on the basis of dollar.

And it sure did and managed to keep that up so for the next 60 years or so. Even though it shows signs of weakness, there is no sight of a threatening force in the near future. To keep up this economic might they sure did use the military as well. Not long back American companies were in the forefront rummaging through the new nations and amassing profits. The treasury bonds purchased by the Asian tigers and the Dragon nation further enabled it to rise upon a credit based economy. The importance of oil changed the dynamics of the economics with US exerting all the influence it can over the OPEC to sell oil in dollars, which it just had to print up and other nations just bought it. In those countries where communism and leftism showed resilience against market forces, the US showed its economic and military might so as to scare off competition or to change even the rulers of democracies. After all democracies became just another name of a channel for capitalism. The economic might also served to buy off entire nations so that capitalism could thrive in them. And sure they did succeed. Well, for those who matters, it did.

To ask the obvious, where do we figure in this field? We have come a long way from those times; when the US gave us food grains in grant, when we had to sell bullion in the international market to sustain our imports, when our forex reserves came down all the way to $1 billion; to one of the largest producers of food grains, more than $300 billion of forex reserves and the fourth largest holder of dollar and ready to buy back gold from the IMF. But does these make us a so called economic superpower? We ourselves assign that term to us taking pride in the new found purchasing power of the great India middle class. It’s true we have huge remittances from our NRIs; we have a large export industry (although the import-export deficits are still on the darker side) and the purchasing power of the average Indian is said to be higher than say 20 years back. But what can we do with this economic might?

Power matters only as long as it is used; the muscle to flex and make other nations act to your will without resorting to arms. As a matter of fact the economic powerhouse status that other national leaders bestow on us is the power of the worlds biggest market for selling goods and services. Sure that's a power; that's the only power we have. But are we going to utilize that? When are we going to ask things to move our way when we have the power to do so? The pathetic state we are in is clearly depicted by our affairs in this realm. We are not able to influence even our neighbors to buy from us, we are ready to open up our markets, banking and insurance system and whatever we can without even the slightest compulsion or need. We allow foreign banks to work freely in India when our own State Bank has been denied permission to operate in areas with vast migrant Indian population. We have to push over selves to a corner and limit the liability of American companies in case of a nuclear accident (and with Bhopal like tragedies and the kind of treatment the victims have been receiving, i doubt whether there is any liability for a foreign company operating in India). We want to open our markets just for the sake of opening it up. We should seriously think where the priorities of our policy makers and the bureaucrats is. It’s as if we are selling ourselves to the bidders, rather than be the bidder in other world economies. Our hold on the SAARC countries itself is loosening.

China is flexing its economic power by influencing even India’s neighbors and surrounding us and choking us. We are still too complacent to do anything proactive. We take pride in our economics by stating that if we wanted we can reduce America to nothing by recalling our engineers and scientists (I laugh myself out of my senses) and all the [crappy meager] software that we produce [for foreign companies]. We fail to realize that our software power is only an illusion. It’s the foreign corporates that are still running the business and we are just tools. If they want they can make Mexicans or Chinese or Africans to do the same thing. As long as we don’t flex the economic muscle its useless. After all brains is all that matters and only if it is used. For our politicians the philosophy seems to be that of the cancer cell - growth for the sake of growth.

(to be continued)