Corruption – Back to the Basics

Long ago the Indian government placed some orders which prohibited industries from trying to win orders by bribing. This comes as a shock to many administrators since most of the Indian businesses live on greasing the machinery to win contracts. If this trend was to continue then many marketing executives will be clearly out of jobs and will have to look for openings such as LIC insurance agents and door to door salesperson for vacuum cleaners.

Nevertheless to give you an account of actually what happens just before signing the deal, I am assuming that I play the role of a brother-in-law to a big politician in a state where Mr.X (an honest businessman trying to make inroads) wants to do business.

So relax and enjoy this fictional conversation on the phone for a business deal:

Mr.X: “Mamma ji, it was the most wonderful buffet that I have ever had. Thanks for inviting me”

Myself: “It is my pleasure, what brings you to Chennai?”

Mr.X: “My Company is interested in setting up a plant for mosquito coils in Chennai. We believe this would make a great health contribution to Chennai. It would save many young lives from Chikkun-gunia”

Myself: “A lot of them are offering for mosquito coils, what’s so new about yours?”

Mr.X: “5 million shares and 15% dividend every quarter, 20 million in low interest rate loans.”

Myself: “Looks like my BIL would be interested but her wife may not be too inclined in this”

Mr.X: “No, we plan to invest 60 million in her Women’s Welfare trust and sponsor 2 grand events of A.R.Rehman concert for their trust”

Myself: “Good, the money is to be deposited in Switzerland”

Mr.X: “Why there?”

Myself: “That’s where the head quarters for this welfare trust is”

Mr.X: So it’s done deal now I think

Myself: Well not so fast, you see my son is running a Clothes shop and he is in the middle of a fund drive you see.

Mr.X: so what, we shall contribute in that drive also. So now does it make a done deal?

Myself: You see I am not the authority, my BIL is the minister for commerce and he is a very tough nut to crack. I shall write a note on your tender and we shall see. By the way he loves diamonds.

Mr.X: We will find the diamonds and have it delivered, anyone else in the list?

Myself: If you can spare a few thousands for the Pinter’s Press Association of Chennai it may be of some help.”

Mr.X: where is this association?

Myself: It’s not started yet, but my daughter is dreaming about one for a long time.

Mr.X: so be it – Now let me convey this to me boss and we shall see it from there

Myself: Good, I will write to the note once I hear from my bank on those transfers. Sleep well my boy.”

Mr.X: Thanks a lot for saving our business in the hour of the need

Myself: For any other favours also get back to me.

C-L-I-C-K
C-L-I-C-K

Well, this is how many deals get over and is precisely how our economy runs.

No wonder I am still a stupid nut who is law abiding and a proper tax paying poor bloke not knowing where to grease the machinery. While I still believe in the legislation to avoid bribery which remains in BOLD letters in every government office may work some day just the as Ghandhi ji’s Portrait hanging in the office walls.

Schools Today Are So Smart

This is a kind of age old cliché that we have been hearing from our parents, but today I feel that the schools today are smarter than when I was doing my seniors. In today’s world to feel confident and superior we just have to complain or make derogatory remarks about the current educational system. Those who are listening will feel that you actually know a lot and are commenting to improve the situation. (Much the same way as all these TV News channel works)

Often you hear parents shouting “These kids today seem to enjoy school and I do not know what they teach there. They pass college and then only start to read and speak. But during my days we had to read the Tale of two cities around 250 times just for our fourth standard”. If I were to take Tale of Tow cities as a base line I wouldn’t mind these comments.

To research on this issue I went around finding facts, which is talking with my neighbours. I found the main evidence that they say is these II-JEE and CAT examinations and their questions.

Remember CAT exams and the only thing that comes to my mind is to sharpen our brains and more importantly sharpen those Natraj 2HB pencils. I wonder how I too was in this race sitting in my college canteen trying to solve one of these questions which may go like this:

“Ashok wanted to redo his bathroom in pink wallpaper and green bath tubs. So he invited Shankar over for help. If Ashok’s bathroom is eight feet by seven feet and has a ten foot ceiling and each roll of wallpaper is thirty inches and you have only 7 feet of sticker and 200 ml of glue, how long will it take for shankar to leave you with a half-finished bath room?”

I have to be sympathetic to these students who appear for CAT exams today much on the tight schedule that they have for preparation. I have my own doubts as to whether any single question in the whole of the CAT paper tries to test someone’s intelligence which one may need to survive in the real world. These papers are set by an elite panel of educationalists sitting around a table for 7 years and design a test paper for CAT. No wonder do the oldies shout and the average students who come out of IIM do know nothing about the real world such as which side of the bike is the kick starter on. Some of them are even worse than this; they can’t comprehend the existence of a bike.

The reason for this level of ignorance in real world things is that we are all taught to learn all the crap in school to get into a college and then to a high paying job so that we can write all our money to the banks which let us buy a house with a covered car park in some remote part of the city.

That’s why I feel that kids today have to become smarter and try not to work their brain cells on questions such as how long will Train A take to over take Train B if they both started from opposite direction 50 KMS apart and traveling at the speed of internet. By scoring less in these exams they let their older generation feel proud about education while the students can live a happy life where failure meets elder’s requirements.

My other worry is that if all students start going to college and thereby graduating themselves as engineers may dilute the degree program. I presume that we are not far away when an engineering degree would be treated much the same way as a gift coupon available with the super market cashiers. (NOTE: It’s for this reason that I choose to fail in all these exams.)

The final worry for me is that schools today teach a lot that I am unable to comprehend. Take for instance trigonometry, I feel that I am incapable of answering some of those questions such as how long will the shadow of a light pole which is at 45 degree angle to a light house 50 meters away in the east while the sun is at 15 degree from the horizon. I don’t want to expose my illiteracy in trigonometry but this question is currently being taught to a second standard child. Normally it took a child around 10 years to know that their father also failed in trigonometry but now with the invention of the decade named internet it takes only 2 emails and 6 scraps in Orkut.

In my days we were told a lot of junk information which we never questioned. For instance, if our history teacher said that the battle of Plassey was never fought in India we would accept it without reasoning while today my kid questions me as to why Europe and Asia though not separated are called as 2 continents. My answer (Which is purely a guess) is that the French and English didn’t want to be in the same continent as the Czech republics.

I guess this is enough about the education of today; I am very allergic to studies. More over I have to run to my home to finish my son’s mathematic home work in advanced calculus.

Note: He is just 4 years old and invests in shares during lunch time.

Men And Their Necessary Evil

Man has always shown signs of adventurism which is very evident from the fact that he in always inclined to marry a woman. Supporting this fact, if you were to look into the apes when they descended from the trees, we find that they fell into the trap of hunting food while the female apes sat around a cozy fire place and gossiped all day. This irritated the male species but due to their adventurism they restrained their emotions on the females and expressed it via crude cave drawings depicting them savagely killing their opponents.

Men have always longed for something which is termed as a “Necessary Evil” or in plain English a “Wife”. There is a time when he refuses to listen to thinking part of his brain and this leads to Bigamy (Motto: I don’t know that one wife is too many). Having said that, I may also be persuaded to look at another angle where many have been successful with bigamy. It’s just that they haven’t come out with those formulas in open and my guess is that they may be selling them on need basis. If anyone of you has got it kindly email it to me.

There is no way in the world that a man can ever understand a woman and I say this because I am married and you are going to read beyond this line because you are also married. Let me explain the reason for the above statement with scientific data (i.e. what happened to my neighbour’s family). We all know that if you want to celebrate some occasion we got to get some gifts. Men would accomplish this task with such ease say for instance it’s your friends house warming ceremony. You would straight walk into a departmental store and pick up the new power tool box with 256 equipments (3 AAA batteries also included) and walk out of the store in under 5 minutes. While the same scenario with your wife would be that she would have gone to the mall 45 days in advance and yet to return. Finally she arrives with a Chinese flower vase depicting a monk with a fiery dragon breathing fire which is of no use to anybody.

Not only has she paid 45 times than what you have but also would have spent 3 more days selecting the gift wrapper. I wonder who found this gift wrapping technology. This is the only technology which becomes obsolete fast than even computers. The whole wrapping of the gift takes roughly 3 years and yet those who receive the gift would tear it apart in less than 7 nanoseconds. So why waste the time on it? Tell this to a woman and you know what will happen. It may result in one of the main causes for the third world war.

Women have a preconceived notion that any gift which may be of some use to someone is not at all a choice. Like that tool box which I said maybe of much use to the man while trying to either fix a leaking faucet or as a surface-to-air missile during a fight with his wife. Yet they never agree to it. They rather gift a Van gosh painting or a China Flower vase or a 3rd Century cave drawing of a snake to the tool box (Even with batteries included in them)

Next is about dressing sense which is a separate blog by itself but nevertheless has to be mentioned here. I wonder how a women’s eye is able to differentiate the 16 million colors which come in Adobe Photoshop while men can never even differentiate between a red and a maroon Ferrari. They seem to be obsessed with colors that it always takes them ages to buy a dress for themselves (sometimes civilisations come and go by the time they are done) but when it comes to selecting your trousers you will be given a graceful 2 minutes. As any other man, you would have picked up that grey pants which you have 40 numbers back home. I guess the dress makers use up all the colors for the women’s apparels that all they have left is black and grey which is used for our pants.

I got to put a stop here, since my wife has come back from shopping. In all I would say with all these difference known to us we still for some reason beyond our reasoning capacity seem to grovel at their feet always.

One point of view is that if we were not after women then the whole economy would fail. There would be no malls, no bouquets, no market for Chinese vases and most importantly no credit card and telemarketing calls. If this was the case, then all men would do is to sit in their couch and watch a cricket match and expect the women to bring the remote to our hands. It would be great if life was like that but let’s not dream too much.

So my reason is that perhaps we are trying to convince them that the tool box is a good gift at least for our carpenter.

Note: Please turn the power driller settings from HIGH to WIFE when used as a missile during a fight for maximum benefit.

Today’s Hot Topic: School Science Project

Come summer and the Indian school system has a way of making its presence felt. During the holidays the student given a task to prepare a science project. This is a yearly ritual since not many teachers like students being free (Their Motto: We hate you). I am not intending to say that science projects are always a “PAIN” but it can help you in many ways. For example, it will teach each parents the Newton’s third law “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. Since you shouted at your son, he shall remain silent till the holiday ends and then on the night before school reopening (when you have just entered the pajamas) shout “I HAVE A SCIENCE PROJECT TO BE DONE AND I NEED TO GO TO THE MALL”.

Basically any project can be classified as a science project, but this time around you son is sure to give you guideline details as to how to present them. The last minute running around in your pajamas for a project is a ritual that is most important part of any summer project. The project has to be delivered in a thick card board paper with proper calligraphic titles and all items bonded to the chart with proper adhesive etc. If any of these items are not used then the school authorities will out-rightly reject the science discovery which you have made. This may be one of the main reasons why many top Indian scientists have failed to win a Nobel Prize in Science. (They forgot the thick card board as a base, I guess)

Once you have returned home at the stroke of midnight like Cinderella (with one leg of the pajamas missing) and start to unfold the card board base you are all set. Set to think of some innovative and creative project – kindly allow 6 hours for your brain to rack up an award winning entry like the “Origin of Earth” which is instantly rejected by the panel consisting of your wife, son, the milk man and 700 cockroaches. After much deliberation you come to a conclusion that the prize winning entry would have to be clearly imaginative and original. So you can immediately drop out of the race, forget winning.

What you need is a project which can be done in 30 minutes with materials found in your unwashed kitchen and untidy bedroom. Ideally the women of the house would like to execute the project without any property damage (i.e. Your Life) which is why she volunteers to do the whole stuff. Based on advices from elders and past experience I am refraining myself from explaining the popular projects and previous year winning entries since it may require certain amount of plumbing and nuclear activities.

Irrespective of the topic you choose, the project has to be dived into 3 parts: (1) The Objective, (2) Some thing which goes after the objective and (3) The Conclusion (which should be nothing but the objective). If we fail to follow this policy the project shall be rejected. Perhaps this is why all government proposals get a quick nod, no one cares for item (2).

With not much of luck (I am certain) you are still glaring at the ceiling and looking for a topic such as “Waves”, “Gravity”, “Light”, “Cellular Phones” etc. The gravity is a good one considering that you can take pictures of you holding your baby down and then take another snap of the baby falling and then another snap of you picking up the baby. This proves that there is a lot of gravity around you.

The only problem with this experiment is that you don’t realize the actual gravity of the situation in hand. All you want to do is to come up with some idea which can be done in 10 minutes. So you are back to square one at “Our Solar System” which takes 10 minutes to prepare. Out of these ten minutes, 9 minutes are devoted to searching for plastic balls of various sizes and rubber bands to string them in order.

Anyway you made it for this year and this whole routine shall occur exactly the same time next year, until then you may not have any problems with Science. The only problem you now have a deal is that your son is not going to get a good grade. For good grades you need good projects and for good projects you need good amount of time to think. So think about it.

Note: I am off early from office; have to go to the mall for buying things for my son’s pre-kg project named “Prehistoric Farm Animals”.

Obsession with Home Improvement

My wife always finds some reason or excuse to go to the Departmental store. Like for instance if I didn’t wash my car or if we needed to patch the ceiling, she will immediately put her slippers on and call out “Let’s go shopping”. I guess from so many male readers reading this line that I am not in a minority group.

I hate sarcasm and more than that hate the 3 most used sarcastic words in English “You do it”. You must be wondering why even a third rated super market in your locality is always crowded, well it’s because we males are afraid of those 3 words. Men hate to do anything themselves except getting lost in the car or watching cricket on TV. So the “Y” chromosomes in this planet have adapted to dislike the concept of sharing house-hold work with our wives.

What really baffles me is why all these supermarkets are carrying a big section for home & kitchen appliances, vegetable stalls when every 9 out of 10 families prefer to eat out. I presume that the shop owners are obsessed for success since even if we prefer to eat out, they tap the female instinct to shop unnecessarily. I have never seen my wife return empty handed from a super market, even if she doesn’t like anything in there she may buy a new fair of silver ware when we hardly eat at our residence.

The supermarket folks are very intelligent; even if we are not willing to cook inside our kitchen they come out with products to mordernise or remodel our kitchens. The only best thing I like about this idea is that every time when we either remodel or mordernise the kitchen, we make sure that we dump those 23 million cockroaches and 43 million lizards out of the kitchen. Perhaps my wife buys those cheeses, breads and cement concretes which stay for inside the freezer (roughly for 43 years) for the roaches to feed their colonies.

Another interesting fact is that these home improvement shops and restaurants are always full of guys who are instructed by their wives to modernize their kitchen or shop unnecessary grocery items. Even at 10:30PM when the store wants to close you will see many guys leaping and diving to enter before the shutters go down. If you don’t believe me, then try to get a vantage parking place at 10:30PM in a super market. After these call centers, I assume the next thing which is 24/7 is the super markets sales counter.

The recent trend is really disturbing, families go out buy houses than rent them so that they can go and shop for home improvements, furnishings, kitchen accessories. Not long ago, my friends used to say “Why waste your money on renting a place when for the same you can buy one. Thus you create equity out of it.” Now, seeing the queue in front of these home improvement shops and super markets, I guess my friends are creating equities for these SHOPS.

On a trip one day to the home improvement shop, I had to visit the restroom. The rest rooms in these shops are always located in the next available planet or 2 miles from the entrance. I walked right through the shop which had sections like plumbing, nuts ’n’ bolts, PVC pipes, bathroom accessories, marbles, tiles, clay, soil and hardware clothes etc. Upon reaching the rest room I find that I can not enter it. It baffles me if so many guys are out there buying these accessories and building a home but can’t flush a single toilet. Perhaps the only solution which I can think of for this problem is that we out-source this work too.

My Son's Driving Turns Me Neurotic

My sons learning to drive and he is really terrific. He is just 4 years old.

Well every parent would love to see their kids learn to drive as long as the vehicle which they drive is manufactured by Fisher-Price and moves in pace with a mega serial. One thing which is safe is that the Fisher-Price set comes with toy Fisher-Price people who are unlikely to swear when you are driving rashly.

Technically from the perspective of a parent, there is no difference between 4 and 18 year except that when is 4 you have more control over him while he is driving his Fisher-Price manufactured Ferrari. Recently when I looked into my driving license I found that according to the law, whenever your child reaches 18 he is allowed to apply for a license and drive an actual car on the actual road with an actual speed of 60 KMS. This puts a big shrill down my bone marrows since I keep seeing him drive, on a daily basis, between the bed room and the kitchen.

According to the law, when my son is 18 he shall be allowed to drive a vehicle with a restriction that he be accompanied by another person (preferably over 40) who has a valid driving license and is not Salman Khan. [I rather let my son drive on the road and kill people than drive on the foot path.] So I request the government to make this restriction a bit stricter by saying that he can drive along with a co-driver, 2 Supreme Court judges, my mother-in-law and a child surgeon.

This is not to hint that my son drives badly but the actual people on the road are worse. My son today follows all laws which are prescribed in the driving learner’s manual and I am afraid. He drives at correct speed; shows hand signals, slows down while turning and honks at my wife while crossing the kitchen etc. My worry is what if my son starts to believe in the manual and tries to replicate this in the real world?

Motorists in Madras believe in some sort of a black magic curse would fall upon you if you follow the driving code and display speeds ranging from Formula 1 to Concorde even while trying to park in a busy shopping mall. If this is not a deterrent to you then I wonder how all these drivers receive calls on their cell phone only when they drive, perhaps their wives are calling them to give instructions on how to come back home. “Swerve left and hit the auto out of the road; turn immediately to the right, 2nd flat is our house, B-A-N-G … The Green one is a garbage lorry you hit, I am wearing a RED dress”.

Veteran Chennai drivers like me precisely know who to go about this system. For instance it is OK to park in the middle of the road; to rush after the Red signal has come. It’s OK to go through the RED as long as you can remember when it was YELLOW. Never to follow an auto-rickshaw because following his wheel makes your head spin. How is my son going to learn all these tricks?

What worries me a lot is that, he may want to drive one day (guessing from his passion for speed in his current Ferrari). My urgent requirement is that there be some kind of a summer camp between school holidays where in they teach you these tiny driving tips which will save many parents from becoming neurotic patients while watching their kids drive. I hope some event managers are reading this piece and start thinking in those directions while I stop typing since my son is approaching me in his Bulldozer @ 250 MPH

Note: Fisher-Price Bulldozer manual says it’s advisable to drive to a maximum of 10 MPH only.

Further Note: The bulldozer is driven by trained child drivers below the age of 4. Never try this at your home.

News As The TV Covers Them

Not long ago the average TV viewing people had very high regards for media journalist who are covering useless news but today this regard has gone way high. Basically I would like to say “It’s rotting”. When I say “it’s” it is referring to the news content and when I say “rotting” is it based on the shockingly new development within the TV channels in covering the top headline of stories that are happening around you and me.

Let me dissect what would happen if hypothetically a news item such as “dead frog found in school canteen” arrives and how would this story be blown out of proportion by these media giants in search for lousy TRP ratings. Let us assume that the story was that a school watchman had ordered a combo meal and noticed that the “Paneer” was chewier than it ought to be. So he spit it out and found it was a piece of a frog. More frighteningly, the head was missing and the watchman was violently trying to vomit food that he had since he was 14.

Before the channel crew members and other innocent bystanders could arrive, the school canteen manager has a tug-of-war and finally takes control over the frog and refused to surrender it. If you knew anything about Indian media journalist, then you would know what happened next, namely, crew members materialized from no-where. Then a group of experts in frog and frog related diseases appear, now it becomes a real head lines for the day and the viewers could be left with frightening visuals of the dead frog, a vomiting watchman and 5 experts wrestling between them. There has to be one lone outsider fanatically shouting slogans like “Stop cruelty to frogs, eat lizards instead”.

With this as a backdrop, the news channels will then form a short documentary featuring interviews with those related to the incident such as the watchman’s second wife, a tea shop owner next to the canteen, the canteen manager’s son-in-law and the school principal. Each of them gives their 10 cents worth of wisdom when the nation is facing economic crises and slowdowns. In-between these documentaries they will show clippings which zoom-in and zoom-out of the actual plate which had the dead frog. Some channels will use latest graphics to recreate the frog in the plate.

In the mean time, the journalist would think and come up with interesting angles from the legal point of view, animal rights and carbon footprint analysis. A PIL would be filed with lawyers stating to the canteen manager that “the frog is vital to the case and that they are to maintain custody of the frog to insure it’s not lost, or damaged or consumed till the case ends”. In reply to this the advocates for the canteen manager would reply “At present we can’t reveal the exact location of the frog but wish to convey that it is being tested by a reputed multinational laboratory at an undisclosed place.”

As soon as we viewers loose interest in this news line item, the channels start their next round of attack. They create a nation wide SMS poll consisting of 32 people well trained to keep sending SMS. They are highly skilled in choosing different options using latest scientific methodology involving “Inky Pinky Ponky” and “Shaat Bhoot Three”. News with charts stating the same numbers in 1000 different ways will be repeatedly aired. They would create headline stories like “Did you Frogget your lunch today”, “A frog in the box”. These stories will be followed by discussion panels answering burning questions related to this incidence like “Are today’s frog suitable for meals?”, “Is the canteens safe for lizards?”, “Face the Nation: Frogs or Onions, which is cheap?”.

By this time the frog issue would have reached to such a height that the parliament would be rocked. The opposition parties would start to blame the ruling party and stall proceedings for 3 days. They would then bring out facts that in-fact the canteen manager was linked with the ruling party and was employed using false certificate for his caste. This would bring the anti-reservationists into the picture and the whole of the media would be having a ball of a time.

Why forget the stock markets, all the restaurants and hotel stocks would have nosed dived and market research analysts would be talking about this deviation. In my opinion anybody who has a nice suit/coat and knows few jargons such as “correction”, “market fundamentals”, “global cues” would be hired by these channels as a market research expert.

While all this is going on, the poor watchman who had tasted the frog and the canteen manager who served the frog would have been pushed to oblivion. Both of them, not to be shocked, would have in their short time of fame enrolled into some opposition political parties and would be campaigning for the next general election. I wouldn’t be shocked if the canteen manager was elected to the health minister portfolio.

This whole drama ends when another headline story is created namely a 14 yr old student wanting to elope with his math teacher. Anyway this ends my point of view on today’s responsible journalists who try to bring news as they occur without distortion. Perhaps I have a different perception of what they show nevertheless I can’t stop watching them on a daily basis for entertainment.