Business ideas

Businesses establishments that I've recently observed have come up in my neighbourhood

* A 'unisex spa and salon' - A kinky enough name to make any homo sapiens take an evolutionary downgrading and become homo erectus.

* A 'dental spa' - Makes me think what exactly is a Spa anyway?

* A restaurant named 'Yoras'!, just kidding, it was 'Mayas' in fact.

Land of opportunities

When experts say India has become a land of opportunities, I totally agree with them. You have plenty of opportunities here now - to get beaten up by some or other regio-religio-linguistic-chauvinists.

Points to ponder

* Today's breaking news - No flights delayed due to fog at Delhi airport

* New movie - 'Karthik Calling Karthik' - I'm confused. Shouldnt it be Kalling?

Global warming - hoax/nohoax

Like any other human earth-dweller with below average level of knowledge on the subject, I always wondered what if the whole climate change thing is a hoax.

In This Thomas Friedman column I found the answer, quoting the most important paragraph from the article here,

"If we prepare for climate change by building a clean-power economy, but climate change turns out to be a hoax, what would be the result? Well, during a transition period, we would have higher energy prices. But gradually we would be driving battery-powered electric cars and powering more and more of our homes and factories with wind, solar, nuclear and second-generation biofuels. We would be much less dependent on oil dictators who have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs; our trade deficit would improve; the dollar would strengthen; and the air we breathe would be cleaner. In short, as a country, we would be stronger, more innovative and more energy independent"

Food for thought

Thought of the day - Whoever framed the proverb ‘an idle mind is devils workshop’ is a corporate guy, who else can know both about idle minds as well as what goes on in workshops for devils.

Business idea of the day – If you know how to make noise by pulling a steel string – Start guitar classes for corporate guys.

Travel tip of the day – Kingfisher airlines, also you will know whether you are suffering from Stockholm syndrome

Pandemic paranoia

I think we Indians are the only species in this planet that are still growing in number, that too despite being attacked by a myriad of killer forces like terrorists, viruses, goons, rapists, police etc constantly. This is primarily because we can adapt quickly to any environmental changes unlike other species that are more conservative when comes to change. For example, a polar bear will die within hours if we move it to a new environment like a room having TV news running, whereas we Indians can live in any such hostile environments for days together without any problem, look at our railway stations and airports with hundreds of TV screens, we can wait any long in these places for our perpetually late trains and planes without dying.

The biggest reason that I see why we Indians will survive dreaded pandemics like H1N1 is also the same - we are ready for any changes our experts are advising us to make these days. People who never wanted to become surgeons or nurses only because they hated wearing surgical masks are now wearing them as if they are just some new type of lipstick. I’m sure designer masks will be introduced soon and we will see India Mask Fashion Week where models take up catwalks wearing transparent masks, pink masks, glossy masks, minimalistic masks and at times even without masks.

Also luckily for us Indians, we don’t have to depend only on what allopathic doctors are advising for protecting us from the attack of H1N1 virus - or any virus for that matter - we got yoga and ayurvedic experts as well to seek advice from, which I think will increase our chance of survival twice compared to people in other parts of the world. Being a conservative society, our frequency of kissing and embracing is also less compared to other more liberal countries; hence we need not worry about the virus being spread through the said activities as well.

The only thing that we need to be cautious about the virus in our country currently is the media hype about it. Every day hundreds of people die in our country in road accidents and even thousands die due to seasonal flu etc, but our media make all of it look nothing compared to the few deaths that happen due to H1N1. For them each H1N1 death is equivalent to a hundred deaths due to other reasons. The only way I see how this media virus can be stopped from spreading is by deviating media’s attention from H1N1, one good strategy for achieving this is make more from our Bollywood Khan-daan to travel to the United States so that the media will also go behind, hoping to get frisked.

Strategic thinking

If somebody ask me what is the one Chinese product that we should not buy anymore, my answer will be – Strategy. Here is why – A Chinese ‘strategist’ says China should break up India into 20-30 states . This strategy is an expired product because long before the Chinese strategist cooked it up, Sardar Patel has already created the said 20 – 30 states out of India, with the help of three other capable people - VP Menon, Mother Nature and Lady Luck.

Swayamvara Parva

Now that history has been made over the last weekend, you can relax and go back to deal with your mundane, routine, unimportant things like your work, family matters, terror attacks, price hikes etc. No, I’m not talking about the release of the 1 millionth love story in Bollywood, I’m talking about the successful completion of first high-profile swayamvar of our times, and by our times I mean Kaliyug; that too done in a way that fully justify the ideologies of the owner of the era – as a TV reality show ‘item’. Now it’s just a matter of time that this new age episode also turns into an epic.

We had many famous swayamvars in the past if you recollect, with Sita’s swayamvar of Treta Yug and Panchali’s in Dvapara Yug etc. But I would say none of them had this uniqueness of being watched by the entire aryavart because in the past only those with divyadhristi could watch them remotely from the safety of their drawing rooms. For the common men and women, the only option was to travel to the venue, which had its own risks as well. They could be eaten by wild animals on their way or they could get hurt by flying metal pieces coming out of the breaking bows or fast moving arrows used to test the aspirants’ skills. Barring the spiritual aspects and the charisma of the brides and grooms, I would say the modern day swayamvar was far ahead of the ones in the past, in terms of glamour, publicity stunts, suspense, item numbers, popularity, drama etc. In future if somebody ask me to describe it in one word, I would say – “stup-endous”(hyphen unintentional).

Couple of factors I see played key roles in making this truly kaliyugaic swayamvar a success, though on the face of it propaganda and ‘items’ looked the reason. Firstly because this time around gods where contractually forbidden from interfering because that’s the agreement between them and Kali. So the producers of the show could go to any extend they wanted to provide maximum voyeuristic pleasures to its viewers. Secondly, to deal with any mere mortals who attempted stopping it by raising such legal issues, the produces have appointed enough lawyers(again an advantage other yugas didn’t enjoy) to deal with them.

Next to some of the consequences of this highly successful swayamvar. If you look at history, all such high profile swayamvars of the past had their own special reasons to happen and all of them later lead to the defeat of the evils that affected mankind as per the expectations of the owners of the respective yugas. That means this current one also will sure lead to incidents that will help Kali achieve his goals I’m sure. One of the things that I see happening is by having more and more of such reality swayamvars, more and more of our young men will get addicted to them and will get their very manhood questioned episode after episode and finally become unproductive to nourish their family trees any further.

And for all of you who have not watched the climax(so far) of the swayamvar over the weekend, I would say it’s the second such once in a lifetime spectacle you are missing after you missed the eclipse couple of weeks back. In that sense I would even question the worthiness of you living any further, but I would not recommend anything here because persuading somebody to commit suicide is still criminal offense.

Zen and the art of lawmaking

If somebody asks what the 3 pillars of our democracy are, even a supermodel will know that it’s the judiciary, legislature and safari suits. This bermudaic-triangular structure also implies that we are still one pillar less to make it a stable table. Now if you are a politically unaware person, you may ask why ‘people’ are not considered a pillar. The answer is, people’s job in upholding the democracy is negligible - just a tap on the voting machine – hence they are as shaky a pillar as that of Delhi metro and cannot be employed to guard our hard earned democracy. However, nobody can deny the role of our legislature(From Latin Leg and Greek Slaughter which stands for "amputate’em all!"), especially that of our state assemblies because they are not only just upholding our democracy, but also are taking law making to a different level altogether. This post is a tribute to this particular pillar for all the services it’s doing for making us a future-proof democracy.

I think our state legislatures are the most vibrant of all law makers hitherto known to humanity - in terms of the diversity of nation building activities they perform every day, starting from humble verbal abuses and allegations to de-garmentation to breathtaking, desk-breaking martial arts performances. Now those of you who are educated, voting, ignorant, uncivilized, tax-paying, arrogant, pessimists may ask whether this is what we have elected and pay them for, the answer is a big “Yes" and my rationale behind this is not just a "So that they won’t perform these activities elsewhere and hurt innocent civilians", the reasons are many.

Firstly, I think they are seeking unique and novel methods to enable our assemblies capable enough to make any new laws and break any existing ones, required in our journey towards becoming a democratic center of excellence. More of such pioneering efforts should be recognized, rewarded and repeated to boost the morale of our elected men and women. This move from the Karnataka assembly sure is a laudable one. We can also supply some of the state of the art equipments to our state assemblies that can accelerate lawmaking, such as slingshots, water/air guns, chilly-sprays etc. It will also make sure that tax payers money spent on procuring furniture and communication equipments will not come in the way of lawmaking as well.

Secondly, we are far ahead of other countries in our journey to build the so called 22st century-ready, legislature 2.0s because our assemblies are professionally (and literally too) very rich and advanced with capable men and women who can not only do politicking but also indulge in socio-economic activities such as wealth creation, land acquisition, uplifting of women and children etc .

Now it's only a question of how our leadership efficiently taps these skills and utilizes them for the noble cause of nation building. And I think we are improving day by day, for example earlier if somebody say "Opposition attacked the government on xyz issue", it would just mean that some old, good-for-nothing-else, khadi-clad men did sound pollution, but now things are changing. If the opposition is going to attack a minister in the assembly, he/she better come equipped like a cricket batsman or a hockey goalkeeper. I wish mother nature bestow something like Karna's Kavach-Kundal for the next generation of our politicians so that they can be born parliamentarians and follow their parents footsteps safer.

It makes me proud when I see how different we are from the murky, mundane, monarchic lawmaking bodies of other countries..Jai Ho!(Btw, why we say this? Ho I thought is from Vietnam?)

Uncultured cultivation

There are many funny ways to react to this news item which says girls were made to plough fields naked for rain, so that the rain gods will be embarrassed and will ultimately come down.

I can joke "Ok, so that means weather gods are all women?" Another more effective idea I can suggest here is to arrange few big screens in the drought hit areas and play some of the Bollywood 'numbers' instead where item-girls do un-garmented mowing and plowing, it can virtually embarrass anybody, let alone rain gods. Or on a second thought, what if the rain gods commit suicide unable to bear the embarrassment, so let’s not take such extreme measures.

However, those of us who joked on it might not have noticed that it's a perfect image of many things that are wrong in our country.

• We still lack education and awareness which makes people become more and more superstitious.


• Our women still are treated second-class citizens – why didn't the organizers think of making men do so?


• We still are incapable of providing basic facilities like irrigation to our farmers that they go to such extremes.


• Not just that much, it also shows how our law enforcement is not capable of stopping such atrocities done against women


• Our perpetually-concerned, hypocritical culture-guardians are so worried about filthy, fifth-rated TV shows but they have nothing to say about such things. May be these kind of things are not against ‘our values’