AmreekanDesi

It all started when some not so creditable people were allowed to take loans to buy them homes.  Down the line, some of them started defaulting on their mortgages. Suddenly banks were competing with each other in writing off billions of dollars of assets. Bear sterns went down. Lehman Brothers went down.  AIG went down. Washington Mutual went down. Wachovia is lined up. Overall some sixteen banks in the US have shut down this year.

Wall street has laid off over a hundred thousand people so far this year, and there’s no end in sight.

For those who didn’t know, Indian faces abound across all levels and departments on Wall Street. There’s a Vikram Pandit heading Citi. Finding an Indian MD at a Wall street firm is as hard as watching TV for a few hours without hearing about Raj Thackeray. There are Indian traders, Indian bankers, Indian techies (lots of them). Heck, wall street loves indian food.

No wonder then that Indians have been directly affected as a result of this crisis. I am not even going into the indirect consequences (prices skyrocketing, Sensex crash, IT downturn, movie tickets getting costly etc).

Especially affected are two families that were so taken in by their fabulous lifestyle that they just don’t know what to do.

“It’s ironic but I feel even poorer now,” she adds. “Maybe it’s because . . . we got used to having things. Now we want things more, and it’s heartbreaking for us.”

That’s Mona Mond. This couple was another of the high flying wall street families, coming  to terms with  a reduced income, and unwilling to live like “normal” people.

She’d married a man with a career on Wall Street, and at the very least she was going to live in a house, preferably brand new, with a Jacuzzi in her bedroom and a pool in that yard. There’d be a maid — and no skimping, no worrying that any day Amar, her husband, would lose his job.

“I’m so angry,” says Mona, who is 32 and about to have a second child. “We are living so tight, and we feel so limited. I wanted a big nice house. . . . This was planned.”

This one appeared on the front page of Hindustan Times.

Anand was this high  flying IT guy making a lot of dough, living in a huge apartment, and unable to find a job for many months after he got laid off. Meanwhile, he kept living in his 3000 dollar a month apartment, and applying to 20 jobs everyday with no success.

Anand was ‘let go’. He applied for at least 20 jobs daily. So that’s close to 100 jobs a week. And waited. Waited for e-mails. Waited for interview calls. The bad news kept getting worse. Anand kept cutting his asking rate. From $130 an hour to whatever. For days and weeks, clicking the refresh button on the computer screen and checking missed calls was the only thing to do. And, pay the bills. Grocery, house rent, electricity, water, cell phone, car insurance. The house rent cleaned us out. Almost $3,000 every month.

That’s a shame. On more counts than one. Among others, what self respecting techie applies to, and gets rejected from several hundred jobs? Besides, what happened to living within ones means, or adapting to conditions. Things are bad no doubt, but stop posing for sensationalistic stories, and get yourself out of the mess you are in.

Having been on wall street for the past three odd years, i know a thing or two about how things work here myself. And these (and other) stories amuse me.

Wall street is such a different world from any other industry. It doesn’t produce anything. At least nothing that you can see and touch and feel, and most importantly, hold on to. It’s all virtual money. One day a commodities trader is up by a million dollars, and suddenly crude goes up by 20% and he has lost all of that. Leave alone professional traders, common Joes (plumbers and others) looking for a safe future are losing their entire life savings that they put into stocks.

The high salaries are much talked about. People seem to almost hate wall street bankers for their fat pay packets. What no one mentions is that they are paid so much probably because of the inherent risk that a wall street job entails.

Then there are the wall street employees such as Anand and Mr Mond. Burying your head under the sand does not make you immune from the coming storm. And the ones who didnt’ see this coming, or take action when they saw this trouble starting up, or tone down their lives trying to come to terms with the state of affairs should not get anybody’s sympathy.

Wall street has seen such downturns earlier, and recovered from them. Maybe things will get back to the high and dizzy levels of recent years. But this should serve as a good lesson about the immortality of it all.

No job, no fortune is safe enough. Deal with it.

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July 4th. The American Independence day. A day for barbeques, picnics, family get-togethers, and fireworks!

The Macy’s ‘spectacular‘ has been a Newyork tradition for the past 32 years. This year we decided to watch it from Roosevelt Island, which supposedly offers the best views of the show.

The show was nice. I probably didn’t enjoy it as much as i did the first time two years back, but then the first time is always more enjoyable.

Here’s a video.

(There’s more videos of the show on my youtube page, for those who are interested)

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Yo fellas…i am back! With a bang. I have a wife now!!!!

OMG…this feels so different. My life is never going to be the same again. Actually, it hasnt been the same since i got married to this lovely angel a couple months back.

Anyway..i have been thinking of getting back to business for a while now. And guess what, today is your lucky day.

AmreekanDesi is back. And Better than before! Please un-forget me now!!

I occasionally come across stories/articles that send shivers down the spine This one shook me to the bones. Literally.

This was about the awful hideous practice of illegal trade of a unique kind – of bones. Of real people. These people steal corpses from graves, and from cremation grounds. They then sell their souls (and the bones of these unsuspecting people) for, of all things, money. Money?!

Not a fair bargain for either party i’d say.

First the corpses were wrapped in netting and anchored in the river, where bacteria and fish reduced a body to a loose pile of bones and mush in a week or so. The crew then scrubbed the bones and boiled them in a cauldron of water and caustic soda to dissolve any remaining flesh. That left the calcium surfaces with a yellow tint. To bring them up to medical white, bones were then left in sunlight for a week before being soaked in hydrochloric acid.

When police arrived to investigate last spring, they could smell the stench of rotting flesh from nearly a mile away.

They dont just steal dead bodies. They sometimes create them too.

The industry shuddered to a halt in March 1985, when a bone trader was arrested after exporting 1,500 child skeletons. Because they’re relatively rare and illustrate transitional stages in osteological development, child skeletons command higher prices. Indian newspapers claimed that children were being kidnapped and killed for their bones.

Children? Those little innocent(?) things?

People go to hell for doing bad things. These people dont even deserve that. I bet there’s some special cell up there to take care of these things. They’re not human for sure.

Sadda Vicky… are baba apna Vikram Pandit.

You don’t know him? He just became the CEO of Citi Group, known in Industry circles affectionately as Shiti Group.

Another Indian does the country proud! haha…its funny when the media just jumps in on the achievements of Indians wherever they are. But then, at least he is a real Indian. Born in India, came to the US for his studies, and been blazing his way across the ranks over the past decades.
A real Indian, unlike Bobby who was also the toast of India till a few months back, albeit his giving up his Indian name, Indian religion, Indian accent (Oh well..he was never a FOB; always had that peculiar ABCD accent. Never mind).

Going back to Vicky. He’s famous for becoming MD in record time at Morgan (Stanley). He is also famous for starting his own hedge-fund. Recently he became famous when Shiti bought his fund with the sole intention of getting him to come on board. Of course, now he is their chief executive.

How do you – a common man celebrate promotions? A dinner? A cruise vacation?
How does a wall street CEO celebrate? By plonking down 18 million for a 10 (yes, Ten) bedroom apartment in one of the hottest part of Manhattan.

Vicky might be the first Indian CEO on wall street, but he certainly isn’t the only Indian biggie. Indian people in senior management are not uncommon. Indian MDs (Managing Directors) are a dime a dozen.

Doesn’t the chest just swell with Pride? We are proud of you Vicky.

Back in the days when i was an 8th grader, we used to play cricket, have little parties, watch tv, and all that boring stuff. Apparently, that is passe now…

An 8th standard kid(yes that would be about 13 years old) in a Gurgaon school shot to death a classmate. In cold blood – from close and not once but four times. Just how gruesome is that?

There have been instances in American schools where kids have stormed the schools killing multiple students. But this would be the first such case i can recall in India.

Makes me wonder – this kid (the murderer) is a little boy. What sort of laws apply to them? Do they go to Jails or to some childrens’ homes sort of place? Can they be executed for such a horrible act?

Or should the father who gave a gun to his 13 year old toddler to commit a murder be hung to death?

First there was Chak De! India, then that fantastic Asia cup victory by the Indian men’s hockey team, then the protests by players anguished at how their outstanding work got completely overshadowed by the cricketers who got rewarded handsomely for their world cup win. Now take this.

Haryana government is setting up hockey stadiums in 50 villages, each with an investment of Rs 50 lakh (5 million). Most of the money for this is going to come from the central government. Once the stadiums are setup, the players will be given hockey sticks and balls free of cost. When they talk of grassroots development of the sports infrastructure, this is how it is supposed to be done. Kudos to the government for this initiative.

Another heartening initiative coming from former Indian captain Rajesh Chauhan who has formed the Jai Bharat Charitable and Welfare Trust to “groom players from the rural parts of the state so that the players will one day win an Olympic gold for the country and restore the golden period of Indian hockey to where it was.”

A couple (more) steps in the right direction, we say!

On occasion of Gandhi Jayanti, which is being marked as the International Day of Non Violence by the United Nations this year, Sonia Gandhi today addressed the UN General Assembly.

Normally UN addresses are made by heads of state. So we’re guessing that she must be the prime minister of India. Or at least the president.

But hold on, the prime minister is Manmohan Singh, and the president is Pratibha Patil. So who is this Sonia Gandhi who is representing India at this forum? And who is her son, Rahul Gandhi who is so famously accompanying her on the trip?

Is the president of the Congress party a bigger deal than the official leaders of the country? Oh wait…it’s because she was married into the family that owns India?

Now we understand. Silly us.

Protest and hunger strike in Newyork
Pro Hindu fanatics protesting against Sonia’s visit

Thiru Kumar, who runs a roadside dosa cart at Newyork’s Washington Square South won this year’s Vendy Award for New York’s best street food at Tompkins Square Park on Saturday.

Standing at a golf cart-sized kitchen, Thiru “Dosa Man” Kumar made his signature pondicherry dosas to order, spreading dollops of batter over the griddle surface with a tool that looked like hockey puck. He stuffed and rolled the crispy dosas, deftly chopping them into perfect thirds with his spatula.

So there…how incredible is that? Dosas being Newyork’s favorite roadside food! Oh, and by the way Thiru is not Indian – he hails from Sri Lanka.

This event sounds very interesting – a five hour orgy for foodies with a $60-eat-as-much-as-you-can. But then, how much can you eat in a day? And given the variety on offer (and the best that Newyork has to offer), thats one choice we would love to be spoilt for.

Another story on this event

American girls sing Vande Mataram to Siva Mani’s beats at the conclusion of the Incredible India festivities in Newyork.

Call it symbolic, call it hyperbole, call it whatever, but we were Impressed. We had the worst seats in the house, so the video isn’t much to look at. But it’s meant to be heard more than seen!

Our detailed coverage of the Incredible India@60 event

A four day event called Incredible India! kicked off in Newyork today. This event is an attempt to showcase India to America, and will comprise several business meets, panel discussions, and cultural events.

If you missed today’s events, there’s still three days to go, and plenty going on. We were there to cover the action, and sure liked what we saw. Here’s our account of the opening day of the event.
There were a host of events today including some high profile ones involving among other things, entry by invitation only. Unfortunately, we are not yet important enough to be invited to events involving union ministers and CEOs. So we settled for the public events.

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