AmreekanDesi

Over the course of some three hundred odd years, the British gave a lot to India. They gave us the Railways, Post and Telegraph, Cricket, Tea, Movies. They gave us the English language, which was going to come in handy in the twenty first century to help India become the world’s back office. They gave us a united India, like this gentleman on the TV series ‘The Story of India’ confidently proclaimed. Apparently without the British there would have been no India to fret over.

Their greatest act of kindness was leaving us with a democratic form of government.

A form of government where votes are supreme. By hook or by crook. By manipulation or coercion. Whatever the means, the ends of power justify them. So much so that anybody can say anything, or do anything, and as long as that person has influence over a couple dozen voters, no harm can befall him. As a result, we have created demi-gods out of petty thugs who do not deserve to see the light of sun, for they should be locked away in dungeons, lest they eat into the fabric of the already sensitive society.

The game is to get a foot in, inspire the masses, become a public figure and eventually make a few crores of scandal money towards a retirement fund. Often this involves dividing the society by religion, language, region, city, height, weight, gender, shape of mustache and what have you. To their credit, its a very imaginative occupation.

Today we discuss one such great mind who has been busy ridding the world of all evil, and Mumbai of north Indians.

Raj Thackeray has been proudly running an anti-north India campaign in Maharashtra. The premise is that Uttar Pradesh  is a den of terrorism and Azamgarh is where all criminals come from, so all people from UP (and Bihar) are criminals, and are not Manhoos Manoos enough to reside in Maharashtra. That’s Mr Robin Hood for you. How very graceful, logical, and full of selfless love for his state.

If these people have their way, we would not be citizens of India, but just representatives of our state, region, religion, or caste, on a mission to establish supremacy over everyone else, through mostly violent means.

Is this the India that Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Bhagat Singh, and Subhash Chandra Bose gave their lives for? These great men of varied methodologies  dreamt of a united, free India. Did they waste their lives so that criminals in the garb of politicians get to vomit all over the constitution?

Ending a long break, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray has resumed his virulent campaign against North Indians describing Uttar Pradesh as a ‘den of terrorism’ and accusing the state’s Chief Minister Mayawati and Railway Minister Lalu Prasad of doing caste politics.[link]

Caste politics? Regional politics? Is there any difference?

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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.

So yeah…i have been thinking about doing this for a long time. About Time.

Diwali would be an auspicious enough occasion to get back to writing. So, Happy Diwali  dearest readers, and i am back.

Take care, enjoy good health, have a happy and satisfied life, and i will talk more about me in other posts following this.

Fear seems to be the underlying theme of our lives these days.

Parents fear their kids not being smart enough to make it to the good colleges. Worse, they fear their kids being too smart to care for them. Teachers fear students filing FIRs if spoken rudely to. Kids fear getting paralyzed because a reality show host talked rudely to them.

They grow old and then they start fearing bad relationships. Or jilted lovers trying to throw acid on their face, or just kill them. Not being rich enough.

Americans fear Indians taking over all their jobs. Indians fear slowdowns in the American economy affecting their rapidly increasing prosperity. America fears losing its prestige as the global policeman.

The government fears getting booted out if it does a good deed for the nation. Drivers in delhi fear getting shot by someone mad with road rage. Women fear going out alone because of the horrible law and order situation in Indian cities. Old people fear getting killed by their domestic help.

Walls street fears sub prime lending. Pfizer fears Ranbaxy. Yahoo fears Microsoft.

Yet Life Goes On. Just How Amazing is the Human Spirit.

I am considering going Big…getting my own website and doing a whole lot of fancy stuff with it. Just wanted your take on this…yes yes you reader..i am talking to you there.

What do you think?

Would be very interested in hearing from people who have made a similar switch from Wordpress to their own blog. People who didn’t make the switch? Would i lose everything (my readers, my pagerank(!?) etc)?

Any tips?

Any recommended hosting services?

Above all, would you still read the blog? Visit more often?

Dear Readers,

Subject: I am not Dead

This is for you the millions of you crazy people who read this blog and appreciate my writing, and adore me and dream about me and want to build temples for me and have come to expect so much of me. I have not been able to keep up the professionalism that this job requires, and have not been able to write as often as you (and I) would have liked to.

You see, i am in Love. This blog’s got competition.

But yea, i will keep trying to sneak in a few minutes here and a few minutes there to create my masterpieces. So don’t you worry, main hoon na.

So come on in, take a seat. Here have some tea. Some gulab jamuns? Oh..they’re fat free. Don’t you worry. There…thats more like it.

Yours Sincerely Humble Pathetic Lazy-Ass Servant,
Um Reekin Dizzy

That is the exact headline of this article i found on the Times of India website. The headline was interesting. Don’t we keep hearing people cry all the time about the ever rising IT salaries?

A closer look turned into disappointment. Disappointment and Disenchantment. Disenchantment with how media people just write anything whether or not it makes any sense.

Heard a lot about constantly swelling tech salaries in India and how this is undermining India’s IT edge. The rising salaries may be “bleeding” Indian IT cos, but they are still far from the global level, as the Mercer’s 2007 IT Pay around the World survey shows.

Based on gross annual total cash, IT staff at all levels are paid the most in Switzerland, where the IT Manager job pays an average of $140,960 annually. The same job level in Denmark (the second-highest-paying country) pays $123,080, while Belgium (third) pays an average of $121,170. The UK and Ireland are ranked fourth and fifth, with an average pay of $118,190 and $108,230, respectively. In the United States, the average IT manager earns $107,500 a year compared with Canada (ranked eight) at $93,340.

Talking of low paying countries, Bulgaria, Philippines, Indonesia, India and Czech Republic pay the lowest annual total cash packages to their top IT personnel on a global level. The survey found that IT managers in Vietnam, Bulgaria and the Philippines receive the lowest pay, respectively, at $15,470, $22,240 and $22,280 a year. Indian IT managers were fourth from the bottom, earning an average of $25,000.

Beats me how salaries can be compared across countries and currencies. Indian IT Managers earning $25k translates into Rs 10,00,000 (10 lakhs) which by any standard is a lot of money in India. This salary would probably compare with a $100k salary in the US, despite being a fourth in absolute terms.

Has anybody heard about the concept of purchasing power parity? I know many people who wouldn’t even be in the US if they could get a 10 lakh salary in India. But still, the US ranks sixth from the top and India fourth from bottom.

Sucks being an Indian IT guy!!

This thanksgiving, it just makes sense for me to do my fair share of thanking. So here goes.

I am thankful i am alive.
I am thankful for god, and his carrying me through the highs and lows of life.
I am thankful for a wonderful family, who mean the world to me.
I am thankful for good health.
I am thankful for love.
I am thankful to life, for teaching me all that it has.
I am thankful my life is not going to be the same anymore. (In a good way).
I am thankful to my country. To the USA as well.

Also…

I am thankful for aloo paranthas. And gulab jamuns. Not necessarily at the same time though.
I am thankful for the perfect dosa that i made today.
I am thankful for the discount on the hdtv i have been eyeing for a while now.
I am thankful i can type as fast as i can.
I am thankful i am writing. Hopefully i will be able to continue writing as much as i want to.

There…now i feel better.

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

He

Here i am.

Slogged all my life.
Achieved a lot, just not yet a wife.

Work takes up a lot of time.
Why should i be single, have i committed some crime ?

I love movies, music, the works.
Have a good sense of humour, not like one of the jerks.

Looking for someone honest.
A nice woman, who laughs at my jest.

Just dont be cunning.
Dont lie to me, or you’ll see me running

I’ll take good care.
Spend some good time together.
My life i shall share.

I have a lot on my plate.
And i am a great cook.
will you be my mate ?

She

I am religious, I am homely.
But without a husband i feel lonely.

I am not lame, i don’t play games.
Just need a guy of some fame.

I love working, some playful flirting.
My duties i don’t believe in shirking

What happened to all the nice guys, for whom women are not just toys?
The ones who are no more little boys?

I am great, don’t too much throw around my weight.
But how long will i have to wait?

As a kid you fantasize about growing up and being independent and responsible and rich and free to do what you want.

Doesn’t always work out that nicely. I remember back in school where my biggest worry was the couple of marks i didn’t score in the latest weekly test. Or finishing homework early enough to go play cricket in the park. Being able to finish a game during the lunch break. Enduring those long school assemblies where they got great people who went on and on about their greatness.

I couldn’t wait to grow up. To have a job, and correspondingly, money. All worries would go away. I would not have to worry about teachers and school. I will be a free bird.

I am a free bird today. A can do everything i wish for. I can buy anything i want. No one to watch over me. No one to stop me. No one to tell me if i am taking a wrong decision.

This isnt as good as i thought it was going to be. Now i am responsible for everything. Life is so complicated.

Were those days better? When Doordarshan played a single movie in the entire week and i was surprised why the adults weren’t as excited about the Amitabh blockbuster playing that evening. There was no cable tv and life was so much better. We actually went out to play, unlike today’s kids. There were no computers but still the world went around, and was much nicer. No shopping malls yet we all wore great clothes. A rupee actually bought stuff. I could actually speak what was on my mind.

The meanest thing a friend could do was not share his lunch with me. The most i could lose was, well, nothing. All i had to do was some silly math, read stories in different languages, and learn about history. That’s way nicer than adult life.

God! I wish i could get those days back!

Youtube is turning out to be a modern day Pandora’s box. Check this out.

This video is a clipping of traffic at some intersection somewhere in India. (Any guesses what city this is?) The video is supposed to show just how bad traffic in India is. Now, frankly i thought this was pretty tame. I have seen much worse traffic.

I normally wouldn’t have given this video a second thought, but then i noticed this:

Honors for This Video:
#10 – Most Viewed (All Time) – Autos & Vehicles
#56 – Top Rated (All Time) – Autos & Vehicles
#2 – Most Discussed (All Time) – Autos & Vehicles
#6 – Top Favorites (All Time) – Autos & Vehicles

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I read a touching post yesterday by a sister remembering her brother who died fighting terrorists in Kashmir.

“J&K: 2 majors, 9 infiltrators killed

How many times have you and I read headlines like these in the last so many years and not given it a second thought? It seems like there is one such headline every few days and all we can do is shake our head in disdain and move on to the next headline. But today, I can’t move on, much as I try. Because Major Dinesh R Raman of 34 Rashtriya Rifles who succumbed to his injuries last night in a Srinagar hospital was my brother. ”

Even in death, his only concern was getting the militants.

“Don’t let any militant escape,” these were the last words of Major D Raghuraman when he was air-lifted from the gun-battle spot in North Kashmir after being hit by a bullet in the chest. (link)

All this for what? How many more people have to die fighting this enemy that just keeps coming at them? New Delhi and Islamabad talk of peace initiatives while everyday people are getting killed in the heaven on earth that wasn’t to be. When is this violence going to end?

Then i came across this news clip about the growing number of Kashmiri people committing suicides. Included was the shocking cctv footage of a man parking his scooter on Amirakdal bridge in Srinagar, and jumping off to his death in the Jhelum.

“Suicide attempts are being reported almost on a daily basis.” “300 people attempted suicide in the past 6 months”

Is a piece of land worth the thousands of bodies lying all over the kashmir valley?

Call me naive, but i cannot understand how anybody can stand to gain by killing another person? When so many people die for no fault of theirs, no one wins. Who loses? Humanity.

India is shining. The Indian elephant is on a roll, galloping along on the path to economic progress. India has more billionaires than any other Asian country. Indians are starting new companies. Indian companies are acquiring foreign ones. The rupee is stronger than it has been in recent years. Foreign exchange reserves are at a record high. Stock markets are on a roll. The GDP is growing at a phenomenal rate. The list goes on.

It sure does.

Only the very rich are getting obscenely rich. The growth is mainly due to the services sector and main beneficiaries are probably the technology and finance professionals. Costs are rising as a result, and other middle class Indians are feeling the pinch. Caste based politics is taking several states backward rather than forward. The very partisan media is indulging in a dangerous game of sensationalism that we have never seen earlier. The poor are not getting any benefit of the growth. Large scale migration to the major cities is increasing stress on the urban infrastructure. We have a serious power deficit. Literacy levels are not improving as much as one would hope.

People straight out of technical and business schools are earning salaries unheard of till a few years ago. Not so much growth for other professions. The costs are rising as a result of the increased purchasing power of these professionals. You can go to a coffee shop and spend hundred rupees on a coffee and some snack.

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Unity in Diversity. We have grown up hearing this common refrain while referring to India.

But as India celebrates its 60 years of independence, and amidst the immense euphoria regarding the massive strides that the country is taking on various economic and technological fronts, we Indians need to pause for a moment and do some introspection.

Are things as great as they appear?

Indian industry is reaching new heights. Indians are doing some great things all over the globe. But what about India – the nation? In pursuit of our individual pursuits, do we ever give the nation a thought? And is the diversity India so proudly acclaims proving a hindrance? Are the divisive forces winning over the cohesive elements that have kept us together so far?

Some nations are bound together by religion. Some by their language. Some even by geography. But what is the common thread to unite India?

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