Indian radio has come a long way since the times of Vividh Bharati. With the plethora of FM stations available today these are exciting times for Indian audiences, more so with RJs on various stations trying out all sorts of innovative stuff to keep the lights going.

As i may have mentioned earlier , my office commute consists of traveling across three Indian states. Everyday. Among other things, this gives me a lot of time to sample the fare.

One common theme doing the rounds these days is calling up random people and trying to make a fool out of them. Sometimes it is funny and sometimes plain rude. The audience seem to love these segments.

Came across this very interesting exchange the other day.

The RJ calls up this guy, whom we will call Hero no 1. As Hero no 1 takes the call, there are sounds of people crying on this side.

Loud wailing by a few men.

RJ: Ajit ji, so how much did Mr Mehta owe you?
Random person 1 (Crying): Well, this is not the time to do this, but he owed me Rs 20,000.

RJ: And Rajesh ji, how much did Mr Mehta owe you?
Random person 2: Now you are embarrassing me. Waise it was Rs 15,000.

All this happening in the background as Hero no 1 is listening in bewilderment. RJ now turns to Hero no 1.

RJ: Hero no 1, did you know Mr Mehta? He just passed away
Hero no 1: Of course. He was a dear friend. What happened to him? He owed me Rs 50,000.

[In case this got too complicated, Hero no 1 has no idea who the caller or Mr Mehta is, but senses the opportunity for a chance pe dance.]

RJ suddenly changes tone. Loud Jat accent, like a Delhi Police cop.

RJ: Abe saale, so you knew Mr Mehta. He was running a smuggling racket involving crores of drugs. So you are a partner in his business?

Click. Phone disconnects.

RJ calls up again. Tring tring.

RJ: Hello
Hero no 1: In a kid’s voice. Hello. Papa is not home.

RJ now can not control his laughter. Bursts out laughing.

RJ: Hero no 1, I am RJ bla bla bla. We were just making a bakra out of you. Your girl friend told us that you are the greediest SOB possible, and you proved it. Serves as a lesson for you.

Creative, huh?

Scary, anyone?

You could get a weird call one day and be made to eat crow in front of millions of listeners.

Do Radio Jockeys need to take it upon themselves to teach people a lesson? What if they get manipulated into mistreating perfectly sensible and honest people, who are just gullible enough to get trapped?

I remember another time when another RJ called up a random auntie, and pretended to be her daughter’s friend. She casually mentioned the daughter’s wedding, and little tidbits about the entire affair. Poor woman was shocked. You could hear her voice trembling and shaking, very nearly in tears. What if she had a heart failure in response to this very sudden and depressing news?

Or another instance where they called up a guy en route to his engagement. The RJ said that he was previously engaged to the bride-to-be, and that he had photographs to prove it. The groom started off disbelieving, but on hearing about the photographs he asked for them to be sent to him immediately. You could sense a wedding about to break. What sort of a mind frame would this person be when he arrives for the engagement, bakra or not?

The question is, how far can we go for fun?

The question is, how far can we go for fun? Should we play with such sensitive issues just for kicks? Should we try to act like a moral authority out to police the streets? Is Radio going to go the way of TV channels, who dont shy away from stooping to abysmal levels just to create glamorous news, however biased it may be? Should these people be liable for defamation lawsuits?

What do you guys think?

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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?

Sure we live in a democracy and have the freedom to do anything we like. But who gave these people the right to take the law in their hands, and beat up Biharis at railway stations? What happened to Gandhi’s silly little concept of Ahimsa?

A large number of Biharis, who returned from Mumbai recently for Chhat puja, complained that Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) activists assaulted them at the Kalyan railway station. And even the Government Railway Police drove them away when they tried to lodge complaints.

Arjun Rai, one of the victims, said, “When our train reached Kalyan station, several slogan-shouting MNS activists entered our compartment, carrying hockey sticks, iron rods and other arms. They started asking the identity of the passengers. When they found that we were Biharis retuning home, they started beating us.”[link]

If this is the example that Maharashtra is going to present to the rest of India, then we are headed for the dark ages. For no nation can prosper as a divided house.

Today the world is opening up, and we are getting our minds and thoughts clobbered by people such as Raj Thackeray. Mr Thackeray and his Nazi brigade only has one nation, and it is their great Maratha nation. What they don’t realize is that in isolation, Maharashtra will dry up. There will be no trade and commerce. There will be no Kashmiri apples or Punjabi wheat. There wont be any coal from Bihar to run their power plants. The tourism industry will suffer.

Very soon Tamilians will start beating up Bengalis. Bengalis will start beating up Punjabis. Gujaratis will start beating up everybody else. Nothing good is going to come out of the misguided sense of nationalism of MNS and their crazed out junkies.

Here’s the latest gem:

Local MNS activist Rajendra Deshmukh has warned the owner of Karachi Sweets to remove his signboards within 10 days or face the wrath of MNS.

It will hurt Maharashtrian and Indian sentiments if the owner refuses to do so. Why stick to the old Pakistani name,’ Shinde added.
Instead of assuring protection, the local police has asked the shop owner to change the name of the shop to ‘Mumbai Sweet House’. [link]

At least they got something right. They figured out the way to teach Pakistan a lesson for the Mumbai attacks.

We all feel proud of the apparent growth that India is undergoing. The huge GDP growth rates. The IT exports. The overseas acquisitions. For this to continue, we need to have our house in order. We need to stay India, not UP, Bihar, or Maharashtra.

Men like Raj Thackeray will keep doing their thing. They may try to lead us off the path we chose and wish to pursue. It is our job to overcome the jingoistic tendencies and respect each other. Killing others for their language, religion, or caste may be an easy way to vent our frustrations, but will not help.

India’s greatness strength never was homogeneity. It is the masala mix of our society that makes us so different from the rest of the world. Once that goes away, it will no be an India anymore.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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

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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!!

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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!

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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?

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