My friend Sidhan"s brother is a small time
business man but not too successful one at that.
So when one his friends him invited him to be a
�junior partnership in a building venture
he was only too happy.
They together coaxed a man who owned a piece
of land to let them build an apartment in that
land as a joint venture.
The application was submitted to the panchayath office,
complete in all formalities and complying with all rules.
The authorities called them for an interview to decide on
the fate of the project.
"You have complied with all the rules and stipulations and
there is no problem in sanctioning the project" the officer
told him.
A member of the panchayath too was present in the
office. The "member" as he is addressed, shook his his head
in agreement as the officer told them that.
Sidhan"s brother was very happy.
Another large builder had got a sanction for a big project
with some difficulty. He felt lucky to have his project
sanctioned so easily.
"But even if you get the sanction you will not be able to
build the apartment" the "member" and the officer told him
with great sympathy.
There will be "problems" during construction. They can get over
those problems for him easily, they told him. They have to get
the road in a good shape and they will have to make good
drainage facilities for the project.
Of course all those things cost money.
"You donate a small amount of money and we will see that
things go smoothly" They advised him.
The small amount turned out to be only about ten thousand
rupees for each flat and another small amount for incidental
expenses. All put it will be only a small amount of about
two and half lakhs.
"Two and a half lakhs nothing? See what Orange a Day
had spent on their project. They donated ten lakhs.
Of course they are misers. But you are not a kanjoose"
Sidhan"s brother's shirt was only partly wet in that AC room.
"You do not have to donate in one lot.
Give us about fifty thousand every month"
There were a lot of consultations and discussions
and at the end of the meeting the deal was fixed for one lakh
to be paid in two small installments.

PS. I typed this small piece in three small installments.
In between each installment power failed only three times
Mera Bharath Mahan
Incidentally tomorrow is republic day

I got this in mail. I know that it is a bit late for any action, all the same please read this . this is an edited version to mask the identy of the sender

Madhavan"s post (pkmadhu.rediffiland.com) must be one of the best comment generating posts in the recent times. 31 comments at the last count! And still counting. Can any one beat it?
He has posed a challenge. What is Indian-ness? What holds us all together? What makes us, us - Indians?
Whew! difficult, tough task.

What is Indian-ness?

In his famous book Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance Robert Pirzig talks of quality - "I do not know how to define it. But I know it when I see it".
That probably is the closest approximation to the definition of Indian-ness.
Obviously Hinduism is not the defining factor in this game. Hinduism is a major religion but not the sole religion. In any case Hinduism is not one monolithic entity. In fact is just as difficult to define it as is Indian-ness. A Malayali Hindu has nothing much in common with a Punjabi Hindu, save a few mythological characters to fall back on.
Is Hinduism truly Indian? I mean the Vedic Hinduism?.

If one were to believe the conventional historians or archaeologists Vedic people migrated from beyond the Hindukush into the Indo Gangetic plains and brought Vedic ideas with them. Hinduism became a dominant religion only during the last hundred or so centuries. Till then India was predominantly a Buddhists and jain country. India probably has/had the largest number of agnostics in this world too. Islam too came to India, like Vedic Hinduism, from out side. Clearly religion is not the defining factor.

In fact several things that we take for granted as purely Indian in essence, did not originate here in this land. Take for example potatoes. It was brought to us by the Europeans, from south America, just as was chilly and cashew nuts. But we cannot think of an Indian cuisine without potato. Can any one imagine alu-paranta without potatoes?
In the same way Islam too is Indian. India without Islam would be Alu paranta without aloo
How ever much they are Indian, Hinduism or Islam or potatoes or chilies or cashew nuts do not make India, India.

My good friend Rama Varma migrated to US and is an American citizen. But that does not make him any less Indian. His son who was born in US, works in Microsoft, does not talk one word of Malayalam and probably hates India is till an Indian! But African Americans who are originally from Africa are not Africans any more.

While I was thinking of something uniquely Indian, my wife called out to announce dinner.
"What is cooking?" I asked.
"Chicken curry" she shouted from the kitchen.
"If you do not hurry there will be no chappthies left for you" She added.

My sons love chappathies, especially with chicken curry. Rama Varma in Oklahoma loves chicken curry and chappathies as does his American son in Seattle.
Sidhan loves chappathy and dhal curry with putheena leaves in it. Radhakrishnan like chappathies with onions and chilies.

We Indians love chappathies. It is uniquely Indian. It is not a Punjabi dish, it is an Indian dish. Tamilian who hates Hindi loves chappathy.
Of course there are variations of chappathy all over India but they are still chappathies.

That is it. Chappathy defines us.

I was reading a feature by the Daily Pioneer Columnist Swapan Dasdupta http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnist1.asp?main_variable=Columnist&file_name=swapan%2Fswapan182%2Etxt&writer=swapan

He writes "Looking back, everything about the Nehru-Gandhi era was despicable. The roads were potholed and inadequate; electricity was a luxury unavailable..." etc.

This is a typical attitude of many writers - I mean clubbing Gandhi and Nehru together in a blame game.
I am no admirer of the so called Nehru Gandhi family. But I think it is not right to use this terminology in any context. What an average person like me fails to notice that the particular Gandhi referred to in this context is not Mohandas Gandhi but Feroze Gandhi, husband of Indira Gandhi and father of Rajeev Gandhi.
Neither Mohandas Gandhi nor Feroze Gandhi had any role in the making of this mess in which we now are deeply in. The present generation of readers of news papers have little acquaintance with Feroze Gandhi. Mohandas Gandhi left the scene much before the present muddle started.
I hope the news makers will leave these two innocent souls out of this mudslinging.

Small car in the big news

TATA's small car project has kicked up a big row in the media.
The environment activists hate the car, enough to go on air to denounce the whole company.

Car aficionados have gone ga ga over the small car.

The objection the environmentalists raise is about the effect of the large number of cars that are expected to be sold.
The car aficionados are happy about one more model on the road.

The attitude of the environmentalist gives me the feeling that had the price been a little steep they would not mind another car in the market. All through they have emphasised the fact that it costs just a lakh of rupees.

What will be the effect of such a pricing policy on the sale of the car?

A rich man will not consider such a cheap car. Two months back one of my friends wanted my opinion on choosing a car. I suggested a particular model that was the cheapest in the market at that time. He rejected the proposal something like this
�"Oh, that is a cheap car. I do not want to buy that"
The reason for the rejection was not lack of features or comfort but lack of a price tag. Such people will reject this small (cheap) car too. It is too cheap for their status.

Another set of people will eject this car equating a small car with a bad car.

A lot of people will buy this car as a status symbol. They surely will not run it as much as we think. They will continue to use their scooter and use the car once in a way. Such use will not cause any further serious effect on the pollution level.

If the present day small car emission is any guide, this car will have better emission standards than any scooter or motor bikes and so will have a better effect on the air pollution, if it will replace that many scooters. Most scooter have horrible emissions.

If you look at any car review in any magazine or any TV channels, you never find any reporter rubbishing a car. Every single one of them has gone raving mad about every single car that has been introduced in the market. So if some reporter says that this is a wonderful car I will not take it on face value. It may or may not be wonderful car.

What the nation or even the whole humanity needs right now is not a car but a good reliable round the clock public transportation system. If I get a good reliable public transport at any time in the day I will never take my car out of the garage. Even if we do not invent a pollution free fuel, the pollution level will still come down if we stick to just buses and stop using cars. It is the lack of good public transportation that forces us to use the inefficient cars.

It is this situation that has give a wonderful opportunity for the TATAs to market a small car. No good businessman will sit quiet in such times. You cannot blame TATA for that.

It is not the duty of TATA to provide a good public transport system to the nation. Nor can they do it. They have made good buses. It is the duty of the government to use them to good effect.

If there are a large number of cars on the road it is our fault, not TATA"s.

During an international beer conference, all the world's top brewery bosses decide to go out for a beer together.
The Chairman of Budweiser says, "I'd like the most refreshing beer in the world, 'The King Of Beers': give me a Budweiser."

The bartender takes a bottle from the shelf and opens it for him .

The Chairman of Guiness says, "I'd like the only beer in the world worth really, truly waiting for: give me a Guinness."

The bartender serves him.

The Chairman of Carlsberg says, " I would like the world's best beer, drunk in more countries than any other: give me a Carlsberg."

He gets it.

Vijay Mallaya sits down, looks around and says, "Just give me a Coke."

The bartender looks at him, shrugs, and serves him.

The other brewery bosses laugh loudly and say, "Hey Vijay, how come you aren't drinking a Kingfisher?"

"Listen," says Vijay Mallya, "If you guys aren't drinking beer, neither will I"

 

Invariably every year I get a lot of new year greetings. Most of them are something like this,
'May the new year bring peace and prosperity to you and your friends and family!' or something to that effect.

In return I too sent out some new year cards, phone calls and letters to the respective well wishers.
Soon I realized that my wishing helped only the companies that print the cards and may be the postal department. I have to be a bit more specific about the postal department. The department makes some money out of this greeting business. It is equally possible that the department is losing some money with this annual mass hysteria. Whether the department makes a profit or not the post man is not a happy man. He knows that the card is of no particular value and will be promptly thrown into the waste paper basket. If he pulls a long face I will not blame him.
Once I asked my good friends Sidhan and Radhakrishnan if my new year wishes made any difference to their financial years.
They both looked at their accounts and declared that it had not.
I have my wife's testimony to prove that all the new year wishes have not made any effect on my life. I have remained just the same old budhoose and kanjoose.
If at all it has badly affected my pocket.
I used to buy three cards every year, one each for sidhan and radhakrishnan and the last one for myself. The third card needs some explanation. If ever there is one who genuinely wants to wish a prosperous new year to me, it is me. That is the reason I sent one card to myself.
I was losing money on the three cards. So I stopped buying them. But I continue to greet Sidhan and Radhakrishnan when I meet them on the road.
I am yet to come across some one who has been benefited by this annual ritual -- of course not counting the guy who makes and sells the cards.
Wishing you all on this rediffiland does not cost me any substantial money. So let me

WISH YOU ALL VERY PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR

�There are some problems with the iland blog pages.
I do not think any one can remember the names of all the friends on iland. And I am no exception.

It happened last Sunday. It occurred to me that I have not read any recent posts by our friend Madhu (pkmadhu.rediffiland.com).

Searching for his name in my friends list, I realised that his name was missing from it.

Unfortunately I cannot remember anyone"s page address. Fortunately he posted a comment on one of my postings and I got his address back from his jottings. I am sure I did not delete his name from my page. That would be the very last thing I do on my page.

Why does it happen?

I am pretty sure that no one can log on to my page and delete names from it.

Since I log on to the net with Ubuntu linux it is very unlikely that it is caused by a virus. It is not impossible though. More over, I do not think viruses have any antipathy to my friends.
I do not know how many of my friends have disappeared from the list.

Some of the older posts have disappeared from the page. I guess it must be work of the rediff itself. I notice that the old pages of others too have disappeared (look carefully at your older pages).

I hope you will pardon me if I have not been seen reading some of your posts regularly. It is the effect of vanishing friends list.
I hope rediff will publish a list of all the members of the rediff iland blogs, so that we can check.

Hopefully such calamities will not occur again in future.

Dear Friends on Iland,


Keeping track of new postings on Iland has become a bit of hard time consuming work.

There is a new blog page by name http://asurakumar.rediffiland.com.

It is anybody"s guess who made that page.

But please enter a comment in that page at any time you make a new blog entry on your page. Even just one word would do. That will let the veiwer know that you have made a new entry in your page. Clicking on that comment will take any one to your page. It is the best way to spread the news amongst your friends.

That will make tracking a new post by any one easier.


It does not take too much effort on your part to do that. It will increase the readership of your page

What Do You Think ?