Who are we ???

Thanks to the all quarter end slow down and my metaphorical salt mine running smoothly without hiccups the past few days have really been a breeze. I’ve had no time for doing anything at all other than lounge around and chill out, from when I’m making a mental list of all the things I need to accomplish by end of year, call it my own Bucket List (Great movie by the way). Decorating my new apartment seems to be on the top of the list. All about my dreams about future new house and big ass plasma entertainment center on some other blog post… for today its something else on my mind. This whole void in my stupidly hectic schedule has given me tons of time for thinking of all kinds of things, ranging from work to my future and also why I seem to perpetually be in a state of abeyance when it comes to deciding just what I should do next…in more senses of time than one.

One thing that has stood out more than most others in this time though, has been the fact that just about everyone in the current generation – and that includes me – seems to move less from one state of mind to another and more from one complaint to another. It’s a malaise that is so widespread that I don’t think we even notice it ourselves. It sets in real early of course and for that, we can thank our fantabulous education system and the Indian obsession with academics and qualifications.

For more time than I care to recall, I have moved from one goal to another…constantly accompanied by a growing and gnawing feeling of dissatisfaction. There’s been only one phase in my life when I can’t recall having felt any such emotion and needless to say, that didn’t last too long either. Perfidious as it sounds but won’t you say that our generation is losing the sight of their desires.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong to be dissatisfied or to have high aims. I happen to endorse aiming high. It’s just that I feel that at a certain point we tend to allow the dissatisfaction to cloud our judgment in gauging just what is causing the feeling. It’s endemic really and it’s not a very nice thing to see happening around you – particularly when you start feeling that perhaps you’re prey to the same syndrome yourself…

One thing that has almost always made me laugh is reading these celebrity interviews where the interviewee declares that he or she absolutely detests hypocrites. Oh yeah? Awesome mate…ironic, but good for ya ;-). The sad part of course is that the older people grow and the further they drift apart, particularly geographically, the more hypocritical they seemingly become. Helps me smile a bit once in a while to think of it, but that’s the way things are.

The conclusion I have reached on that of course, is that the greater the time span since your last interaction and the more courses you’ve done since then, the more hypocrisy you will be privileged to be witness to. Like people claiming to be your best buddies after having thoroughly despised you over the course of half a lifetime.

It seems as if people are so diffident about themselves that they can’t even decide whom they like and whom they don’t. They seem so lost that at times you begin to wonder whether they are indeed the ones of whom it was so appropriately said that they are to be pitied rather than censured. Come to think of it I don’t even get why companionship is so highly over rated. Why does one have to prove every bit of his stand over and over again? Can’t he be doubtful and still be happy. Can’t he spend the years learning and when 40 stands up to say that I am a self made man.

Yet, we move on…and then the realization hits home that for some reason, it seems to be this very hypocrisy that gets people places. Look down upon it if you will. Frown upon those you deem to be that way or the ones you term sycophants…but after a certain point of time, people start saying it’s jealousy that causes it…and it’s not because they’re tired of hearing you say what you think…it’s mainly for they’ve understood and chosen the course they wish to follow. Would you care to do it? Your call. Do you do it already? Think and the answer may shock you…

That of course brings one back a full circle to the question of just who you are! Are you the person you imagine when you’re with yourself? Are you the person the ones around you think you are? Or are you just an elusive construct that nobody including you ever gets to see?

At the end of the day, it all depends on the confidence one places in oneself. That’ what will determine the definition one chooses to choose, so to speak. It’s a function of the person one wishes one was correlated to the person one has been successful at projecting and of course, the person one realizes as perhaps existing…with the twist of course coming from the element of honesty one is willing to throw in when pronouncing judgment in each of these areas.

Ah well, as Bruce Dickinson once said, “Maybe someday I’ll be an honest man. Upto now, I’ve done the best I can…” Wasted Years indeed…

Namaste or Nee-Hao

It is popular belief that China is going to be the next economic giant. In fact, the anti-American wishful predict that China will become the new world power and dwarf the hated USA.

Surprisingly (but not too much, knowing how westerners have traditionally been racists against everything Indian), very few people predict India as the next world power. I believe that these predictions are flawed on both political and economic grounds.

Economically, China has a top-down model that has worked amazingly well to transform the country from the starving level where it was left by Mao Tze Tung to the developing level where it is now. But this model has relied mostly on cheap exports to the USA, the good old Far-Eastern model. Worse: it has been largely driven by government rather than by entrepreneurs, which means that China has not raised a generation of entrepreneurs that can take that model and extend it to a domestic market. Exporting to the USA is a relatively easy business model: you simply list all the things that the USA buys, and then make them cheaper. Creating a domestic market is a much more difficult task, because it has to be self-sustaining. Japan went down the same avenue and, despite being a much more advanced capitalist society than China, is still largely dependent on exports to the USA, a fact that causes pneumonia every time the USA economy catches a flue. China, with one billion people and far less powerful companies, is even more vulnerable.
One wonders what happens when the USA will force China to let its currency fluctuate (Chinese goods are so cheap because the currency is kept artificially low, something that benefits inflation in the USA but that won't last forever). One wonders what happens when Chinese companies will have to compete free and fair with American, Japanese and European companies. On the other hand, that is precisely what India has done. Government has merely enabled the transition to capitalism, which the transition has been carried out by thousands of big and small entrepreneurs, who had to develop skills to compete among themselves and with many other "offsourcing" destinations. India is one huge version of the Silicon Valley, with venture capital initially being supplied, directly or indirectly, by the USA but increasingly coming from inside India itself. India has also managed to capture skills in high technology that China can only dream of: by now, India has probably become the second software power in the world after the USA. Long-term, India's economy is better prepared than China's to compete worldwide. Its success depends less and less on cheap labor, more and more on infrastructure, skills and, in general, competitively.
Politically, it should be even more obvious that India has a great long-term advantage: it had 50 years to experiment with democracy, and it is now the largest democracy in the world, the largest of all times. Despite all the trouble with its Muslim minority and eastern separatists, India's democracy has become more and more stable. Legitimate governments and the rule of law have the advantage that people complain about policy, not about the institutions themselves. On the contrary, China is still one of the most brutal totalitarian regimes in the world. Its minorities have been appeased by the sudden economic prosperity, but discontent is rampant both in the countryside and in the cities as poor masses have to sacrifice for the army (that still controls most of the business) and the corrupt elite of capitalists. The likelihood of a Soviet-style collapse is much greater in China than in India. As the capitalist economy creates a middle class (the thing that communists used to despise as bourgeoisie), the middle class demands more power, something that neither the old-fashioned communists nor the new capitalists are contemplating.
Eventually, as Marx taught, this will lead to a class struggle and a revolution. (Right, Mao?) Socially, the wealth gap is much bigger in China (that has already created billionaires, mostly corrupt government officials) than in India. Demographically, India's population is still growing, whereas China is experiencing the biggest slow-down in the entire world: the number of people of working age per every pensioner is projected to fall from 9:1 to 2.6:1 in the next 40 years. Its rapidly ageing population will soon become a major factor. Today, early retirement is a way for China to avoid unemployment. If China is forced to increase retirement age to 65 or even 70, millions of Chinese will be jobless (they already are, but right now they receive a pension, which basically works like an unemployment benefit). Western Europe and Japan have the same problem, but they got the problem after they got wealthy enough to solve the problem (at least for a while), whereas China will probably get the problem while it is still a poor country. China is getting older faster than it is getting richer.
China is expanding its sphere of influence, particularly through acquisition of strategic resources such as oil and raw minerals. But this sounds eerily similar to what Japan did in the 1980s, when it created an inflated demand for real estate and then bought real estate at overpriced values. China's booming economy is creating inflated prices for oil and raw materials, which then China proceeds to purchase at these inflated prices. Japan learned the effect of buying in a bubble: when a slow-down occurs, the bubble bursts, and you are left with a net loss. Last but not least, China's growth relies on a stable Pacific environment and stable routes from the Pacific to its trading partners (Middle East, Africa and Latin America). Ironically, the peace that China needs is guaranteed by the USA, which China itself sees as a long-term competitor for supremacy...

On both economic and political grounds, India might be a safer bet than China.

Who are we kidding ???

A political party thinks that women are to blame for a lot of rapes because of the "provocative" clothes they wear, which arouse the animal instincts in males, who are by nature lecherous..... Apart from insulting the entire male species, this statement is not just sexist, but also perverted and escapist.

The new Pope is so conservative, that he has asked Christians to stop using condoms (what about AIDS sir?), stop family planning and he is said to be so conservative that even some senior priests have spoken out against him.

Islamic states in Asia seem to be reverting to hardcore islamic law in great numbers. This has led to incidents like the stoning to death of some women in Afghanistan and the gang rape of several girls in Pakistan......all in the name of law. These acts were actually advocated by the "independent law bodies" in these regions.

The President of the USA is so conservative that he too is anti-abortion, anti family control and his policies have sparked a wave of right-wing feeling across the nation, sparking killings, making life and travel miserable for certain communities and creating a state of paranoia so severe that a plane was grounded because passengers refused to allow on board an Arab wearing a turban!!! Things reached an all-time low when no other than Azim Premji faced such Hell in US airports that after returning he joked about changing his name!!!

The fastest growing opposition party in England openly proclaims that its view of England is as "a land for white Christians". A major political party in France believes that Algerian and black immigrants should be chucked out of France because they "are not truly French". Even a person of the standing of Zinedine Zidane was insulted by the leader of this party and the contention was that Zidane and some other players should not represent France in Euro....

Are these just one-off events? All of them? Or are they indicators that the entire world is just moving backwards into the dark ages? Or, of course, is it just me?

Theory of Relativity…

When Einstein came up with the theory of relativity, less did he know that the world will find its meaning in so many different ways and in so many walks of life? I came across this awesome article and wanted to share it with you guys. In a strange ways it shows how futile all our beliefs and faith are and all it takes to shake a pain is a bigger pain and shock. It’s a long read so stick with me for a while…should be worth your time. In the end it’s all about putting things in perspective and catching on to the lesser “evil” showing how hollow some principles have become.

Enough digressing now, here it goes…
Flight to India - $1500.
Indian kurta - $5.
Emetic to throw up - $1.
The look on your parents' faces - priceless

Grandmother was pretending to be lost in prayer, but her prayer-beads were spinning at top speed. That meant she was either excited or upset. Mother put the receiver down. "Some American girl in his office, she's coming to stay with us for a week." She sounded as if she had a deep foreboding. Father had no such doubt. He knew the worst was to come. He had been matching horoscopes for a year, but my brother Vivek had found a million excuses for not being able to visit India, call any of the chosen Iyer girls, or in any other way advance father's cause. Father always wore four parallel lines of sacred ash on his forehead. Now there were eight, so deep were the furrows of worry on his forehead. I sat in a corner, supposedly lost in a book, but furiously text-messaging my brother with a vivid description of the scene before me.

A few days later I stood outside the airport with father. He tried not to look directly at any American woman going past, and held up the card reading "Barbara".

Finally a large woman stepped out, waved wildly and shouted "Hiiii! Mr. Aayyyezh, how ARE you?" Everyone turned and looked at us. Father shrank visibly before my eyes. Barbara took three long steps and covered father in a tight embrace.
Father's jiggling out of it was too funny to watch.
I could hear him whispering "Shiva shiva!".
She shouted "you must be Vijaantee?"
"Yes, Vyjayanthi" I said with a smile.
I imagined little half-Indian children calling me "Vijaantee aunty!".

Suddenly, my colorless existence in Madurai had perked up. For at least the next one week, life promised to be quite exciting.
Soon we were eating lunch at home. Barbara had changed into an even shorter skirt. The low neckline of her blouse was just in line with father's eyes.

He was glaring at mother as if she had conjured up Barbara just to torture him.
Barbara was asking "You only have vegetarian food? Always??" as if the idea was shocking to her. "You know what really goes well with Indian food, especially chicken? Indian beer!" she said with a pleasant smile, seemingly oblivious to the apoplexy of the gentleman in front of her, or the choking sounds coming from mother.
I had to quickly duck under the table to hide my giggles.

Everyone tried to get the facts without asking the one question on all our minds: "What was the exact nature of the relationship between Vivek and Barbara?"

She brought out a laptop computer. "I have some pictures of Vivek" she said. All of us crowded around her. The first picture was quite innocuous. Vivek was wearing shorts, and standing alone on the beach. In the next photo, he had Barbara draped all over him. She was wearing a skimpy bikini and leaning across, with her hand lovingly circling his neck.

Father got up, and flicked the towel off his shoulder. It was a gesture we in the family had learned to fear. He literally ran to the door and went out.
Barbara said "It must be hard for Mr. Aayyezh. He must be missing his son."
We didn't have the heart to tell her that if said son had been within reach, father would have lovingly wrung his neck.

My parents and grandmother apparently had reached an unspoken agreement. They would deal with Vivek later. Right now Barbara was a foreigner, a lone woman, and needed to be treated as an honored guest. It must be said that Barbara didn't make that one bit easy. Soon mother wore a perpetual frown. Father looked as though he could use some of that famous Indian beer.

Vivek had said he would be in a conference in Guatemala all week, and would be off both phone and email. But Barbara had long lovey-dovey conversations with two other men, one man named Steve and another named Keith.

The rest of us strained to hear every interesting word. "I miss you!" she said to both. She also kept talking with us about Vivek, and about the places they'd visited together. She had pictures to prove it, too. It was all very confusing.

This was the best play I'd watched in a long time. It was even better than the day my cousin ran away with a Telugu Christian girl. My aunt had come howling through the door, though I noticed that she made it to the plushest sofa before falling in a faint. Father said that if it had been his child, the door would have been forever shut in his face.
Aunt promptly revived and said "You'll know when it is your child!"
How my aunt would rejoice if she knew of Barbara!

On day five of her visit, the family awoke to the awful sound of Barbara's retching. The bathroom door was shut, the water was running, but far louder was the sound of Barbara crying and throwing up at the same time. Mother and grandmother exchanged ominous glances.

Barbara came out, and her face was red. "I don't know why", she said, "I feel queasy in the mornings now." If she had seen as many Indian movies as I'd seen, she'd know why.

Mother was standing as if turned to stone. Was she supposed to react with the compassion reserved for pregnant women? With the criticism reserved for pregnant unmarried women? With the fear reserved for pregnant unmarried foreign women who could embroil one's son in a paternity suit?
Mother, who navigated familiar flows of married life with the skill of a champion oarsman, now seemed completely taken off her moorings.

She seemed to hope that if she didn't react it might all disappear like a bad dream. I made a mental note to not leave home at all for the next week. Whatever my parents would say to Vivek when they finally got a-hold of him would be too interesting to miss. But they never got a chance.

The day Barbara was to leave, we got a terse email from Vivek. "Sorry, still stuck in Guatemala. Just wanted to mention, another friend of mine, Sameera Sheikh, needs a place to stay. She'll fly in from Hyderabad tomorrow at 10am. Sorry for the trouble."

So there we were, father and I, with a board saying "Sameera". At last a pretty young woman in salwar-khameez saw the board, gave the smallest of smiles, and walked quietly towards us. When she did 'Namaste' to father, I thought I saw his eyes mist up.

She took my hand in the friendliest way and said "Hello, Vyjayanthi, I've heard so much about you." I fell in love with her. In the car father was unusually friendly. She and Vivek had been in the same group of friends in Ohio University. She now worked as a Child Psychologist.

She didn't seem to be too bad at family psychology either. She took out a shawl for grandmother, a saree for mother and Hyderabadi bangles for me.
"Just some small things. I have to meet a professor at Madurai university, and it's so nice of you to let me stay" she said. Everyone cheered up. Even grandmother smiled.
At lunch she said "This is so nice. When I make sambar, it comes out like chole, and my chole tastes just like sambar".
Mother was smiling. "Oh just watch for 2 days, you'll pick it up."
Grandmother had never allowed a muslim to enter the kitchen. But mother seemed to have taken charge, and decided she would bring in who ever she felt was worthy.

Sameera circumspectly stayed out of the puja room, but on the third day, I was stunned to see father inviting her in and telling her which idols had come to him from his father. "God is one" he said. Sameera nodded sagely.

By the fifth day, I could see the thought forming in the family's collective brains. If this fellow had to choose his own bride, why couldn't it be someone like Sameera?
On the sixth day, when Vivek called from the airport saying he had cut short his Gautemala trip and was on his way home, all had a million things to discuss with him.

He arrived by taxi at a time when Sameera had gone to the University.
"So, how was Barbara's visit?" he asked blithely.
"How do you know her?" mother asked sternly.
"She's my secretary" he said. "She works very hard, and she'll do anything to help."

He turned and winked at me. Oh, I got the plot now!

By the time Sameera returned home that evening, it was almost as if her joining the family was the elders' idea.
"Don't worry about anything", they said, "we'll talk with your parents."


On the wedding day a huge bouquet arrived from Barbara.

"Flight to India - $1500.
Indian kurta - $5.
Emetic to throw up - $1.
The look on your parents' faces - priceless" it said.

Convenience: Is that all we care about???

Ever wondered how hypocrite of a society we belong to? Everything seems to have a context waiting to please us. We suddenly seemed to have lost the concept of a progressive society and moved into stagnation. It’s like all of us have dug big holes and got comfortable in there blaming everything on the stability of society as tradition. We misinterpret the term tradition to a practice crossing over the time barrier. We inherently are stubborn on the lamest argument in support of this being “What was good back then, ought to be good now”. Doesn’t that make your blood boil; doesn’t that make your conscience die a million deaths???

As a society we chose to hand pick the beliefs from our SHASTRAS not in its entirety but based on convenience. There are many stories recounted in the ancient texts and Puranas. But do we accept them all as literally true? Our parents make us have the best of education to learn the basic concepts of Solar eclipse and Lunar eclipse, even when according to our traditional scriptures those were the acts of 2 demonic figures called Rahu and Ketu who ate Sun and the Moon in some divine act to result the eclipse.

But when it comes to the caste system our parents themselves reject the best of suitors for us just based on caste and not credibility. Is it all about convenience and ego charade? One cannot become a Brahmana because of birth alone.’ Great sages like Rishyashringa, Vishwamitra and Agastya stand as illustrious examples of people who, though not born as Brahmins, became Brahmins by their penance, virtues and attainments


It is said in the Puranas that Mahidasa, the author of Aitareya Braahmana, who became a Dwija, was the son of a Shudra woman. Jabala, who had no father to be named, was initiated into the Brahmin group by his Guru through the Upanayana ceremony. These things were possible only because they had recognised the limitations of the inherited talents and had made the system elastic and catholic in outlook. Thus it was possible for the system to last for centuries.

The origin of cast system is form chaturvarniya system. In chaturvarniya system there were four varnyas i.e.castes . These are :- Brahmins , kshatriya , vaishya and shudra . These four castes are based on occupations of people . Slowly and gradually , Brahmins were considered as the highest and most important caste below in hierarchy there were kshatriya then vaishya and lastly shudra . shudra received low status in society . They have to live miles away from locality . they were not suppose to touch any of brahmin and were not suppose to drink water from well . Brahmin tortured shudras . Brahmin have right to take education . There very much dominating . These caste system prevailed for many years in India .


In the past when socioeconomic status was inexorably tied to an inherited caste system, a caste determined marriage was the most reliable way of ensuring a continuance of the lifestyle that the parties to marriage were born into and grown accustomed to. Caste determined occupation and therefore earning power. Caste determined social status and ones role in religious practice. Caste was therefore the most important determinant of lifestyle. With such clear differences between the castes, marriages between individuals of differing castes would expose them to widely different lifestyles that could potentially lead to marital discord. This is probably the reason why matching of caste emerged as a rule of the thumb to achieve marital compatibility.


In urban India, socioeconomic status is increasingly becoming independent of caste. Occupation is no longer a matter of caste-linked inheritance. Religious and cultural practices too are becoming more homogenous across the previously well delineated caste boundaries. Lifestyles are to a great extent determined by spending power and are influenced less by caste. In this emerging new social structure, convenience therefore lies in matching earning prowess which is now decreasingly determined by caste.

Inter-caste marriages pose less of problems in terms of cultural compatibility and day to day interaction for we are all merging into a common culture. Is marriage also just another institution for us based on convenience? Is it just another way to spend life based on bounds of meaningless myths? Don’t get me wrong I don’t believe in either arranged or Love marriage. I only believe in social compatibility and having the freedom to choose our partners based on logical parameters instead of something as mind less as a sir name and all.

The caste based marriage system evolved and was stable because at the heart of it was the fact that matching castes was equivalent to matching economic power, social status and cultural lifestyle. Now, in many cases, matching of caste in marriage is no longer essential for achieving such compatibility. What is not essential will not survive. Running away with some lad who doesn’t have a future or stability and believing in the bogus phrase “Love will keep us alive” is utter foolishness, but neglecting a biological chemistry on compatibility with judgmental parameters is flat ol cruelty.



“The institution of marriage as opposed to the relationship of love has always been a matter of convenience.” – This statement should enough a nightmare for any real Indian to do something about the social hell we all are in.

Let’s consider this post as a food for your thoughts and not a biased slang against the institution of social harmony.