The Talebans business model

I asked a simple question on facebook "What is the talebans business model?" Didnt expect anything except the odd line, but Rohit Rathi truly gave it a go. This is an awesome answer - the split open income statement for the taleban :)

Revenues
- Sale of Dead Body Parts
- Sales of Girls to Rich Sheikhs
- Sales of Boys to Rich Sheikhs
- Moneys Received from Hijacking Operations
- Other Misc. Ransoms
- Booking of Protection Revenue as Period Income
- Gains resulting from shorting commodities of terrorized Nations

Expenses

RM Purchases
- Chemicals
- Nuclear Waste
- Bullets

Selling & Admin Expenses
- Recruitment
- Video Mfg. Charges
- Salaries
- Event Management Charges (for Executions and Public Flogging)
- Terror Planning Department
- One way Airline tickets purchased

Depreciation

Interest

Cool things on the web

I like to think that I am a "call-it-like-i-see-it" person. I saw something cool, and I shall call it cool.

Check out the tag cloud here. http://indiaatwar.com/

The tag cloud is actually like a bunch of aerial floating words, very visually exciting. Also, the firm that made the website. id8 or something. 

I am working on a rather large write-up about how Sidin Vadakut and other south indian gents who have been unfairly denied their success with the ladyfolk in India have been more than avenged by yoga gurus in China. Collecting data in this sensitive field puts one amidst danger and is time consuming. 

Hence, my current middle name is danger and I am consuming time. 

Please waiting. I am maintained yesterday.  Welcome to take my blog again.

The question of moderate Islam

In an interesting article on how Islamic scholars are now critically studying the Koran, Nicolas Kristoff suggests that Islam is fundamentally cool and non-MCP and promotes the equality of gender and faiths other than Islam. 

In a no-holds-barred reply (2nd from the top), Vijay S from Mumbai says that Islam was, is and will always be an intolerant and anti-equality of gender religion as proved by acts of Islamic kings since the rise of Islam. He cites examples of how reading Mein Kampf will not change the acts of Hitler, similarly reading and interpreting the Koran in a more moderate vein will not change the facts of the fundamentalists past actions and the nature of their future behavior.

I'm uncertain of which way the truth lies, being far less well read than either of the two gents. I hope Kristoff is right, but I fear that it may be Vijay who is closer to the truth. If that is the case, then Kristoff and the Islamic scholars efforts will be similar to Gandhi's when he asked India to stay as small villages. It was probably a fantastic idea, but unfortunately the industrial revolution was making rich people out of small people at the low price of the planet, which in any case was a long term issue, so it was hard to resist then, as it is hard to resist now.I need to go turn up the air conditioning now.

High on technology, Low on wisdom

Paul MacCready, back in 1998, made a compelling presentation about what a mess of our solitary planet we have made. 

His talk (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/paul_maccready_on_nature_vs_humans.html) speaks of a nature vs. humans battle and very very sadly - Humans are defeating nature.Humans are not winning however. There can be no winners in this battle, save nature, and Save nature, is the one thing we will not do.

All the kings horses and all the kings men, however many PhDs they have between them, and however many compelling presentations they make, will not be able to turn around the disaster that the industrial revolution brought about. 

Mortality rates, world health and other such civilised issues are some of the prime examples of how "civilized" behavior will destroy our civilization. 

Perhaps I'm in a doomsday mood but all this information and knowledge that we all share globally is fairly worthless in the larger scheme of things. Its good to understand the eco-system with, but it works to destroy the very eco-system we exist in.

Since its all coming to a close, we might as well get in another drink - I'm buying.

Awesome quote!

Charles de Gaulle  - "The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs."

Dharma and Indian Elections

Ashok Bankers Ramayana leaves you evaluating every action under the dharma lense. A true soldier of dharma as defined in 2009, Arun Bhatia , is contesting the elections in Pune. 

If Rama was banished and faced many asuras, so has Mr. Bhatia. All we the Puneites can do is give this man what he deserves, more importantly what we need - A true leader and not a dirty vote-bank oriented playing the caste/religion/money card corrupt-to-the-core politician like a certain Suresh K (I am not referring my ex-boss, the dude, who is totally awesome and I believe would make an awesome Prime Minister!)

Most of the well meaning folks in India go to work for MNCs/themselves/anything else rather than get our hands dirty with the politics of India. Self included. What can 1 person do? Might as well take care of myself, country gets my taxes, which they dont deserve anyways. We all lack the stomach and/or the balls to get in the ring.

Arun Bhatia is the man. He gets in, fights the fair fight, even against dirty SOBs such as the aforementioned SOBS who will never fight the fair fight. I desperately hope he wins. I dont think we, the educated middle class, can do shit about it by merely casting our vote.

I propose that we bribe our househelp and close-by poor people to elect Arun Bhatia, just as other politicians are bribing their vote-banks (My talented cousin Kunal explains why here). Mr. Bhatia doesnt have money and has ideals, most of us are the opposite. So lets do this - Tell all the househelp, menial labor everybody we know that we will give them INR 100 or 200 or whatever if they go vote for the Nagara and then Arun Bhatia wins! So possibly they are encouraged to push others as well. Variable performance based compensation!!!!!

Bankers Ramayana - More than just a story

Ashok Bankers Ramayana is much much more than a retelling of an age old tale. All the books do exactly what the Ramayana is meant to do, teach the reader the path of dharma. Banker has done a great job of creating situations where the choice to path of righteousness is a hard one, and shown the reader that the choice is almost never the easy one, but Rama, a true soldier of dharma, will choose it nonetheless.

A couple of other things come across more saliently as I read Bridge of Rama. 

Firstly, the author uses the character of Lakshman to differentiate good from great. Lakshmans frustrations, anger and despondance depicted through this book are but natural for even the best of men in that situation. Lakshman is not a weak man, nor a bad one (Black and white are the colors of the Ramayana, for grey, we need to wait for Mba), but he is not a perfect man, he is not Rama. And this is the tale of Rama. Differences between the evil Ravana and Rama are not hard to find even in the childish depictions of the Ramayana that we are accustomed to. Although I am glad that Banker's Ramayana presents Ravana, lanka and rakshasas as truly evil, rather than the standard "Oh Ravana, the pious, the meditative, the ten-headed super-worshipper who just happened to kidnap Sita and even then, treated her nice, because he was all of the above". But I digress, showing a difference of opinion, and the high road choices of Rama as against Lakshman,  highlights to the reader how virtuous a man Rama truly was. 

Secondly, Rama's acts in the book can be interpreted in the context that one is presently in. Me, being the businessman, and thanks to Rajendra Upadhyay's wonderful class on lessons in leadership from world literature while at ISB, find learnings to be applied to everyday business life. I could state all the things that I see as key learnings from the books, but then, you might not read the books.

GO BUY THE BOOKS NOW!

Financial Smarts/Corporate Governance, no longer a western stronghold

In what I sense as a sea change in the global attitude towards Eastern banks and financial systems, Mckinsey Quarterly published an interview with the chairman of ICBC, where Mr. Jiang Jianqing is telling Mck how ICBC came to be a bank that has not only survived the global disaster but is currently growing and stabilizing in terms of corporate governance. Their goals are ambitious and their plan is clear. 

In another interview, also conducted by Dominic Barton, a director at the Shanghai office, John Thornton, erstwhile President of Goldman Sachs and now an independant director for ICBC, China Netcom and various other firms tells Mck how Chinese state-owned giants incorporated corporate governance in their own way. Unlike most western commentators on China, Mr. Thorntons views are much more tempered, having been part of the change, he recognizes leadership in these firms are more than just capable and talks the reader through what instituting of boards and governance meant in this context.

Having been in China for almost 2 years now, I have heard all sorts of remarks berating Chinese banking, management, capability and integrity. How high the NPAs are, how badly managed they are, how unsophisticated they are. I suspect if I was a foreigner in India or any other Asian country, I would hear similar things. That is exactly why I was surprised and fairly pleased. Possibly one of the few decent side effects of the global financial crisis.

These two articles from the worlds best paid wise guys underline a marked change in the way that the west will talk to the east in the future. Not condescending, not patronizing. As equals. 

The asian elephants march forward. Slow, steady but forward.

(Dont) Get Naked by candlelight

I doubt anyone who is going to the Naked retreats Naked by Candlelight is reading this, but this is an event that really exemplifies environmental awareness done ass-backwards. 

Their cunning plan was (they have now rescheduled to 11th Apr) to spend Earth Day's no lights hour at a mountain called Moganshan a few hours drive from Shanghai listening to music by candlelight. A lovely thought, on the surface appearing extremely eco-friendly. But anyone with half a brain can see the obvious flaw in their cunning plan.

If 200 odd people are going to travel from Shanghai to Moganshan in their cars/buses (it is not  possible to reach Moganshan by public transport alone), that is going to send a shitload of CO2 out. I doubt that listening to music in the hill will even begin to compensate.

If you want to save the planet and feel cool, just buy a plant or plant a tree. And dont go to Moganshan to do it.

What is your XXXXX?

Apart from advising everyone to shut off their lights for 1 hour a day, instead of just on March 28th, I have no other cunning ideas to save the planet.

Oh, also don't use TP, use water when you can. This actually consumes less water. If you cant understand this, let me spell it out for you. TP expands to toilet paper -> paper comes from trees -> trees grow on water and sunlight (mostly) -> trees take a long time to grow and a short time to be cut. Instead just use the water. and then wash your hands well. All inclusive, water usage is way lesser than TP. Also, its way cleaner. Ask 1 billion indians.

Ok, so everybody on facebook is now taking quizzes that tell them that they are awesome/stupid/sexy/ugly/likely to be rich/tall/gandhi. Perhaps I'm miffed that it didnt say I was likely to be rich but I think this is as much fun as it is scary. Of course, ill-informed humans have been passing judgement on each other for time immemorial now, but facebook now allows you to make this quiz (I made one, it took me 10 minutes to make a quiz that would ask you a bunch of sweet questions and then insult you no matter what, but you wouldnt know this unless you tried all combinations)

The quiz result then appears on your profile as judgement passed. The ease of doing this makes me wonder if idiots will inherit the world.

Dragonball Nauseation

Stepping away from my usual save-the-planet line of attack, I chose my words carefully to speak of junk, that i believe should have stayed in the trunk.

I was actually glad that I thought Dragonball Evolution was a lousy movie made for people of extremely limited mental capabilities. Why was I glad? Because I finally saw a movie that I completely hated for how bad it was. I was beginning to doubt that I had any standards left, since I was impressed with almost all of the movies that I saw recently.  

If this is what people like today, I'd rather watch Tom and Jerry turned into a live action movie. 

I dont know what was worse, the oh so predictable storyline, the random "east is wise and confusing" trip (with random dudes chanting "Om Namah Shivya" and Chow Yun Fat saying "
Namaste" as a goodbye to Ernie Hudson)!!!! 

I beg you, young Americans and second generation american-asians (this never includes indians btw its only people that look Chinese/Korean/Jap/Philipino), please please please don't come to the east to discover yourself if this is what you discover!

If Dragonball is a success, then it is proven that humanity is getting dumber. If not, there is still hope.

Also, if you havent got it yet, as someone who liked Dragonball may not have, This is what I am telling you - If you liked Dragonball Evolution, the movie, you are really really stupid. Do you understand? "Namaste"

Stop complaining and buy some plants

On my daily dose of ted, i saw a 4:04 minute talk by a guy called Kamal Meattle, who has figured out an almost exact way to use indoor plants to improve the air quality indoors in a massive massive way. They have demonstrated this in New Delhi, arguably one of the most polluted cities in the world. 

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kamal_meattle_on_how_to_grow_your_own_fresh_air.html

I will type out the recipe for happy indoor air as described by Kamal

3 plants are all it takes to improve air quality. They are

1. Areca Palm

2. Mother-in-laws tongue

3. Money Plant

All very commonly found and meant to survive easily. 

2 Things deeply impressed me about this talk. 

First, guys with non-american and non-scandinavian accents can make fantastic presentations.

And second, an extremely powerful message can be communicated in under 5 minutes. 

Kamal's talk underlines the strength of a short, sweet and powerpacked message and walking the talk. Please go check it out.

All them great ideas seem taken...

I thought I had thought of something pretty cool when i was contemplating the "plant a tree as a gift" idea - Oh well! That one was taken...

Then on the throne another cunning plan struck me, what about all the paper thats wasted in printing multiple copies of books, considering that we have technology to e-read now...hence came my cunning plan of the IBook, a digital reader which works like a book, with encryption so that books cant be duplicated for free (but basically relying on the goodness of humanity for revenue). I also thought of sending Steve Jobs an email, following which he would hand over control of Apple to me and go to the Himalayas to be one with nature. 

Alas, there are more cunning people than I thought.

Sony and various others have already done this.  A long, long time ago. Google just put half million books on the net for free! These are books published prior to 1929, when IPR wasnt big and you could write letters without having 4 page disclaimers.

I wish i could get the reader in China. There are barely any english paper books available

Lesson for the day for me: Instead of blogging first and doing the research later, i shall attempt to reverse the order.

TED

If you haven't beent to www.ted.com yet, you absolutely must right now. Stop reading this and go there.

If you are still here, thanks a ton! What is TED. Its a forum about ideas worth sharing, quite unlike this blog, which is mostly crap. TED is global thought leadership in one neat website. You better have some decent bandwidth though!

Enjoy! 

Plant a tree

Nayana sent me an interesting email today, which shows how the amount of water consumed in Mumbai in one day on Holi would be sufficient for the irrigation of Rajasthan for 1 year. Wow! 

This made me question the environomics of celebrations of all kinds. Diwali, Christmas, Eid, Chinese New Year!

Gifts, eating out, firecrackers. Each of these carry a rather large environmental footprint that is hard to reverse. Here is an idea to start a reverse trend...(this is not a new idea, but i thought of it while on the throne, hence it deserves to be blogged about)

Everytime you want to give a gift to someone, plant a tree. If they have a garden, plant it in their garden. If not, plant it somewhere else. Or fund someone who will plant a tree. 

Dont give them flowers, give them a tree. Trees are awesome! (must thank Nicolas for teaching me the power of this phrase ;)

If there are still some folks asking why is planting a tree a good thing. Let me explain, as simply as i possibly can.

Trees consume carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. You, me and cars consume oxygen and produce carbon dioxide. Lots of carbon dioxide will kill you and me. Now, go plant a tree. Also, feel free to pee on your neighbors trees and blame Al Gore.

India Works

Digressing from the planet for the day, I have to say something about Delhi 6. Its as good as slumdog, if not better! It proves that even we can look at ourselves objectively and make a movie that doesnt gloss over reality.

In Slumdog, the director was a firang, in Delhi 6 - the protagonist was, for all practical purposes, a firang!

Ram vs Allah for bullshit reasons - Yup

Real Delhi (Chandni Chowk) rather than fancy delhi (South Delhi) - Yup

Hope for a better tomorrow - Yup

A R Rahman brilliant score - Yup

Real characters, real emotions - You betcha - Probably better than slumdog where I thought the teen aged salim and jamal were too too convent educated to be "slumdogs"

Finally, there is a bit of sugar coating but not too much....the truth of the so called "heart of delhi" and the "spirit of mumbai" lies exposed.

We have no food, so we make up for it with love! 

We have no water in our taps, but our tears never dry up...we can cry for everything and nothing!

Our divisions are wide and deep - be it religion, caste, class or color! There is no f#$king escaping this...as exposed by the Kabir of Tarun Tejpal, Jamal of SM and Gobar/Jalebi of Delhi 6.

There are no truly actionable solutions, are there?

Who do we blame? The mughals? The Brits? The americans? 

Humans are a lousy race....it just manifests differently in different places but, on average, we are a horrible horrible race.

Thank God our films and our books are now questioning and attempting to unite us, not by ignoring the reality that we live in, but rather by holding up a mirror to our face, so we can see in horrific detail who we are and what we are doing to ourselves.

Now, how about an Oscar for Mr. Mehra?

The choices we make

Following my own set agenda for this blog, I'm going to talk about simple choices we all make everyday, and their impact on the planet. I wonder why I'm so concerned about the planet? Possibly because its the only we have. And summers have been getting worse....thats worth trying to fix !

Sadly, I suspect the morbid truth is that whatever Al Gore and millions of others try to do for the planet - we are on a slippery downhill slope of self-destruction and Live Earth, Earth Day etc etc will at best slow down the slide, not stop it. The human race is terrible and destructive. Our greatest strength is the cause for what will be the end of us. It is our ability to take the learnings of one generation, apply them in the next and move forward with intelligence rather than instinct. Science & Technology - The wheel, written communication, the knife, the gun, the printing press, the car,the aeroplane and the internet are all our greatest achievements and also irreversible paths to the end of this planet as we know it. Prove me wrong! I double dare you.

But coming back to the choices we make, let me start with a very personal choice for me. One that I have been battling with for some time now and one where I have finally chosen a side.

To kill or not to kill, that is the question. Eating meat, i.e. killing animals for food. There are largely 3 reasons cited as justifications to killing animals for food.

1. Its healthier than eating plants.

2. Its necessary to keep the ecosystem in balance.

3. Its tastier than eating plants.

Out of these, I agree wholeheartedly with pt. 3. Yes, animals are way way tastier than plants. The other 2 are just myths or bullshit that made sense at some point perhaps, but in todays context dont make any sense whatsoever. 

WHY WHY??? you are a crazy vegetarian!!! 

No. You are ignorant or are choosing to ignore. I am not a crazy vegetarian.

1. Meat is bad for you - healthwise and wealthwise. The risks of eating animals are way way way higher. If its clean meat, you will have heart trouble. If not, you could get much worse stuff - refer Mad Cow disease and other terrible ailments.

2. Eating animals is not keeping the ecosystem is check. The ecosystem is so screwed as a result of factory farming that we all, repeat we all need to stop eating meat right now for another million years to bring it back to a point when we can talk about eating meat to maintain balance. Balance is when you hunt a chicken or a deer with bare hands, sometimes you win, sometimes the neighboring lion eats you. Balance is not defined as buying meat in a store.

Your thoughts?

A sense of purpose

Finally, perhaps, this blog may have found a sense of purpose. After having blogged on anything, everything, and more often than not, nothing, I have found a topic that I feel I will be able to write blogs that are interesting, informative and implementable. Well, at least one of the above, some of the time.

Planet Earth, how we are messing with it and how we can begin to fix it. 

It all started for me when Al Gore invented global warming. Apart from letting the biggest idiot in the world become president of US&A, Al Gore's biggest crime was global warming. If it wasnt for him, the world would have been perfectly ok - no warming, no climateincrisis, nothing - right uptill the day everything went up in flames. The Day after Tomorrow, so to speak.

After you see his spectacular documentary An Inconvenient Truth, if you are not moved to action - then there is obviously something wrong with you. You may think he is alarmist, (I personally think he might be playing it down a little bit, just to not panic you too much), but you cannot deny the issue.

There are a million other issues to be dealt with like education, healthcare, free speech,human rights,  democracy, protectionism, but this one seems to be closer to my heart than others. So I will try and stay close to this track from now on.

Here is an interesting video, for those with ample bandwidth - Its from Ted.com which is a fantastic site to say the least.

Its about how Willie Smits converted a patch of land in Indonesia from a barren, fire-prone worthless patch to a beautiful, self-sustaining, green landscape. Its not simple to do, its not a quick fix - but these are beginnings of a solution to a problem that we, humans, have brought upon ourselves. 

Save the rainforest, Save the world!

The history of the stick

Our unfriendly neighbourhood state(barely) of Pakistan is going from bad to worse...Here's an article that I thought was interesting

http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/2009/02/27/the-pakistan-army-and-the-history-of-the-stick/

"If you use a stick too often, the stick will take over" Stephen Cohen

Life mein risk middle class style

Risk is an over-used term and an underutilized resource.  Here's a theory, not supported by data or anecdotal evidence. Just a theory.

This goes out to all my middle class brothers and sisters across India. We are inherently not risk takers. The very rich and the very poor are. Which is why NRN and other middle class heroes truly stand out as giant exceptions and inspirations to the rest of us.

The poor kids have nothing to lose and everything to gain - This makes them braver and more likely to take a risk with everything they have, since they are at the bottom of the pyramid, and have nowhere lower to fall to.

The rich kids have a fairly sound safety net and hence can take on a decent amount of risk without fearing complete decimation of their future.

Us, the burgeoning middle class, have just enough (we always have just enough, however much we earn) and so we find it extremely hard to step out on a ledge and dive, we arn't sure our parachute is big enough.  In the recent past, many of us have stepped out on that ledge and taken the dive - and its paid off, some no doubt have crashed and burned.

But my theory is simply this, all other things being equal, middle class manohar will not take the risk that rich ramesh or poor pratap will. 

The Ramayana movie!

My fixation with Ashok Bankers Ramayana continues.... I just started reading "Siege of Mithila" and its as enthralling as the first.

I wish there already was a movie based on Ashok Bankers books, but sadly there isn't yet. I read on his blog (readerswrite section) that there was interest from a US studio to turn the books into movies, but that seems to be falling through. Ashok seems fairly dissappointed with that turnout. 

All I can say is that JRR Tolkein's Lord of the Rings had to wait approximately 50 years for his work to be turned into a movie.  His book was good, but he couldnt even get a publisher to publish his second volume, hence LoR ended up being the only one at that time. 

Your books are brilliant and way way way ahead of their time, inspite of the story being thousands of years old. It will take a while for any moviemaker to be able to execute what you have envisioned. Hopefully, a day will come within my lifetime when it does happen!

Slumdog (no?) Surprise

Slumdog Millionaire swept the Oscars with 8 wins! Wow! It was a fantastic movie and deserved every accolade it has received. I'm very proud that a film made in India, with a large part of the crew and cast as Indians has won Oscars. I wish everyone would let it rest at this sweet taste of victory for a great movie which was about India and made in some part by Indians. 

But it won't rest there. It never has. The press and the khadi-clad activists (last standing upholders of our sanskriti and samskar) will have a field week, month or year perhaps...

The great sense of national pride that was deemed lost when Jamal jumped into a shithole to make it to Amitabh has no doubt been restored, nay doubly replaced by 8 shiny Oscars. 

Another thought that has always got me a bit pissed is how people always want to associate ourselves with the success of unrelated folks using ridiculous threads. Take for example desi rockers who pride themselves on the fact that Freddy Mercury was in fact born Farukh Balsara in Parsi Colony in Mumbai. SO WHAT!

Another one that gets my goat everytime is "we invented zero".  It's been approximately 2500 years now. Can we move on to a new source of national mathematical pride?

Of course the question is where do you draw the line between distant relation to the event and not so distant.....any thoughts?

Fame, fortune, fun...its all mine!!!!!!

Not!

But hey - Ashok Banker, yes, the Ashok Banker of the Ramayana series fame visited my blog and answered my question about the spelling of Rama. I feel like the kid who actually saw Santa Claus. 

A huge kudos to Ashok for being uber-cool and unbelievably down to earth!

Being stuck in China, all I have is Prince of Ayodhya, but hopefully someone will travel to India soon, and I will be able to talk them into carrying 3 kgs of books for me!

I didn't see the much famed Paul van Dyk of house/trance fame last night. Instead, I attended a wine appreciation class at my friend Matthieu's company www.yangjiu.com. It was excellent, with antipasti and Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay. I learnt some pretty funky stuff about wine. Whats great about Matthieu's style of conducting the class is that he is just a friend telling you about something he knows rather than an exclusivist wine expert who is throwing morsels of information down from his ivory tower of knowledge. His style is extremely relaxed and that helps you let down your guard, ask some silly questions and enjoy the wine.

Here is something I learnt yesterday that I had absolutely no clue about before.

Port wine is a fortified wine. The fermentation process is halted before all the sugar from the grapes is converted to alcohol by adding alcohol externally. This is why ports are generally fruitier and sweeter. For the less informed, such as myself - this is wine making 101 

1. Grow grapes

2. Crush grapes

3. Store in big containers and by changing the temperature upwards a little, allow the yeast (micro-organisms) to convert the sugar in the grape juice to alcohol. They eat the sugar and "reject" the alcohol.

4. Either this solution is bottled directly, or aged in casks.

After this, you buy the wine, invite me and then we drink the wine! If Matthieu is reading, please let me know if I got stuff wrong ;)

The Story of My Assassins

The advantage of not blogging for a long time is that I have tons on my mind and none on my blog!

I read Tarun Tejpals second book The Story of My Assassins recently and it was fantastic in a refreshingly Indian way! He shows you the dirty viscera of India, not the lovely shiny bindi walla face and sari-draped, yet sexy midriff. This is India Uncut, raw and brutal. This is the India that middle-class Sam has blocked out of cognition all his life...If you are reading this, you probably blocked it out too. So go out there and buy this fantastic book. 

I cant express how much I hate shitty excuses for authors like Shobha De and Arundhati Roy. F$#king shitall, soft porn writers is all they really are. So you took freaking 7.4 pages to describe some womans breast, that doesnt make you a great writer, it just makes you an inefficient one.

Also Arundhati Roy should be taken out and shot twice, at least, once for being a shitty author, and twice for being a priority-less dumbf#$k activist who doesnt know her ass from her elbow.

As a student of economics, my belief is that resources should go to where they will give the maximum return. As an idiot, Ms Roys belief is that effort should be expended to make some publicly poor people happy. Irrespective of how many other people will stay hungry/poor/waterless as a result of her activism. As you can see, she is stupid and should be shot, at least twice.

Weekend coming up, with a football match lined up. I hope we win. I will dedicate the victory to the defeat of idiots like A. Roy and Shobha De, and the rise of brilliant and authentic Indian authors like Tarun Tejpal and Ashok Banker.

Ashok Banker's Ramayana

I just finished reading Ashok Banker's Prince of Ayodhya, and it was absolutely awesome. As some american dude mentioned in a letter to him here, J.R.R. Tolkein's work is childs play compared to this.

An unfair comparison since the Ramayana is a story that was in existence before, and Ashok is retelling it in a contemporary way, whereas Lord of the Rings was an original piece of work. However, having read the first piece of his work, I have to read the rest. 

Perhaps in some strange, late attempt for me to connect with my hindu roots, (albeit in a pop way), I also bought the Mahabharata TV series when I was in India. The Mahabharata was badly produced then, and it looks terrible now, but I'm skimming past the quality of the production to absorb the story in a quick way (as I said - this is 21st century pop hinduism at its worst).

I can only hope Ashok Banker writes the Mahabharata soon....

I still have a question for Ashok and all other well versed folks. If we say and write राम and not रामा in Hindi, then why is it Rama everywhere? Same question for all the hindi other words that have an "a" at the end when written in English?