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!

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!

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 ;)

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?