Astride Three Continents
By Chandan Sen Arms and the Man Dr. Rajendra Pachauri and T.E.R.I. Bhanu Banerjee Bill Wood and the Eagle Annuals Poverty and Illegal Immigration Cricket at Vivekananda Park Distant Cousin Bachchu Dada Distinguished Professor D. N. Bose Skills Stones of the Silicon Type The Joys of Soccer Bela De Of Yesteryear Deep Thinking (Achtung! Achtung!) Artifacts of Civilization Austerity Versus Opulence The Advent of a New Year The Wisdom of Crowds Half-confident, Half-despairing The Tactics of Success Bengali and English Proverbs and Sayings The Song of Hiawatha “Solaris” and Its Creator Creativity Of Creation, Preservation and Destruction Devotion Survival Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish Steve Jobs, speaking at a commencement ceremony at Stanford University some years ago, told three stories the gist of which I reproduce here. Apparently, Steve was given up for adoption soon after his birth. His biological mother had stipulated that he must go to college and so his foster parents, neither of whom were college graduates, paid for his tuition at an expensive college. Two Cheers for Our Leaders A recent G-8 summit in Italy provides food for thought on a number of issues. They seem to have agreed to a two-degree rise in temperature vis-à-vis the pre-industrial level, and that is all. The 80 percent decrease in greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050 is too vague to be of any immediate use, but might serve as the starting point for future global climate-change conferences. Creative Negotiations Let’s face it. We share planet Earth and many other things besides, with our fellow creatures. Only an unfair person like Nikita Kruschev can brazenly say, “What is mine is mine; what is yours is negotiable.” But perhaps Kruschev missed his vocation and should have been a standup comedian like Jay Leno. Did you watch Jay one late night last spring? He was busy regretting a recent investment he’s made. that he’d bought a Chrysler dealership in Mexico City. The Billboard Customer Consciousness Business Practices Going Dutch? Kisan Evocative Songs A Sociological Conundrum The Usefulness, or Otherwise, of Books The Cistern and the Fountainhead Lily the Pink Love of the Romantic Kind If I am to write about romantic love I’d rather use a paintbrush than a pen, for affairs of the heart need a deft and delicate touch. In my opinion, love that is reciprocated leads to a happy ending - but that does not make for good literature. It is, rather, unrequited love, or love gone awry, that has been a favorite topic of the great masters. Literature abounds with examples of such love. Charles Dickens, in his book Great Expectations, writes about Pip’s undying devotion to Estella, who spurns his overtures. He suffers dreadfully and writes in the first person - perhaps the novel is autobiographical. I don’t remember if Estella finally succumbs to Pip’s advances, since the book actually belonged to my sister and I got bored after reading halfway through it. Why on earth did Pip persist in the face of such rejection, I asked myself? Somerset Maugham, in his classic tale of unrequited love, wrote Of Human Bondage in which a man falls in love with a woman, I think she was a waitress, and is rebuffed, goes away for a few years, but is drawn back to her irresistibly, only to be turned away again. Oh, what an unhappy man he was! Finally, in A.J. Cronin’s book, The Judas Tree, a man ruins a woman’s life, though I don’t remember exactly how, and disappears for thirty years, having tired of her. He then returns and repeats his dreadful work by ruining her daughter’s life! Cronin, always a dark and depressing writer, excels himself in this book. Ultimately, the man is filled with remorse, but since he cannot undo his wrong, hangs himself from a Judas tree. The tree is named after the Biblical character, Judas, who if you remember, betrayed Christ. Yes, the lesson is that true love is never to be betrayed. It is one of the most mysterious and potent of humankind’s emotions. May it never go unrequited. Humor To The Rescue The use of humor can be a great way to communicate a message. People like to laugh, especially when the joke’s not on them! As the sage wrote, “Laugh and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone - for the sad old earth, if the truth be told, has worries of its own.” Slipping on a banana peel, and falling, may not be very funny to the person who falls, but it makes for great entertainment. As a writer I didn’t make much headway until I wrote a piece called “Chief Broken Tooth,” where I made fun of my own dental problems. One tends to get too serious in this world of ours, and the media is mostly responsible for reporting what they consider to be newsworthy material - all the natural and man-made disasters, murders, thefts, etc. One begins to feel that these doomsday prophets may be right till one regains a sense of proportion by reading a joke and having a good belly laugh. No wonder that laughing clubs have flourished. The entertainment industry thrives because people want to escape from the dull realities of life. My favorite humorous screen character was the Bengali actor, Bhanu Banerjee, who was also a friend of my Dad’s. I’ve met Bhanu in person and he’s just as funny in real life as he is on screen. They say that his face is like the Bengali numeral “five” - always sour, and his humor is often deadpan. Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Jim Carey, and various stand-up comedians of all shapes and sizes do a roaring business; there’s no end to the public’s demand for humor. The renowned writer, Arthur Koestler, in his book, The Act of Creation, explores what makes something funny. He brings seriousness to the study of humor, if you’ll pardon the oxymoron, that sheds some light on what people think “funny.” Features in the Readers’ Digest like “Laughter, The Best Medicine” and “Humor in Uniform” testify to the abiding popularity of the humorous, the ludicrous and the comical. Here are two jokes that I remember: An accountant went into a bookshop and asked to see a book on accountancy. The shopkeeper showed him a book and said, “This book will do half the work for you.” The accountant was delighted and replied, “Excellent! I’ll take two.” A couple celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary by eating at the same restaurant where he had first proposed, and she had accepted. She said, though, “Darling, I have a confession to make. When you proposed, and you thought that I was accepting, actually I was merely nodding to the band.” Finally, the story is told about Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, the pair that starred in many movies. When they first met, Katherine Hepburn remarked to Spencer Tracy, who was a short man, “Aren’t you a trifle too small for me?” He replied, “ Stick around, lady, and I’ll cut you down to size.” Change and Stability Did you know the average person spends more time with her co-workers than with her family? No wonder that the number of office romances is increasing. The typical young man now meets a typical young woman, either marries or does not marry her, but they have kids who go to daycare while both parents work. Soon the couple separate and go their own ways, while one or the other of the parents pays child support. The child goes to school and sees a counselor, who has her hands full by the time the child reaches adolescence. He or she will, of course, repeat this pattern when it comes to his or her turn at parenthood. I suppose it is no use lamenting the demise of the family at this late stage. Many couples don’t bother to tie the knot at all. The ding-dong battle between change and stability seems now to be weighted towards the former, at the expense of the latter. I don’t know who the winner is, or the loser. Wealth is the Prelude to Art When I was a young boy in school, I painted, wrote short stories, and experimented with electricity and electronics. My activities were more like those of an artist than a scientist. I didn’t have to worry about money because dad was a good provider, and I didn’t have to worry about food, clothes, or anything else for that matter, because mom was an excellent housewife. I painted for the sheer joy of painting, not from nature but from pictures in books and on calendars. My exuberance exceeded my talents and I was certainly no budding Picasso. But friends of the family admired my art and encouraged me to continue. But once in adulthood, the necessity of earning money put a damper on my artistic efforts. True, I still wrote, and could dash off an essay in a jiffy, but painting took a backseat in my life. In my childhood I had painted forests and mountains, trees, snowmen, castles and ships. Now in my late middle age those vivid colors of my paintings are still alive and I see them in my mind’s eye – the turquoises and aquamarines, the crimsons and purples, the golden browns and azure blues, and yes the midnight blacks and somber grays. Wealth, said Will Durant, is the prelude to art, because food must come first, followed by shelter and clothing. Yet man does not live by bread alone and the proverbial starving writer or artist is more fact than fiction. Art uplifts both the artist and the audience. Once, I listened to music, and then yearned to produce music myself. My efforts on the harmonica – my instrument of choice – delighted me more than I can say. Indeed, once a certain amount of earned money is assured, we can take heart from another of Will Durant’s sayings: When we have learned to reverence liberty as well as wealth, we too shall have our Renaissance. Think Tanks An important emerging global trend is the rise to prominence of think tanks that profess to provide an expert opinion on all public policy matters ranging from trade, economics, weapons system purchases and the like. Examples of think tanks are Citizens for a Sound Economy (US) and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (India). Think tanks started in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century and were generally funded by independent organizations so that their reports and recommendations were bias-free. Indeed, this essentially Anglo-American requirement – that high credibility required independent funding – is not quite as prevalent in the think tanks of the developing countries, and countries in transition. After the issue of funding comes the important one of scope. Should a think tank limit itself to a specific sector or should it cover a spectrum of subjects? What about the geographical area covered? Should a think tank be nationally active or should it limit itself to regional issues? Often, the choice of scope once again is determined by the leanings of the stakeholders, be they funding agencies, think tank managers or researchers. Next comes the question of staffing. One would expect PhDs to dominate the field but this is not necessarily so. Very specialized, albeit learned people, often produce too verbose or exclusive reports that busy policy makers find too tedious to read. A balance has to be struck between scholarship and readability, and here the person with a larger repertoire scores, because he paints with a broader brush, so to say. Other issues that think tanks of the world face are questions of taxation and legality. Once again, the politically astute think tank manager who is also adaptable will survive where others may perish. A final word on funding: it is prudent to have multiple revenue sources that have overlapping scopes of payment on a time scale, so that at least a minimum level of funding is assured for salaries and facilities maintenance. Indeed, many think tank researchers are forced to continue working as professors in universities because the think tank they belong to operates on a shoestring budget. Three Pyramids As one journeys through life one tends to accumulate so much knowledge and experience that one learns to “chunk” information and wisdom under different rubrics which serve as a kind of entry-point to deeper levels of meaning. The other day I told my son, who stays in Chapel Hill, to remember the food pyramid when he eats. Every honest school kid knows that carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vegetables and fruit are all essential to a balanced diet, so the “food pyramid” is a convenient, shorthand way of remembering this. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs constitutes the second pyramid on my list. Briefly, humankind must first have food, shelter and clothing. Once these basic needs have been met, there arise additional needs in the following order: safety and security needs, belongingness, recognition, and finally self-actualization. The last and ultimate need, self-actualization, is often placed first by great people like Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa, even before the lower level needs. But for ordinary folks, the other needs take precedence, in their respective order, before one thinks of self-actualization. The final pyramid that I briefly want to touch upon is Bloom’s Taxonomy of Knowledge. When you “know” a subject, you first start with knowledge, then proceed to understanding, followed by application. After that you can synthesize new knowledge and finally comes the evaluation phase. For more information, folks, hit the books or go online. Happy hunting! Confessions Of A Substitute Teacher Often, while walking down the corridor, I was pointed out by smiling students as “Reeshi’s Dad.” I bumped into Reeshi occasionally, but, true to his adolescent stature, he preferred not to be seen talking to me. He enjoyed going around with his classmates, and I marveled at the enormous camaraderie that I saw the students exhibit among themselves. Other occasions to observe kids and interact with them more deeply were the daily lunch period and the bus journey. I think the students who shared with me the daily encounter with the public transport system, saw in me a person very much like themselves, only older, who, for whatever reasons, chose not to drive but use the bus. We bus travelers have a sub-culture of our own. We know the ropes, the routes, and the occasional boredom of bus travel. The girl who used to grin and call out loudly, “Reeshi’s Dad!” has become a serious senior. The lad who skipped class as a freshman is now busy with his engineering studies. And I, a foreigner who found a place in their hearts, am still learning, teaching and marveling. As for my son—he has graduated and moved on, an alumnus of Enloe and a student at ECU. Revenue Streams
Auroville, Bhubaneshwar and Chandigarh
A sage once wrote a verse:
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne,
But tell me nymphs, what power Divine,
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
A city faces, among other problems, the issues of sanitation and water supply. Planned cities in particular, are those in which various stakeholders’ needs are satisfied, be they esthetics or functionality or both.
Indians have a head start because the ancient cities of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro were planned cities. In more recent times we take pride in three cities in particular—-Auroville, Bhubaneshwar and Chandigarh.
Auroville has a unique, central Matri Mandir which is a delightful structure in which sunlight streams in from the top and sides to create a pleasing ambience to meditate and mull things over. Besides this, structured roads and sectors are designed to facilitate living both at present and in the future. Auroville was designed by the ashramites of Aurobindo ashram and especially by the Mother.
Bhubaneshwar is called the City of Temples. About 600 ancient and modern temples dot the landscape, while wide roads and many well-designed institutions make life worth living. There are major Indian and foreign companies like Satyam, Infosys and Nethawk (Finnish). Contemporary Bhubaneshwar was designed in 1946 by the German architect Otto Konigsberger.
Chandigarh is the capital of two Indian States, Haryana and Punjab, and boasts a University, Punjab University, which I had the honor of visiting in 1972 when I attended a one-month summer school in Physics during my BSc, having won the NSTS or National Science Talent Search Scholarship of the NCERT, or National Council of Educational Research and Training, under UGC, or University Grants Commission. Chandigarh was designed by three architects: The French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier, the American architect-planner Albert Mayer and the Polish architect Matthew Nowicki.
As people migrate from villages to cities, the need for planned cities increases. But we must also improve our rural infrastructure and living conditions because obviously everyone cannot live in cities.
Zoning of cities, which I had first-hand experience of as a Century 21 real estate agent, does help to reduce unwanted effects such as bad residential conditions, while pedestrian-only city centers can reduce clutter and help to bring down noise and other pollution.
Ultimately, planned cities must grow to optimize a number of different factors, including the modern concept of sustainability. They must draw on the surrounding countryside without encroaching on it in an undesirable fashion. We owe it to future generations to plan all our cities and modernize them along state-of-the-art lines.
I recently watched the fascinating movie, “Lord of War,” on Hulu, starring Nicholas Cage as the Ukrainian-American gun runner Olarov. Private gun dealers to this day ply a lucrative “trade” second only to national arms suppliers which, in decreasing order of magnitude, are : US, UK, Russia, France and China.
In the movie, Olarov repeatedly justifies his “profession” by saying, successively, that his arms were used by people for self-defense, that if he stopped supplying arms, someone else would quickly take his place, that governments sometimes turned a blind-eye to his operations and indeed, encouraged him, covertly or overtly, to step in when their hands were tied.
Payment for the arms was made in various ways. Cash was preferred by the arms dealer but was not always preferred. Diamonds, drugs and even timber were sometimes used to pay for the arms. The cold war of the sixties through eighties saw the largest arms build-up in history, and when the cold war ended a huge stockpile of Soviet arms appeared on the market.
People like Olarov profited by becoming middle-men to supply arms to conflict-ridden regions like Liberia, Monrovia and Sierra Leone. It was further shown how American soldiers often left behind their arms after fighting a war, since it was cheaper to buy new arms than to transport the old ones back to America. These abandoned munitions were also a great source of wealth for people like Olarov.
The question arises as to the moral propriety of gun-running. Many governments in the world at present are not democracies. Of those that are, very few have free and fair elections. Thus the strong arm of governments, be they so-called democracies or one-man dictatorships or military juntas, is used to keep people terrorized and in-check.
It’s a moot point whether arms given to freedom-fighters solve any problem or not. In the movie, Olarov’s rival, a seasoned gun-runner, admits to supplying both Iraq and Iran with arms during their brutal war in the mid-eighties. He says he normally “takes sides” but in this particular conflict, hoped that neither side won.
Indeed, the longer that a war rages, the more money these gun-runners stand to make and, in the same vein, peace is anathema to them.
When Olarov’s brother is killed and his wife deserts him, he finds himself in custody with a variety of charges against him. But he confidently asserts to his captor, the law-enforcer Valentine, that he would soon be released—-and indeed, this does happen.
Apparently, he had friends in high places. As the saying goes, killing one person is murder but aiding in the massacre of thousands of innocent people is war, or patriotism, or any one of the many euphemisms that are applied to present-day barbarism.
Most people have heard of the famous, Nobel Prize winning Indian scientist, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri. Recently I had occasion to exchange some emails with him. Dr. Pachauri is 74, and from the same school as myself—-La Martiniere. Only, he’s from the Lucknow branch while I’m from the Calcutta branch. Also, coincidentally, he’s a Ph.D. from NCSU.
Dr. Pachauri is founder and president of T.E.R.I., The Energy and Resources Institute. If you visit their website you’ll see the large number of projects, and diverse activities that they’re involved in. I had occasion to deal with Dr. Banwari Lal, of TERI, in connection with a suggestion that I made regarding using a TERI product, OilZapper, in the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
At my behest, Dr. Banwari had submitted his proposal to the EPA/BP website and we are now awaiting results. Meanwhile, the 700 people that TERI employs are busy with solar power, improved seeds and the like. There are about 20 or so divisions within TERI, as the website will show.
Another project that I recently initiated involves placing a Siemens CSP solar power unit in the Thar Desert in Rajasthan. I wanted to involve the firm, IDEO, in the project because of their innovative methodology, and lack of a hidebound process.
Let’s see what the two projects materialize into. In the meantime, heartiest congratulations to Dr. Pachauri and TERI for
winning the Nobel Peace Prize!
The heroes of one’s youth have long since passed away, but as long as I’m alive they will remain in my memory. Stalwarts like Uttam Kumar, Hemanta Mukherjee and, yes, Bhanu Banerjee provided the relief that was so needed in a youth filled with long hours of studying.
One day when I was in high school my dad suddenly said, “Come, I’ll take you to Bhanu’s house.” I asked, “Which Bhanu?” And he replied, “The Bhanu. Bhanu Banerjee. The comic actor you love so much.”
I was astounded. Never could I have imagined that my dad knew the famous Bhanu. As we drove toward’s Bhanu’s house in Tollygunge, dad told me how he, his sister, brother, and some friends had founded a successful entertainment troupe called “Shur O Jhankar”, meaning “The Melody and The Chorus.”
Pisima, my Dad’s sister, was the singer of the group while Chhotokaku, Dad’s younger brother, played the tabla. Dad himself played the esraj and Bordi, my cousin, who was much older than me, also sang and played the sitar.
Apparently, one day in Calcutta, an acquaintance told dad about a young man from Dacca, now in Bangladesh, who could do “caricature.” Since the troupe did not have a resident caricature artist, dad and the other members of the troupe decided to give Bhanu a try. And he was a success.
Soon after that, dad married and became too busy with his engineering day job with the British firm AEI (Associated Electrical Industries) to have time to devote to music. The troupe disbanded, and Bhanu found a new career in films.
We reached Bhanu’s house just as dad finished speaking. It was a modest home considering how famous he was. Dad knocked on the door and Bhanu appeared. His first words and gestures made me laugh.
Touching dad’s balding head with his hand he asked (and these were his first words), “Oh my God, Niranjan, what’s happened to you?” The same lopsided facial expression, like the Bengali numeral “five”… the same deadpan humor…the same dhoti Punjabi.
After some reminiscences it was decided that we’d return for Saraswati Puja some weeks later and indeed we did, this time accompanied with my mother and sister.
As for Bhanu’s screen career, he had a string of successes, the names of some of which I remember—-Bhranthi Bilas, Bhanu Pelo Lottery, Bhanu Goenda Jahar Assistant etc. Jahar Roy was an able second to Bhanu, as was Robi Ghosh, who came much later, but Bhanu stands head and shoulders above any other Bengali comedian.
Satyajit Ray, the legendary film director, came later in the day but could not use Bhanu. It’s interesting to speculate what Bhanu would have done in Ray’s able hands as a director. Ray’s best find was Soumitra chatterjee—-but that’s a different story.
My dad, serving an apprenticeship at British Northrop in Blackburn, England, made many friends, both inside and outside the factory. The most senior person was the General Manager, Mr. Sommerville, who invited us to his house, as did Bill Wood, my dad’s closest friend.
Childhood memories can be fickle and fragmented, but I remember that we went to Mr. Wood’s house to meet his family, and that they came to our house to reciprocate. I perhaps would not have occasion to remember them had it not been for one fact. Bill Wood’s son, just entering college in 1961, gave us four children’s annuals called Eagle Annuals.
From 1961 to 1971, or well into my college years, those four volumes served to refresh and entertain me. They made my imagination soar. I got to know all the comic strips by heart, from Dan Dare, pilot of the future, to Waldorf and Cecil. There were construction projects like space scooters and garden ponds—-all age appropriate—-and there were articles on the Greek Parthenon and rousing tales of adventure.
Indeed, if British culture could be ensconced into fish and chip packages, the Eagle Annual did it, figuratively—-so much so that when I visited England again in 1998, looking for a present for my 13 year old son, I first asked to see Eagle Annuals.
But alas, the shopkeeper told me that Eagle had stopped publication in 1985, (I think), and then smiled, a trifled apologetically when I finally settled on a Tintin.
When I came to the US a second time was to go online to Amazon and buy a vintage Eagle Annual, shipped all the way from England, to feed my nostalgia and take me back to my childhood fantasy land.
Yes, Bill Wood, Sr. and Jr., you did something exceptional when you parted with your valuable Eagle Annuals, for today when I put pen to paper I can still see myself in the wonder that was Greece and the legend that was Rome, not to talk of gambolling tricerotops in runaway spaceships!
If poor people in Mexico are so impoverished that they risk illegal border crossings, then they should be helped by the Mexican government and, at the same time, encouraged to stay in Mexico.
If necessary, the UN can help Mexico with funds and other resources to look after their poor. If necessary, the rich nations of the world can increase their financial contributions to the UN.
If businesses and farms in the US are short of workers, the guest worker program can be rigorously applied. If the demographic profile of the US were to change drastically, we might have untold indiscipline and havoc.
We cannot improve the lot of the poor by impoverishing or greatly inconveniencing the rich. We cannot buy the argument that we need illegal workers, working at or below the minimum wage, when these same workers cost the US government a huge amount in health care and education.
Undocumented border crossings are, above all, a security risk. It is sane to put up a border fence and increase border patrols. At the same time, allow legal workers to come in.
Finally, problems can be solved in the right way, not the wrong way. Shortsighted temporary “solutions” are actually larger problems in disguise. I hope all concerned see a problem and its thoughtful solution, not an ad hoc patching up that will do more harm than good.
Lessons from Mass Migrations
Okay, so we humans all originated from a common root, somewhere in East Africa more than two million years ago. Then, because of climate changes and the shifting patterns of animal migration, ancient humans moved northwards into what is now the Middle East, and finally some of our ancestors went East, and some went West.
Fast-forward a few hundred thousand years. India now has the Aryan Indus Valley civilizations and the older Dasyus of South India. Europe has been the home of Caucasians and other fair-skinned people—-fair because of the cold weather presumably, and with more or less aquiline noses.
Advancing a few more hundred years, the cities of Harappa and Mohenjodaro have been abandoned because they have become deserts, and the Aryans have intermingled with the Dasyus, barring sporadic skirmishes.
Now dawns the modern age, the age of European colonization beginning in the 16th century. My point is that early European explorers like Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus traveling to India and the New World, respectively, met with people who had simply migrated to these lands millennia before them. It could arguably be seen as the meeting of long lost relatives and indeed, as far as Indian history is concerned, there was trade, mingling and inter-marriages. But alas, there was also war and struggles for dominance.
As I understand from BBC audio podcasts, combined with my own reading of history, the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, which Indian historians call the first war of Indian Independence, brought to an end the era of Indo-British cooperation. The next 100 years of British rule were embittered by memories of atrocities committed by both sides in the immediate aftermath of the Sepoy uprising.
Yet, to my mind, all these wars that we see, even to the present day, are fratricidal blood-lettings which miss the point that we humans all originate from a common ancestor or ancestors in the Eastern part of that continent which for many decades, if not centuries, bore the rubric Darkest Africa.
The Designer’s Dilemma
Most people have been brought up on the idea of competition, that the world is a competitive place and one needs to get on and prosper in life by hard work. Businesses thrive by becoming more efficient and effective, by doing the right things, and then doing them right. Shaving research and development costs and reducing manufacturing, marketing and other expenses is the watchword.
But now the time has come to factor in the ecological imperative…do what’s best for the environment. This green phenomenon is not new, but has gathered momentum in recent years. People’s consciousness has risen about the global emergency we face.
Witness the fact that China has plans for producing 550 more coal-fired super-thermal power stations, at the rate of two per week. These stations emit huge amounts of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. A recent BBC report said that the West has shifted its manufacturing base to China, because of lower labor costs there, and now we are all paying the price.
Granted, the per capita emission in China is still lower than that in the US, but as a nation, China is fast becoming the number one polluter. The Chinese authorities say that, when faced with the task of reducing poverty, the priority is to raise living standards, and this requires large amounts of cheap electricity. Indeed, 80 percent of China’s electricity comes from coal-fired plants, compared to an average of 40 percent in the rest of the world.
Perhaps the solution lies in retrofitting these power stations with equipment that take out and trap the carbon dioxide. I don’t know. The best scientific and engineering brains need to put their heads together and come up with a solution. Else we’ll soon see the co-2 level rise to 400 ppm, and the emergency will become a calamity.
Power Shortage and Surplus
Many of India’s and the world’s most pressing needs can be met from the source—-and that source is power, energy, or any other name that you might care to give it. Yet fossil fuels—-or fuels from hell—-are getting outdated in this age of environmental consciousness and sustainability.
There is no cause for despair; Mother Nature simply has to be tweaked a bit. Abundant sunshine falls on the deserts on a cloudless day—-which is most days of the year. I can envision a solar-powered unit—-or a hundred such units—-sitting on or near the deserts’ edges, producing electricity that can be fed into the local, national, or international grid.
My mission is to make this happen. No ifs, no buts. This power can be used:
1) In desalinization plants to produce drinking water, the most important ingredient of life, after air.
2) For transportation, (read electric trains, trolleys and buses), lighting, heating and air-conditioning.
3) To power tools to produce the artifacts of civilization.
4) To produce hydrogen to be used in fuel cells for cars, buses and trucks.
5) To power water-pumps and other agricultural contrivances and instruments as required.
The possibilities are endless and the beauty is that the carbon footprint is zero. What we get from Mother Nature, we give back to her. We imitate, in a form of bio-mimicry, the way all life lives, drawing our sustenance from the air, the sun and the abundance of Planet Earth.
Distance lends enchantment to the view. How tranquil those halcyon days of our youth appear now! It was during our BSc at St. Xavier’s College in Calcutta that a classmate suggested that we play cricket during the weekend.
This class friend, whose name I forget now - an unforgiveable sin - lived very close to that beautiful park next to the Lakes in South Calcutta. I remember the names of some of the other enthusiasts who gathered at Vivekananda Park that Saturday. There was Archan De, who’s now a Professor in Scottish Church College in Calcutta. Debabrata Saha, who went on to score in the top 10 in the IAS exam, was therefore inducted into the IFS, and is now Indian Ambassador in the Ukraine, and Dipankar Pramanick, who again is a Professor in an American University.
Our game was played with real cricket gear—-pads, gloves, duce ball—the works. We played almost all day every weekend during winter, with only a mid-morning break for “drinks.” To add a personal touch to the proceedings, one day my dad turned up in our black Ambassador car to watch me play from the sidelines. Now, with the 20/20 vision of hindsight, I realize that it warmed his heart to see me healthy again and enjoying the fresh air of Vivekananda Park. My illness in middle-school had greatly distressed him, but had had the salutary effect of bringing him closer to God.
I’m not claiming that our game was net practice for First Class cricket played on the Eden Gardens. We were, after all, Physics major students much more familiar with books and lab work than the subtleties of bat and ball. Yet to our undiscerning minds we played a good game. Yes, there was the occasional flighted ball and the bumper, the hooked shot to the fence, the diving catch and the accurate throw in.
Many years later my cousin Kunal held his marriage reception at the hall adjoining the park. I took the opportunity, in a lull in the proceedings, of wandering over to the spot where we had had our “pitch” that winter of 1970. Memories flooded back, and I remembered Swami Vivekananda’s quizzical remark in Bengali, “If the stomach is full, even the idea of a football game appears attractive.”
When we were in Hukumchand Jute Mills between 1950 and 1960, my childhood memories consist, among other things, of relatives who visited us from time to time. Among those who made the 30 miles journey was Bachchu Dada, a young man of about 24, son of a cousin of my Dad’s.
This uncle of ours, Prodyut Sen, was a senior detective in Calcutta Police. The story goes that Bachchu Dada, always scared of becoming a victim of some criminal vengeance against his dad, was always ready to run, and run fast!
But jokes apart, Bachchu Dada applied for an apprenticeship in (West) Germany and went abroad in 1960. The family lived in Calcutta, and Dover Lane, the quiet cul-de-sac in South Calcutta, saw a number of young men and women leaving to study in Germany.
Children have fragmented memories, and when in the course of things, I found that our grown-ups—-meaning Mom and Dad—-had decided to take us to England with them for one year, imagine my surprise when, halfway through our stay in England, Bachchu Dada suddenly turned up at our house in Baxenden, Lancashire.
Dad had got him a job at his factory, British Northrop, in Blackburn. Dad and Bachchu Dada would go to work, and come back, together. One fine day Bachchu Dada presented me and my sister with two books—-my first Biggles books. These books, featuring the fictional hero Biggles, and his friends Algy, Bertie and Ginger, were written by a skilled writer, Captain W.E. Johns, and were hot favorites in those days.
Even today, critics acknowledge that Johns was a fine writer, though he had his faults, notably self-plagiarism. To me at least, the books opened up a fascinating world of planes, guns, and innocent childish notions of how the adult world worked.
The two books that Bachchu Dada gave us had lurid pictures on their covers, and alluring titles:- Biggles in the Cruise of the Condor and Biggles and the Black Peril.
Looking back, those two books were among the very best that I’ve ever read. No wonder that the shopkeeper recommended them to Bachchu Dada when he’d gone to the bookshop looking for books to buy my sister and me.
Bachchu Dada eventually returned to Germany to complete his study of German foundry practice, and then went back to India to settle into a job in Madras, about 1000 miles from Calcutta. His company produced steel castings for scooter engines, and supplied a local vehicle manufacturing unit. Bachchu Dada had finally arrived.
Much later, I had occasion to present Bachchu Dada’s son with a book on the DOS operating system. It was a small token of gratitude for a favorite cousin.
I first met Professor D. N. Bose at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 1972. He taught us esoteric subjects like Materials Science and Solid State Devices, and by his skill and passion for the subject, imbued in us an interest that remains to this day, at least in me. He had done his PhD from a British University and, after post-doctoral work in America, joined IISc a few years before my batch started our BE studies.
In an environment where almost all the professors were talented teachers, Professor Bose stood out in my mind because of the exceptional clarity with which he intertwined mathematics and engineering. Let me explain.
I’ve always felt that our engineering teachers gave the impression of using Math merely as a shorthand notation, when a verbal description would have done just as well. As an undergraduate student, I felt that our Math teachers taught complex analysis and other Math subjects in a very isolated fashion. In fact, while doing my MS at NCSU I wrote a letter to the editor of IEEE Computer magazine to this effect.
Professor Bose left IISc at about the same time that I did. He had wanted for me to do my BE project under him, and, looking back, I feel that this would have been a wise move on my part. But, as they say, life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards. My interest, at that time, was in circuits, rather than in materials, and so I did my BE project under a different teacher. Who would have thought that, over time, these two different fields would almost coalesce, and certainly become practically indistinguishable from each other?
Professor Bose joined IIT (Kharagpur) as a full Professor, and retired many years later after serving and leading as Dean. I kept in touch and had occasion to meet him both at his home in Short Street and at IIT (KGP). He always obliged me by writing glowing recommendations whenever I required them.
When I came to the USA, once in 1984 and again in 2001, Professor Bose and I exchanged email messages and phone calls. He traveled widely both nationally and internationally, to participate in seminars, attend meetings, and grill students in their PhD defense.
Last time I was in Kolkata, in 2005, Professor Bose and I had a pleasant dinner at Marco Polo restaurant in South Kolkata. He reminisced over so many things. He had kept in touch with so many people. He was busy writing a book and still drove a car, although he had grayed and could well afford a driver. The old house in Short Street had been pulled down and rebuilt along modern lines. There is now even an elevator to go up to the second floor, an unusual facility in a two-storied building in Kolkata.
Professor Bose was, and still is, a role model for us. Along with his students, he had discovered a way to produce pure Silicon from rice husk. Recently, I sent him a directory of companies in the Research Triangle Park, companies who might be interested in this new technology.
Who knows, INTEL may be interested in building a chip factory in the venerable district of West Bengal called Medinipur. It would only cost a few billion dollars.
Sacrifice Versus Pragmatism
When I was studying Physics at St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta, we had an optional course called “Moral Science” taught by a smiling but passionate teacher called Father Antoine. Among other things, he told us stories from mythology, both eastern and western, to illustrate moral dilemmas, such as when kings had to choose between their kingdoms and their wives.
It was from Father Antoine that I first heard of the word “pragmatism.” According to the good Father, human beings normally, and perhaps very sanely, do “cost-benefit analyses” before doing anything, saying to themselves, in effect, “if I do this, will I get that?”
But the concept of “sacrifice,” being a higher, spiritual value, transcends pragmatism. There is no immediate benefit in a sacrifice—-in fact, none may result at all. Yet idealistic people routinely do it. Soldiers put their lives on the line, fighting formidable foes in far off lands; teachers stay on after school hours to tutor their students; Parents forego luxuries so that their children can go to better schools, and so on. Yet people often make sacrifices reluctantly, or not at all.
I had a friend, Subrata, in Calcutta, who lived in Ballygunge, which is a relatively centralized location. We went to college together and socialized often when I visited him. But he never once visited my house, which was a bit on the outskirts of Calcutta. It was too much of an ordeal for him, I guess, and he never thought of it as a sacrifice necessary for friendship. Yet he had a brother, Debabrata, who did make the trip. It’s something I remember with gratitude, because it stamped him out as a true friend, to me at least, unlike Subrata.
As the year passed, students started dropping out of Father Antoine’s moral science class. Since there was no year- round exam in that subject, and attendance was voluntary, we shrank to a small group to listen spellbound to Father Antoine talk about Ram and Sita, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, Ulysses and Achilles.
Father Antoine used to say, regarding our small and die-hard class, “Good, the wheat has been separated from the chaff,” a remark that tickled us no end. It made us feel very special indeed.
It takes skill to plough the land,
Skill to plant and hoe,
Skill to coax the land to give,
Us fruit and grain and more.
The difference between individuals and, indeed, nations, is often one of skill level. Of course, there are other differences, but skills which are complex and take years to learn can lift the entity having these skills from poverty to wealth, to comfort and preeminence. Besides, there is the joy of attaining unprecedented levels of fulfillment.
Consider the succeeding waves of immigration that poured into America over the centuries. First from Europe, then from the East, mostly skilled people have enriched our knowledge base and added to our economy. The same is true for tiny Israel.
Machinists, computer programmers, artists and artisans have seen to it that our products and services are the best in class.
Not only is there a qualitative difference between a skilled person and a less skilled one, there is often a quantitative dimension as well. The more skilled person can do better things faster and cheaper.
We have sent men into space and machines to Mars. We have satellites that magically connect us to one another across vast distances, and beam quality programs ubiquitously.
We have writers with high imaginative awareness and mature technique, who enrich us with their specialized knowledge of the world, be it in human relations or pure fantasy. After all, science fiction is fiction today, science tomorrow. We now have cars that practically sip gas instead of guzzling it, and even run on renewable energy.
Management skills have advanced so that we can now harness the skills of diverse individuals and groups, coordinate their activities, and synergize, synthesize and create new artifacts, gizmos, widgets and service offerings.
Even our vocabulary reflects the prevailing scientific, technological and artistic milieu of our day.
We download songs, burn CDs, open attachments and fast-forward movies.
Our computer tomographies and magnetic resonance imaging have given us insights about how the brain works. Yes, the brain, that most complex of complex creations, is yielding its secrets and giving us novel ideas that embrace and surpass mere left-brain/right-brain jargon and glibness.
Dan sat staring down at the puzzle in front of him. It wasn’t a run-of-the-mill puzzle but a unique one, his own creation. The pieces of the puzzle were not cardboard cut-outs but state-of-the art integrated circuits, or “chips.”
He’d ordered eight sample chips from Texas Instruments and now peered uncertainly at a multiplexer/demultiplexer, two instrumentation amplifiers, one direct current to direct current converter and several SPDT switches.
His task or agenda or brief was to put together the chips to form one integrated system that did something useful, fun or bizarre, but something that worked off a battery. Attaching the problem as if it were a Rubik’s Cube, Dan tried moving the eight chips around, to form, successively a square, a triangle, a straight line, a circle and a rhombus but this initial exercise did nothing to jog his brain, at least consciously.
Then he focused on the functionality of each chip. The instrumentation amplifiers had an input/output characteristic, and the mux/demux could clearly combine and separate two channels of data. Fine. Now the single-pole-double-throw switch could be used to switch between channels, while the dc-dc converters could be used to provide a very versatile power input to the rest of the chips, drawing on battery power ranging from 3 to 15 volts.
Using the solderless breadboard that he’d recently acquired from allelectronics.com, Dan quickly put together his prototype circuit. Adding a few red, green and amber LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes), he was ready to demonstrate his little gizmo to his friends on YouTube. He used his Nikon coolpix L11 digital camera to take an enchanting video clip of his gadget and uploaded it to YouTube. In a few minutes it was ready for viewing. All systems go!
For someone who enjoyed playing soccer oftentimes in my childhood and occasionally in my youth, the enduring joys of kicking a leather ball around, dribbling it past skillful opponents and yes, occasionally scoring a goal, can hardly be overstated.
I had my own soccer ball and would delight in pumping it up myself with my dad’s cycle pump, till it was hard and bounced freely. Then I remembered smearing some grease over the tie cords to soften them and seal up any leaks. I played soccer mainly at two spots - one on the lawns of Hukumchand Jute Mills, where I spent the first ten years of my life, and then in Baxenden, Lancashire, in England.
In England our school headmaster, Mr. Kenyon coached us once a week in the afternoons. He praised my left kick, which was almost as strong, though not quite, as my right kick. He also liked the fact that I volunteered to play goalie, something my British friends abhorred doing.
Among British professional footballers, Stanley Matthews was my favorite. Of course, it goes without saying that Indian football stars like Chuni Goswami and Jarnail Singh were also on my list of soccer heroes.
And of course my own dad, once a first division soccer player in Calcutta, inspired me to play my best. I remember one evening, as I played with my friends, my dad was returning from work, and he showed us the fine art of taking a free kick.
He placed the ball on the ground, with the cords facing front, and kicked it straight into the goal, a rising shot, beautifully timed and placed, that had years and years of deliberate practice behind it. So much for the joys of soccer.
My mother, God rest her soul, listened to Mahila Mahal each afternoon on our old Bush radio. That radio was imported from England and must have weighed a ton (just joking). Anyway, it took two minutes to warm up, so that if you heard a song wafting across from your neighbor’s, and rushed to switch on the Bush, all you got was the next song. Talk about listener’s choice!
Bela De conducted, or shall I say compered, Mahila Mahal, and she wrote a famous cookbook that has stood the test of time. The Bush has given way to pocket transistors and XMRadio (digital, satellite, you name it). But the late Bela De’s book has crossed the oceans with us and occupies pride of place next to our Toshiba TV.
Just this morning I cooked chicken biryani following the book implicitly. I phoned sister Jaya in England, to tell her that I had just prepared a delectable dish.
She told me to email her the recipe, which I did from memory, writing of course in English, and interjecting whimsically funny remarks like “spread some bay leaves on the bottom of yet another container.”
As one grows older, and the appetite for food declines, one is immersed more in the preparation, feeding of the young, recipe-exchanges, and such like ancillary activities.
They say, rather vulgarly, that the poor eat “quantity”; the middle classes “quality”, and the upper classes are involved in the “presentation.” To Bela De, as to my mother, all three were important that is why I now wax eloquent on my well-spent youth, with memories of good food and, yes, good company.
I’ve always had a soft corner for poor people although I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Early in my life we had a domestic help called Satkaridada who took good care of my sister and me. Then there was the boatman who rowed us across the river to school everyday.
In my grandparents’ house in the village there was Shyamarma, who came to help with the household chores, and Sushil Thakur, who worked in the yard. They had a simplicity and honesty that made them superior people, despite their obvious poverty.
In adult life I may have changed were it not for the fact my health has always interfered with my earnings. It was almost as if Providence had decided to make me poor, so that I could better appreciate their plight.
It was Abraham Lincoln who wrote that “God must love poor people - he made so many of them.” Poverty breeds many ills and the poor are often ashamed of their poverty.
I feel strongly that we should declare a global emergency and tackle world poverty, among other things, on a war footing. Just look at what happened to India. At the time of Indian Independence in 1947 our population was about 300 million. Our first Five Year plan concentrated on building up the industrial infrastructure by emphasizing steel mills, power stations, etc.
Subsequent plans addressed other issues, like agriculture and land reforms, it is true, but poverty was never directly addressed on a priority basis, except for one ill-fated Garibi Hatao movement.
Now, sixty years later, our population has grown to a whopping one billion. Why? Because poor people tend to have large families. It is an acknowledged fact that as families become more prosperous, they tend to have fewer children.
The only humane way we can tackle global overpopulation is for the UN, the G-8 and the G-15 nations to declare a war on poverty. Else enormous calamities can happen. I can see Malthusian famines of stupendous proportions overcoming the world. It would ravage and distress everyone, both rich and poor. And the best way, if not the only way to have a more equitable distribution of the pie is to have a larger pie for peaceful uses - turn swords into ploughshares and start producing more butter than guns.
Some years ago, in the staff lounge of Enloe high school, I objected to calling certain societies “civilizations” because they practiced human sacrifices. A colleague quickly corrected me, saying that anthropologists had other yardsticks to measure progress, such as whether agriculture was practiced or not.
By this yardstick, Mayan and Aztec civilizations indeed pass the test; they are considered to be ancient civilizations where, incidentally, human sacrifices were performed.
As an engineer I’m more curious about the artifacts that different civilizations produce. Fine gold filigree work, or massive mind boggling pyramids, or tiny microprocessors containing 5 million transistors all fascinate me because they are artifacts of civilizations.
The pyramids, though marvels of human ingenuity and coordination, were yet built using slave labor, so there was more coercion than coordination involved. In making a microprocessor many people are involved, and one needs a billion dollar fabrication facility to actually produce a working product.
My despair with Calcutta, my hometown, is that it has reached a point of degeneration where no worthwhile artifacts are produced. Granted, Amartya Sen produced books—-which are a form of mind artifacts—- and his Nobel Prize citation praised both his theoretical work and practical field work in Bangladesh.
Amartya Sen can arguably be called a product of Calcutta while D.K. Sachdev is a product of Bangalore. In winning the Arthur Clarke award, Sachdev was cited for both the space and terrestrial segments of the INTELSAT satellite system. Recently he’s written a second book called “Success Stories in Satellite Systems” to follow up on his first book “Business Strategies for Satellite Systems.”
As an Indian and native of Calcutta I am proud to have been able to read and understand Amartya Sen’s book. Similarly, having grown up in Bangalore, Sachdev’s success in the West makes me feel very proud to be an Indian.
Both Sen and Sachdev are about ten years older than me and hence serve as wonderful role models.
Many years ago, Alan Sillitoe wrote a book, “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.” Sillitoe’s career had been interrupted by illness, so he turned to writing and, by dint of hard work became a successful writer. I am also reminded of the famous Bengali song, ”Runner.” A man’s life is almost like a marathon race. It keeps getting better and better till the finishing line is crossed.
The tragedy happens if a man loses heart, takes to drink, or loses his ideals in some other way. As Swami Vivekananda has written, “We lose because we lose track of our ideals.” So take heed, my young readers, and keep your faith, for Life is the Gift of Nature and Beautiful Living is the Gift of Wisdom.
We all know people who, for various reasons, live austere lives. The difference is great between, say, a priest who fasts and a beggar who starves. One is a king of the spiritual world, the other is—-well, simply a beggar.
Mrs. Whittaker, our 93 years old landlady in England in 1961, had been through the rationings of two world wars. But in 1961, long after World War II had ended, she still avoided buying luxuries like TV, simply because she’d got used to living an austere life, and found it attractive.
My friends have all done well in life, and lead opulent lives. But I like to think that God blessed me with a childhood illness that has had the effect of making me poor. Poverty has been much studied by welfare economists and the like. It is rightly a condition that needs to be rectified. Yet monks and priests routinely take vows of poverty, celibacy and service.
Is wealth, then, sour grapes to me? I honestly don’t know but I do know that the Almighty singled me out as an example to others—-and perhaps even to teach me a valuable lesson. Which would you rather have—-eating well for 30 days and thereby feeling overly satiated, or living frugally for 29 days and then feasting on the 30th? The former is the present lifestyle of many, while the latter was the reality of my grandparents.
I have mentioned, in passing, Aesop’s fable of the “sour grapes.” Perhaps also, in advocating an austere lifestyle, I’m invoking another of his fables, that of the “dog who lost his tail.” Far from trying to induce you try a restricted lifestyle, I still urge you to give it a thought. I may be a failed materialist or a spiritualist by choice but I do know this—-that I am riding the wave of the future.
The world, it is said, is a bridge, cross it but don’t build on it. Maybe that statement is not to be taken literally. Maybe, having been given a lemon, I’m simply trying to make lemonade. Or maybe I am the lemonade!
With the coming of the New Year one is given an opportunity to make resolutions to consolidate the gains of the past year and break new ground. The recently concluded climate change conference in Copenhagen may be described as a “successful failure.” Heads of states left the meeting resolving to act on climate change in their own countries but without binding agreements. Surely where self-interest is involved, we can expect to see nations taking the global warming issues seriously and enacting measures to reduce greenhouse gases—-without verification.
Every generation in every age faces challenges that are both new and unique. As a person on the verge of sixty, I look on the next generation to gear up to the twin challenges of terrorism and environmental concerns. Certainly, the world is much more than the antics of nations such as Iran, North Korea and now Yemen, and we must not lose track of notable advances in arms reduction talks, space exploration and the like.
Last year President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize. Apart from anything else, this signifies European approval and blessings on what he has achieved so far and perhaps more importantly, on what he still has on his agenda. Republicans would do well to note that conservative politics has its limitations and that one simply cannot ignore global trends.
With the world’s population still increasing at an alarming pace, and resources dwindling day by day, certain paradigms that have stood the test of time need finally to be overhauled. “Big” is no longer synonymous with “great” and Schumacher’s saying “small is beautiful” needs to make a comeback.
Unbridled consumption and a purely materialistic lifestyle are on their way out. We need to temper the Dow Jones Industrial Average with spiritual values like sacrifice, giving and self-denial. I am not trying to be unique here, only practical. The long-standing relationship between Mankind and Mother Earth needs to be reevaluated.
As I write, the climate change conference in Copenhagen is deadlocked on certain issues between the rich nations and the poor. While negotiators struggle to reach common ground, the crowd outside the conference hall jeer and say, ”If the climate had been a major failing bank the rich nations would scramble to save it.”
Meanwhile on American public TV I heard a debate between the followers of the two famous economists of the past, Keynes and Hayek, who held diametrically opposite viewpoints as to the role of governments in intervening in financial crises. Briefly, Keynes said that governments should intervene to avoid huge and painful unemployment problems in a failing economy.
Hayek, on the other hand favored a hands-off policy on the part of government, saying that market forces would eventually right a failing economy. Personally, I think that two opposing cultures cannot be compared, just as apples and oranges can’t. The Queen of France, two centuries ago, when told of poor people’s plight, asked in mock innocence,” If they can’t eat bread why don’t they eat cake?”
Likewise, the Emperor of Ethiopia, facing large scale famine in his own country, refused to intervene. It’s all a case of “whether to be good or whether to be strong.” Granted, in the long run we’re all dead, and it is easy for some people to turn a deaf ear to the plight of those with whom they can’t relate, and who are far away. The ultimate policy followed will of course depend on who’s in charge of the government at the given moment.
Thus Republicans favor Hayek and Democrats opt for Keynes, and so we have big government now that Democrats control Capitol Hill. My mother used to repeat a saying that she’d learnt in her childhood which said in effect, that “whoever goes to Lanka becomes Ravana.” So whoever is in power follows his or her way, whether it be Keynes or Hayek. Meanwhile the crowds on the streets of Copenhagen grow ever more raucous, and following the wisdom of crowds, shout, in effect, “The Emperor is wearing no clothes!”
India’s strides since gaining Independence have been massive. We have increased our electricity generation enormously and rapidly enlarged our yearly tonnage of manufacturing capacity in all the core sectors - steel, cement, paper, fertilizer and the like.
This increase in GDP would have had a significant impact on the per capita real income had it not been for our unbounded population growth, which has negated the growth in all other sectors. Granted, the Indian economy has grown at a rapid clip of 8-9 percent in the last few years. From all indicators the middle class has been growing also, and now stands at 300 million people, practically equal to the entire population of the United States. This segment of society has good educational achievements and good production and consumption patterns. They might be called the backbone of Indian society.
It is the remaining 700 million people who constitute the poorer classes that are a cause for concern, if not for despair. With low incomes, inadequate skills in the new economy, and very poor educational standards, these people struggle from meal-time to meal-time and are lucky if they have the basic necessities of life—-food, shelter and clothing. Even these last three, when available, are substandard and unfit for human use.
For centuries, the people caught in this poverty trap have found themselves in a vicious circle. While the rest of society “nickels and dimes” them—-giving them subsistence wages in the name of getting a good bargain—-they continue to have what is known as “generational poverty”—-that is, their poverty perpetrates from one generation to the next generation, with no hope of redemption.
I think it is with these people in mind that the late Adlai Stevenson wrote: “We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed for our safety on its security and peace, preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half-confident half-despairing, half-fortunate half-miserable, half-slave half-free. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On the resolution of these problems depends the survival of us all.”
May we heed his warning before it is too late.
Since ancient times, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker have all survived and prospered by following three principles: division of labor, economies of scale and differentiation. The first principle implies that one person, family, community, company or country cannot make everything well, or indeed do everything well. Thus one has to specialize.
The second principle implies that by producing in large quantities, much more than is required for their own need, a manufacturing unit can produce things more cheaply than others, because, until a ceiling is reached, economies of scale kick in.
Finally, by making somewhat unique products, the candlestick maker, for example, can differentiate his or her products from other such candlestick makers. Consumers love variety and what is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander, or put another way, one man’s meat is another man’s poison.
But these three principles are not, by themselves, sufficient in the modern world. As a Japanese entrepreneur has said succinctly, one makes, one sells and one counts. Thus a businessman must wear at least three hats, the producer, the marketer and the accountant.
The East, it is said, is a huge market. If you step inside a typical market you’ll see all the above principles at work. In the services sector also, we see that India has become a specialized call-center hub. Why indeed India has become an IT paradise while China is a manufacturing power is mysterious, and involves historical and linguistic reasons, at the very least.
While mass markets are here to stay, most small businesses and individuals wishing to sell their products and services keenly feel the need of niche markets. Until recently, these businesses had to identify their customers, target their offerings and find a way to reach their audiences. The Internet has changed all that. Especially, Google words has made it easy to link potential buyers with eager sellers.
By providing a huge “switchboard” which magically connects buyers and sellers, Google words has made it eerily possible for matchmaking to occur. The next best thing to telepathy has arrived, and the entire globe has become one vast marketplace.
Being bilingual, with Hindi as a distant third language, I find it relaxing to read Bengali when I tire of English. In this vein I find the similarities and differences between the proverbs and sayings in the two languages to be interesting, if not downright entertaining.
Let me start with the Bengali proverb which says, in effect: While living happily the evil ghost prods one. The English equivalents to this are, firstly, to leave well alone and secondly, to let sleeping dogs lie. There is a third English saying: Don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you, which is germane to the issue.
So, if the above homilies urge you to be “reactive” rather than “proactive,” the next ones do the exact opposite. “Fortune favors the brave” has its quixotic Bengali counterpart: If you sleep, your fortune sleeps also. This exhortation to action is further amplified in the English saying: Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Next come what I call the Trojan Horse warnings. In Bengali we say: Don’t cut a canal to let in the crocodile! In English the nearest equivalent, or at least the one that springs to mind, is: setting the cat among the pigeons (is not a good idea).
To an engineer like myself, the wooden Trojan Horse is a marvel of workmanship, and this leads me to the English saying: A bad workman blames his tools. The Bengali equivalent is: He who dances badly blames the courtyard.
But that’s enough of negativism. The English saying: Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise, may have its roots in agrarian societies, and the Bengali exhortation to students is: Early at dawn if you put your mind to study, in the evening of your life you will be magically rewarded.
As a final word let me say that Bengalis, despite their volatile nature and love of the humanities, are - like the Greeks - well aware of the sharp stings of life, and of its tragic brevity.
The American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote an epic poem on the legendary Indian chief, Hiawatha. I first read the poem when I was about eight.
Now that I am in the land of Hiawatha, so to speak, one thought leads to another, and I lament the decimation of the American Indian tribes at the hands of European colonizers. Maybe “manifest destiny” played a part in colonial times. How else can you explain the invention of the six-shooter and the repeating rifle that tipped the scale in favor of the Caucasians?
Be that as it may, I see a great role for the present generation of Caucasians. They can, if they will, become the salt of the earth. Where there is darkness, bring light. Where ignorance, bring knowledge. Bear The White Man’s burden in an elevated and evolved form.
Dr. Phil’s show recently had a man who said, “What is not white is not right.” I know people in India who think that all the world’s ills are due to white people. So who is right? Maybe neither. Hiawatha united the Indian tribes into a single nation of five tribes, which later became six. It is now time to unite the five continents of the world into one. The world has always been one, only our ignorance prevents us from seeing it to be so.
Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha departs from the actual historical evidence, but still there is a great deal to be learnt from people who, in those days, were conveniently considered to be savages. This attitude blunted the conscience of the oppressors and made it less uncomfortable to decimate them. The great Indian chief departs in a blaze of glory, undefeated, and a great white American poet, Longfellow, pays a tribute to him that immortalizes them both.
Recently, Apple Computers sent me a marketing email stating that their 1GB iPod Shuffle was now available for $49. This was within my purchasing power, so I got one, and for the last month have been experimenting with my iPod and iTunes—-downloading songs, audio books, topical podcasts and yes, movies.
I rented the movie Solaris because George Clooney is the hero, but also because it promised to be a science-fiction movie with a dash of romance in it. The cover photo shows George Clooney passionately kissing Natascha McElhoen, the heroine.
Well, I was pleasantly surprised by the movie. The story line, slight though it is, is very intense. Briefly, Chris Kelvin (Clooney), a widowed psychiatrist, is called to troubleshoot the space station Prometheus near planet Solaris, because strange events have occurred there.
Kelvin arrives at the station and, in a dream on his first night, sees his dead wife Rhea. On waking, he is startled to find Rhea with him, seemingly well and alive. But events soon show that Rhea is not quite human! (I’m not telling why). The other scientists abroad Prometheus all have had similar experiences, notably, visitations from their dead relatives, not only in their dreams but also in their waking moments.
The principal scientist, Snow, surmises that a parallel universe exists where the dead go to, and whence, apparently they return to those living near Solaris.
The movie explores a haunting theme for anyone who has lost a loved one. I remember a famous writer, whose name I forget, who practiced séances in an effort to communicate with his dead wife.
After some dramatic moments, the story ends with Kelvin apparently “dying,” finding himself back in his apartment on earth, and living blissfully with Rhea in a parallel universe - one where wounds heal magically and where everyone lives happily ever after.
The movie intrigued me so much that I ordered the book on Amazon, and even researched the Polish writer, Stanislaw Lem. Lem, a secular Jew, wrote in his native Polish language and experimented with science fiction stories like “Fiasco,” “His Masters Voice,” and of course, “Solaris.” Later he renounced SF and concentrated on philosophical writings that dwelt on future technological advancements.
But for anyone interested in a brilliant, though enigmatic, science fiction romance, I recommend the film Solaris, with its talented cast including the heroine Rhea, hauntingly played by Natascha McElhoen. Without her the film would undoubtedly have been a fiasco!
Creativity has been loosely defined as “the ability to create meaningful new forms.” The concept is important because it has enabled humankind to invent the wheel, discover fire, perfect the automobile and send spacecraft to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
After all, if you consider that every human being is born with practically no knowledge or skills engrained, except perhaps what is transmitted through the genes - and then must learn so much of what the human race has learnt since the beginning of time, before contributing any new knowledge to our accumulated store of wisdom, you will see how much creativity has played a part in advancing the lot of mankind.
In the same time that humans have gone from horse drawn chariots, say 4000 years ago, to the Space Shuttle, other animals have remained practically the same, stuck with their ant heaps, rabbit warrens or even eagles’ nests.
Professor Richard Florida, who specializes in studying human creativity, has written books on the subject. Creative people, like artists, writers, doctors and nurses, engineers and teachers thrive in an open climate which encourages experimentation and diversity. They move to cities where cultural activities are fostered, and shun places where creativity is stifled.
The management guru, Peter Drucker, had a name, “knowledge workers,” for people who carry their intellectual capital with them - in the space between their ears, so to say. These people have both knowledge and skills as part of their professional portfolio or repertoire of assets.
Even nurses, who for some part of the day may be involved with such mundane things as making beds, may also be involved in skilled activities like drawing blood from a patient, or checking his blood pressure or pulse, skillfully, without causing discomfort or pain.
Simon Singh, who has a Ph. D from Cambridge University, has written a book called “Fermat’s Enigma” wherein he traces the 300 year old history of mathematics’ most famous puzzle. It’s fascinating to read how the problem was eventually solved, after seven years of sustained effort, by Andrew Wilkes, who used the work of various people, like the Japanese mathematicians Taniyama and Shimuro, as a springboard for his own work. This creative epic, although serving no useful purpose, yet is intellectually stimulating because, as the old saw goes, “man does not live by bread alone.”
Finally, writers who have at their disposal only the bare essentials - the 26 letters of the alphabet -have created beautiful masterpieces like “The Merchant of Venice“ by Shakespeare to “Gitanjali“ by Rabindranath Tagore. So it is safe to say that so long as humans remain creative we shall always have new artifacts, like the iPod, and new works of art, like The Da Vinci Code, to play on them.
Tools of the Trade
In the movie Castaway, Tom Hanks finds himself on a small, uninhabited island, with few resources and even fewer chances of survival. But survive he does, using the tools that he had or those that he improvised. An ice-skating shoe is used as a multi-function tool for cutting, hammering and the like. And his persistent efforts to light a fire bring home to us viewers how dire life can be, and was, before the accumulation of our artifacts of civilization.
I’ve watched our carpenter in Calcutta work miracles in wood. Using the very basic woodworking tools like the hammer, saw, manual drill, planar and an assortment of chisels, he could, in a few hours, turn some planks of wood into a chair, a table, or any other piece of furniture that he had been commissioned to produce.
Here in the US carpentry is a favorite hobby of many, and a livelihood of some. Most manual tools here have given way to power tools, which make life easier and task completion quicker. But leaving aside this apples and oranges comparison, Biren in India and Brian in the US both produce artifacts that are functional, aesthetic, and of lasting value.
We humans have used tools to produce successively more complex and larger, or smaller, artifacts. Machine tools are machines that make other machines possible. Robots, which are another class of tools, make anything from computers at Dell to cars at Toyota.
The Space Shuttle, an engineering marvel, is a behemoth that could not have been produced without sophisticated tools. On a more down to earth level, a farmer has his tractor and a software programmer has her computer. Beyond that, Peter Drucker’s “knowledge worker” carries her most important tool in the inner space between their two ears. Yes, the brain is the most awesome tool of all.
Insights Into Integrity
When I was an Assistant Executive Engineer in ITI, Bangalore, I found out a salient truth within a few months of working there, and this was it: if you wanted to work, ITI provided a very good work environment, and there were reasonable avenues for promotion. But if you didn’t want to work, nobody could sack you because ITI was a public sector undertaking. Many people just coasted along, doing the bare minimum to keep their bosses happy. I certainly wasn’t one of them.
Now ITI had a large, well-equipped hospital attached. All the hospital workers and staff were ITI employees, including the doctors and administrators. When I was trying to decide whether to get my dad’s hernia operation done in Bangalore or not, naturally I thought of ITI hospital, since our employment benefits allowed for parents’ health care. But some of my colleagues advised against it, saying that the hospital was no good, and that they themselves did all their medical work outside. (Our employment benefits allowed us the choice of going to other hospitals.)
Looking back, in hindsight, I realize two things. Firstly, I was right in getting my dad’s operation done in the ITI hospital. The surgeon, Dr. Lila Manikoth, did an excellent job and my dad never had a twinge of pain or discomfort for more than 35 years after the operation.
Secondly, I realize now that it was precisely those slackers and malingerers who wasted their time, and the company’s money, that were doubting Thomases when it came to evaluating ITI hospital.
For the record, Dr. Manikoth performed the operation in 1977. I sent her a thank you card from the US in 1985.
You are what you are and a knave thinks that the entire world is full of knaves. Thank God that I had worthy colleagues too who set a good example and a boss, Mr. D.K. Sachdev, who was a role model for all of us.
Many years ago, my dad told me of the time when he went swimming in Bombay and wanted to test his mettle. As a Cadet Officer in the Royal Indian Navy he used to go swimming in the Bombay beach in his spare time.
One day he decided to swim out a further than he normally did. He kept a brisk pace till he decided that enough was enough and it was time to head back. But when he looked around for the shoreline, it had vanished and all around him was the watery horizon.
In a panic, he told himself that he would certainly drown if he did not reach the beach, so he set out blindly. Luckily for him, it turned out to be the right direction and he reached the shore exhausted, otherwise I wouldn’t be here to tell this story.
I can relate to my dad’s experience because something similar happened to me in Bangalore around 1977. I used to go rock climbing with other members of the Karnataka Mountaineering Association. One day, I decided to go alone instead of with my fellow climbers. Equipped with a small rucksack, I started climbing up a relatively steep, boulder-laden slope. Without looking backwards or downwards, I told myself that I would climb higher than I usually did.
When I looked back, vertigo seized me and I froze. The slope downwards seemed incredibly steep and I found that I could not bring myself to give up my perch atop a boulder. Minutes passed. Every time I tried to climb down fear gripped me and I could not stir. In desperation I told myself that I’d surely die if I stayed put where I was, so I forced myself to descend, hand over hand and feet over feet, all the time expecting to fall and roll downhill to certain injury, if not death.
It is at moments like these that I wonder at the Trinity of Creator, Preserver and Destroyer. If my dad had died that day, I wouldn’t be here to tell this story, as I wrote before. To a lesser extent, my misadventure on the hills proved an important point to me—-that we are created, preserved till it pleases our maker, and then destroyed, and nothing can stop it.
A well-respected Swami of Sri Ramkrishna Mission had passed away, and Calcutta was grieving. The Maharaja had written on spiritual matters for many decades, and we say that he had attained Mahasamadhi, or left his body - not just passed away as ordinary mortals do.
I was in the vicinity of Gol Park, where one of the main centers of the Mission is situated. The vehicle carrying Maharaja’s body came out of the Mission compound and slowed down to turn right into Gariahat Road, on the way to the Garia crematorium.
Suddenly a man dashed out from the sidewalk and touched the hearse with his hand. It was a brief contact and then the vehicle sped away. The man’s devotion was so strong that I remember the scene to this day, even though the incident occurred over a decade ago.
Many saints have written books to spread their messages. My father, although a believer in God, doubted that He governed day-to-day events. People mistakenly thought that he did not believe. But one day, when I’d told him about Sri Aurobindo, and left the pocket edition of Savitri on the table next to his bed, I saw him reach out and touch the book.
My son, greatly influenced by his mother, is a devotee of Swami Muktananda. The laptop on his desk had books by Swamiji, along with other books. One day, I needed some space on his table to set up my own laptop so that I could connect to the Internet. (We share a common connection.) Well, I’d put the books on one pile and, inadvertently, placed a book - I think it was a science book - on top of a book by Swamiji.
Later, when my son came into the room, he gently admonished me and said that he would rather that I did not place any other object on any of his spiritual books.
Finally, the ancient tale of devotion is told of the man who approached Jesus and asked for his help in curing his son. If I recollect, he requested Jesus to just say the word and his son would be cured. The Master replied, “Go. Your faith will be rewarded.” Or words to that effect. Such is the nature of devotion.
Fear of loss drives us more than the lure of gain. I coined this saying after observation and experience. The secret to health care in America is not to fall sick! As if that’s in our hands!! But illness causes absenteeism, loss of production and all sorts of other ills. My wife keeps the thermostat at 67°F in winter. This is a trifle too cold for me, so I asked her to turn it up. But that costs more money, she said. Since that day on I’ve been contributing my mite to the family budget.
The thermostat, I noticed, had been kept at 69°F, but only for a few days! Soon it was back at 67°F. I figured that my mite wasn’t enough, but I had no more money to give. Then I caught a cold and had to absent myself from work. That didn’t change things much at home because my wife earns five times what I do.
Her hard work has had an adverse effect on her health. We’re all in the same boat, aren’t we? I’m happy that I occasionally fall sick. Robust health at my age can be viewed with suspicion. (Hey, he hasn’t been pulling his weight!) I’ve coined a saying here too, Your strength inspires me; your weakness reassures me. Shocked? Well, that’s the real world.
Survival of the fittest according to Darwin. Will the poor eventually become extinct because of an inability to pay heating bills? All sorts of scenarios race through my mind. A sage once said, adaptable people survive, so I’ve decided to wear a woolly cap and sweater in the house. As for helping with the expenses, I’m about to send my sayings to the quotable quotes section of the Readers’ Digest, in the hope that they’ll publish at least one and pay me the princely sum of $300. That’s the lure driving me on. The lazy man finds an easy way.
Steve, finding that college was costing his parents too much, dropped out and instead took courses he fancied on an a la carte basis, instead of taking the required courses. Thus he took a calligraphy course which came in very handy when designing the fonts for the Apple Macintosh computer. In his speech Steve emphasized that “connecting the dots” was important. Unfortunately, the dots could only be connected later in life, looking back.
One can only hope and trust that the choices one makes do indeed turn out to be intelligent choices.
Steve used to skimp on food to save money, and his only good meal of the week was at the Hare Krishna temple across town. Steve made that journey on foot every week for that one hot meal.
The idea of “death” being an important factor in one’s life came up in Steve’s talk. Death is universal and final for everybody. Since it is the one thing certain in one’s life it is important to choose one’s life’s work where your passion lies. Death cleans out the old deadwood and brings in a fresh generation. This is as it should be. Follow your heart, said Steve, just as did the pioneers of a magazine that he read in his youth. It was a sort of Google on paper.
The last issue of that magazine had a familiar picture of a country road on its back cover, and a cryptic saying, “Stay foolish. Stay hungry.”
One intractable problem is that China and India —and to a lesser extent, Brazi — who were invited to the finale of the G-8 summit, are as reluctant as ever to cut back on their CO2 emissions, citing the oft-stated fact that it was the G-8 nations that had caused the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere in all these years when emissions from the developing nations was practically non-existent.
It’s like having a party in a restaurant, inviting a few more people to partake of the coffee at the end only, and then expecting these people to share equally in paying the bill! No, say the third world nations, latecomers to the party, we had the coffee only and that’s what we’ll pay for.
It’s easy enough to criticize both sides, and easier to suggest that either or both sides relax their demands, but any sacrifice can cause real hardship to the most vulnerable people on planet earth. Already there is talk of Bangladesh going under, to a greater or lesser extent, as a result of a rise in sea level. People like Arundhuti Roy, who speak up for these “children of a lesser God” are to be lauded.
To my mind it brings up the inevitable question of whether we, in the industrialized nations, are a breed apart — sort of first class citizens of planet earth — and “they” in the third world are second class, with fewer rights and privileges. The irony is that I, like so many other migrants, I have cousins, aunts, nephews and friends in Kolkata, and even some in distant Bangladesh.
Seriously. The story is told of two persons, say Tom and Dick, who wanted to share an orange. Being reticent, of the strong, silent type, they did not talk much to each other. Instead they cut the orange neatly into two and each took one piece. Fair enough, right? Maybe, but afterwards when in a mellow mood Tom and Dick were comparing notes, it turned out that what Tom had really wanted was the orange peel, for baking purposes. The pulp was useless to him and so he’d thrown it out from his half of the orange.
Likewise, it turned out that what Dick had really wanted was the pulp, to eat. He had had no use for the peel and had discarded it.
Now, had they had better communication before they divided the orange, Tom and Dick could have arrived at a far better solution — let Tom have the entire peel and no pulp, and let Dick have all the pulp and no peel.
Both would have been far better off, and presumably far happier.
Between 1987 and 2000 I ran my own consulting firm in Kolkata. Apart from writing project reports for corporate clients, I taught computer hardware and software, both at my own house and also in other establishments in and around Kolkata. I also taught Spoken English.
I had to do my own marketing for my home business. This included placing classifieds in The Statesman, distributing fliers, and placing advertising material at strategic points like shop fronts run by local people.
I remember one particularly large, six feet by ten feet, billboard that was spectacularly successful in drawing in customers. Everyone knows that small businesses succeed when they have a steady stream of customers, and that the number one reason for a small business to fail is lack of customers.
Well, whenever I got a new client, I made it a point to ask how he or she had heard of my business. To my surprise, many new clients said that they had seen my billboard. I realized then that my billboard was indeed very strategically located, above a friend’s shop on the main road. My house was about 300 yards from the main road, in a small lane called Ramgarh.
This friend, Bapi, did not mind me putting up my billboard above his shop, next to his own sign, because I was a regular customer at his shop, which sold medicines and cosmetics. Besides, in my experience, most business people do not mind helping other business people if it doesn’t hurt them to do so.
Across from the shop, and my billboard, was a bus stop. People waiting for their buses spotted what I had put on my advertising billboard. Quite a few of them, it turned out, needed my services, and guided by my address on the billboard, made a beeline for my house. Oh, how I loved that billboard!
This story has a strange ending. One day my billboard was missing! I surmised, quite correctly I think, that it had been removed by one of my competitors, who could be any one of the many other computer schools operating in the area. It could not have been too difficult, in the dead of night, to surreptitiously remove my billboard. That’s why there’s the saying, “Business is war.” This is unfortunate, but true.
In the final analysis we all live by selling something, so it’s important to decide who our customers are, and be conscious of how we conduct ourselves in our actions and words. It has been said that everything we do or say moves the sale either forward or backwards; there are no neutral activities.
Understand your customer’s pain and uncover his “hot button.” What is on the customer’s mind? Can you do anything to alleviate the pain? Which note should you strike to get him to notice you as a supplier?
Position, or reposition yourself as you see fit. Offer, and highlight the benefits of your product or service and show how your offering satisfy those benefits. It has been rightly said that when a customer buys a drill-bit from a store, he’s not actually purchasing a drill-bit per se but thinking of the hole that he will make with the drill-bit. So don’t get enamored of your product or service but relate it to the customer’s situation.
Price your product so that the market value of your product is equal to the perceived value of the product in the customer’s eyes. If you price your product wrongly, either it will not sell, or it will sell but you will lose revenue. The Mazda Miata is an example of a car that was priced too low. Customers perceived a higher value and bought the car in large numbers. Dealers, sensing a good product, reaped the benefits of this situation and added a $2000 markup. Mazda lost revenue.
The customer is always right. He or she doesn’t always make logical buying decisions but emotional ones. In fact, every purchase is ultimately an emotional decision to buy. Seek to delight the customer by exceeding her expectations. Listen to her and respond to her complaints, because a delighted, if not dazzled customer will be loyal and return again and again. He or she may even become your raving fan.
I once worked for a man (not for long though) who was fighting a number of court cases. He had bought a franchise from a computer education firm, whereby he got software and other educational material to teach programming to students.
The agreement with the firm, as I understand it, was that he would open shop at one and only one location. Where he violated the contract was that he opened half a dozen locations, one after another, duplicating the study material and pirating the software.
Naturally, the principals, or “head-office,” warned him, threatened him and finally sued him. While the case was being fought in court, a long drawn out process, somebody threw a rock through the glass window of his office. I presume it was someone from head-office taking the law into his own hands.
Again, reverse engineering is practiced for a number of reasons. It is certainly not illegal to buy an expensive piece of equipment, dismantle it, and figure out how it works. So long as patents are not infringed, it’s presumably OK to get ideas that one can use from equipment that one has bought. That’s what intellectual property rights are all about.
But some pieces of equipment are so expensive that it is difficult to buy more than one unit, although the requirement may be there for more. (Should one cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth?) Software piracy, from this “developed” end of the world, looks very wrong—-and it is. However, from the other end of the world it just doesn’t look so dire—-which it should.
Business is generally seen, regrettably, as a form of warfare. As long as this perception remains, people will try to break the rules if they can get away with it. Indeed, Sri Aurobindo had two words to describe business — he called it economic barbarism.
My sister called me yesterday, as she does every Saturday, from England and we talked about events in the past week. Apparently they’d gone out with friends, Bob and Anita. When the time came to eat in a restaurant, Jaya, my sister, suggested that each person pay for himself or herself. Bob said jokingly, “So we’re not going Indian?” Apparently the overall feeling in England is that Indians invariably pick up the bill.
To this day I have yet to find a person who does not like the idea of “going Dutch.” My Dad, in his day and age, used to call it “his-his whose-whose.” I told Jaya that the popularity of going Dutch probably is because people are scared to foot the entire bill. She had a better reason. “It’s a very fair arrangement,” she said. Besides, restaurants have become so expensive that no ordinary person can afford to pay the entire bill for the entire party of, say, two or more families.
My son and I went out to eat the other day. Since it had been his idea, he fully expected to pay for both of us. But I said, “Let’s go Dutch.” He seemed curiously relieved and relaxed. Going Dutch leaves no one feeling obliged in any way, and is far better that “going Indian.” Or was Bob just flattering us?
Kisan came to our house to work as a domestic help when he was about eleven, and I was doing my B.Sc. at St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta.
He was a refugee from the devastating famine which gripped Bihar around this time. His dad, unable to provide for him, left him in our household till such time he grew up and could fend for himself.
He soon learned to speak Bengali, and helped mummy in the kitchen and did the daily marketing for us. In return he got boarding and lodging and a reasonable monthly allowance.
Now, there was a slogan from the Indian Government which went “Each one teach one.” I, being an impressionable young man, heeded that slogan and started teaching Kisan in the evenings after he has finished all his work.
Since my Hindi was not that good, I taught him Bengali reading and writing. After about three months of this, I added math. Then Kisan suggested politely that he’d like to learn English also. I was a bit hesitant at first, but then started teaching him the rudiments of English.
This unofficial tutoring was in addition to my Saturday evening tutoring for which I had to take the bus to a nearby school. The latter was under the auspices of the National Service Scheme, parallel wing of the NCC (National Cadet Corps).
I think I taught K for about three years till he left our employment to return to Bihar. He was a reasonably diligent student and would pore over his books in his spare time. If he managed to keep up with his studies after he left us, I’d like to think that I helped to reduce the number of illiterate persons in India by one.
I love certain songs not only for their intrinsic worth but also because they define some specific moments of my life.
“Summer Wine” by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood, is an all-time favorite. But for me, it was another girl, another place, and another band of men that this song evokes memories of. During our summer school in Chandigarh, there was this rather plump girl from IIT Kharagpur who sang this song superbly. The young men who accompanied her were from a different city altogether—Bangalore. At the drop of a hat they would pick up their guitars and she would enchant us with her rendering of this song.
When our holiday bus took us to Simla, they performed as soon as we got off the bus. Curious passersby stopped to look, listen, and stay to hear more. Such is the personal history of “Summer Wine” for me.
Another lyric, which I can reminisce about, is “Walking Back To Happiness” by Helen Shapiro. In England, in 1961, this song was a hit number, and the local TV station would play it every few hours. So my memories of England are colored by memories of Helen Shapiro’s seductive voice. By the way, Cliff Richard’s “Young Ones” was also being played a lot in those good old days.
Finally, “I Don’t Want To Be a Memory” by the Exiles was a 1983 hit in the US, and I remember waiting in my car, an ancient Monte Carlo, in Dorothea Dix hospital at 11:30 at night—waiting to pick up my wife after her work as a nurse in this hospital. Once again, the words and music on my car radio put me in the mood for romance. Free music, full of love and nostalgia, filled the car.
Democracy, it is said, is not a perfect form of government, best it is the best we have. Similarly, marriage is not the perfect form of man-woman relationship, yet it is the best we have. That said, it is instructive to remember that monogamy has evolved over the years from polygamy and polyandry. Any form of marriage other than monogamy was disadvantageous to the woman, chiefly because she was economically dependent on the man. Go figure!
Also, the man was very possessive of his mate because he wanted to be certain that the child she bore him was actually sired by him! This again was because firstly he did not want to bring up someone else’s progeny, and also because he did not want the family legacy wealth, in a patriarchal system, to pass into someone else’s hands - someone who was not his own child.
Both these considerations have largely become anachronistic, because firstly, most women are financially independent and secondly because of DNA testing. Nowadays, the biological father can be identified and forced to pay child support. Also, you can be very sure — if that is so important to you — that you are rearing your own child.
Did you know that India is the most married nation on earth? Almost everyone gets married in India. Even with all its disadvantages, marriage provides a stable environment in which to bring up children. It also provides for a long-term commitment and security to both partners. So look before you leap, but tie the knot just as your parents did!
Many years ago, soon after my engineering friends and I had graduated from college and had been working for some time, I visited an old friend, Ravi Amur, in Bangalore and he asked me casually how I spent my leisure time.
“Well, I read a lot,” I replied.
“Each book pulls you in a different direction,” he commented.
The years have passed and I recently sent Ravi an email in which I said, “I’ve been thinking of what you said and here is my defense – each book tries to pull me in a different direction, true, but I don’t have to go in that direction!” The choice is mine, but it is nice to know that those directions exist!
The motto I follow is, “If books on long shelves are my mentors, and friends when I’ve grasped what they say…”
Indeed, if one browses books online at Amazon, one can take a peek at the contents of books tagged “Look Inside,” before buying, and even read a one or two page excerpt.
Ravi Amur’s warning came to my mind the other day when I was “looking inside” a book by Wayne Dyer called “Your erroneous zone.” The author was trying to make the point that it is more important to lead a happy family life than to be adept at solving equations, knowing complicated chemistry, and so on. According to Dyer the psychiatric wards are full of both types of people, high achievers and not so high achievers.
I found the book interesting because, of course, Dyer is on public TV pretty often, but also because it runs counter to the competitive spirit on which US society is founded.
In another book, by contrast, people like Tiger Woods and Einstein are analyzed to find out what makes them tick – what caused their stupendously high achievement. Here, this second author comes up with the term “deliberate practice” to account for superlative performance.
On reflection, these two books certainly advocate two distinctly different life philosophies, and it is left to the reader to decide whether to follow the high road of achievement or the low road of contentment.
Finally, these two books, representing diametrically opposite viewpoints, vindicate my friend Ravi Amur’s off-the-cuff words of wisdom: Each book tries to pull you in a different direction.
That’s what friends are for, aren’t they?
It was Albert Einstein who said that imagination is more important than knowledge. His ability to make the conceptual leap from observation to sound theory is well known. Another great scientist wrote, “Chance favors the prepared mind.”
I am writing this piece to motivate my young readers. Motivation has been defined as processes that direct, energize, and sustain behavior. Speaking for myself, I find that the occasional essay penned satisfies my creative urges and leaves me motivated for the more mundane tasks of life – such as earning money or doing the household chores. Indeed, psychologists say that therapy through creative activities is often very beneficial.
If your goal is to discover something new about the natural world, or invent something that was not there, remember that Edison tried hundreds of materials before he finally found one that was suitable for his incandescent lamp filament. On being questioned about his 100 failures (or was it 1000?) he merely said that he now knew what wouldn’t work and that is as authentic a piece of knowledge as knowing what would work.
With the vast expansion in knowledge, the challenge is to keep learning new things while keeping an eye on possible new discoveries. Some discoveries merely consist in rearranging old knowledge, or on discovering new ways of doing old things. But some discoveries and inventions are revolutionary in nature, like the iPhone, for example.
Finally, to the heading of this essay. It is said, somewhat disparagingly, that learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads. For every Shakespeare there are a hundred camp followers who are students of the Bard. We read these critics to understand Shakespeare better. Yet how much more satisfying it would be if somehow, somewhere, we could pen our own bestseller! That is a quest that should never leave our consciousness, however often we fail.
I like to think of my writings as Mr. Sen’s Concoctions, much like Lily the Pink’s medicinal compound. In the song, Lily invents a compound that is designed to heal, but often does the opposite. My pieces hopefully correct human foibles much like Henry Fielding’s. His book, Tom Jones, is touted as the first English novel.
But people are touchy if they have low self-esteem, and are sensitive if their self-esteem is high, so I’m caught between a rock and a hard place, so to say. Also, as a sage once observed, meaning is not given to us but by us.
We interpret what we read so as to fit it (accommodation or assimilation) into our personal mental framework. So one should be extremely careful when writing on important issues. Reverting to Lily the Pink, her medicine made the stammerer absolutely mute, and given to big-eared people, her compound enlarged their ears so much that they had to learn to fly!
Rumor has it that the Second World War started because of a misplaced comma. Likewise, misspelled or mispronounced names can infuriate people. Children at my school delight in asking, “Are you Mr. Sen or Mr. Sin?” Regrettably, some adults also do the same, and guffaw.
Can behavior be changed by parodies, lampoons, cartoons or the like? Not if you’re egocentric. But consider how wise Socrates was when people were making jokes about him in an assembly. He stood from his seat so that all could see him, and thus enjoy the jokes better.
Lily the Pink’s final, and greatest achievement, or blunder, was when Mr. Ebenezer – who thought he was Julius Caesar – took her medicinal compound. Now, he thinks he’s the Emperor of Rome!
The writer, wrapped up in his work, bent over a typewriter or computer keyboard, can also become a butt for jokes. One should not take oneself too seriously…then only, like Lily, one can hope to go to heaven when one dies.
When I first joined the substitute teaching profession, I told myself that I was lucky to get a job in a difficult job market. The pay could best be described as pocket money, but we had enormous flexibility in choosing and canceling assignments.
We could key in dates and periods of unavailability, and choose the schools where we preferred to sub. But beyond all this, it was the fact that I started subbing at Enloe High School, which was the school my son Reeshi attended, that made the experience all the more worthwhile.
Irrespective of race, religion or economic status, these students had a spirit which did Enloe proud, and no wonder—-it is the 52nd best school in the nation.
Since I was at Enloe for almost four years, I had the opportunity of watching a batch of students come in as freshmen and leave as seniors. Within this time frame, they grew and matured and developed their personalities and skills almost like chrysalis into butterflies. Boys went from being uncertain tweens to tall, gangling, sometimes muscle-bound young men. Girls went from primness to flamboyance to sedate young ladies. And through it all they laughed, talked, thought and perspired as they acquired knowledge, honed their laboratory skills, and coordinated motor skills on the playing field and in the gym.
Often, while subbing, I would find a kid more interested in humming a tune, or in throwing a crumpled paper ball into the wastebasket. Then I would surmise, often correctly, that they had just come in from a music class, or a basketball game, as the case may be. It was a challenging experience to change their frame of mind to the one more suited to the task at hand, be it a calculus worksheet or a group project on To Kill A Mockingbird.
I had occasion to do a long-term subbing assignment also, during which I got to know almost 126 students on a more than nodding acquaintance. In guiding them through an energy resources project, I used my judgment in giving them freedom to express themselves as they wished. Of course, there were some discipline problems, but these were more the signs of exuberance than troublemaking. Three years later, these students still greeted me affectionately, and I got a glimpse into their mindset when one of them confided to me, “It was the best time we ever had.” I feel it necessary to emphasize strongly the need to balance “concern for the job” with “concern for people.” Except for occasional admonitions, I had no need to place strictures on their work. After all, Enloe is a magnet school and its students are highly motivated.
Lunch is a joyous occasion for all students, and a chance to socialize and let off steam. A healthy mind in a healthy body can only be attained if the proper nourishment is present. Young people at the peak of their growing process have voracious appetites.
And, finally, to the teachers and administrators go my thanks for congenial and collegial relationships. They were, without exception, helpful, and aroused my admiration at how skillfully they taught their students; how much motivation and commitment they brought to a task, and how well they succeeded.
I remember my Dad running his tiny workshop in Calcutta during the eighties and nineties. He had a lathe, shaping machine, drilling machine and grinder. He had to do his own marketing, accounting and managerial work, but the machines were operated by casual workers who worked only when there was work for them.
To the question, why did these workers not have their own workshops, I’d like to say that firstly, it takes a lot of business acumen to run a small-scale industry. Secondly, my Dad had got a loan from the State Bank of India, against the land that he had at Konnogor, which served as collateral. Most poor people cannot provide this collateral, and so they usually can’t get loans. Of course, experiments have been tried to give loans without security, but often the borrowers don’t bother to repay the loans. Human nature being what it is, a borrower pays back the loan to release his collateral, not otherwise!
When all the machines in my dad’s factory were running, it was music to our ears, so to say. Money was coming in and we had the promise of a good month. An idle machine is a sheer loss, in more ways than one. But there was one machine that my Dad did not have—a sawing machine. Because of this he had to outsource his sawing work, thus reducing his profits.
We had a family discussion on whether to go in for a sawing machine costing Rs 5000. Capital expenditure is always risky, but here the rewards seemed to outweigh the risks. So we bought the sawing machine and after that all our sawing work was done in-house. We had just started a new “revenue stream.” This term, so favored by bankers, means that additional money would be coming in, financial obligations like debt servicing could be met, salaries and other bills paid, etc.
Back in the US in 2001, I initially was dependent on my wife for all my needs. But within a short time I managed to generate my own revenue. Now I have three revenue streams. Firstly, there’s the money that the editors of Saathee magazine pay me. Then there’s my income from tutoring high school students in math, and finally there’s my monthly paycheck from my work as a substitute teacher.
With increasing competition, it is very necessary to be resourceful. Society will only give you money if you give value to society. A customer is, therefore, a person with whom you exchange value. Entrepreneurs know this, and institutions like banks and venture capitalists are always ready to provide the finance, albeit at a cost. But the risk is yours, as are the profits.
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