Author: SK

Played the game today after a gap of around two months. Played for an hour. Half court. On a screwed up board where the angle between the board and the ring was around 135 degrees while it should ideally be 90!

Figured out that even though I haven’t played for too long, I’m still fairly good at the game. Most of my shots went in and I didn’t do too badly in the defence department either.

As a side effect, it was after ages that I was indulging in any kind of decent physical activity.

Feels so good!

Recently I had told you people that I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s a possibility of a relationship with her. Still trying to figure it out.

However, must tell you people that I’ve started enjoying it – talking to her frequently, guessing what goes behind each thread of conversation, trying to understand her while she tries to understand me – in short the entire process.

And it so happens that once you start enjoying a process, you stop worrying about the results. Which, I think, is exactly the case right now. So I can peacefully go on putting blade/scissors without too many worries as to where the thing is headed!

Recently I had written about the difficulties I faced while chatting with Shilpa in Kannada. Today I figured out one more difficulty that could crop up, but thankfully didn’t during my last chat with her.

One peculiarity with Kannada (i guess it must exist with more Indian languages) is that written Kannada is completely different from spoken Kannada. In fact, the only people who SPEAK written Kannada are maadus settled in Bangalore.

Now, when you chat using Roman script, which form of Kannada do you use? I didn’t face that problem with Shilpa because neither of us know written Kannada too well (I remember the nightmares I have reading the Vijaya Karnataka when my dad asks me to read what he thinks are interesting articles; I take one minute per sentence). But what if I were talking with someone who has formally studied Kannada?

A couple of years back, when my cousin-in-law was abroad, he used to mail me. All his mails used to be in written Kannada written in the Roman script. Used to be so heavy I would just reply in English.

Wondering if we can start a “kannada in roman script association” where we can come up with soem kind of standardization!

Have been running on a short supply of sleep of late. For about two weeks now, I’ve never had my “quota” of sleep. Extracts from two Pink Floyd songs aptly describe the situation…

… you fall
upon my waking eyes
inviting and inciting me
to rise

through the window in the wall
come streaming in on sunlight wings
a million bright ambassadors
of morning

no one sings me lullabies
and no one makes me close my eyes
so i throw the windows wide
and call to you across the sky

That was from Echoes. Happens everyday to me. Arbitly wake up early in the morning. My room is bathed in sunlight. I’m still feeling sleepy and want to sleep again. Somehow I’m not able to sleep and decide to wake up.
Awake to the morning, no reason for waking
(Sorrow, from A Momentary Lapse of Reason)

Due to some allergic reaction of the skin on the back of my right palm, I’ve had to shift my watch from my right wrist to my left. It’s a fairly heavy Titan watch, something my left hand is not used to carrying. And I wear it almost always, which means my right hand feels incomplete without it!

Anyways, the transfer of the watch from one arm to another seems to have turned everything topsy turvy. The whole world seems to have become suddenly laterally inverted. I suddenly feel left-handed. My right hand reaches down to change gears while I’m driving. Thankfully it doesn’t extend to my legs, so I don’t end up pressing the accelerator instead of the clutch.

I slowly seem to be recovering. At least now I observe that I’m not switching the keys of the keyboard… like typing “s” instead of “l” or “i” instead of “e”. Oh yeah, I’ve kept my watch aside now. So much better off to feel naked than to see the world ulta-pulta!

A few days back, I had cribbed about the really arbit mid-term paper of the Contemporary Economic Scenario (CES) course. Just back from the end-term and it ended up being no better.

The end-term had two divisions, each forty five minutes long. And both of them were “fill in the blanks/short answer” type question papers. The first was a fairly short paper, six questions, and included stuff like “Name one Asian country whose stock market outperformed India last year” and “According to the professor, what is the illustration given to prove that Greenspan was wrong in 1999?“.

In effect, one could crack this paper if and only if he/she mugged up the entire 80 pages of notes meticulously prepared by the prof.

The second part of the end-term also lived up to the rest of the course. It was purely fill in the blank type with probably some of the vaguest possible questions. Included stuff like “Bilateral trade agreements can have ________ or _______ effects” or “The Singapore issues consist of _________, _________, _________ and ________“. Again of the totally muggoo type. Only difference being this portion didn’t have negative marking, so there was some scope for creativity!

Just to remind you that this course is taken by three of the best faculty in the Economics department. And they come up with such rotten quesiton papers. Just hope that the grading is good, else it might get a little dicey!

The previous NDA government had made ambitious plans of disinvesting stakes in numerous PSUs. However, given the left support to the current government, and the presence of people from the socialist era, most of these plans have been scuttled. The disinvestment ministry was scrapped and parliamentary proceedings stalled for numerous days (thus wasting millions of rupees of taxpayers’ money) when the government wanted to sell stake in BHEL!

Given the policies of the current government, a number of PSUs are likely to be continued to be closely held, with a huge majority of shares with the government and small portions with public sector banks, NBFCs, LIC, etc. However, it makes eminent sense to sell a small stake in these companies to the general public, if not anything else, to improve transparency.

Let me illustrate this taking Telecom as an example. Telecom in India is an uneven playing field, with private players being charged an “Access Deficit Charge” (ADC) which is supposed to go into cross-subsidizing BSNL’s rural telephony. Of course, there is the talk of how different players are manipulating with the ADC in order to abstain from paying, and there is also talk of how excess ADC has been collected this year.

However, the crux of the matter is that BSNL is not a public company and has not declared its financials for about two years now. As a consequence, nobody has any clue as to where the ADC is going and whether BSNL is actually using the money to provide rural telephony, rather than to just subsidize its local calls at the cost of its competitors!

Now, BSNL has been asked to come up with this OneIndia plan, where STD calls to anywhere in India would cost just Re. 1 a minute. Sceptics, including the MD (or is it Chairman) of BSNL have expressed their reservations regarding the feasibility of the plan. Once again, a little information about BSNL’s financials would have helped clear the air. If not anyone else, it would have at least helped TRAI frame its policies better.

What I am driving at here is that had a small share of BSNL (even as small as say 1%) been held by the public, SEBI would have forced BSNL to publish its financials, solving a number of problems. Similarly, given that a large number of sectors would be (hopefully) opened up to competition pretty soon, it would be really helpful if the government agencies in the same were listed and available for public scrutiny.

Even if we keep this competitive issue aside (after all there are so many private firms which are competing in various markets), in the larger public interest it makes sense for the companies to be public. After all the companies belong to the people and it is well within the rights of the people (as indirect shareholders) to scrutinize the financials. And we have already seen that unless the SEBI sits on a company’s back, it is not likely to release financials very efficiently.

In conclusion, it would only be in the interest of the people if a small stake in each PSU (both state and center) were sold to the public. It would bring greater transparency to the affairs of the companies and discourage hijack by politicians and bureaucrats. And it is evident that there could be no better time than now, what with the buoyant stock markets, to do the same. Just hope Mr. Chidambaram has the willpower to do it, though I’m sure Mr. Yechury and Mr. Bardhan are likely to make more than their fair share of noises!

Spent the last half hour chatting with Shilpa. We started out talking in Kannada. Five minutes later I noticed a couple of peculiar problems and then we quickly switched to English.

1. There is no standardized way of writing Kannada in the Roman script. I try to follow the baraha model by using caps and h and stuff. However, she didn’t seem to follow that. She tried to write it so that I pronounce it the way I would if it were an English word.

2. Kannada slang is highly localized. Shilpa and I both grew up in Bangalore and went to a CBSE school, so both of us learnt Kannada at home only. And the thing is, even the Kannada I speak at home is some kind of slang. And I have now come to believe that Kannada slang is localized at the household level! Have faced this problem earlier when talking to friends. However, it struck me harder today because she happens to be my distant relative and yet was using a different slang!

These two reasons together met that it was really tough for us to figure out what the other was saying.

No wonder, whenever two Kannadigas meet, they start speaking in English!