In the classic 1988 Kannada movie Avale Nanna Hendathi, there is a character who has three wives. The first wife convinces the guest that he should have coffee. The second wife makes the coffee. And the third brings the coffee for the guest.
Isn’t this exactly the way IT companies work?
This interview with A B Bardhan, the General Secretary of the CPI published in yesterday’s Business Standard is nothing short a masterpiece. The entire interview is a work of art, and deserves to be framed. However, even in such a galaxy, some lines deserve a special mention.
When asked why the left has little influence in the cow belt, Bardhan says:
The reasons for our failure in the Hindi heartland are the continuing hold of feudalists, traditionalists and obscurantists in our society.
He even admits that states such as West Bengal and Kerala are “peripheral” (and i’m not sure he meant that in a geographical sense) and has more reasons to offer about the non-performance in the heartland.
In peripheral states like West Bengal and Kerala, we have had the advantage of great social movements but in the Hindi heartland, in spite of philosophers like Kabir being from there, things haven?t changed much.
What takes the cake, however, is Bardhan’s stand on FDI
The Left supports FDI as this way at least some part of the billions that were looted from India in colonial era can come back.
On reforms
We will not allow the issue of hunger and poverty to be relegated to the background while pursuing growth. Reforms will have to touch the last man in this country. Today?s reforms are only producing millionaires and billionaires, and even trillionaires.
You should read the full thing for maximum pleasure. Hats off to Aasha Khosla of the Business Standard for enabling this masterpiece!
Sometimes I feel like I want a break. That I want to take a few days off, even unpaid leave will do. And roam. I want to generally roam the forests of the western ghats. Go by bus. Start off at some famous place. Take a bus to some arbit place and get off. Walk for a while. Take pics. Talk to people. Make notes. Make sure I stay clear of naxalites. Move on.
Only problem is that it’s monsoon now? so I can’t immediately execute on this. And I can’t execute on this for pretty much the next three months. The last time I had got such ideas was last August, when I was on a break between jobs. Again, there was the monsoon issue. Add to that the uncertainty that was in my life then. And the fact that once i’d successfully interviewed with my current employer, I didn’t get much time.
Why does it always have to happen in the monsoon? Why don’t I get this kind of feeling in say winter, when it can be easily executed? Worresht.
Cricinfo says:
Both James Anderson and Chris Tremlett are in which means there won’t be a Lord’s debut for Stuart Broad. A little unlucky, after his 5 for 76 for England Lions against the Indians at Chelmsford. It is Tremlett’s Test debut though.
I think the reason Tremlett has been preferred to Broad (despite the latter’s recent string of strong performances is that… he bats right-handed! Yes, i know that both of them are right arm fast bowlers but Broad’s selection would have resulted in an all-left-handed English Tail.
The English think tank knows fully well that India’s weakness is in its failure to get out the tail, and hence some left-right combination there should definitely help! Bowling abilities don’t matter I guess.
I had a haircut today. I don’t think i’ll ever have long hair :(??
So the government has done it again. After managing to procure only about 11 million tons out of the targeted 15 million tons from our farmers, the government has gone ahead and imported about half a million tons from the international market at a much higher price. A process which, in its entirety, ends up raising a large number of questions.
Continue reading “Wheat Procurement And Derivatives Markets”
Following a 2-minute chat with #1 half an hour back, it turns out that I’ve talked (through GTalk, mostly) to all my “old flames” in the last thirty-six hours. Conditions for someone to be on this list is that the person in question should know me (rules out Kajol, etc.) and the crush should have lasted at least a week (else it gets unmanageable).
Quite an incredible occurence, not unlike the lining up of the planets. For, there were some pieces in the puzzle (eg. #2) that were lost until a couple of days back, while interaction with some others (#3) is extremely infrequent, limited to about two chats a year or so. The others are better off in this regard. I’m in touch with #4 on an almost daily basis (through email and chat), and chat with #1 and #5 quite frequently (about once a week).
Interestingly, all five of them are now outside India, in four time zones across three countries (#4 and #5 are in the same city). So it did help that I was online practically all day yesterday, so that i could catch all of them at some point of time or the other.
And in some sense it feels good that I’m not in touch and on fairly decent/good terms with all of them, considering the extent to which I had messed up things with each of them! And to think of it that with each of them (apart from #1, maybe), I had messed up things to such a bad extent that they had all cut off communication for a while.
Ah, those good old days when I used to fall in love with someone at the drop of a hat! And to now think that I haven’t even had a one-minute crush on anyone for over a year now…
By the look of things, it might not be too long before it happens.? With Saqlain Mushtaq gaining British citizenship, it may not be too long before he will want to play international cricket for England. Of course, he’ll need to work on his fitness (he seems to have become four times his original size) and stuff, but as he showed in the tour game against India, he can still give the ball a tweak, and also bowl a mean doosra.
So, with Monty and Saqlain, soon we will have the unlikely situation that England has the best international spin attack! And with the fast bowlers not really performing too well of late, and being plagued by injuries, it would be interesting to see what kind of pitches they’ll prepare for home series! And who knows, some stud leg-spinner might come up from somewhere and England will be ready to avenge the 1992-93 humiliation.
hmmm??
Once again, in a moment of madness, i’ve shaved off my sideburns. Thankfully i haven’t gone all the way, I have stuff that reaches till the bottom of my ears. Still it’s bad enough. I’m kinda losing half of what I think used to define me – they were so long and growing that in a month they’d’ve met. But one look in the mirror yesterday told me that I’m bored of this same look.
Initial plan was to just shift the location of the facial hair. i was planning to leave a stubble on the chin. But then I got faced with the problem of the monkey and two cats – I take off a little from the right and the left looked too long. Now, there seems to be too much on the left, and I have to take corrective action for that. After a while I got disgusted and decided i’m incapable of precise measurement of things on my face, and shaved it off. The only thing that might have been left was my moustache, but again it didn’t look prominent enough , so off that went too.
Is there some device available which allows me to precisely measure things on my face, so that the cat and monkey problem doesn’t occur? So many times i’ve had to shorten my sideburns much more than I wanted to because of this, it’s disgusting. And I don’t want to trust hajaams with my face, and prefer to shave myself.
More madness will result shortly. I’m thinking of giving up on my efforts to grow my hair (it’s an ugly in-between length now) and have a haircut. And this would be the fourth or fifth time, maybe, that I’ll be giving up at this point. First few times, it had resulted in dandruff and forced me to run to the barber. This time I’ve taken enough care to ensure that doesn’t happen. But it looks like it’ll be in this woresht in-between length for a while so i’m losing patience.
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