Who needs a life here?

You know what’s funny? It’s the choices we make. I recollect seeing rajmah for the first time in my first week of college in Hamirpur. I’m talking about that reddish brown kidney shaped group of pulses. Gosh, I hated the very sight of it in the mess. Every Tuesday night meant a trip to Ekta café, Tilak, Canteen or anywhere as far away as possible from Rajmah for Narayan , Sagar and I. And on Thursday mornings we had oats and banans for breakfast. I felt like these mess guys really needed a life. Who has oats at 7 am for crying out loud? I always waited to get out of college and get back home to Bangalore where I could have ‘good’ south Indian dosas, idliys and filter coffee for breakfast.

Now that I’ve relocated to Chennai, I must not have any problems with the food here, right? There’s dosas and idlies and pongal and gallons of filter coffee available; I just need to wave my arms to get it. But instead, I choose to have rajmah, black dal, cauliflower and rice for breakfast AND lunch. I prefer oats, banana and milk for dinner. I’m serious. It’s like when you’re growing up in India in your twenties, you’re thinking of blonds and bikinis. And after that second year in Amsterdam in your early thirties, you are thinking of gold and silk saris.

The great big Indian Wedding just got smaller

There’s no denying that love is in the air. Matchmakers are in business. Families are buzzing with excitement this season with someone in it readying to tie the nuptial knot. What is that one thing that, maybe besides organizing logistics for the wedding (and finding a partner) that takes up maximum time? I believe it’s got to be the invitations. House after house: your first cousin’s wife’s third sister’s Labrador will be pissed if he’s not invited in person.

I think I’ve got some news. The times are changing. An average Indian Wedding would have around 500 to 600 guests. But an average wedding in the west would have only a few dozen people. Doesn’t the difference seem striking? May be the roots go back to our ‘joint family’ system, where an average family consisted at least 10 members. So, assuming that the guy’s family and the girl’s family each had 10 people, that makes it 20 in the first circle. These two families had 5 other extended families with an average of 10 in each. That means, about 100 in the second circle. Let us say that each person in the initial 20 knew 20 others (friends, acquaintances etc.) That makes it a straight 400. Btw, these numbers are rather conservative in south India. So, 600 people at a wedding is really no big deal.

You may be going, “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” I’ll tell you what the frequency is.In twenty years time (at max), Indian weddings will have only a few dozen guests just like their Western counterparts. I got an e-mail invite this morning from a distant friend. Now, I know what that means: I am on her guest list; but I am not worth the pain and trouble of a phone call or a personal invite because we don’t know each other well enough. And so, I won’t show up at the wedding because I know she really doesn’t want me there. Extend this to the hundreds of people that have received her e-mail invite. I’d be shocked if anyone turns up.

In this way, we keep playing this game of invites through e-mails, blogs and worse still, orkut and facebook posts. Slowly, down the line, the numbers at Indian weddings will keep reducing. My generation is far less attached to its second circle of family than my mother’s generation anyways. I have first cousins whose name I don’t know. Extrapolate this over 10, 15 and 20 years. I think my assumption is safe. Weddings will cost far lesser; and we’ll manage to keep the noise out.

Why Steve Jobs' $1 salary means little

There’s a table calendar on my colleague’s desk. The month of January has on it the photo of a man with curly, ruffled hair holding up two wall clocks on his shoulders; one clock shows 9 and the other clock shows 5. The punch line reads: “Success cannot come from a 40-hour week”. I love the illustration for the simplicity with which it conveys a very powerful message. Hidden into it is also the idiosyncrasy of being displayed on a guy’s desk who clocks 40 hours per week.

But the elephant in the room is easy to spot. I went up to this guy and asked him how he interpreted the line “Success cannot come from a 40-hour week” He looked at me with a “Duh!” and continued “It could mean one of two things: A) is that success cannot come from putting in just 40 hours per week at my job or, B) I need to be more efficient with the 40 hours that I put in to be more successful.” Maybe that’s how you would interpret it too.

But let me tell you how a man who takes home 1 dollar a year as salary would view the statement. The 40-hour week is representative of a job (or in other words something that the great majority is involved in). To be in position to take home a dollar in pay check, the guy would not have to depend on his pay check for food. And that means, his net worth/ passive stream of income would make his paycheck irrelevant. Again, that implies he keeps his job as head of Apple not because he has to (for Goodness sake), but because he chooses to. As popularly misunderstood, a 1$ paycheck to a CEO of a company who holds equity in it means nothing. However, a CEO with no equity in his company is never going to see a 1$ pay check. He’ll be well taken care off (or at least, that’s how it’s made to look).

A friend said this over lunch: “If you borrow 3 lakhs from a bank, the bank owns you. If you borrow 3 crores from a bank, you own the bank.” I’d say “If your company pays you a 100, 000 a year, the company owns you. If it pays you one dollar a year, you own it.”

Wish you a speedy recovery, Mr. Jobs.

Well Well

Looks like someone seconds my opinion:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Davos_goes_nowhere/articleshow/4072530.cms

Happy Day

Our Leaders are on Drugs

Davos is over; at least for 2009.

Here

As a by-stander, I am disappointed. Beyond re-iterating the existing gloom and sad stories, I can’t quite see an action plan in place. Platforms for discussions like the prestigious one in Davos tend to pride more on the fact that world leaders, diplomats and religious leaders made an appearance. Little is understood as to why they did it.

The message from the Annual Meeting is that leaders must continue to develop a swift and coordinated policy response to the most serious global recession since the 1930s: global challenges demand global solutions.

Honestly, did we need 4 of the heads of G8 counties to tell us that? What next?

Does the WEF have any follow up programme? How are we doing on the agendas that were set in the WEF 2005 (say) to tackle hunger in Africa? Or trafficking in Cambodia?

The greatest outcome of the Annual Meeting 2009 was that, despite the economic turbulence, people chose to come together in record numbers from industry, government and civil society to reflect on the seriousness of the global challenges we face and to connect and respond to such challenges.

Goodness! Is this the kind of conclusions that you would expect from history makers at a time in history like this?

The bottom line question is: Will the effort that went into staging the WEF this year pull the world out of recession? I doubt so. A lot will be achieved on the periphery.

In case you suspect, I am not a critic of the World Economic Forum. On the contrary, I am a keen follower of the event with the hope that something might get done that could improve the well-being of an old lady in the Andes, or a twenty five year old in the heart of India’s Silicon Valley.