Last of the short stories..

A little therapy (see previous post)

So she is with another guy. Does it really matter? What was left of our “relationship�? anyway? Phone calls, which only I used to make, at my own expense. What loss is there really, for me? None, except loss of face. The worst thing you can do to a man is kill his Self-Respect. Quoting Ayn Rand: No. The worst thing you can do is kill a man’s pretense at it, because true Self-Respect cannot be killed. She’s so right.

(Sorry, just had to cross the limit there. It’s not even a short story anymore. So what?)

“It’s not you. I just don’t feel like being physical with anybody right now”.
“That was the way I felt at that time. I meant it then“.
“If I find another guy, why can’t we still be friends? Don’t you see that what we have is beyond labels?”.

If you fall for this tripe, who is to blame, other than yourself? Can you really claim the “Purity of the Victim” simply because you chose to hope that even though the signs are bad, things will improve? Life is cruelest to the Optimist – but only if s/he stops being an Optimist. This is one more lesson learned. Be Optimistic. But listen to your brain. This should never have continued past 2 months. That it went on for 3 years is a travesty, and could be viewed as time wasted. But it served its purpose. Is there any point punishing yourself? You made a mistake – one which you’ve made before. So what?

Oh and one last thing:

“You’ve have gotten closer to me than any other guy has ever been”.

“Closer-than-ever” guy has known her for 3 years, and can usually tell what she’s thinking while she’s thinking it, and can sense when things are heading South (like they did).

Recently-met-lucky-bastard gets to sleep with her after having known her for about 2/3 months.

Is sex just sex? Who got closer to her? Yes, this exposes me in a poor, homosexual-type light, but it also exposes hypocrisy. To one man, she reveals her favourite colour, to the other, she reveals her body, and she gives herself to him. Who got closer?

One of them was just an over-glorified Best-Friend (”Let’s not put a label on our relationship”).

Again, you only have yourself to blame, if you believed this tripe. Time to move on, and find somebody who is less of a hypocrite.

Short Stories…

I’ve been tagged

Here’s my attempt at writing a short story, in 55 words. Not much of a story. But I think it says a lot.

After three years of love, hate, arguments, space, relationship labels, men & women, they were ready for a break. An indefinite break. Isn’t that the same thing as Goodbye, he wondered? Then Geetanjali walked past him, onto the dance floor. Perfume alluring, dressed to kill. *Smile* Yes, we need an indefinite break

Not the best I can do. I might even cheat and rewrite it. Ha!

Well instead of cheating I’ve just deformed the idea.

Here’s some more of the story

Did I love her?, he wonders, on an hourly basis. 3 years. How can I still be uncertain? Is that internal Void because of her, or is it simply because the last occupant has left, without a replacement? She may now be possessed by another, and equally possess that other. That drives me crazy.

* * *

Some random flashes of memory. Cuddling in a basement bed in London. Fighting outside a South Delhi multiplex. Getting a head massage in a New York taxi. Trying to figure out what life would be like if we were married. Married?! Fuck me! I’ve got places to go, and Wild Oats to sow!

* * *

In an old sci-fi classic, a character wonders: Why can’t I grieve? In the same tone, He asks: “Why don’t I miss her?�? Where is that dull ache? That feeling of being incomplete. Why don’t I feel it? Was it all for nothing? Then self-admonishment. You have reasons to be Happy. He realizes: I am.

* * *

He’s given his notice. Less than a month left before he is free. Being idle scares him. Being lonely scares him. But a new life beckons. Will I be up to the challenge? Yes I will be, this time. Having attempted to make his mark in the Northern Hemisphere, he now crosses the Equator.

I tag Shiv and Karma

Road Rage

Ok, the title says that because I wanted to spew as many cuss words as I could

WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD

One has to wonder what the other half of humanity uses for a brain. Other half, in this sentence is defined as those people who disagree with me. :-p

Roads only benefit Rich People

I am literally shocked at the number of times I have seen people (who I assume know how to read and write) say the above bolded sentence. I just cannot get my optimistic self to believe that people with an education can say such a thing. But it does also explain why the world is the way it is.

I would think that the benefit of roads would be obvious, and that’s why it’s taken as given, and requires no explaining, but apparently it does. So either I’m a fucking prodigy to whom the following scenarios come naturally, or there are a lot of people doing an injustice to humainty by claiming to be members of it!

How investing in roads & highways benefit poor people

When I say investing in roads, I don’t mean laying some tar from point A to point B. I refer to the whole Government program of creating a Golden Quadrilateral, the NHDP, highways, flyovers e.t.c.

Ok
1) It provides low-income people with jobs.
Scenario 1: There are no roads in India. Poor people sit on their thumbs (and starve to death).
Scenario 2: They help out in the building of a grand highway. This could mean they actually work on the road itself (clear rubble, lay the bitumen, help level the land, feed other people who are working on the road, be employed as sweepers once the road is construct). This puts money in their pocket. They use this money to eat/sleep/survive.

2) It saves lives.
Scenario 1: Let’s give every shitty village in the country money to make a hospital, and not focus on building roads at all. Result: out of 40,000 villages 12 actually use the money to make hospitals. The others find that the money never reached them (or went as far as the Village panchayat, which miraculously manages to afford BMWs, with none of the villagers being any wiser). Out of the 12 hospitals that are made, 8 aren’t used at all, because nobody was really monitoring their construction, so they’re simply rotting corpses. That leaves 4. Out of those 4, 2 operate at slightly substandard conditions, because all of the fresh, bright-eyed young doctors don’t want to waste their lives in the middle of a godforsaken village, so you get the dregs working in those hospitals. That leaves 2 hospitals. One of them gets a young bright-eyed doctor with a positive approach and leftist leanings, and is successful enough to get a brief mention in the New York Times and the BBC, detailing the young Doctor’s ideals and how he studied in Johns Hopkins but came to back to make a contribution to his country. The last and final hospital is run by a Western European who has decided that since his country has spent the last 800 years plundering the darkies, he has the right to come back to their land and patronise them, all the while lecturing on the beauties of Socialism, explaining that is what made his country rich. When idiots like TTG point out that maybe plundering the darkies made him rich, not Socialism, TTG is instantly shut up by Macualay’s bastard brown children, all the while profusely apologising to pompous arrgoant european fuckhead.
When a person in one of the non-hospitalized villages gets sick, s/he gets loaded on to a bullock which trundles along on a dirt track, eventually leading to poor villager’s death. TTG never hears of it. Left-leaning blogger gets inspired to write an emotional article on the village which is called KahinBhiNahinPur, highlighting little details like the children’s smiles and how “Baa” was such a sweet quaint old lady, killed by the ineptitude of India. The article gets published in a newspaper.

Scenario 1a
KahinBhiNahinPur gets hit by a tsunami. There are no roads connecting KahinBhiNahinPur except for the dirt track, which also got washed away by the tsunami. No hlpe reaches KahinBhiNahinPur in time. People die. TTG never hears of it. Left-leaning blogger gets inspired to write an emotional article on the village which is called KahinBhiNahinPur, highlighting little details like the children’s smiles, and discarded buscuit wrappers and how “Baa” was such a sweet quaint old lady, killed by the ineptitude of India. The article gets published in a newspaper, and then Arundhati goes and writes a book on how Cellphones used by Punjabi men named Honey and Pinky have brought about Baa’s death.

Scenario 2: You spend money connecting all of India up with very very good roads, and spend money setting up hospitals in Small-medium towns with some semblance of infrastructure which attracts doctors/nurses and other people who don’t have to take shits out in the open. When person in village A gets sick, they call out an Ambulance which goes speeding down a newly constructed highway (almost getting run over by 3 cows and 8 trucks) and manages to get the villager to a hospital in time.

Tsunami hits KahinBhiNahinPur. Relief reaches it very fast, on the Toll Road which is making an exception in this case to allow emergency traffic to get to KahinBhiNahinpur for free, using the high-quality roads which did not get washed away by the tsunami.

3) It provides low-income people with jobs.
Wait didn’t I just mention that above. I guess this needs to be hammered in. Scenario 1
KahinBhiNahinPur is a village of farmers. They grow vegetables. They figure they could make money selling these vegetables. They make more vegetables than they consume. The nearest big market of vegetables is New Delhi, with a population of 14 million, and fat pockets. But there’s no way of getting those vegetables to New Delhi. Because there is no road connecting to KahinBhiNahinPur to New Delhi. And what vegetables do attempt to make it to Delhi get eaten by the bullock that pulls the cart that holds the vegetables. The villagers commit suicide, and Chandrababu NoDo gets kicked out of office, because he wasn’t doing anything to “help the poor”, he was just concerned with building highways for rich mercedes drivers. Won’t someone PLEASE THINK OF THE COMMON MAN. (After all, what good is a road when you’re NOT MAKING ENOUGH MONEY TO FEED YOURSELF, FOR FUCK’S SAKE).

Scenario 2.
There is a road connecting New Delhi to KahinBhiNahinPur. The villagers sell vegetables to Rude/Crude Delhi-ites. In Rude/Crude Delhi, some unfit, but good-looking, Software engineers get a pay rise. They get married. They buy more vegetables. The villagers in KahinBhiNahinPur sell more vegetables so they make more money…….WAIT….NOOOOOOOO…..THIS IS THE TRICKLE-DOWN EFFECT. We all know this is just an article of faith. It couldn’t possibly be the outcome of REASON!

4) It provides low-income people with jobs.
Wait didn’t I just mention that above. I guess this needs to be hammered in.

Scenario 1
There is a dirt track connecting KahinBhiNahinPur to New Delhi. It is graced by a convoy of VIP ambassador cars and police gypsies once every four years.

Scenario 2
There is a national highway built by a private (i.e. greedy multinational) company running very close to KahinBhiNahinPur, which actually dared to suggest to the government that it wanted to make a profit on it, instead of doing something for the Common Man. Lots of trucks, buses and cars pass by KahinBhiNahinPur. KahinBhiNahinPur resident Ramu (or Sita, I’m no chauvinist!) is good at making Parathas. Ramu sets up Monty da Dhaba on the national highway, close to his home town and starts making money. 15 dhabas, 1 McDonald’s and 3 petrol stations come up to cater to the traffic on the Highway. The McDonald’s, being an evil greedy multinational hires every single one of their employees from America, even the beggars outside it. They import everything, the toilet paper, the dirt, the cement, the electricity even! The surrounding neighbourhood does not benefit at all. How after all, does letting McDonald’s into India benefit the COMMON MAN. HOW? I just don’t get it. The Petrol stations also refuse to hire anybody from the local village. They ship slaves from Africa to man their Bharatiya petrol pumps.

5) It provides low-income people with jobs.
Wait didn’t I just mention that above. I guess this needs to be hammered in.

Scenario 1
There is a dirt track connecting KahinBhiNahinPur to New Delhi. It is graced by a convoy of VIP ambassador cars and police gypsies once every four years.

Scenario 2
There is a national highway built by a private (i.e. greedy multinational) company running very close to KahinBhiNahinPur, which actually dared to suggest to the government that it wanted to make a profit on it, instead of doing something for the Common Man. NotATattu Automobiles, a big multinational corporation making cars, notices that plump software engineers in New Delhi now have enough money to buy their cars. They also realize it’s cheaper to assemble/manufacture cars in India rather than import them. They are looking for a place set up a factory. Since land in Delhi is expensive, they have to build their factory outside it, but nearby. They have two sites in mind. KahinToHaiPur, which looks and feels like hell, and KahinBhiNahinPur, which also looks and feels like hell, but has a highway running near it, built by the ex-Chief Minister Chandrababu NoDo who got kicked out for not helping the Common Man.
They decide to locate their factory in KahinBhiNahinPur…OH NO. The TRCIKLE DOWN EFFECT AGAIN? BUT BUT WE ALL KNOW IT DOESN’T EXIST! Rich software engineers cause villagers in KahinBhiNahinPur to also make money? How can this be? People of the village get jobs in the factory, and since they had no jobs before, they are willing to work at low rates. Arundhati Roy writes an article on how greedy multinationals exploit workers with low rates, and how they deserve to kicked out, so that the villagers can go back to teaching the village idiot to dig holes in the ground.

*takes deep breath*
Rinse, lather and repeat, with Electricity and other rich people’s toys….

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Outsourcing. No Worries

Why the World shouldn’t worry

Disclaimer: This post is based on no researched facts. It is completely based on the contents of my head. Read at your own risk

America, is of course worried about outsourcing to India, and how all its jobs are going down the tube.

But lest ye think that India is all ok about everything, there has been lots of talk over the past few years that India will lose its edge to China, or the Philippines, or Estonia or somewhere.

No.

This whole outsourcing thing will actually just cease to be an issue soon (for Americans) and Indians also need not worry. Here’s why:

1)Indian salaries are rising much faster than American salaries are falling
In the outsourcing industry (software, BPO e.t.c), the average pay hike, for the past 2/3 years has been a whopping 30% (no sources, this is just based on my anecdotal evidence). A pay hike is expected every year in the software industry! This when inflation is a low (by Indian standards) 4%! Now the SOLE reason for outsourcing is cost. If that cost advantage disappears, there will be less outsourcing. If salaries in India are rising fast (in this sector) eventually outsourcing becomes less lucrative. Another reason for this salary rise is a shortage of skilled workers in India!!!

This brings me to point 2

2)There is no other competition
If India is going to become more expensive, then the work should just shift to other countries which are cheaper right? No. Why? Because the uniqueness of India, lies in BOTH the quality and quantity factor.

India has a large number of qualified and engineers, and continues to churn them out. Other countries may be able to match on quality, but few will able to match on quantity. Quantity is an important factor, because of the way outsourcing works (in India). Put simply, it’s “Throw 2 billed engineers and 2 shadow resources on this problem, and get it done!”, i.e. have four people do the work while you’re only charging for 2. Even within that equation, those 4 engineers are making more money as compared to the pre-outsourcing days. No other country has the amount of qualified engineers that India does to enable it to perform outsourcing cheaper rates than the Indians! They may be able to sustain it temporarily, but the wages would rise faster in a smaller country than they do in India. So attempting to outsource (on a large scale, i.e. the type of stuff done in India) would be a very temporary phenomenon, short-lived.
Okay so quality and quantity. Now here’s another crucial factor: Time Zone.
The bulk of outsourcing comes from America. India is 12 hours ahead of 1 or 2 US time zones. What does this mean? This means that you can provide 24 hr support to American customers, and charge DAYTIME rates for the full 24 hours. While India is also handling US daytime customer service, the nightly stuff is what makes the huge difference. You have somebody who is (sort of) up and perky in their time zone, but working through the American night time. This makes it theoretically possible for an American company to get something like 18 hours of work done in an 8 hour workday, by farming problems over to the Indian wing after their office hours. While this is not something revolutionary, it is successful because companies who would not be able to afford this before can do so now! (Multinational corporations have been using timezones to their advantage for centuries, but now even without a global presence, smaller companies can make use of this).

Wait. If we’re talking population, what about the only other 5000+ year-old civilization in the neighbourhood?

3)What about China? Nothing.
India has nothing to fear from China in the software field. For lots of reasons.
One of them is English. Yes, we’ve been hearing for a while now that the Chinese government is pushing Chinese people to learn English. But this is already true of many people in India. English and Hindi are part of the Indo-European language tree. Chinese is not. It is much, much easier for an Indian to learn English, than for a Chinese person. This is not to say Chinese people will always suck at English, but this an obstacle in the way.
Another important language issue is the language of the operating system. In India, computers using local languages never took off, for a variety of reasons. But in China, Windows, Linux e.t.c they are all in Chinese. Now if your customers are American, they’re probably using the English version of Windows. If you’re in India, so are you. So What? Weelll, technically, an American company could ship its English product over to a Chinese company, but then there’s added overhead: If the American company’s software product is in English, there now needs to be an interpreter betwee n the Chinese developers and the English designers….and some things can be lost in translation. But in India, you learn Computer Science in English. And thus, certain things are instantly clear. Language makes a difference…

Ok now the thing is that determined Chinese can overcome this. But there’s another big hurdle against them. A Chinese worker is already more expensive than an Indian one!. I say this again, with no evidence. I base this simply on the GDP per capita for the two countries. China’s GDP per capita is higher than India’s. This means, in a very inaccurate sense, that China’s income is higher than India’s. This means that the cost of a Chinese worker (his/her wage) is higher than an Indian worker’s. So not only do Chinese not have the requisite large pool of English speaking graduates, but the ones they do have will already be more expensive than Indian ones.

Add lack of a decent legal infrastructure to handle IT issues, and the lead that India already has in Software/BPO, China is not a threat in this particular sector.

Conclusion
So..in conclusion, eventually outsourcing will peak, then drop, and that day is not far. Also, although I dismiss the competition, it doesn’t mean that they won’t get some small share of the pie. Eventually, faster than people think, outsourcing to India will no longer be the value for money it used to be, and that will be end of the large scale trend. In order for the Indian software companies to survive, they will have to “move up the value chain”, into the consulting biz, and also by developing their own products. Infy, Wipro and TCS already have their own products, and other big companies are working to develop their own, to shut up cynics, who constantly crib and question: Why doesn’t India ever produce a Google or a Microsoft? And consulting is already happening.
End result: India gains a reputation in a “knowledge” field, and if leveraged correctly. gets to exploit it as Brand India. As for the Americans, eventually the outsourcing will drop off, some jobs will move back, and Americans will eventually discover the Next Big Thing and ride the next wave.

South Asian My Ass!

my take on an old spat

Anybody who is a regular follower of Sepia Mutiny may have noticed how a couple of months ago, a(nother) great rift opened up between FOBs and ABCDs.

I forget the exact article, but it had to do with the London terrorist attacks, and how the Sepia team criticised (Indian)people who were disassociating themselves from the South Asian tag and the Muslim tag . The Mutineers (and many others) argued that this behaviour was despicable, and that “in this difficult time, all of us browns should stand together” – why? Because the aftermath of the attacks meant that being brown meant being a terrorist so an Indian/Sri Lankan/Pakistani/Muslim/Hindu/Sikh all had an equal chance of being subject to backlash.

So the argument started off with “Since we’re all being discriminated against, we should stick together”

The next argument made was that South Asians had a common culture (cuisine, parental issues, marriage e.t.c), and that’s why the Term South Asian made sense.

Now, in this day and age, I understand that the concepts of Identity, Nationalism and Patriotism are considered old-fashioned, evil even!

But not to me. I do consider myself a “Citizen Of The World”. Somebody who is happy bouncing around London, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco, Houston, Singapore, Hong Kong as much as Delhi, Bombay and Chandigarh. But I know my roots, and my grounding. I am Indian.

So pardon me, if I take offense at being associated with a bunch of suicide bombers, and fundamentalist pricks. Of course, one argues that the “average” Pakistani and Bangladeshi is not responsible for these characters either. Which may or or may not be true, but the fact is, that we Indians have worked hard to carve out a name for our country – it stands for something. The Idea of India is not a new concept. It’s been around for a good 2000 years or so. Replacing the Idea of India with one of South Asia devalues everything that India has achieved to group it right back with a surrounding basket cases.

Anybody who has read my previous post on The United States of South Asia may think that I’m contradicting myself. Well yes-and-no. I floated that idea as a means to end current political problems (mostly), not because I feel we share something in common with our Paki “brothers”.

I don’t particularly blindly hate Pakistanis as the government would have me do. But neither do I particularly like them, nor share any fraternal bond with them. This is because, in my mind, the Pakistani/Bangladeshi identity is precarious at best. Yes this is based on the fact that these particular identities are only 50-some years old, but also on the reasons behind their creation. What was the reason behind the creation of Pakistan? It was to be an anti-India. That is what defines Pakistan.

How am I expected to believe I share something in common with a bunch of people who’re trying their hardest to show they’re NOT Indian. When brown people are called “Cow-Worshippers, “South Asian” Muslims/Christians will quickly jump to point out they’re not idolatrous Hindus. Sri Lankans hate being confused for Indians (and rightly so!).

All of this “stand together” stuff is bullshit. The people we’re trying to stand together wouldn’t do it for us, so why should we do it for them? The day Pakistani jihadis start fighting for the World’s mistreatment of India and Indians, you can call me “South Asian”. I see no harm in trying to educate White Rednecks in the differences between Indians and Pakistanis. Hell I want to do it! But NOT because I want them to go beat up Pakistanis and leave us Indians alone – simply because it’s frikking insulting for me, as an Indian to be associated with that crap. While India has never been particularly nice to its own citizens(1984, 1993, 2002 e.t.c., e.t.c.) it has never perpetrated any acts of agression against other nations. It has not given its land over to Freedung/Freedumb Fighters to practise blowing innocent people up. So it would nice if that particular distinction was not lost on the Western world when they decide to hop on top of a man and fire 5 bullets into his head. Why should I, a nerdy software engineer with an ivy-league degree have to be fingerprinted like a common criminal because of the stupid acts of people from Arabia/Pakistan? And I’m sorry, it doesn’t seem like the average Pakistani is against those terrorist acts. I could be wrong about this, but it doesn’t seem like they are. As Indians, we should loudly advertise the fact that we’re Indian, NOT South Asian

One final note – about the common cuisine and culture…..yes, we do have a common cuisine and culture – it’s INDIAN culture and Cuisine. I dare somebody to show me a drastic difference between “Pakistani Cuisine” and what Indian Muslims eat. Guess what – 50-some years ago, there wasn’t anything called Pakistani “Culture” – that’s because it was INDIAN!!!!

Update
After posting my reply to Arzan in my comments section I just realized something – this standing together nonsense devalues all that INDIAN Muslims have struggled and fought for as well. Many of them have taken advantage of India’s freedom to pull themselves out of the ghetto and to challenge dogma (Yes cynics, I know about a woman called Imrana, and Shah Bano). Why should they also now be painted with a Jihadi brush? Let me stress, as I did in my comments, to me Indian Muslims are Indians first – and I’ve met many of them who think of themselves in the same way, and could not think in any other. Sure we’ll keep our distances from each other (especially when I state my craving for a nice Hot Dog..)

Second Rant of The Day

Singhapur and Bharat

The second rant, goes back to my all-time fav – Deeshaa.org.

So there is the regular, predictable, conventional post on Singapore.

Comparing Singapore to India from an Indian’s perspective is depressing: how did we–given all the advantages we had in 1950 compared to Singapore–squander it all and end up being a poor misgoverned over-populated country? That is the depressing bit.

Ok here’s the re-write:

Comparing Singapore to India, from any perspective is Idiotic: <Sarcasm>How did we, as a country with 5000 years of love and hate and bloodshed and wars and history and religion and culture and empire and 500 million people who could barely feed themselves not end up as “developed” as a teency-weency 4 million-strong authoritarian city-state?</Sarcasm>

Oh and one thing – am I to take it that India was NOT a poor misgovernment over-populated country in 1950? Were we a first-world country then?

Yes. It truly boggles the mind. When comparing development trajectories, our next comparisons will involve Ethiopia and Hong Kong. How did Ethiopia, with all the advantages that it had over Hong Kong in the late 9th century, end up being such a poor, misgoverned malnourished country, while Hong Kong has gone from strength to strength?

No wonder the World is the way it is today…

See, I’ll confess upfront – I’m a loud-mouthed idiot, with not much to show for brainpower. I didn’t figure out wave-particle duality. I’m lucky if I don’t get mated in chess in 3 moves(sigh…the one case where I DON’T want to get mated so easily….). But when the Brains of the World, who actually study Economics in depth come up with swill like this, one really begins to wonder.

policies — well thought out, rigorously implemented, and single-mindedly enforced — have the power to transform.

Duh.

This is what I heard. A certain minister, very close to Lee Kuan Yew, in charge of housing (or some such) was involved in some kick-backs. The word went around that the guy will surely get off easy since he was in the inside circle. Lee asked the minister to see him. The meeting was brief. Two days later the minister blew his brains out. The message was clear: zero tolerance.

Ah, “This is what I heard”. Anecdotal evidence. The Best Kind. Now judging by this story, one can deduce many things.

Lee (Kuan Yew) is an expert hypnotist. How else do you think he convinced the minister to blow his brains out?

Lee Kuan Yew is a Mafia Don. He made the minister an offer he couldn’t refuse (cue Godfather Music).

The Minister was tired of being constipated, so he killed himself two days later, because he was..full of shit.

Or… The Minister was so shamed by his act he committed suicide.

None of them reflect very well on Lee Kuan Yew. Well, I would think the first possibility would make his being a leader much easier..but neither the second, the third nor the fourth possibility show what a “great leader” Lee Kuan Yew was/is.

That week they go out and catch a vandal, prosecute him to the utmost, and plaster his picture on the papers and in the write-up use the word “shame�? a dozen times.

O Glorious tactic of public disgrace. How I love thee. Not. Because in a country as small as India, with a population of only 1 billion, it would easy to capture all the vandals, and to plaster their faces in the papers, right? What a nice paper that would read like. What a lovely business idea! I can make yellow pages of all the people shamed! I’ll be rich! (*puts pinky finger tip to mouth, shaves head bald, and puts on a grey Nehru coat*) One BILLION dollars! Before you look up propesctive grooms on Shaadi.com, you will check out their mugs in my Shame catalogue! And this system would be so foolproof. I mean it’s not the least bit prone to corruption or mistakes. And hey, if you got defamed accidentally, and weren’t really guilty, you can always make your reputation back in your next life, right?

Freedom of religion is guaranteed in Singapore but freedom to proselytize is not. Proselytizing essentially says that my religion is better than your religion and that if you don’t accept my god as the One True Savior(TM), you will rot in hell that my god has specially prepared for you. This sows seeds of discord in society and soon the newly converted start asking for special treatment and handouts and in the limiting case, when the bunch grows sufficiently large, ask for a separate state of their own because they cannot bear to live with the other people who are destined to go to hell.

Does anybody else sense a little bigotry here? No no, this is just general conversation…

o Singapore is strict about proselytizing. In keeping with their policy of discouraging that anti-social behavior, they caught a meek little Catholic lady who was going door to door peddling her religion and threw her into jail after she was found guilty by the courts. Then they publicized the event. This sent the message to all religious bigots who follow the dictates of their own hearts that bigotry is not ok.

This also sends the message that meek little old catholic ladies are the real threat to society. Not suicide bombers, thieves, or rapists. What a remarkable concept. I love it. Remember, don’t be caught with a religious book outside a strangers house. According to common law precedent, this treasonous, murderous act could get you in jail. But at least it would keep all the fundamentalists at bay.

They took care of the mullahs as well. Got them together and told them that if they even make a peep in their weekly religious sermons promoting killing and terrorism, they will have their butts in the sling. Live and let live was the message they got and as rational humans, the mullahs got in line. The last time they had communal unrest was sometime in the late 1960s.

What Neato Idea! Now I wish the kings of the 25 disparate Hindu kingdoms had thought of that 1100 years ago. India wouldn’t be in this mess. Then maybe even we wouldn’t have had any communal unrest since the 1960s. Live and let live. All this time. It’s been so simple. If we’d only said that to those Arab marauders with their scimitars. Then maybe us Hindus and Muslims would be living in peace now. Yes truly. Lee Kuan Yew. What a great man. What novel ideas Singapore has come up with.

No such luck in India, of course. We have Christian missionaries from all over the world having a grand old time converting heathens and soon enough you have the neo-converts pissing on Ganesh idols to show their new-found faith. News gets around and finally out of desperation and plain old brutality, a few missionaries get roasted and this gives the country an ill-deserved reputation of being intolerant. Madrassas funded by Saudi money flourish by the thousands where apparently the mullahs teach the young that killing kuffars is a pretty practical way of arranging society.

In reaction to this ocassionally, a few of the normally tolerant Hindus band together and retaliate. This hits the international press and India is tarred as a society full of murdering morons.

I notice that most of the commenters on that blog have let this comment fly. Frankly, this comment scares the shit out of me. Anybody who tries to justify these kinds of massacres, is a true disgrace to humanity.

And another thing – Hindus are NOT tolerant. We may not convert people to other religions and may let other religions be, but we are not tolerant. Don’t believe me? Ask any Hindu woman how “tolerant” Hindus are. Ask any Dalit how “tolerant” Hindus are. Yes members of other faiths may be even less tolerant. But please, lets not have any illusions about ourselves.

Every chronic persistent shortage you see around you in India is the result of a failure of imagination

Nope. It’s a failure of Socialism. I am pretty sure that some of the lalas sitting at their grubby desks imagined up precisely that some actions would lead to a shortage, thus causing hapless people to line up at their desks with bribes. That’s imaginative.

Not so the Singaporeans under Lee Kuan Yew. They learnt to use their imagination. They build capacity before they hit shortage. I hear that they have started building the third terminal at the airport even though the second one is not even up to full capacity.

Of course, that’s it. Build capacity before you hit shortage. Right. How foolish of me. And here I was, thinking, wait until everybody is dying, until every transformer blows a fuse before you replace it. Because of course, we have money to spare, and it’s easy to inject planning into cities that have existed since Jesus’ time. It is easy to buldoze 400 year old villages to make way for new highways. I mean there must be what – one or two of those in India at the most. Singapore must have also had 400 year old villages right?

I don’t know why but some people just draw good cards from the random draw that is life. Singaporeans are lucky. I am sure there are those who will immediately retort that the Singaporeans don’t have the freedoms that are normally associated with a liberal democracy. And I am also sure that the person making that statement is sitting comfortably well-fed in his nice office or home accessing the world wide web for knowledge and entertainment. For the average schmuck in a third world country, he would any day trade in his imaginary freedoms for a decent shot at a full stomach, a roof over his head, and a chance to get his children educated. After the average schmuck has achieved those basic necessities, he would ask for all sorts of goodies that a liberal democracy provides. And that is when the society should become a liberal democracy.

The sequence is important.

And here lies the greatest horror of horrors. Mr. Dey accuses people who champion democracy as being out of touch with reality. That we should all stay indoors in our airconditioned rooms….while he stays in his a/c room to tell us that Democracies should follow DICTATORSHIPS!!!!! This is it folks. The Path to salvation.

1. Create an authoritarian state.
2. From your pool of available dictators, pick one who has vision, knows how to read and write and is good at economics
3. Create country
4. Once your country is full of people with high living standards, transition to democracy.

*smacks hand on forehead*. EUREKA! The solution to all our problems are here! YAYAYAYA! *dances naked on the streets*

But, but wait. Didn’t America start out as a capitalist democracy first? And doesn’t comparing India against America make a teency bit more sense since they both were under the Colonial Yoke and had to fight for their freedom?
Hmmm, well more than Singapore, but America was just empty land before the Colonial times.

Oh – so we should compare against China. Ohhh, so China is the model for all to follow. Where they speak only one language, and follow mostly only one religion. And where their country wasn’t divided into two.

Hmmm…so that would mean, that just because something is good for Singapore, it’s not necessarily good for India?

But but, reducing crime and corruption aren’t bad things. We should learn those ideas from Singapore, shouldn’t we? Yes, but I think people in India do want less crime and corruption as a rule….so what is the new thing that Singapore is teaching us?

Hmmm… could it be…that it is more important for a country to be Economically free, than Politicially?

Possibly. Could it mean, that if your country is economically chained, the democracy would just end up re-inforcing that chaining?

For the most part, until the citizens of that country slowly wake up to other forms of Economics.

First Rant of the Day

An awful pissing contest

Ok so I’ve meaning to get a few rants off my chest for a while now, but being bloggicapped has prevented me from doing so.

Anyway, first off, is the now famous (Paris Hilton-type famous) post by ZigZackly. So apparently, it’s bad enough that people are murdering each other/killing each other in New Orleans and stuff, this idiot instead decides to admonish Americans for daring to talk about being poor. This is like what kids used to do in kindergarten – “My daddy is stronger than your daddy. My car is better than your car”

In this case it’s “My poor person is poorer than your poor person”. I totally second one of the abusive commenter’s retort – Suffering is suffering, and just because somebody doesn’t meet your definition of suffering doesn’t make it any less real, or of less consequence.