Who Answers Your Phone and How? 'हलो हलो' ला हलकट उत्तर.

One of B S Mardhekar’s बा. सी. मर्ढेकर poems starts with following lines:

त्रुटित जीवनीं सुटी कल्पना,
ट्रिंग ट्रिंग जैसा खोटा नंबर
सलग जमेना एक भावना,
'हलो हलो' ला हलकट उत्तर.

Last two lines read:

“not aligned are feelings,
‘hello, hello’ is answered by an abuse.”

(poem number 28, “मर्ढेकरांची कविता” “Poetry of Mardhekar”, 1959)

Times of India wrote a leader on June 17 2008 “Goodbye Hello”

“A study commissioned by UK's Post Office Telecoms to mark the 130th anniversary of the telephone in that country has found the once standard telephone greeting of "hello" is falling out of favour.

Instead, up to one in three 18 to 24-year-olds prefer answering their mobiles with "hi", "yo" or "wassup". ..

…Today, with caller identification protocols in existence in cellphones, most people — especially the younger set — know exactly who's ringing them up and react accordingly with nobody getting offended in the process.

…However, having acknowledged that technology is the main cause for the cultural shift in creating more informal relationships, it should also be recognised that the use of cellular devices per se is not helping much to maintain basic courtesy levels in society either.

Too many people are starting to complain about mobile phone users. They criticise them for leaving their phones on in movie halls and meetings, for speaking while driving rashly or too slow, for discussing personal matters loudly in public or simply for using hands-free attachments and walking..

…Emily Post's well-known book, Etiquette, written in 1922 may read like fuddy-duddy stuff today but its principles remain the same: honesty, respect and consideration for other people…”


Artist: Raymond Thayer The New Yorker 21 May 1932

Phillips Rodny Associates (and many of us) are now in Bunge

John Kay said: “…what we need is a term for the opposite of a bubble….bubbles are puffed up, not puffed down. That is why we need a phrase to describe the anti-bubble..”, asked readers to try and annouced a prize for the best entry. (FT June 24, 2008)

I participated with an entry ‘elbbub’, produced as al-boob. I lost although Kay says I would have won if Keynes’ rules were applied.

John Kay now has announced the winner:

“…But under Keynes’ rules the runaway winner would have been elbbub – bubble reversed – and that did not quite do it for me. So I decided to seek fundamental value rather than be carried away by market momentum…But the most compelling image is surely the bungee. You are in free fall. You expect that fall will end and reverse before you hit the ground, but you do not know when. And bungee jumping offers the same kind of immature pleasure as blowing bubbles in the air…But bungee is the cord, not the process… And congratulations to Iain Martin for his winning entry – the bunge…” (FT July 1, 2008)



Artist: Arnie Levin The New Yorker 27 August 1990

My caption: "Well, I guess Phillips Rodny Associates are now in bunge."

Tata’s Nano because they said Oil Price was a Globe Wide Bubble

The New Yorker Caption Contest #152



Artist: Mick Stevens The New Yorker 7 July 2008

proposed caption:

"Oh, no! We bought Tata’s Nano because American Congress and India’s Finance Minister said oil price was only a globe-wide bubble, inflated by commodity speculators. And here we are facing onrushing globe-sized behemoth."

Reader’s Digest for the Overclass,The Economist, does it again!

Paul Krugman: “Nine years ago The Economist ran a big story on oil, which was then selling for $10 a barrel. The magazine warned that this might not last. Instead, it suggested, oil might well fall to $5 a barrel.

In any case, The Economist asserted, the world faced “the prospect of cheap, plentiful oil for the foreseeable future…” (NYT, April 21, 2008)

The Economist October 6th 2007: “The American presidency is Hillary Clinton’s to lose…Mrs Clinton is clearly a formidable candidate for the presidency. She has the most powerful name in the business now that the Bush brand is tarnished. She has a smoothly working political machine. She has a wealth of experience in both the legislative and the executive branch. And she exudes competence. All told, she looks likely to translate this into both the Democratic nomination and a victory in November 2008…”

Homer Simpson might say: “Suckers!”

When Indian stock markets started falling in calendar 2008, the magazine probably thought they finally got one prediction right.

Did they?

The magazine said on November 17, 2008:

“…India shows dangerous signs of irrational exuberance. It was swept by euphoria last month as the Sensex, India's benchmarket index, hit 20,000 for the first time. India's Economic Times declared, “The first 10,000 took over 20 years. The next came in just 20 months...Superpower 2020?” Instead, India's poor risk-rating should ring alarm bells.

China's economy looks less risky thanks to a small official budget deficit (many reckon that it really has a surplus) and its vast current-account surplus and reserves…

…The p/e for Chinese shares that foreigners can buy is a more modest 22, well below the 40 reached in 2000. In contrast, Indian shares, also with a p/e of 22, have never been so overvalued…

… The riskiest economies, all with current-account deficits and relatively high consumer-price inflation, are India, Turkey and Hungary…”

They risk-rated China 5, Russia 8, Brazil 12 and India at the bottom of the pile 15.

But as the luck would have it, sure Indian stocks have plunged since then but Chinese stocks have suffered worse, both in local currency and dollar terms! See the table below.





'Now the weather, and as usual it's a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.'

The Spectator 2008

My caption:’Now the future according to The Economist, and as usual it’s a tale told by an …’

Did a Typewriter Play a Role in Nietzsche’s God is Dead?!

Andrew Sulliavn wrote on June 15, 2008 in The Sunday Times:

“Here’s something I didn’t know: Friedrich Nietzsche used a typewriter. Many of those terse aphorisms and impenetrable reveries were banged out on an 1882 Malling-Hansen Writing Ball. And a friend of his at the time noticed a change in the German philosopher’s style as soon as he moved from longhand to type.

“Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote. Nietzsche replied: “You are right. Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.”

Gulp. The technology writer Nicholas Carr, who pointed out this item of Nietzsche trivia in the new issue of The Atlantic, proceeded to make a more disturbing point. If a typewriter could do this to a mind as profound and powerful as Nietzsche’s, what on earth is Google now doing to us? …”

or should it read "I've killed Good Lord."?

Artist: John M Price The New Yorker 9 March 1940

Whose Nice Decade/Century/Millennium was it Anyway?

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, has declared the “nice decade” to be over.

Tim Bond argues in FT May 19, 2008 that we are now in the ‘nasty decade’ and life won’t be easy there.

For vast majority of Indians, could any period in India's history be called "nice"?

Social scientist V K Rajwade’s (विश्वनाथ काशीनाथ राजवाडे 1863-1926) following extract from his essay महाराष्ट्र व उत्तरकोंकणची वसाहत (The colony of Maharashtra and North Konkan) is interesting.


click on the scanned pages above to get a larger view

(source: राजवाडे लेख्संग्रह Rajwade Collected Essays, संपादक: तर्कतीर्थ लक्ष्मणशास्त्री जोशी editor: Tarkateerth Lakshman-shastri Joshi, Sahitya Akademi, 1958)

How Tall can Pencils Grow in Green Pune, NASA'a Innovative Zero Gravity Pen

Artist: Tom Cheney The New Yorker 30 June 2008 caption contest # 151

Proposed captions:

1. "“…So you are saying I may go to jail if we don’t take permission from Pune Municipal Corporation before sharpening them because they technically are now trees.”

2. “I just wanted to create a living monument for our innovative spirit and extend it. Remember, NASA’s extravagance and its tendency to look for complex solutions when they developed a pen that would write in zero gravity while we Russians made do with pencils.”

Like Brahmins in the past, Wheat has Enslaved us

Girish Karnad says: “No one understood the sense of humiliation as Vijay Tendulkar विजय तेंडुलकर did.” (Frontline June 20 2008)

If so, I wonder if Tendulkar ever wrote anything about eating millet (मिलो in Marathi) because for most people of Maharashtra eating red coloured rotis of millet- if they did it- was one of the most humiliating experiences of their life. The year 1972-73 saw Maharashtra in the grip of a severe drought. For those who were alive then, even finding 'lowly' millet was not guaranteed.

Why don't Maharashtrians just say they did not like the taste of millet? Why feeling of humiliation? Do Maharashtrians discriminate based on what one eats the way they did (or do) based on what profession one’s ancestors held? For example, during my childhood at Miraj, eating rice was considered “feminine”.

Business Line reported on June 8, 2008:

“Millet Network of India (MINI) has demanded that the Union Government include millets in the public distribution system, while announcing an ecological bonus to farmers growing millets. This will help the country address the food security and agrarian crisis…

… the two major advantages of growing millets were saving valuable water and ensuring the nutritional needs of the people…millet farming didn’t consume much water and has zero dependence on chemical fertilizers…Millets have 30 to 300 per cent more nutritional elements such as calcium, minerals, iron and fibre.

… millet acreage had fallen over a period of time due to undue focus on rice and wheat. From 45.9 million hectares in 1990, the acreage decreased to 31.5 million hectares, a drop of 35 per cent…”

In Japan, Tsubu Tsubu cafes across the country have millet dishes on their menu, recipes that suit modern tastes.

Millet and other `miscellaneous' grains were the staple food for Japanese across the country from ancient times until as recently as 30 or 40 years ago.

Yumiko Otani says: “Millet grains can expand and stabilise food supply; these grains can grow in poorer soil and colder areas compared to rice and wheat, and are resistant to aridity and climate change. They require less irrigation and fertilisers. Considering that Japan's self-sufficiency rate of food supply is 40 per cent (calorie-base) and that it imports more than half of its food from overseas, the country, in a way, could help tackle the world's food problem by changing from white rice to miscellaneous grains. By learning to supply foods to its own people, using its own land more efficiently, Japan can reduce pressure on farmlands abroad.

These grains are rich in dietary fibre, minerals and vitamins; contain both protein and vegetable fat, and are nutritionally well-balanced. Diets based on polished rice and processed wheat, on the other hand, can cause "hidden starvation" because they lose many of their nutrients such as vitamins and minerals.

The grains are more resistant than rice or wheat to diseases and pests, and are easily grown without pesticides. Post-harvest, they can be stored for a longer period of time.

These wholesome grains require a lot of chewing, and are rich in flavour and taste; it is easy to switch to a millet-based, no-meat diet.”

Urban Indian children prefer to eat only wheat and rice. My wife and I love to eat jowar but our son doesn’t even try.

Like Brahmins in the past, wheat and rice have enslaved us. Read an earlier related post here.

Picture Courtesy: The New Yorker 2008


Following caption is mine.

“We get it, Wheat - We urban Marathi speaking people owe our survival to you.”

Enjoyment of Aesthetic Experience- Jyotirao Phule ज्योतीराव फुले and Nanasaheb Peshwa नानासाहेब पेशवे

Marathi readers are fortunate that Marathi became the chosen medium for some of the best poetry in the world.

Marathi prose has not scaled the same heights though.

There are some exceptions. Here are two of them.

John Maynard Keynes(1883–1946): “…one's prime objects in life were love, the creation and enjoyment of aesthetic experience and the pursuit of knowledge.”

One of the greatest personalities of India, Mahatma Jyotirao Phule महात्मा ज्योतीराव फुले (1827-1890) knew that well.

Following is one of the most moving passages I have read in Marathi. Its author Phule imagines what our pre-religion-caste ancestors must have witnessed in the nature around them.

The last line reads:
“…looking at this, ancestors of our human brothers who call themselves Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Mahar, Brahmin etc must be feeling so delighted!”

(click on the picture to get a magnified view)
source: शेतकर्याचा आसूड Shetkarayacha Aasud (Cultivator's Whipcord), July 1883

Jyotiba had no respect for Brahmin rulers of Pune- Peshwas. Peshwas, never visionaries like Shivaji or Akbar, were products of their time. But most of them did show some great qualities.

Nanasaheb (1720 or 1721 - 1761) नानासाहेब पेशवे- wrote following letter that brings out the finest qualities of his personality.

Nanasaheb wrote it when Marathas were campaigning in southern India. The letter describes qualities of south Indian landscape and people inhabiting it.

(click on the picture to get a magnified view)
source: पेशवेकालीन महाराष्ट्र Peshwekalin Maharashtra by वासुदेव कृष्ण भावे Vasudev Krushna Bhave, 1936

Guns made in China from Manhole Covers of Mumbai don’t Shoot Straight!

Times of India on June 17 2008 reported:

“…Civic officials say the massive construction activity undertaken for the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing has increased demand for iron ore globally. As a result, they claim, organised gangs are now operating in Kurla, Bandra, Mankhurd and parts of Byculla to systematically steal the manhole covers. A staggering 1,500 covers have been stolen in the past few months—each costing a handsome Rs 5,500 in the grey market…

… BMC officials have shot off a letter to the Mumbai police, asking them to speed up the detention in cases of these thefts. They have also unsuccessfully tried drastic measures to prevent thefts, from chaining the manholes to covering them with concrete, but to no avail…”

(Read the full report here)


Artist: Lee Lorenz The New Yorker June 23 2008 cartoon caption contest # 150

Proposed caption:

“That gun doesn’t shoot straight, honey. It is made in China from manhole covers of Mumbai. It’s kind of cursed by citizens drowned there.”