the somnambulist

"Hi" Fever

2005-09-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

I know I havent posted for a long long time and I am extremely sorry for it. Took me a while to open my eyes to the American Dream. Fast cars, plush houses and big tomatoes ;-). Yeah! these are the things that amaze us desis when we set foot here, though not necessarily in that order. Another thing that takes us a while to catch on to is the American way of exchanging pleasanteries. You walk into office, a gas station, a convenience store or a bank and there will be people who will smile at you and say "Hey, how are you doing today?". Thats kind of very difficult to adjust to because back home when people see you somewhere they try and look through you or give you a look that says "Dont even think about smiling at me!". Well thats us, but what can we do about it. Since childhood our parents teach us to not talk with strangers, some even going to such lengths as making up weird stories like "you know Chatterjee aunty's son just smiled at a guy in the bus and the guy kidnapped the little boy and sold him to a Dubai sheikh. Now her son is in Dubai racing camels". Well that kind of gets in your head and you start thinking about all the bad things about racing camels for a sheikh in Dubai, and decide that not smiling at people is definitely easier than racing camels.

So, given your aversion to conversation with strangers and possibly to the entire humanity, what do you do when a person walks up to you and says "Hello how are you doing today?". There are just two options to deal with such kind of behaviour. You could try and look busy like a guy who has just lost his shadow and is trying hard to find it. Or you could muster a radiant smile and say "Im doing good and how are you today?".That in all fairness is the better of the two options, the other option being beyond the pale of civilised behaviour. But it comes with a catch. Now that you have started responding to others, wouldnt it be more civilized to start the exchange of pleasanteries yourself. After all its a proactives world. Be a go-getter dude. So you see a guy in office coming towards you, look hopefully at him, put on a 1000 watt smile and start to form words in your mouth when he whizzes past you like Daffy Duck with his arse on fire. You are bewildered. After all, wasnt he supposed to anticipate what was coming. There my friend lies the catch. People exchange pleasanteries but not always. Mornings are the time when people are at their civil best. Enter any American office in the mornings and you are sure to hear pleasanteries richocheting like bullets. But as the day wears on people start losing their perky edge. The next phase starts in the lunch queue. "hey how you doin today. Can I have a crispy chicken burger please?". And no better way to end a 'pleasant' day than a warm sionara in the evenings. Also washrooms are the worst places to exchange greetings. After all one has to answer the call of nature before he can take your call. Well its not too difficult. Once you learn the game, you play by the rules.

Footware (please excuse the spelling)

2005-07-23T01:50:00.000-07:00

I got mugged for the second time this year. Last time it was my digital camera, this time it was my footwear. I got up late(9ish) on Sunday morn. and had just finished my morning ablutions when one of my PG mates started searching for his leather sandals. The search took him to the main shoerack where the 10 of us keep our shoes. To mine and his amazement the shoerack was virtually empty, with all branded shoes missing. It took us a while to realize that we had been robbed early in the morning. What must have happened is that someone must have left the door ajar for an hour or so. Sensing the oppurtunity thieves must have sneaked in and made away with all our shoes.

Now what's interesting about the theft was that nothing else of value was touched. This points to the existence of theives who come in with the primary intent of selling shoes. The fact that no unbranded shoe was taken points out to the fact that the thieves are educated enough to distinguish between brands and are aware that branded shoes fetch a greater price on the seconds market. A little bit of asking around showed that shoe theft is very common in Bangalore. Now this points to the existence of a active seconds market in Bangalore and surrounding areas where branded shoes are sold at great discounts. With rising income levels and greater purchasing power of the populace,people have started indulging themselves in high end footwear. Branded shoes have become a norm and have become a necessity for peer acceptance.

Even the cheapest piece of branded footwear costs more than Rs 1000 (20$). Considering that the population of Bangalore is about 65 lacs (6.5M) and at least half of the population can afford branded shoes, the branded shoe market in Bangalore works out to 300 crores(60M$). Now, if 30% of the population is susceptible to footwear robbery, the robbery market in Bangalore is somewhere close to 90 crore rupees (18M$). If the robbed items are sold at a discount of 50%, the seconds market still is somewhere close to 45 crore rupees (9M$). Thats a lot of money to be made and criminal elements have realised the oppurtunity waiting for them.

What can be done to stop such thefts? People would suggest excercising extra caution, keeping footwear under lock and key and what not. None of them are viable solutions, the primary reasons being:

Footwear doesnt merit elaborate security measures to make them theft-safe.
Footwear thefts rarely get reported to authorities irrespective of the value involved.
Footwear is a replaceable commodity, and it hardly takes someone a month to replace stolen footwear.
Branded footwear is a necessity in a social context, especially among todays youth.

So is there something that can be done? Probably, but the ball is in the court of the enforcement agencies of the Govt of India. Rather than trying to stop footwear thefts, an effort can be made to track down the resell channels of such stolen footwear in Bangalore and sorrounding areas. Due to the lower value/weight(Rs/Kg) of footwear, they dont make ideal candidates for transportation over long distances.

This means that all stolen footwear has to resurface in near shore markets. That should makes things easier for enforcement agencies. If the resell points are shut down then the incidence of such thefts will fall dramatically. Footwear is not edible. So no resell would mean no reuse and would consequently mean no value for the stolen goods.

-sankha subhra som
(http://thoughtcurry.blogspot.com)

Festival Of Touch

2005-03-27T21:19:00.000-08:00

India truly amazes me. Indians celebrate each one of their senses, be it taste, color or sound. They also celebrate each of nature's elements be it fire, wind, water or earth. There are a few festivals that transcend all barriers of relegion, caste and creed. Holi definitely is one of them. It is a day when India's seething masses unite to celebrate the most cherished of senses, color. The entire nation is awash in splashes of red, blue , green and yellow. Streets are overrun by colorful groups brandishing water cannons and gulal.

I feel that in a country tutored to detest all forms of touch, this festival is a stark contrast. Indians are Haphophobics by nature. The polite NAMASTE is an Indian ploy to resist being touched by other people. Most Indian ladies hesitate to shake hands with the opposite sex. This sometimes leads to embarassing situations where an extended hand has to be hastily withdrawn. The situation has become severe with greater infusion of western ideas and culture. Earlier a namaste would have been the ideal form of greeting. But now a namaste may be taken as being old fashioned by some and an offered hand may be taken to be too intrusive by others. Surprisingly physical contact among men is normal in Indian culture. Many a times I have witnessed men walking with arms around each others shoulders and some even go to the extent of holding each other by their waists. Such displays of camraderie are looked upon with raised eyebrows in the west. But in India they are as common as cows on highways. Contradiction yes, surprising no.

Holi is a festival when people lower their guards and allow themselves to be touched by others. I have always looked with amazement as traditionally demure ladies, frolic with juvenile excitement and maul each other with an assortment of colors. A male rubbing gulal on a lady's face is not frowned upon. Even a light embrace fails to register with the moral brigade. India, thy name is contradictions. The way I see it Holi is not only the Festival of Colors, it is also the Festival of Touch.

Temple Management

2005-02-21T01:04:00.000-08:00

Not long ago, I and Priya decided to take a bike ride to Chilkoor, a temple on the boundary of the Gandipet reservoir. We started out at 9:00 in the morning and after driving about 25 kilometers through idyllic suburbs, we reached Chilkoor. True to the reputation of any public place in India, the temple was crawling with devotees. There were people there from all walks of life. People in big cars, people on bikes and people who had availed public transportation to get to the temple. The entire economy of the place seemed to have evolved around the temple. There were local youths engaged as parking attendants, meticulously noting down the numbers of all vehicles that entered the lot, and issuing parking tickets after the payment of a modest amount of two rupees. Waiting immediately outside the parking lot was a curious mix of children and adults, shouting unintelligible sales pitches in Telugu. It took them about a minute to realize that we were not locals and out of the crowd a man emerged, shouting to us in Hindi why we should buy the offerings for the Lord from his stall. The deal was that if we bought offerings (2 cocunuts and two garlands) from his stall, he would look after our footwear free of charge. To the uninitiated, most Hindu temples do not allow footwear on their premises. They usually have footwear attendants who look after your footwear in return of a small amount that goes to the coffers of the temple trust. The man charged us rupees thirty for a offering and gave directions as to how we could enter the temple and how we could locate his stall from the temple exit, which was on the other side of the entrance. There were at least two dozen other such small stalls in a row, that sold offerings and acted as guardians of footwear for the devotees.

The footwear issue now settled, we decided to enter the temple. The first thing that greeted us when we entered was the coconut cracking platform. It was a granite basin with sharp edges where the devotees were supposed to crack the first of their coconuts. On cracking a coconut, half of it is retained by the devotee and the other half goes to the temple management as offerings to the Lord. There were people with baskets waiting to collect the other half of the cocunut. A filled basket is expertly whisked across a wall and sent to the interiors of the temple. Finally we got to the heart of the temple. The sight that greeted us was nothing short of spectacular. There was an open courtyard about 40m x 40m. There were about 500 devotees, half of them queued up neatly to do the Darshan (seeing the Lord's idol) and the other half making rounds of the idol chamber. Without much ado, we joined the tail of the queue. The queue had three layers, entwined around the idol chamber. One surprising thing was that, in the two hours or so that I was in the temple, the queue never grew to more than three layers. The design of the queuing system looked evolutionary and therefore was a higly accurate model of the number of people it would serve on any given day. The entire courtyard was monitored using CCTV, and the feeds were checked by temple attendants constantly. Another useful innovation that was implemented at the temple was a round-counting ticket that was available on the payment of a token amount. The ticket is used by devotees doing rounds of the idol chamber (108), and is very handy for keeping track of the number of rounds completed so far. By the time we got to see the Lord, we had been in queue for nearly half an hour. There was a minder near the idol, who was constantly urging devotees to move on, after they had taken a peek at the Lord. Each devotee gets to see the Lords face for about 15 seconds. Surprisingly there were no delays or gluts at the head of the queue, inspite of the large number of devotees.

All this motioned to the existence of very effective evolutionary designs in management of a large number of people. The entire system of the temple was optimised for just one purpose, providing a safe and hassle-free spiritual experience. Now imagine a supermarket single server queue and imagine 250 people queued up to check their purchases out. The confusion that would arise out of such a situation would be harrowing. Also notable was the fusion of modern technology with time tested methods for queue management. The temple management projected themselves as people who are constantly learning new ways to make the entire system more effective and hassle-free for the devotees. India is a land of temples. There are approximately two thousand temples listed on Templenet. The more popular ones sometimes get 1 lakh footfalls on auspicious days. Now imagine a popular mall recieving one lakh footfalls someday. The entire system would be thrown out of gear. There would be utter chaos. But, temples can easily handle such huge crowds, without any discomfit to the public. The way they do that is by fine tuning their operations to the best extent possible. Their ultimate aim is to expedite the spiritual experience without causing any discomfit to the public. Obviously, the larger the number of footfalls in a day, the larger the donations made to the temple Hundi. Monetary implications such as these encourage temple trusts to optimise their processes to allow for greater footfalls.

So, why not introduce a course on Temple Management. Temples are big business and all big businesses require competent managers. Also there are definitely lessons to learn in management of temples which could be applied to domains such as retailing. When courses such as Agri-Business Management and IT Management exist, why not a course on Temple Management. After all, spirituality is also an experience and therefore needs to be optimised. Then, we could have ISO 9001:2000 certified temples.

The Barbecue Story

2005-01-17T20:53:00.000-08:00

Winters are pleasant in Hyderabad. With temperatures bordering on chilly and a pleasant breeze as accompaniment, winter nights in Hyderabad are ideal for partying late. And what better than a barbecue party to savor the Hyderabadi winter nights. I floated the idea and sure enough Anoop and Ritu were pretty excited about it. When the initial excitement had died down, we realized that none of us had the barbecue hardware. We decided to look for a place where we can buy one cheap and if buying was not an option we would try and get one for rent. After hours of searching all we ended up with were subdued smirks from some amused shopkeepers and scores of Bar-be-What's from the rest. Anoop and Ritu were extra zealous because their close friend Chetan was coming over for the weekend from Delhi and they wanted to impress him with a barbecue. At this point I came up with the idea of making one from scratch.

A barbecue in itself is an uncomplicated piece of equipment. The rudimentary ones don't have any moving parts. I first thought of using a steel bucket for the base, but gave up on the idea. My next big idea was to use a disused cooking pan for the base, but gave that one up also as there was the hazard of overturning it and spraying someone with red hot embers. I finally settled on a clay flowerpot as the base. It is cheap, easy to come by and safe to handle. The next problem facing me was, what to use as a grill to cook upon. I immediately ran down to the nearest hardware store and bought a thin gauze iron grill, one that is commonly used for fencing. One has to take care that the grill spacing is not too large, else we could have food falling into the hot bed of coals below. The only thing left to do now was to decide what to use as spits. The best thing that came to Priya's mind was new bicycle spokes.

The entire hardware now in place, all that was left to be done was getting the coal for the fire. Once that part of the puzzle was complete, we all gathered around our newly assembled toy. The girls got the software ready and the guys started configuring the hardware. We first filled the base of the flowerpot with mud, so that we don't use too much of the coal. Next we started pouring coal into the half filled pot, stopping only when the level of coal was an inch below the brim. We then sprinkled the coal with some kerosene and started a fire. Once some of the coal had lighted, it took us nearly thirty minutes of fanning and blowing to get the rest of the stuff lit. After we had a nice hot fire, we placed the grill over the pot. We anchored the grill firmly to the pot using four bicycle spokes driven into the soil in the flowerpot. We then started roasting the meat and the veggies, which by then had been properly marinated. By the time we were done with the food, half of it had already been eaten.

We then carefully put out the fire and settled to finish what was left of the food. Already Ritu and Anoop were planning the next barbecue party and Chetan was having second thoughts about flying back to Delhi the next morning. All in all a perfect way to spend a perfect Hyderabadi winter night.

Beware of a wish: for wishes do come true

2005-01-08T06:23:00.000-08:00

It's a new year and here's wishing you the most wonderful year of your life till now.

You know, for a minute there, I almost said "wish all your wishes come true" but then I had to desist. It is true that the mere fulfillment of a wish or two doesn't seem enough and all we want is everything, but not all your wishes are really worth granting. In fact, there are plenty that can sure land you in trouble.

How many times, in the midst of sheer frustration over some unfortunate incident in life, have you wished that you were dead; how many times, in an inexplicable rage, have you wished ill of your best buddy. Indeed we can go on and on about so many times we have been saved from misery because our wishes, thankfully enough, have not been granted.

However, that doesn't undermine the power of wishes. Given the highly unpredictable and increasingly unfriendly world that we live in, the very fact that you are alive and happy enough is because someone has wished you well, whether it be your family or just some stranger wishing for the good of mankind.

So it's in our own good that we wish well, whether it be our friends or our enemies and help keep alive the circle of good fortune!

-sumandatta

Literary Morons

2004-12-02T03:06:00.000-08:00

Our regular somnambulist has met with a 'cat'astrophe ( you know sleepwalking can be really dangerous ). While he recuperates this is a feeble attempt at keeping the column alive. Let's all pray for his well-being.

Yesterday my friend came up to me with a peculiar problem. He wanted to gain admission into a management program that was touted as the best and which boasted of producing "exceptional" people; the problem was that they would only admit students who were "exceptional". So my poor friend had to miss out on his only opportunity to being exceptional because he wasn't already so!

Personally I think educational institutions should insist on admitting the dumbest of students and build geniuses out of them if they are really out to prove their own worth. Anyways what struck me about my friend's predicament was the oxymoronic situation he was in; and that led my thoughts onto other such juxtapositions of incongruous words in the English language.

My all time favourite is this profound piece of advice: "Always expect the unexpected". Well seriously, if you are already "expecting" the unexpected, it doesn't remain unexpected anymore! Right? :-)

Then again, there is that silly statement that inefficient people keep throwing around: "Almost done!". Hey! Who are you fooling? You are done when you are "done", there is no "almost". ( Sorry, I borrowed that from Yoda's "do or do not, there is no try" ).

Now from oxymoronic situations, to phrases, to finally words. Yep! I would call them oxymoronic words: like the word "she" contains the word "he" within it. Dr. Richard Lederer would call them "beheadments" ( like "t/here" ) and "kangaroo words" ( like "catacomb" containing the word "tomb" ). ( Look up Dr. Lederer's book "The Word Circus".)

And finally, combining all/some of them morons together, we have :
"If you think that you have "none", look closely and you'll find one"- now THAT is what I would call a great piece of advice!

-sumandatta

DUMB AND NUMBER(s)

2004-11-24T02:00:00.000-08:00

Our regular somnambulist has met with a 'cat'astrophe ( you know sleepwalking can be really dangerous ). While he recuperates this is a feeble attempt at keeping the column alive. Let's all pray for his well-being.

"Numb"ers aren't called that for nothing. Not that I am scared of them, in fact when I have time to spare I quite like playing with them but the moment I lay my eyes on these creepy creatures in the examination hall my mind stops functioning and my hands get numb. Having been through such a "cat"astrophe just last week, I simply feel like eradicating the whole number-system from the present, past and future of all mankind!

What a wonderful world it would be...a world without numbers. A world where you won't be embarrassed by people enquiring about your age for no one would keep 'count' of the days, where you could gorge on all the food you want without having to 'count' the calories, where your team leader won't prod you on to deliver within specified deadlines - your deadline will be met as and when you complete the work! - and of course, no more stupid number-crunching exams!

Hey there's more to it! You wouldn't be worrying about your bank balance any more and come to think of it, neither about the 'number' of spouses you take! The world will be governed by nonquantifiable entities like love, compassion, ethics, values - things we are so used to discounting as being emotional folly - instead of the usual money and vote counts. Maybe that would be UTOPIA after all.

Strangely enough, the strongest case against numbers is being made by modern mathematics with its emphasis on fuzzy logic ( where 'ranges' of numbers are used to do away with the injustice of explicit cut-off values ) and fractal/chaos theories ( where it turns out that 'imaginary' numbers are more applicable to real world problems! ). Maybe the world is finally waking up to the fallacies of a dumb acceptance of numbers and counts as the guiding beacon of our lives; hopefully someday we will teach our children to use their precious fingers for playing the guitar 'before' we teach their use for counting.

Let's wrap up this session with a quote from the master himself, Albert Einstein, who said, "Not all that can be counted counts, and not all that counts can be counted."

-sumandatta

Of Potatoes, Couches and Fields

2004-11-23T05:43:00.000-08:00

Exotic places, colorful people ,delectable cuisine and a totally wonderful life. Oh!, the pleasures of being an anchor for a travel and lifestyle show on commercial t.v. "Rageh Omar, reporting from Baghdad .......". "Caroline Hawley, reporting from Gaza". "Lyce Doucet, reporting from Washington D.C". How exciting it must be to be a correspondent for an international news channel. Always packed, on the move, interacting with new people everyday, making a network of valuable contacts. The excitement just doesnt seem to end. Caught in a dilemma, as to what you want to be? Do not despair my good friend, for there is a new breed of humans, they who can be anyone they want to be. From war-correspondent or lifestyle anchor to style guru or adventure sports freak. Behold the Couch Potato, the final frontier of human evolution.

Comfortable on her lofty perch, in the most cosy of environs, munching mouthfulls of popcorn, drawing slowly on her glass of Coke, she watches the world turn. With a deft movement of her wand (remote), this high-priestess of the Information age can see images of the entire planet in her looking-glass, the fabled Televison. She devours terrabytes of information in the form of sights and sounds and all this at the touch of her fingers.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term 'couch potato' first appeared in print in a December 1979 edition of the Los Angeles Times. Since then it has been used to describe a person leading a sedentary life. It still refers to someone who is slothful and obese. But I contend that in this information age this rather derogatory term can mean a highly aware and up-to-date individual whose general awareness is much higher than a contemporary human being. She sees more and thus consequently knows more. But I also contend that just seeing more and knowing more doesnt make you a more evolved and sound person. What's missing in the Couch Potato style of general awareness is the vital factor of human interaction. Thus there exists a possibility that such individuals may be socially inept, inspite of their higher GA. A contradiction in terms isn't it?

So my dear fellow, its better to be a Potato, part Couch part Field. Therein lies the secret to an ALL-ROUND (pun intended) personality.

Summer of '69 (revisited)

2004-11-23T05:42:00.000-08:00

I got my first real six-string
Bought it at the five-and-dime
Played it til my fingers bled
It was the summer of '69
.....
.....
Oh when I look back now
That summer seemed to last forever
And if I had the choice
Ya - I'd always wanna be there
Those were the best days of my life
.....
- B. Adams and J. Vallance

Thus immortalised in the words of Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance. Written in 1984 for Adams's Reckless album, the song became a major hit, and a must-perform at college rock shows. Interestingly, Adams was 10 year old in '69 and it would be another five years before he starts playing in a band. Christened "Best Days Of My Life" in the first draft, both Adams and Vallance didn't like something about the song, and Adams had even contemplated dropping it from Reckless. Fortunately he didn't, the song remained in Reckless, and the album went on to become number one at the countdown charts, and sold a whopping 12 million copies!

I have often wondered, what is so special about the song, that young adults identify so well with it? Is it the rendition, the music, the brand equity of the performer or is it one of those youth phenomena that we so often hear about? In my opinion, its neither. In fact, its because, each one of us, has a personal 'Summer Of 69' that we cherish so very much. Its that sepia colored period of our lives that we get nostalgic about. Its the time when our youth was innocent and we were able to savor it with gay abandon. High school, good friends, crazy ventures and puppy-love. Its a period that seemed so turbulent at the time, yet so serene and fairytale-like in retrospect. It was a time when friendships seemed so natural and guileless, when life wasnt as byzantine or banal as it seems now and when trying out new things seemed the natural thing to do.

Its with this youthful zest that we drifted into adulthood and found that life wasnt as easy as it was before. People were different now and so were their expectations from us. Relationships were no more easy and problems were graver than they were before. Slowly the youthful energy ebbed away and was replaced with a mature and pragmatic view of life and people, that seemed unthinkable of in the days of yore.

It is this metamorphosis that we secretly dislike and in the process cherish those days when life was simpler. Each one of us thus keeps a personal album of memories that reminds us that from that point onwards it was always downhill. I have my very own 'Summer Of 69' and its high time you started recollecting yours.

A Smoking Issue

2004-11-23T05:41:00.000-08:00

A serious looking guy in a dark, smoke-filled room, draws deep puffs on his cigarette, while someone croons in the background "... with a cigarette in my hands, I felt like a man".The scene changes and the same man in the same dark, smoke-filled room is shown.But to one's horror, its not a hand to which the cigarette is anchored, its a human skeleton. And in the background someone croons "...with a cigarette in his hands, He felt like a man". Black humour and cliche's aside, what is it about this leaf filled strip of rolled paper that has made it the subject of intense debate? How has this seemingly harmless commodity gone from style icon to an incarnation of Satan?No one knows for sure.

The history of cigarettes has been a roller-coaster ride. After landing in the Caribbean, Columbus and his men noticed the natives' fondness for chewing and smoking the dried leaves of an aromatic plant. The Indians inhaled smoke through a Y-shaped pipe called a tobaga, thought by etymologists to be the origin of the name of the plant. While Columbus scolded his men for sinking to the level of the savages by mimicking their habit, he was reported to have said that, "it was not within their power to refrain". Much to the chagrin of my wife, I fully agree with Uncle Christopher. Tobacco use spread to Spain and Portugal. The ambassador of France to Portugal, Jean Nicot de Villemain, sent seeds of the tobacco plant to the Queen of France.The plant that grew from these seeds was christened Nicotina tabacura. The U.S.A was the biggest proponent of tobacco in the modern world. After the invention of the cigarette rolling machine in a project sponsored by tobacco baron James Duke in the late 1800's, cigarette sales surged. In the early 1900's smoking cigarettes was considered pedestrian and unmanly. All this changed with World War I. There was a huge demand of cigarettes at the front. The American Red Cross and the Young Men's Christian Association, previously opposed to the propagation of cigarettes, actively supplied them to the troops overseas. With the war over, opposition to cigarettes increased again. This time physicians started to correlate respiratory disorders with cigarette smoking.But not for long. The world got embroiled in war again, and cigarette consumption surged.Surprisingly, the first national campaign against cigarettes was run by the Bad Man of history textbooks, Adolf Hitler. He banned smoking in Germany and raised taxes against cigarette manufacturers. If Hitler had won the war cigarretes would have been a thing of the past. He would have killed fewer people than cigarettes did since WWII. The period after the war was the Golden Age of cigarettes. Everyone, from surgeons to hollywood legends, advertised cigarettes on TV. Cigarettes, formerly a male bastion, now found their way into the dominion of the fairer sex. It was not until early eighties that legislations were in place to prevent smoking in workplaces across the USA. But still cigarettes were the most advertised commodity in America. Americans did in 1988, what Hitler had done in 1939. They passed a resolution to increase the tax on tobacco companies. It was not until 1998 that non-smoking bars became the norm in California.

The history of Tobacco in India is as old as the history of colonialism. Tobacco found its way in India through the Portugese as early as 1600. It quickly esatlished itself as a industry by the 1700's. Having flourished under centuries of colonial rule, tobacco found its way into independent India. Post liberalization, major global brands invaded India and there has been no looking back since. Ironically, Goa, a former Portugese colony, now the smallest Indian state, was the first to pass legislation against tobacco use. Following this, the awareness of the harmful effects of tobacco has increased , with several states passing similar legislations. The center has banned all promotions of tobacco and related products. Recently, it banned any tobacco company from sponsoring any sporting event. In India, tobacco is still a legal agricultural product, and there is a long way to go before it is classified as a narcotic. Global brands, facing tough legislation in developed countries are targeting developing world markets.An estimated 1 million people in India die from tobacco related diseases annually.

The issue of cigarettes and tobacco is not a social one. It is chiefly a political and financial one. Cigarette companies have tremendous clout among the political elite. The Government of India has put 33% of its investment in securities in tobacco related companies. Most of the insurance companies in India invest in tobacco companies. As long as cigarette smoke drifts in the corridors of power, a tobacco free society is a far fetched notion. As for the masses, who is complaining? As you sit and wonder about the evils of cigarette smoking, and try to figure out how you can curb this menace, I will slunk off for a quick smoke.Ciao!

Lets GO!

2004-11-23T04:34:00.000-08:00

"Yeah sure, heard of it. The punchline of an ad run featuring a young couple with a manic obsession for mo-bike riding". Well, that's the creed of the 20 something, techie, urban youth; denizens of India's cyber corridors who are living the Indian Software Dream. Young, single, well heeled, these yuppies live their lives in gay abandon where each day brings with it new experiences to be gained and new vistas to be explored. And what better a place to practise this belief than Hyderabad, the city of Pearls, the land of the Nizams and more recently India's Cyberabad.

A veteran go getter myself, I too enjoyed the joys the city had to offer to the hilt. After a long day spent at office (10 hours normally), my evenings would begin pretty late. The best way to start the evening would be to catch the 9:45 p.m. movie. The first step in the preparation for the movie would be to call all the like minded junta and inquire about their whereabouts. The next step would be to try and coax as many of them into seeing the movie as possible. The theatre being a stone's throw away from office, the best time to start out for the movie would be 9:30 p.m. Purchase the tickets, park the bikes and file into the theatre just as the last advertisement is being screened. The movie finished by 11:45, the next question that would pop up is "Khana kahan khayen yaar?"."Lets go for a midnight buffet at Central Court". "No yaar!, lets go to Golconda instead". "No way! I want to have the midnight biryani at Aditya Park Inn". Amid the tirade of alternatives, the final venue would be decided with a show of hands."Ok. So we are going to Central Court for the midnight buffet". After a sumptuous meal of biryani, a choice of rotis, chines and a rather heavy dessert, it would be the time to decide what to do next. "Lets go to Hussain Sagar. We can sit for a while, and I can light a cigarette in the meantime [sic]". After a satisfying 30 minutes of 'smoke on the water', banter and some serious reflections on life, it would have been the ideal time to cal it quits when suddenly out of nowhere comes, "Hey what about some late night ice-cream at Famous?". Again there would be a show of hands and the majority would be for it. Its 1:00 a.m., but hey theres a huge crowd at Famous. We too join in and bite into bars of ice-cream sold at throwaway prices. Its 1:30 a.m. and the yawns are getting a bit too frequent. Guess its time to make a move. Drive home at breakneck speeds, manage to rouse the watchman from his slumber, jump into bed and doze off without as much as turning over once in bed.

Narrate this to a parent and a typical reaction would be, "What's come over the youth of today. Never lived so irresponsible a life when I was your age". Wake up call dear parent. Things have changed drastically since you were last in your bell-bottoms. The youth of today work hard and play hard too. Changing lifestyles, work environments and pressures call for a change in the way in which people entertain themselves. Don't call it hedonism, call it adaptation.