Fund Managers Needed

So Kasab now wants his money to be deposited in a jail account.

We now have a terrorist who understands both the power of compound interest & the average trial duration at Indian courts.

Wake Up & Buy Metal

A couple of years after the gold lobby ensured upwardly mobile Hindus purchased the metal on Akshaya Tritiya, the platinum lobby is trying hard as well. So you have a priest on prime-time telling us "white" is auspicious - jasmine flowers, milk, kheer (dessert)...and.. would you believe it..platinum.

Aggressive marketing of this arcane day understandably coincides with India's rising middle class. With increasing disposable incomes, the only hurdle was the willingness to spend it...and if ancient Hindu scripts exist to vouch for the authenticity of these fests - that hurdle is crossed easily.

Another gold ad stretches it further. Apparently, the Gods are propitiated only if you buy gold of a certain quality (which is obviously available only at select showrooms). If only these scripts were revealed to the public 5000 years ago, India would not have been so poor indeed..everyone would have bought gold in bulk...and multiplier effects would have taken care of the rest.

Anagrams in Life

Varun makes a HATE speech....is then lodged in ETAH jail. Nice temporary 'reversal' of fortunes.

Kasab....well he is a 'Sabak' (lesson) we would do well to ignore to our peril (going by the trial, that will happen soon enough)

Life gives you the best anagrams.

DXB T3

Dubai Airport before Terminal 3 was not an airport. It was a mall with parking space for planes. It was a place where you felt Dubai is a hub (or at least was wanting to be one). It was a place where you could see people of all colours, shopping together for gold, swiss watches & cuban cigars - with counters manned exclusively by Indians (Malayalees, if you zoom in further) & Filipinos.

A kid (about 3-4 years old) cries for help...an airport officer is carrying her on his shoulders...people are buying her chocolates as he walks around quite frantically. Seconds later a mother with a frenzied & desperate look runs around the shops....her 2 brats (aged 6-8) run behind her (they shout to me "we lost our sis"...they were actually enjoying the hunt)....all of the people who had seen the officer pointed their fingers in the right direction...I & a few others followed the mother and finally saw them re-united. The mother landing quite a few kisses on the little one, and the staff saying "oh...don't worry...your mom got lost somewhere and now you found her". There was genuine emotion. There were real people. There was heartfelt love. There was the hustle-bustle. Some people smiled, all the while drinking Costa "Italian about Coffee" cappuchinos.

Dubai T3 effectively puts an end to all this. Its "organized" and "neat" and "well maintained". It takes the "people" out. It puts the "passenger" in. The design authority assumes that people are just out to catch planes (of course they are...though some fun along the way is always better). Gates are spaced far away from everything. No 2 unrelated people sit close to each other. There are not even sufficient places to charge your laptop as you surf. Its as cold as a "passenger transit site" could be. Sit alone & enjoy your coffee (cold by now).

Information.....the more the better?

Unlike many other things in life (resisted using the word 'goods' to avoid sounding like a professor of economics), information does not seem to have diminishing marginal utility.

So now if you suddenly knew that the crooked CEOs who cooked their books for years were actually diverting the money to charity (scripted like a bollywood flick), you would not feel so angry about them....the point being additional information can be bi-directional (good / bad) & is just as valuable as the first flow of news.

Welcome, Recession

1. No cribs about the AC at 25C (It's mostly off anyway)
2. So much talk about savings, fixed deposits, spending within means, paying bills on time. No one can spell equity.
3. Happiness seeing the salary credited to the bank account on the 31st. No complaints about how "low" it is.
4. Malls are relatively crowd-free, even with "Buy 2, get 6" offers.

The Year Begins

The year of the Ox is beginning to look more like the year of the Axe, with multiple firms announcing job cuts at the beginning of the year.

ABN Amro called yesterday offering a 30 lakh loan ("unsecured for your business needs, Sir...no collaterals needed...just need your credit card copy", the executive explained). Bets open now on an Indian sub-prime crisis in 2015. On second thought, if the nation gets someone like Obama to lead it in times like these, it could be welcomed.

Pointless

There is no point flaunting your military might, complete with nuclear weapons when you cannot defeat terrorism. Weapons are not the means in this non-conventional environ.

There is no point of Israel being a relatively developed economy, with an educated & intelligent populace when they cannot live in peace with their neighbours.

Someone has to get to the root causes...and atleast act as if they are interested in solving them.