SORRY SEEMS TO BE HARDEST WORD (OR NOT)

"Sorry seems to be the hardest word", sang Elton John in 1976 to great popular acclaim and economic success. He has covered that song many times over since, with Ray Charles wailing in a plaintive voice in a recent oeuvre.

I disagree with Elton. Not because of his outlandish shades and his even more weird dress sense. Nor even for his pitiful choice of vague-looking boyfriends. I used to dislike him in his younger days. His songs were very popular on both sides of the Atlantic then and I could not fathom why. Elton has mellowed and so have I. I am less intolerant of weirdness (including the quantum variety of which I remain clueless). I actually like him these days.

But I digress.Sorry. That wasn't so difficult. Not at all. That brings me to the real reason why I differ with Elton John about sorry being the hardest word: It simply isn't. 

Linguists and statisticians claim the article "the" to be the most commonly used English word. I beg to differ with them too. I think the honour goes to "sorry" and my conclusion is based on solid empirical evidence, not on some namby-pamby statistical sampling.

Just look around yourself and listen carefully for a few minutes and you will hear the word sorry spoken a million times. Sorry I'm late; sorry I don't have any change; sorry I have run out of juice in my phone, can I borrow yours?; sorry it is not for sale; sorry it is not available; sorry (and then again, may be not) I stepped on your toe; etc, etc ad infinitum. More plentiful in use or not, "sorry" certainly rolls off people's tongues more easily, with greater regularity and ease than "the".

The word "the" also suffers from being uttered unconsciously, as part of routine English usage, without having to be consciously employed. It is almost a "space filler" in the English language. Its abundance also owes considerably to the usage in most parts of India, where it is considered mandatory to prefix proper nouns with the word "the", as in "have you seen the Joshi?", "have been to the Madras?" etc etc. I look down upon such loose usage. However, I do not hesitate to say "the U.S.A." even as I shrink from a visit to "the England".

Sorry; my intent was not to give a lesson in English grammar although one would not be wasted in the days of text-language devoid of vowels and articles and filled with emoticons. I was merely pointing out that the exalted status of "the" owes more to liberal misapplication of it rather than to proper use. Hence, I humbly submit that the honour of being the most used word in English belongs to the word "sorry".

The word "sorry" is not capable of being grammatically misused,  as in "sorry Chennai" or "sorry Manmohan Singh",  , for both these usages are quite legitimate and correct.

The ease with which "sorry" rolls off people's tongues also renders it devoid of any emotion attached to it. In that sense it is closer to its rival, "the". When was the last time you attached any emotion to "the"? How many different ways can you say "the" aside from the two different pronunciations while preceding a vowel or a consonant? It sounds and means the same irrespective of your state of mind.

Sorry has become so routine that the speaker is generally acknowledged not to be expressing contrition at all. It is merely a face-saving device, a filler, a time-buyer when you have done something you ought not to have, like stepping on toes, or walking into a room without knocking first. Even as you are formulating something clever to say when faced with the embarrassment of unintentionally catching someone with their pants down (sometimes literally too), "sorry" comes in handy and buys you precious time as you arrange your thoughts and the other party  their dress.

When someone digs you in the ribs with their elbow or the tip of their umbrella in a crowded train, and if you happen to take note and shoot a cross look at them, "sorry" rolls of their tongue. No contrition, no apology. It is just something that they say; like when the dulcet voice informs you, "sorry, the number you have dialed is not available" over and over again without in anyway conveying a sense of apology, regret or contrition for the inconvenience the unavailability has caused you.

Sorry, however, is not mandatory under all circumstances. In love, for example, you don't have to say sorry or so the famous tear-jerker "The Love Story" informed us decades ago ("Love Means never having to say sorry").

Rest of the world may over-use the word sorry, howsoever insincerely.
In Chennai we love every one.

GBS AND MY MONEY

"A lot depends on what Bernardshaw will do next", informed my "wealth manager" from A bank.

First, a disclaimer: I do not have any wealth that needs managing. But by signing up for this service, I do get services delivered at my doorstep by the bank from across the street, in addition to a lot of drivel on financial markets.. One day they are sure to discover that I do not belong in that group, but until then my life is made a bit easier.

The thought of the long-dead Nobel-winning author and playwright rising from the dead only to take away and redistribute my meagre savings to people with even less - he was a socialist after all - boggled my mind. I was profoundly disturbed. My last encounter with the said Mr Shaw was 46 years ago, in college, when compelled to read his plays Pygmalion and Apple Cart. In a show of one-upmanship, and in order to impress my professor as much as to scare my classmates with my erudition, I chose also to read a few of his other works (not prescribed by the University).

He had, in my opinion, done enough damage by propagating Fabian Socialism which found an ardent adherent in Mr Nehru, India's first prime minister. The latter was the one responsible for many of our ills today - state ownership of businesses, the border problem with China, the "Hindu Rate" of growth, the dislike of and attempts to eliminate the "middle men" in total disregard to the risk-dispersing role they played, etc etc. My attempts to read many of Shaw's plays the better to make sensible comments on his "prescribed works",  not to mention impress afore mentioned constituencies, was a distraction I could ill-afford in my pursuit of Physics. My independent comments were not welcomed by the examiners, it turned out (a C for my efforts), who preferred the "standard answer". The greatest mortification was that smug and stupid girl who couldn't even spell right most of the time getting a B+ and pointedly asking me what my grade was.

As you can see, the thought of Bernardshaw coming back into my life  is unwelcome for a number of reasons. My banker's words deeply disturbed me.

I did rather like the movie My Fair Lady based on Shaw's Pygmalion, though. Especially the scene in which Eliza Doolittle urges the horse she backed to "move yer bloomin' arse". The songs "I could have danced all night" and "I have grown accustomed to her face" are my favourites. Rex Harrison was fantastic and Audrey Hepburn was pretty as she always was. It was one of the two or three movies I was allowed to watch while in college - the fact that it was based on my "prescribed play" was somehow deemed by my mum to be useful for enhancing my grades. When the grades finally came, it was too late but my mum's faith in movies as a means of improving grades was shaken for good. Lucky for them that she did not have any children after me.

I was trying hard to ascertain the ways in which Bernard Shaw could come back to affect my financial status for the worse. Socialism has largely been abandoned as "The God That Failed", publicly-owned enterprises are bleeding themselves to a slow but certain death, and redistribution of wealth would in all probability give something to me rather than take something away, etc etc.

Then it struck me: my banker was referring to Bernanke.

I think my financial well-being is in trouble, even without Bernard Shaw.

A TASTE OF MONEY

Srini's Song

(sung to the tune of A Taste of Honey)

(Winds of) Change may blow

o'er the ICC

But I'll protect

the BCC(I)

A taste of Money

A taste much sweeter than wine

I will return

to the BCCI

I'll come back

for the Money and you

I leave behind BCCI to care (for)

And may you e'er

'member I own it dear

and the TNCA

I taste of Money

A taste much sweeter than wine

I will return

to the BCCI

I'll come back

for the Money and you

He ne'er came back

to the game so fair

And so they died

dreaming of his kisses

For his kiss was Money

A taste much richer than wine

I will return

I will return

I'll come back

for the Money and you

I'll come back

for the Money and you!

I'M A LIABILITY !

So says my bank.

It comes as a bit of a shock. Why wouldn't it? Consider the following facts:

I am not (yet) dependent on my children and manage my affairs on my own - grocery shopping, travelling, driving oneself here and there, buying railway tickets and generally doing everything that constitutes day-to-day life.

I even, for the most part, manage my technological needs and activities on my own. Last week I even de-fragged -  successfully, I might add - my desktop which my wife uses as her sole indulgence in modern technology and which I fill with all sorts of junk thus slowing it down. I have even partitioned the drive and moved some heavy files to a new partition, not to mention jail breaking a hand-me-down iPhone.

My claim of independence from children is not meant in any way to belittle the value of the daily long distance calls from my daughter - the daily exchange of life's trivia provides much entertainment to both parties and acts in addition as her stress-buster.

I have paid taxes for longer than most people have jobs these days, and continue to do so. I have paid  more  in taxes over the last couple of decades than most people earned in that period. I have never cheated on taxes notwithstanding my new-found enthusiasm for feeding the government as little as legally possible - it has as much to do with my views on where my money should go but does not, as with the simple arithmetic of income and expenditure. But I still pay as taxes sums far higher than any politician with assets hundred times greater than mine. In short, I would expect the government to consider me an asset. 

I do not depend on the society to provide me free anything - no free TV, no free laptop, no subsidised education, housing, health care, nothing. I do admit to using subsidised domestic fuel for which I am willing to pay the full price whenever it is demanded. I also am not a burden on the public transport system. I  am guilty of using the public roads but isn't that covered by my taxes? I have stubbornly resisted the urge to acquire a diesel-powered car in order to benefit from the subsidised prices of that fuel.  In sum, no freebies for me.

Never received any favours from the government - in fact was denied what was rightfully mine, which led me to desert the hostile (to me) academic shores of Madras and seek my fortunes elsewhere.

I do not get a pension from the Government  or any of the entities owned or controlled by it.

I have never borrowed from my bank. Nor ever defaulted on a loan.

Why then does my bank insist on calling me a "liability" and Vijay Mallya an asset?  

SILLY CHICKEN

There is much flap about the lowly Gallus Gallus Domesticus albeit in the dead form. The verbal fracas involves dinner invitation from one golfer to another with an offer to serve a certain form of dead chicken. The imbroglio highlights the cultural divides that separate continents and peoples of our world, not to mention their eating habits. Extreme Political correctness also features right up there along with these differences.

Much storm in a tea cup, you might say; never mind the injured party's preference for cups that runneth over but not with Tea. He appears to have got his knickers in a twist over a simple dinner invite, notwithstanding  his reported aversion to this garment, the better to facilitate rapid short-game.

I am unable to understand what the birdly brouhaha is all about. People are what they eat and they eat what they can find in their immediate surroundings.  The advent of rapid transport and modern "cold chains" changed all that, but that is a relatively recent development limited to a few affluent continents. Therefore you are, by and large, what you eat. Should you resent that fact or being known for that fact?

 Despite the wide availability of different foods from different parts of the world many peoples still eat their traditional fare and consequentially they are known as eaters of certain foods. Do the French resent being called Cheese eating surrender monkeys?  Do they object to references to their fondness for consuming frogs' legs? Would they mind being called Escargistes for their preference for Escargos?  (They might conceivably object to my coining a new word which without the approval of the Academie Francaise). Would they be insulted if you included any of the above or duck liver pate in the dinner menu? Absolutely not. They are good sports, the French are, if you overlooked their tendency to resent all things English as well as to consume huge amounts of garlic,  and a predilection to start wars they couldn't win. My personal experience of the French indicates a great fondness for "chisnaan" (a.k.a "cheese naan")  which is not French despite the cheese stuffing.

Leaving aside the French and their peccadilloes, lets turn our attention to the fuss about a fried bird.

Sergio Garcia, the Spanish golfer, reportedly offered to serve fried chicken to Tiger Woods were he to invite the latter to dinner. To the African Americans - to use the politically correct expression lest I am misunderstood, vilified and crucified - Fried Chicken apparently remains a powerful reminder of the terrible period of slavery. I am unable to understand how a form of food associated with plenitude and celebration for  one people - the Indians, for example - could represent the exact opposite to another, except to say that everyone else's "mostest" is utterly inadequate for the Americans.

Should I be offended if someone were to invite me to dinner and offer to serve "thair sadam" (curd & rice)? During my various trips to Paris I used to hanker for this simple fare, easily tiring of the supposedly excellent French vegetarian fare (an oxymoron) and would easily have killed for it, but not for being addressed as Monsieur Thair Sadam. Or should a Punjabi feel slighted if served Sarson ka saag and Makkai ka roti; a Bangalorean put off by reference to "Hathu Poli, Dappa Thuppa" (ten polis with a can of ghee) or "Bisibele"?

I grew up being referred to as "Thair sadam" both at school as well as in college. The term was a coined from the typical final course in a TamBram (=Tamil Brahmin) household and referred to the TamBram's less than adequate physique. At college it went further: they tried to ascertain if you were a "Pattai" (smearing of holy ash on the forehead in the form of three horizontal finger-width lines) or "naamam" (three vertical lines drawn on the forehead with sandalwood paste). The idea was to ascertain the exact degree of geekiness / nerdiness. Generally we Thair Sadams were thought of as no competition when it came to sports or girls and hence the need to identify and ignore non-competition (=TamBram).

Did we resent it? No. The sobriquets were worn as badges of honour for at an invisible level, underlying them, was the grudging admission of and admiration for our facility with academics in general and Maths in particular. Come exam time who else would help them pass their courses with educated guesses on likely questions and concise (=<10 sentences) answers for them?

Later in life I lived in another part of India  where different languages were spoken and different foods eaten. There, people from the South were all referred to as Idli-Dosas in a reference to the popular snack from the South. The Northerners can never get into their heads that Idlis and Dosas are just two of  scores of dishes which constitute our staple. We certainly are not impressed by their stupendous ignorance of our world; but insulted? NO.

So what about serving a dead Gallus Gallus Domesticus to an African American Golfer? It is just a matter of excessive political correctness.

Would a Bengali be offended if offered Sinese Silly Sicken?
I think not.

THATCHER'S LEGACY

Mr Jaithirth Rao's wrote an obituary for Margaret Thatcher (The Economic Times, India, Op-Edit, April 9th) that reads like Mark Antony's peroration at Caesar's burial except that Mr.Rao came to praise Thatcher, not to bury her. Essentially he credits her with everything except sliced bread. We need to place Thatcher's contribution in perspective.

Mr Rao's assertion that but for Thatcher we'd all be socialists now, queuing up for life's necessities, is as inaccurate as it is alarmist and unfounded. In so far as any personal credit is due at all for this so-called dismantling of Socialism, it should go to Ronald Reagan.

Notwithstanding her visceral dislike of socialism as a political system or an economic philosophy neither the idea of bankrupting the Evil Empire nor the execution thereof was Thatcher's. Socialism's own failures assured its demise. Let alone bankrupting the Soviets, Britain was itself barely solvent. Mr.Rao's claim reminds me of comedian Spike Milligan's claim of playing a key role in the down fall of Hitler!

The UK's physical location willy nilly placed it in the forefront America's confrontation with the USSR. Thatcher was the voice of the anti-soviet rhetoric thanks to her oratory skills in comparison to the complexity-challenged Reagan. The means, the materiel, the desire, all resided in Washington. In any case, Gorbachev was already moving to dismantle (perestroika, glasnost) the old Soviet system even before the West got to know him. We cannot ignore the lasting damage done by her opposition to sanctions on the apartheid regime in South Africa. We have witnessed what the precipitate dismantling of Soviet State has wrought – a unipolar world without any counterweight to that unipolar power, emergence of a confrontational brand of Islam, and the strife in resource-rich middle east. Achievements to be celebrated? Hardly.

Thatcher used democratic means to acquire power but was not a true democrat by temperament or intent. She supported oppressive regimes that made a mockery of her claims to support democratic aspirations of people around the world. Think South Africa or Pinochet's Chile . She supported the American invasion of Grenada, a tiny island incapable of defending itself let alone threatening its neighbours. Her democratic credentials were exposed by the rebellion in her own party culminating in Geoffrey Howe's resignation and the ascent of John Major.

Much credit is given to her for destroying Britain's militant labour unions and perhaps deservedly so. That view ignores the fact that the power and hold of the unions, led by coal unions, were weakened by the flow of oil and gas from North Sea.

Thatcher unleashed two trends which came back to bite Britain. One was to make London the centre of new forms of financial buccaneering. The other was to usher in the “home owner democracy”. Home ownership was promoted as a virtue in itself. The rush to own homes gave a fillip to the economy in the short run. This trend was neither desirable nor sustainable as later events were to prove. More than a million home owners on the verge of retirement around 2010 were at risk of losing their homes, unable to pay off their loans. Her support for the Financial sector, and neglect of manufacturing saw Britain lose whatever manufacturing edge it had, over the next two decades.

Commentators aver that Thatcher's quintessential Englishness and abrasiveness alienated the Scots, for one, and kept the Irish troubles on the boil. Scottish devolution is almost a reality now and without Thatcherite abrasion Northern Ireland is quiet. She was a shrewd, ambitious, ruthless, and divisive politician who played a larger than life role in British politics but cleverly accepted credit for developments of which she was neither the instigator nor the executor.
Lord Ashdown put it very succinctly in a TV interview: she was very good at destroying things: labour unions, her own party, international comity and the like.

Additionally, see this analysis: http://business.time.com/2013/04/09/was-thatcherism-good-or-bad-for-the-economy/?xid=newsletter-daily
Or this
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/did-thatcher-turn-britain-around/

THE THREE C's

Long ago when I started my first job in a bank I was taught that three C's were central to assessing a borrower. Character, Credit and Cash. You may quibble why would a guy who already has Cash borrow from a bank? It is not as dumb as it appears at first glance.

"Character" is an obvious one, isn't it? I wouldn't lend to men of bad character. In those days men of "good character" did not throw their money after fast women and slow horses. They just gritted their teeth through bad times, and tightened their belts. They did not renege on their promises. Nor did they jump ship and swim for the shore at the first hint of trouble - they stayed on board and were the last to abandon ship or sank with it. They also did not ring fence their private assets so as to defeat creditors and bankers should their business go belly up.

Today there are hundreds of examples of businessmen doing well for themselves even as their businesses are floundering. Newspaper headlines are full of them.The government facilitated this with an act that wrung concessions from lenders, creditors and even employees so as to put the business back on its feet; when the business' health was restored, it is handed right back to the people who ran it to the ground in the first place, thus paving the way for Rescue Act II.

The second C, "Credit", is quite vague. A person must be credit worthy in order to get credit.  Does getting credit make him creditworthy or does being creditworthy get him credit? In the olden days it clearly meant those who had the assets but not the liquidity. The assumption was that a man with assets will not default on his commitments to repay. Something like saying a person is solvent, but not liquid.

 "Creditworthiness" and "Collateral" were used interchangeably until the latter was declared antisocial by the socialist brigade. This brigade had invented the self-serving and politically-driven banking practices which were apparently designed to stop the rich monopolizing the limited credit available in the economy. The new practice actually created many credit monsters who knew how to play the system - monsters without even the most basic business scruples. Collateral and "creditworthiness" overnight became dirty words and could halt your upward progress in your banking career.

Now we come to the third requisite, "Cash". So the basic question: why would someone with cash want to borrow  more cash? For the reason that it is cheaper to use borrowed cash than your own. A bit of leverage improves your RoI, says finance theory. It may make your business more risky, but it improves returns to the shareholders. Since the shareholders have already risked their capital by investing it  in a business, why not take a whole lot more risk in order to get greater returns? After all the additional risk is taken not with their own money but with the Bankers'  money.

For the record, the third C of the "three Cs theory of lending" referred to the business' ability to generate cash; not to its already existing cash hoard but to the business' future Cash Flows.

Why this primer on bank lending? I was reminded of it by what happened recently.

Yesterday I was at a wedding. I heard one wag propound his "Three Cs theory of Marriages". According to him the aspiring bride should be able to Cook, Clean and Conceive.

It is comforting to know that traditional values have not been forgotten.