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.

ODE TO A CRICKETER

WITH APOLOGIES TO BOB DYLAN

How many innings must the young man play
Before you call him too old ?
How many tours must the short man sail
Before he sleeps in the pavillion ?
Yes, how many times must the short balls fly
Before he's forever rested ?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes, how many years can you call him great
Before knowing he's washed up for good ?
Yes, how many years can some people play
Before they're allowed to be free ?
Yes, how many times can a man fail
Pretending its just a one-off ?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes, how many times must a man look up
Before he can see a century on the board?
Yes, how many “lives” must one man have
Before hearing people cheer a hundred ?
Yes, how many defeats will it take till he knows
That too many times he's failed ?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

GANDHI'S GHOST

It is good to be Mr. Sanjay Dutt, even great. I envy him greatly.

Is it because his father was the handsome Bollywood matinee idol, Sunil Dutt, who went on to become a Member of Parliament representing the Congress Party (his one mistake in an otherwise blemish-free life) ? Or because his mother was the ravishing Bollywood beauty Nargis Dutt ? Or for the reason that despite his erratic ways, he still gets plum roles ? Or that his movies turn out to be block-busters? Or - my personal favourite - because he gets to play romantic leads opposite the prettiest heroines half his age? Or, is it because despite leading a dissolute life on and off-screen, he still gets a lot of sympathy all around?

In Bollywood  pedigree matters. A lot. How else could you explain the phenomenal success of the Kapoor family (whose youngest female member looks like her grandfather in drag)? One member of the family made a name for himself entirely on the basis of making the most grotesque faces. Talent can be acquired through hard work and training. But pedigree comes by birth. We in India greatly respect inheritances like pedigree much more than the things that people acquire through hard work.

Younger Mr. Dutt inherited neither his mother's good looks nor his father's scruples. He was quite the ladies man which is understandable given Bollywood's predilection to conflate the reel life romance and real life romance. It is as if, in order to succeed on screen, one must have a string of romantic liaisons off-screen too. To Mr Dutt's credit - and the discredit of of the ladies linked to him - there was no lack of willing ladies to partner him off-screen. Good for him.

A biggish man, he also played a number of toughies on screen. At some point his on-screen persona crossed over into real life and as a result he was involved in many a fracas, which became the staple of  Page Three and glossies devoted to movies and movie personalities. His collection of guns would have made him an honorary president of the American NRA if only they had heard of him. Not content with guns that can shoot one bullet at a time, he also started collecting weapons that could shoot hundreds of bullets a minute.

His father was of course distressed, the poor man, for he lived a simple and private life. I am not sure if he collected anything, especially ex-girlfriends, ex-wives or guns.  It is quite understandable therefore that he did not cast an indulgent eye on the goings on in his son's life. Once he went so far as to say that his son had fallen into bad company. Clearly he loved his son, but apparently not enough to smack him across his cheeks and read the riot act. The son in any case had independent means to indulge his fascination with and for guns and gals.

The said bad company, it seems, included certain underworld dons on the run from Indian police and resident in Dubai who supposedly bombed half of Mumbai one day in the early 'nineties, allegedly for a hefty fee from Pakistani intelligence. It is unlikely that junior Mr.Dutt ever went on a Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, but it was later established that he did make many trips to pay obeisance to the underworld dons ensconced in Dubai, out of reach of Indian Law Enforcement. It is natural that at this time that the reader is confused as to the religious affiliations of junior Mr.Dutt. It seems he himself was, and kept switching allegiance depending on which affiliation was advantageous.

This is where it all gets murky, and will probably remain murky for ever. Perhaps due to his feelings of hurt following the destruction of the so-called Babri Masjid by Hindu mobs, or perhaps owing to his love of  assault weapons, he conspired with the underworld dons to land and distribute substantial quantities of  arms and explosives. Clearly the type and quantity of the load were inconsistent with duck-shooting or Diwali fireworks. He is said to have lent his name to the operation  which the police allege resulted in the extra-large consignment getting through and getting distributed as planned by the miscreants.

Thanks to our fascination with all things Bollywood as also our inability to bring any trial to speedy conclusion, it has only taken 20 years since junior Mr. Dutt was first arraigned for having helped miscreants,  (this was full 8 years before 9/11 and therefore the term "terrorists" hadn't been invented, never mind the act itself and the loss of lives) to find him guilty and award punishment. Pedigree also helped. I am not sure if Senior Mr.Dutt actively helped pervert or at least delay the course of justice, but given his popularity and political affiliations this cannot be ruled out. What we do know is that despite the Police's valiant and persistent efforts to lose the case, the courts found  Junior guilty of having helped the "miscreants" ("terrorism" come into being only on 9/11, remember?).

Sentencing has only taken two decades. After all, there are important factors to consider involving ordinary citizens  - they were awaiting the next movie featuring junior Mr. Dutt in a leading role. There were tens of billions of rupees riding on movies featuring Dutt junior. Various governments since then have been loathe to disappoint the people by putting him behind bars. In the interregnum not only was junior free, but he also released two wildly popular movies featuring him in the lead role as a medical school prankster and general do-gooder not to mention stealer of the heart of the fairest. Suffice it to say since then the ambition of every Indian male has been to become in real life the person Mr Dutt's played on screen.

On screen, he cures incurable ailments and deepest sorrow with a hug, fights the medical school establishment at the risk of being "rusticated" (expelled in ordinary English) romances the daughter of the Med-school Dean, finds time to get drunk every day, aces the exams (with some illegal help of course)  and even has a conversation with Mahatma Gandhi's ghost in the library. In between he helps mend broken hearts, students beat the Dean's strict disciplinary regime, a poor girl get married to a well-to-do groom against his family's wishes, a boy express his feelings for a girl, avert a suicide, and performs all manners of miracles. He however does not get sainthood as he does not cure a cancer patient  by placing a blessed medallion on her navel - in any case he was not a Catholic.

In real life he successfully evades jail term for two decades.  Now he enjoys the support of entire Bollywood as well as multi-partisan legislators. They all want he should be let go.

All because he had a conversation with the ghost of Gandhi - Mahatma, not Rajiv.

HOW HP SAVES ME FROM RUINATION

A disclaimer at the very outset is in order. The HP in my post refers to the venerable Indian company, Hindustan Petroleum Corp, not the eponymous computers and printers company which cannot even save itself from ruination let alone saving me.

I get my domestic fuel from the aforementioned HP, a Fortune 500 company, in dirty red steel cylinders. HP does not supply just cooking fuel (LPG) to me. Its services extend to looking after my financial welfare by saving me money, my mental well-being by teaching  me the virtues of patience, my physical well-being by saving me from those delectable but dangerous fried foods, and connects me up with a lot of people. To use a trite management jargon, its services encompass 360 degrees. You might wonder how does a fuel company manage to do all these things. Wonder no more for I shall endeavour to capture their generosity in  the following paragraphs.

True to its origins, HP is socialist to its core. It came into being thanks to socialist fervour in Indian governing circles. Some might suggest that it had more to do with bloody-mindedness of our then Prime Minister and less to do with wealth distribution. Talk of policies facilitating a few to control the markets through License-Permit Raj is mischievous. That the poor were furiously sliding backwards was an unfortunate consequence of the effort to control the rich from getting richer. The poor were just the collateral damage in the war against wealth.

As I said, HP is socialist. It tries to level the field of energy use by all households. No one can use more than any other so it regulates supplies such that everyone gets just the one cylinder in two months. If not controlled thus, the irresponsible middle and upper classes would over use the LPG and make this world a lot less green. This is supposedly driven by government policy.  But HP operates policies far more stringent and redistributive than the government's. This socialist control has some interesting beneficial effects on people like me.

Firstly HP gets us away from our compulsive use of computers and smartphones - You see although you can book your next cylinder on line, you are warned by the friendly HP staff not to do so. Talk of transparency and ease of booking are mischievous and the benefits to consumers are overstated. In order to wean you away from your compulsive web habit, the nice people at HP have made it as hard as possible to use the site. Should you ignore their advice and use the web to book a cylinder, the booking mysteriously evaporates if a) the booking is within 21 days of previous cylinder being delivered, b) a new cylinder is billed but not delivered within 48 hours of billing (which it never is).

By maintaining a gap of minimum two months between cylinders, the nice people at HP ensure that the earth is saved. They are also helping me save money. Where I used to pay for 12 cylinders a year, they are now saving me 6 cylinders worth of money. Given the inexorable rise of fuel prices, this saving is considerable and  would normally go to augment one's pension corpus. The fact that I am already retired is not HP's fault, of course. There are bound to be some unintended collateral damage to all good deeds.

I am also saved from a lot of trans-fats which I would be consuming in considerable quantities if only the  cooking fuel were more plentiful. Having to make each cylinder of gas last full two months, we do not fry papads, chips and stuff like that.  The good people of HP are saving me from hypertension, elevated cholesterol, obesity, clogged arteries, heart attacks and the huge expenses the above conditions entail.

Dealing with HP teaches me to defer gratification. Though initially it was hard, I have gotten used to waiting and to not fretting while I am waiting. I now wait with equanimity bordering on fatalism. This control over the desire for instant gratification and my purchasing impulses has helped me avoid the temptations of new smartphones, tablets, cameras, HDTVs and any number of new-fangled devices,  thus adding considerably to me retirement kitty.

In an errant moment when I do pick up the phone to complain, I am greeted by pleasant music long enough to restore my equanimity. Then and only then, if at all, does a human voice breaks the spell. Once again, the effect on me has been nothing short of miraculous. I have started "accepting". The concept of acceptance is at the core of Indian philosophy of life, but forgotten lately in the mistaken belief that man can overcome anything and everything if only he tried hard enough. My question is, and this wisdom is very recent, must we overcome everything? Isn't it pleasanter to coexist? Isn't there space in our universe for everything, including problems?

The good people of HP realise that human networks and interactions play a key role in healthy living, especially in preventing Alheimer's or at least delaying its onset. When I call with a complaint, the pleasant man on the other side connects me to some equally pleasant friends of his who in turn keep passing me like in a game of "pass the parcel". It would be unpleasant were it not for their solicitousness and their concern that I talk to as many different people as they possibly can make me in order that I forge new relationships and friendships - networks that can potentially delay the onset of Alzheimer's.

Some times HP even fosters direct face to face interactions with the people who constitute, in the modern management parlance,  their entire supply chain. The other day I was referred to their dealer whose unhelpful attitude precipitated my call in the first place. The latter passed me around every employee in his establishment and then to his "delivery boys".  These are the poor sweaty lads that deliver the fully loaded cylinders in their hyper inefficient tricycles, making occasional excursions via local restaurants whose need for fuel they take a sympathetic view of. It was wonderful getting connected and talking to a key link in HP's supply chain. We exchanged pleasant banter with me explaining  my desperate need for fuel and them explaining what their sweaty job was like.

HP thinks of everything, even generating employment. You see, when we run short on fuel, we amble down to the neighbourhood eating joints which employ many young people.

AN EQUINE THEORY

Yesterday I went to a concert.

It .featured the songs of a Hindi film-music composer well- known for his mono-rhythmic style. He kept it simple and all his songs were set to the clip-clop rhythm of a horse on trot. Some of you could and probably would take issues with me on this, but  the distinct equine influence is a matter of fact, not of opinion. The compere, who was a very knowledgeable film buff in general and an expert in film music in particular, called it Horse-carriage music ("godha-gaadi music") at the very outset, perhaps to dampen down expectations. It was  at the same venue where I had decades ago seen Peter Shaffer's Equus, a play about the love of a young man for horses. An ironic coincidence.

Equine coincidences apart, the evening of music was eye-opening. The audience was mostly over sixty with the exception of a young man from Europe (if you were that dandy-bordering-on-gay you have to be European, most likely German) who was probably in his twenties. He had, it seems, come along for the ride with his hosts who looked well into their sixties. The audience was mostly Guajarathis and Sindhis. Well known for their astute financial acumen,  these communities are generally not credited with finer sensibilities associated with appreciation of fine arts.

The "oldies", as my 66 year old friend  kept referring to them, were evidently enjoying themselves, leading the hand-clapping which is easy when the beat is an equine clip-clop. Even the young European fop was was seen moving to the beat which was presumably the only thing he could relate to. The strange melodies and incomprehensible language did not seem to bother him overly. I liked that spirit. He took what he could and did not moan about the rest.

I recalled a performance at this venue of Viennese waltzes by a chamber orchestra many summers ago. It was memorable as much for the orchestra's valiant efforts as for their music. Dressed formally, the Austrian orchestra was trying to do its best in the sweltering conditions. Some in the audience drifted in and out at will. Some were trying to joke audibly about how much "fiddling" was going on. Yesterday too people were drifting in as late as an hour after the concert began. The Indian film music may have attracted a bigger audience than Viennese waltzes, but it didn't improve audience's respect for the performers.

The oldies were on fire. It was music from their youth, perhaps when they were in college, vying for the attention of the pretty girls. The popular stratagem in such instances was to fashion themselves after  popular matinee idols, complete with drain pipe trousers and puffed out hairstyles. Smoking was considered uber-cool. The West had Elvis and we had our Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar, Raaj Kumar and the likes. Singing popular songs within earshot of the objects of one's desires was the preferred  means of communicating one's amorous intentions. This is where the old film music still finds strong echoes in the hearts of that generation. Perhaps they found their love thus and even married them. If they were not successful in their amorous endeavours, there were even songs for such  sad outcomes, accompanied by piano-playing and much scotch drinking.

The music last evening was, well, equestrian. The singers were not even born when these pieces were originally performed. But they gave it a good shot and in my view did an acceptable job. All that did not matter for the oldies. For them it was not just about the music. It was a long-forgotten time of their lives being brought back. It was time-travel to a period in their lives without responsibilities, sales, loans, profits taxes or losses or any of those myriad concerns that occupy their days now. The music hall was a a time-travel capsule which took them back, albeit for only two hours, to a happier time in their lives. The audience  didn't care who saw them swaying, clapping or singing along. It was 1950's and it was their time!

 The most appreciated aspect of the concert was the fidelity to the originals from all those years ago. After all we are a culture that prefers faithful reproductions to original interpretations, be it music or art or even examinations.