Appaney!, Eeswara!, En perumaaney!, Nee dhaan pa enga maanathai kaapaathanum
unnai nambi dhaan irukkom.
engaluku unnai vitta vera naadhi kedaydhu.
yedho parthu pannu 
PS: For the first time in 16 years, i am admitting something 
puriyadhavanga adutha posts padikalaam 
I was reading Po Bronson’s book and there was this story about an ex-model which made me think. This story is about an ex-model who successfully reinvents herself as a recruiter. This is a classic one-in-a million case. What about the rest?
Consider this scenario. There is a sweet, college going girl, all of 18 years of age. She takes to modeling as a hobby. Suddenly something clicks. She is transformed into a super model or a popular actress overnight. Before she could realize, she is a VIP mingling with millionaires. She is globetrotting while her friends go through the boring classes, struggling for an increase in their pocket money.
Years roll by. Those who complete their studies either get married or get into a nice job or both. Whatever they do, they hold a small place in the society and lead a normal life. They have a home, a family, a partner, children perhaps.
Consider our heroine on the other hand. Stardom is thrust down her throat. Every minute of hers brings millions. Every action of hers is scrutinized.
Years roll by. Younger, hotter models come into the arena. She is no longer the hottest in the circuit. She is getting older and her looks are fading ever so slowly but surely. Now what does she do? Lesser and lesser newspapers mention her. At one point she is thrown away from the media glare. She is not even old enough to be called middle age. All those years of stardom also means she is alienated from her own friends and family.
Alternatives… That is not an easy word for those who’d seen the glamour of filmdom and fashion. What do these people do when the fade from the limelight? What can they do? What do they know? Can a model learn programming and try to be a programmer or designer or a marketing professional? Can she go back to college? Is that all possible in India? It’s like you find yourself struggling to even be a beginner in some field where your classmates are middle level managers.
This is especially relevant in India.
She is desperate to lead the one life she is denied – a normal peaceful life.
Once they realize they have nowhere to go and survive, they need to sustain a kind of aura about them to have a fighting chance of making a comeback into the only world they know - fashion and films. For that they again need to make any sort of compromises.
So before they realize they are in a Catch 22 situation.
If I find myself in such a situation, what would I do? I guess I would try and find someone rich enough and try to stick around him for as long as possible.
And that’s what these people do too, isn’t it?
Lucky are those who hang on and end up doing mother roles in the industry. For every Kushboo or Simran or Ramya Krishnan, there are 100s of lesser known people who have just vanished from the scene.
Some who come to my mind are
Rekha - kadalora kavidhaigal
Sangeetha
Kousalya
The list goes on.…
My heart goes out to them.
Paritrana - this is neither a bollywood flick nor the next hot thing after Mallika Sherawat. It’s a political party.
January 20, 2006 might be a very important day for all of us Indians. Just how important? I am not sure. Guess it is in our hands and the guys behind Paritrana(via youthcurry).
At a time when every Kandaswamy, Kuppuswamy and Madaswami is thinking about important things like home loans, salary hike, Vettayadu Vilayadu, Shivaji, Asin and Virender Sehwag, 5 IITians and a Chennai born US educated economics expert have come together to form Paritrana (meaning complete relief, implying the end of the very cause of distress). They’ve chosen to make India better rather than mourn about it.
It’s not as if these guys can make India better because of their IIT background.
IIT is merely a tag. I guess it just shows that they indeed have better options than politics if they want. It’s not that you need an IIT B Tech to bring about a better India. Kamaraj was not even school educated, but his rule in Tamil Nadu is still the benchmark.
But I need to cling to something to be optimistic about this country. So any small act of unselfishness, any non-materialistic behavior should be appreciated, celebrated, and supported in whatever little means. India can’t have enough of these guys. These guys could’ve gotten away out of India rather easily, much more easily than me. Nothing wrong if they’d gone either. But their choices and their decisions makes me be a little less selfish in my day-to-day acts.
Some 20 years back M S Udayamurthy returned from US and started a movement called Makkal Sakthi Iyakkam in Tiruvanmiyur. K Balachander even made a movie loosely based on MSU (Unnal Mudiyum Thambi). I wonder what happened to Makkal Sakthi Iyakkam now. Let’s see. I am optimistic this time.
Maybe these are the guys Vivekananda talked about.
‘What makes you think so?’ you might ask. ‘Why not?’ is my retort.
As I keep saying often, I am optimistic, for I don’t have an option.
The following URL’s would help throw more light on Laurie Baker’s genius and contribution to India in the past 50 years.
Some of his masterpieces include Dakshinachitra near chennai, Center for Development Studies, Trivandrum etc.
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2005/stories/20030314000906400.htm
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/07/brick_master.html
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1416/14161160.htm
Here’s one to Shankar, another Trivandrum based architect.
I could not find any links in the morning mainly because I got Laurie’s name spelt wrong (I tried searching for Lawry Baker:D)
Tagging is a tricky game, often a lousy game. I’ve 144ed it sometime back. But Dinesh’s tag was exceptional. The tag is to write about three ways to save our earth for our children.
I read about that and thought ‘wonderful topic, let me take some time’ only to come back in the evening and find Ramya and Priya had already written all that I wanted to write and more
Anyway here are my pointers
Spend less:
Particularly on fuel charges, water charges and electricity. By spending less on these, we are doing ourselves, our country and the world a great favor. Why do I talk about spending? Because there is a relationship between that and the environment. Most of the irresponsible acts are done by the highly educated and wealthy in the name of ‘growth’ and ‘development’. They spend more because they can afford and they think it’s their freedom.
Fuel:
Consider this, a middle class person who earns about 6,000 per month in Chennai takes the electric train to work and return everyday.
The guy who earns say 20,000 per month takes his own two-wheeler and spends 20 litres of petrol per month.
The affluent, IIM alumni types, and vice presidents take their gas guzzling cars to their offices 40 km away. To and fro makes it 80 km. That is they spend like 10 litres of petrol per day! Their thinking is - The employer is paying the fuel bill and the chauffeur. It’s all part of the CTC, so why bother?
Now, who hits the environment hardest?
And let me not get started on the wisdom of having IT campuses for 100s of acres at some obscure place 50 km from the city and running a virtual transport corporation. More on this later.
Water:
Many might think that chennaites being water starved would be very stingy with water. Nopes, not all. Why is that? Because it’s not that water is not available, its available provided you are willing to pay for it. There is a crucial difference between the two.
I know several instances where gallons of water are wasted because people did not have the time to change the flush mechanism in the western toilets!. And you dare not ask them, they will throw cash for the water they ‘used’ this way. There is a notion that since they pay for it, they are entitled to use it the way they want.
These are the drawbacks of attaching price tags to natural resources. Those who have money exploit it to the core.
Even if we cut down our consumption by 10%, that would be a boon to our family, country and the world.
Think simple:
Many of my readers might admonish me for saying this. But it pays to think small in certain aspects of life. While building a house, see if you can do with fewer rooms, doors and windows. It might mean silly to you, but it matters in terms of raw materials used, trees cut for wood etc. Cut down on things we do not need. Better still employ environment friendly building methods like Laurie Baker. It’s sad that we celebrate gorgeous Kerala girls but never this architect who settled down in Kerala and who has done wonders in low cost housing. We may not employ all of his techniques, but even some basic awareness might help.
Read more:
Most of the daily environment degradations happen because of a lack of sensitivity and some plain bad habits. I happened to read a portion of E F Schumacher’s ‘Small is Beautiful’ and my concept of development has never been the same (thanks to vatsan).
Reading more on such topics would broaden one’s horizon.
For example, read this (via prabhu).
With this, I’ve partially removed my 144 on tags. But please don’t compel me and I’m plain disinterested in doing tags like ‘Seven satyaraj movies you’ve seen’ etc.
I am not tagging anyone, those who share the concern and have a few things to say are more than welcome to do it:)
Is it fair to write about a book that I’ve read just about halfway?
Coz that’s what I am going to do now.
The book in question - Po Bronson’s “What should I do with my life”
The book is about people who at some point of time in their lives decide to re-examine their priorities, dreams, and ambitions and respond to their true calling.
They are the ones who simply roll up their sleeves and say, “Okay, let’s do something about this thing called life”. In other words not very different from the Sidin’s of the blogosphere.
The best part of the book is that the author is more of a chronicler than a writer. He is not trying to pigeonhole people and their actions into convenient sophisticated sounding section headings. Instead he listens to what they got to say by engaging them more as a friend. And it’s much more honest and off exaggerations than I expected.
How good is the book? To the extent i’ve read, the book is much better than what some of the Amazon book reviews suggest. Maybe some people could not relate to this mindset. There are some of my friends who find all this quite amusing. For them things are always very simple. Life is all about eschewing risks and making more money. It’s only dumb heads like me who confuse life.
Incidentally, its not that this is only an American mentality. Click here for more desi versions.
What’s more couple of my friends have already done something similar. A former Cisco Software Engineer in US quit her job and started taking documentaries. Another one is one the verge of doing the same and try his hands at moviemaking.
There is another who keeps saying “Ennamo poda, ipdiye irundha velaiku avadhu, edhavadhu pannanum, ana enna pannanumnu dhaan therila!!!”
That just about sums my mindset too
In the last few days, i had a chance to read about Advaita Philosophy and Adi Shankara. Man, i was mighty impressed by this philosophy. I’ve never read about advaita before. Looks like Sankara was far ahead of his times. Much of the credit for reviving Hindusim should go to him.
Later on, I searched for the Mutts apparently established by him and was interested to know the origins and history of those Mutts. This brought me to the origin of Kanchi Mutt.
I’v heard even the venerable Cho mentioning that the Kanchi Kamakoti Mutt is about 2500 years old. And then i found some sites which states that Adi Shankara himself was born in 7-8th century AD. My mathematics thus puts the maximum possible Mutt age to about 1400 years.
If indeed it was formed in 4th century BC as the Kanchi Mutt claims, then it could not have been instituted by Adi Shankara.
Moreover there are other theories that suggests that Shankara attained Moksha in Kedarnath and not Kanchi as claimed (by the Kanchi Mutt). The other version also states emphatically that the Kanchi Mutt existed in Kumbakonam as a branch of the Sringeri Mutt.. and parted ways sometime during 1800 s
Click here for more
Edhu Unmai? Aahaa, Engengu kaaninum arasiyal!
What is common between history and software?
Well, both gets rewritten often and version control is always a challenge:)
Now, this shud be one of the gutsiest decisions i’ve seen in recent days.
Life is full of heroes if only we care to look.
Sidin is certainly my hero. By this, he also posed me a question - When am i going to do the same or something similiar?
The following is based on a true incident. Its not fiction.
Scene 1 :
X takes his two-wheeler out of his house and parks it in front of his gate.
His mom calls from inside and so X goes inside the house to respond her leaving his vehicle outside.
On coming back he is shocked to find his vehicle missing!
What! missing? How come? It was here a moment ago?
For sometime he thinks some vehicle thief had stolen his vehicle and proceeds to lodge a police complaint.
Now what if i tell you that his vehicle is not actually stolen but his financier ICICI Bank had actually taken ‘peaceful possesion of his vehicle’ in view of his failure to pay the due for the last month or two.
Read another related incident here
I mean its totally wrong to buy something and not make payment for the due amount. The bank is fully entitled to receive its outstanding amount or initiate proceedings. No second opinions on that. But taking possession of the vehicle without even intimating the owner like a robber is so damn cheap. Its just third rate behaviour. Not even the eetikaaran seen in tamil movies would stoop down to such levels.
All this is from one of the top private sector bank in India.
And Oh Yeah Customer is King!!!
Prem’s poser about the effect of not taking loans from an economic perspective prompted me to write this. One disclaimer though,I am also not an economics guru. But then I am never ashamed to reveal my ignorance.
To the best of my knowledge, the impact of loans from an economic viewpoint is based on the ‘Multiplier effect‘ concept in Economics.
According to this concept, there are some unused resources in an economy (land, labor,capital etc). By increasing demand in the economy, it is possible to increase the utilization of these resources for economic benefit(boosting production). This is my understanding. But maybe some economics guy can throw more light.
But having said that, this concept is more relevant to credit given by financial institutions to industrial houses.
But the downside to it is that financial institutions are required to lend money to industrial houses at very less rates of interest. Like, say 4% etc.
On the contrary take the case of retail consumer credit. For example take the case of credit cards. The rates of interest for credit card debts is about 2% per month. Which comes to about 24% per annum. No wonder banks offer lifetime free credit card.
Even in the case of personal loans, the rates of interest charged is usually in the order of 16% per annum. Not to mention the numerous processing charges, fees etc.
Also when you provide loans to a gullible salaried employee, the balance is always in favor of financial institutions when it comes to loan default or some other dispute. He is after all an individual. He will not resort to legal remedy that easily.
The methods employed by some of the private sector banks for loan recovery would put the eetikaaraan in old thamizh movies to shame. More on this later.
The industrialists on the other hand would demand lower rates of interest in view of the huge loan amount. I also suppose RBI has some norms with regard to the rates of interest for loans offered to financial institutions.
From a business standpoint consider two scenarios.
Case 1:
1 crore loan given at say 5% for a leading industrial house.
Case 2:
100 personal loans of Rs 1lakh each where each fetches a rate of interest of 16% pa.
It does not take a genius to figure out which is profitable, right?
Of course banks justify these high rates of interest on the basis of lack of security for personal loans and credit card debts. But from what I have seen as an observer, no bank will give a personal loan without signed cheques in its favor. A signed cheque is an acknowledgement of debt according to Negotiable Instruments Act(again to the best of my knowledge).
Also add to it the prospect of harassing the consumer in case of default. All this is not possible when you are dealing with powerful industrialists.
I would like to know one thing. Does the likes of Citibank, HSBC, Standard Chartered give loans for industrial projects if at all? I am not sure. Only public sector banks sanction loans for starting industrial projects.
If the banks in India are so slush with funds, why not lend it to industrial projects for lower rates of interests? This will generate employment opportunities. But banks are here to make money.
In my layman’s opinion, a loan given for industrial houses will have a greater impact on economy than all these personal loans or credit card debts. But these kind of loans are proliferating mainly because of the profitability aspect of these institutions.