Life and Travel – Page 2

Proliferation of “Chinese” goods!

When I went around looking for some memorabilia at the Liberty Island, US hoping to take something back home, I was surprised to see all items having a “Made in China” stamp. I repeat … all. I was stumped. I wanted to carry something back that represented the US and here, everything that represented the US was actually Chinese!

A few years earlier, I lived in a remote village in North Bengal for two months. The village was 10 km away from a metalled road and had only mud houses. There was no electricity and none of the households had a toilet. Guess what the villagers used for pumping water into the fields for agriculture? Chinese pump sets!

Low cost wins. Not just against remote access and utter poverty, but also against pride.

Developed vs developing world

Is there a way to differentiate between a “developed” nation and a “developing” nation by asking a single question?

I think yes.

When you want to find out if a particular place belongs to the “developed” category just ask a fairly rich local “What is your preferred mode of travel within the city/town anytime during the day? ”

If the answer is a train or a bus or any other public transport, you know you are in a developed country.

(I guess it is simplistic but more often than not the logic is correct.)

Private property v/s Shared ownership

In the real “physical” world, humans went from economies based on shared resources or common property resources as seen during the “hunter gatherer” phase of ancient human civilisation to the economies based on concepts of private property and ownership as we see today in the modern era.

Interestingly, in the digital world, we have taken the OPPOSITE direction. While we owned servers in the past and owned every piece of hardware and digital storage spaces earlier, today we have moved almost completely towards the concept of shared “ownership” . We don’t own our mail servers. Most websites are hosted on shared space maintained by others and we have the likes of the mighty Amazon Web Services that offer shared services.

The Dreamliner

The recent excitement and fanfare around the arrival of the Dreamliner aircraft in India reminded me of the good old childhood days. The average Indian household was then deprived of most of the material luxuries (“durable goods”) that we consider basic necessities today. The most sophisticated device that you could expect to find in the house was the radio or the cheaper handy version better known as the “transistor”. Around the late eighties and early nineties, scooters, televisions and refrigerators started entering the average Indian household. Their arrival was marked by huge celebrations. Friends, relatives and neighbours would all come rushing to take a first look of the new member of the family. Pujas, flowers and chants made the whole incident look like a festival!

I have clear memories of the day when the first television (TV in short) came to my “maama-ghar“. Ours was a joint family with 5 families living in a bungalow tucked away in the lap of the hills and forests on the Chota Nagpur Plateau. My grandfather was a physician who decided to set up his practice in the quaint hilly village of Silli in the tribal heartland of Bihar (now Jharkhand). The huge house was complete with mango, litchi, jack-fruit trees in the backyard and farmlands just outside the boundary with a row of hillocks a few hundred meters away.

It was the first TV in the town! It had to be an event! We knew since morning that the TV was supposed to reach home around evening. It was to be bought from Ranchi (the current capital city of Jharkhand) which was some 55 km away but the road had to cut through the hills and dense forests and often took longer than expected to cover the same distance. The entire town was waiting with bated breath for the TV to come. Several times during the day, our neighbours from the tribal village came down asking if the TV had already come. Kids of all ages lined up close to the house as evening came close. The sun slowly set and darkness fell but nobody would move. It grew darker and people slowly started drifting back to their huts.

Much later the sound of vehicle horn was heard and everybody rushed out of the house. The kids in the house zipped across the large playground in front of the house to the other side to see the van even before it reached the house. The sky blue “Matador” van came tumbling down the slope of the playground, chased by kids of various sizes and came to a halt at the doorstep. Children howled in excitement, the women of the house struggled to keep their happiness in control and the entire neighborhood stood waiting with glistening eyes for the TV to be taken out from the van.

The TV did finally come out and it was set up in the largest room of the house. The antennae was fitted on a long wooden stick, connected to the nearest socket board and then the TV flickered on. Sweets were distributed and the doors of the room were opened wide for everybody in the neighborhood to come in. Almost everybody in the small town came down to the extent that I almost felt that the jackals, elephants and the leopards in the nearby forest would also come down to witness the euphoria.

For about 10 years or so since then, the house was open to neighbours from the nearby tribal hamlets to watch TV with us. The TV room was always jam packed. So much so that the actual inhabitants of the house barely found a place to sit. People of different age groups always made sure that they catch up on the “Chitrahar” and the Sunday movies. Whenever electricity failed (which it often did), batteries were put to use! One of my uncles had a car battery charging unit. I guess the whatever he made in that business (if not more) was used up in charging the batteries for the TV.

India has changed so much since then. Bringing a TV or a refrigerator home is no longer a marquee event. We don’t celebrate them. Somewhere those big things in our life have today become obvious and bland. Is this a sign of development or lost ability to celebrate new things in life. The arrival of the Dreamliner proves that we can still celebrate a new marvel like we did in the past or may be not?

“To laugh often and much…

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Credit bureau” for air travellers

Some people just don’t want to switch off their mobile phones when the flight is about to take off. The same guys happen to be equally keen on switching on their mobile phones (if at all, they have switched them off!) even before the flight touches down. Some others feel that putting on the seat belt is against the fundamental right to freedom. Even if they do put them on, after “intense” insistence from the cabin crew, they do ensure that they unlock it and spring up on their feet even while the wobbly flight is finding its way to a stable parking bay. There are a few others who take immense pleasure in poking the assistance button every now and then for inane requests.

I was wondering if we could have a credit bureau kind of a thing where you could report flight “behaviour” of passengers on a compulsory basis and use the flight behaviour score (a la Cibil, FICO, Equifax, etc.) to decide the premium that the concerned person should pay to board another flight.

Such a bureau would record details of the passenger behaviour as reported by the cabin/ground crew of the airline companies and give scores. So, if you are hell bent on yapping or texting away when the flight is about to take off, you get a negative score. Similarly, if you don’t understand that you need to keep your seat back upright and somebody has to tell you five times to do so, you get another round of negative scores.

So, with a score of 300 you can bid goodbye to flying for a period of atleast 2 years. The chronic “defaulters” can then easily be kept off the “access to airline services”.

One more question, has anybody done any research on why the same people who are incredibly fast in getting up immediately after touch down (and yanking off the oversized baggages from the overhead lockers) are the same people who just dont want to get off the airstairs when they are climbing it down?

Enjoy your festivals!

Why are festivals important?
A. It gives you the excuse to do things you dont generally do everyday. Meaning it gives your brain the rest from usual work to help you refocus.
B. It gives you an excuse to bump into people you never met/spoke to before.
C. It gives you an opportunity to expose yourself to good old “quaint” ideas that you completely disregard in your day to day life.

In brief, celebrate festivals!! (off course,once in a while.)

“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows”

Possibly the best motivational speech in the history of cinema: Courtesy – Rocky Balboa.

The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody!