The die is cast

Its been a hectic ten days with things hotting up on the daughter's marriage front. On the evening of 22nd Dec Ammu was to fly in to Chennai from Mumbai for her Christmas vacations. The General and his wife chose to fly in on the same day from Yol (almost 10 hours of travel!) - their flight was delayed by about 45 minutes and Ammu's by over an hour and a half! This meant that that they would have to wait for almost two hours at the airport if they wanted to get a glimpse of the prospective daughter-in-law! Surprisingly, the General and his wife decided they would wait till Ammu got in! This gave Sudha and me some time to chat up with the General and his wife and get to know some more about them. They seem very simple folk who are just happy to get themselves a daughter-in-law who will keep their son happy. Ofcourse, the Army had dispatched a Subedar Major to receive the General in a fancy car flying the General's flag - those folks had to wait too till Ammu got in.

After Ammu's flight landed her luggage seemed to take for ever! When she finally got out of the airport she had big hugs for me and her mother and big hugs for the mother-in-law to be and father-in-law to be too! Times are a changing arent' they?

Arun, the prospective groom would come in only the next morning (23rd Dec) and it was arranged that the Subedar major would come and fetch him from the airport and then by noon that day they would all head for our home. A little past the appointed hour I get this call on the mobile saying they are outside our building but have been told (by the General's brother on phone) that it is Rahu kaalam until 1330hrs and that they should not set foot into our home during Rahu kaalam! Much as I contest the concept of good time and bad time I guess I just had to fall in line now. I quickly decided that Ammu, Sudha and I would take them all to a Coffee lounge to kill time until the Rahu kaalam is over - the by line of the Coffee Day chain was beginning to sound profound now - 'A lot can happen over a coffee'!!

After a round of various coffees we were ready to head home and maybe tuck into a few beers which were nice and chill and waiting to be consumed! But as I broach the subject with the General he tells me he normally stays off alcohol while on leave! His logic being that this is the only time he can abstain from alcohol without other officers thinking he is being prudish! With lunch done we got to the business end of the proceedings and decided that we will have the marriage and engagement in Kerala for the convenience of the extended family on both the bride's and groom's side. The engagement was to be scheduled for late January while the marriage would be in September. Ofcourse, it was going to be tough for Ashwin to spend more than two days in Kochi for the wedding considering he will be in the dive-ticket phase of his submarine training.

Soon the General's brother and family arrived from Pondicherry and spent a while at home before taking the General and family on board his Innova to ferry them to Pondicherry. We were invited to visit Pondicherry the next day and Ammu was more than keen to go because that would give her another opportunity to spend time with Arun. The next day dawned and we headed off to Pondy by road - a beautiful leisurely drive along the scenic East Coast Road. Had some great food there and then headed back to base late evening.

All is nearly in place and it is now time to set the ball rolling for the engagement which is scheduled for 31st Jan 2010.

Its a heady feeling....

The last few days have been a blur - my little girl has been spending time with a boy we have found for her and trying to make up her mind if this is indeed the person she wants to spend the rest of her life with. It hasn't been easy for her because of the excitement that her meetings with the boy have generated among my family members and Sudha's. People have been calling her late at night and asking her 'So have you made up your mind, whats the decision?'. It wasn't long before the poor girl began to wonder why she was feeling pressured to make up her mind! Last Sunday she called her Mum and burst out crying on the phone saying she doesn't want anybody calling her and pressurising her to make a decision!

It is only then I begin to empathise with a 22 year old trying to make sense of society and its insistence on how a Nair girl should be married off. Hats off to the kid for expressing herself in this manner because most girls before her would simply accept societal pressure and plump for the guy chosen for her. While that is the way I saw her outburst on the phone, her mother was not very pleased with her wanting to meet the boy a few more times before she would be anywhere near ready to say 'yes or 'no' - Sudha's contention being that society may misconstrue her daughter's need to meet several times before making up her mind - after all, most girls she knew of seemed to have to make up their minds about the man they will marry in the blink of an eye and that too immediately after the first and only meeting bewteen the two, often overseen by the elders! What is worse is that Ammu's guy seemed to give the green signal immediately after the first meeting with her while Ammu was not quite ready to wave the green flag!

To cut a long story short, after a few meetings in person, a couple of coffees and a lunch together, followed by several night-long online chat sessions with the boy she finally decided, 'yes' this will be the person she will marry. Ofcourse, this must be one of those strange Nair weddings because the parents of the bride-to-be haven't even seen the groom-to-be and we're talking about a wedding happening!! I guess it is a sign of the times - things are achanging about us and we had better embrace the change!

By this time next week we the parents of the bride-to-be would have met with the parents of the groom-to-be and worked out how we should proceed with the marriage plans. It is clear that there will have to be an engagement before the wedding because Ammu has her final semester to complete before she has her Masters in Clinical Psychology. Then there is the issue of Ashwin needing to find a way to get leave from his submarine training program to attend his sister's marriage - this would mean that the marriage will have to be fixed for an appropriate time taking this and other issues (conveniences of the groom's family) into consideration. Talking about my young lad I find he does'nt somehow relish the idea of somebody new coming into his sister's life - he prefers that his family stay just the four of us! Hopefully, his brother-in-law will win over him and make him understand that his sister needs a man in her life just as he will need a woman in his life - thats the way nature willed it to be!

Of Pens and more!!!

We are scheduled to head up to the old school in the hills of South India this weekend for the Grand Raffle Draw in the school. Well, the prizes for the big draw are a) First Prize - 40" LCD Television b) Second Prize - Apple iPhone c) Third Prize Asus Notebook Computer and d) 20 Consolation prizes.

The consolation prizes were to be a beautiful pen set that the children in school would love to have. It was my job to source and ferry items b, c and d up to Ketti! So I went about trying to find these here in Chennai and with some luck managed to get hold of these within the stipulated budget. Well, this story is about my search for the Consolation prizes - the pen sets! I would normally set out during my lunch break to find the goodies - checked out the Spencer Plaza, Landmark (the mega book store here), several small stationery dealers and more but I somehow didn't find something that fitted within the budget AND was good enough to excite the kids in school!

Yesterday, on my lunchtime mission to find lunch and those pen sets I ambled into a mall right behind my office and discovered a pokey little stationery shop. The owner a 40 something Marwari businessman asked what I wanted and I told him what I was looking for - it turns out that this gentleman has been selling pens for close to 30 years and he claimed he has stocks of almost every conceivable brand of pen in that small store! To test him I asked if he had refills for a brand of pen called Caran d'Ache - its a relatively unknown Swiss brand and he says 'Ofcourse, Sir, those are, in my opinion, the best pens in the world'! He hauls out about 10 models of those pens with a price tag starting at 7,000 bucks! Ofcourse, I flinched when he cited the price! And he goes on to tell me that if you own one of those pens and you lose it anywhere in Europe, you need only make a police complaint and send the copy of that police complaint to Caran d'Ache and they will replace the pen free of cost via courier! Then he says he has pens that he has personally sold at the most astounding price of Rs 800,000!! He went on to show me a pen with a miniature projector fitted in its top which allowed you to watch a full fledged DVD movie projected on a wall (screen size 7" across)! He then pulled out a pen that was smaller than the average pen but he said it has a refill that will not need replacement in the lifetime of an individual (calculated at 85 years!).

I was gobsmacked by now at this man's knowledge of his product and asked him why he chose pens as a business specialty!! So he says, 'Sir we Marwari's believe that the pen you have in your shirt pocket and the one you have in your pants are the two most important instruments in a man's life - how they perform and what they do can make or mar your life'!! How's that for a business rationale?!!

I learnt something about pens and life yesterday and that too in my own backyard!! One lives and learns I guess!!

Network Theory

I have been meaning to write about this for some time but never quite got around to doing so - there have been a few reference to the concept of 'Six degrees' on several e-groups that I am a member of - indeed, the idea of 'Six degrees' propounded rather simplistically back in the late fifties basically was that every body in the world is connected to somebody else perhaps half way around the globe by six degrees of separation i.e in six hops it is possible for anybody to connect with anybody else in the world or in other words somebody you know, knows somebody else who knows someone else who knows yet another person and so in six such hops you can connect with a person who lives a world away and who you may never have set eyes on! Well, the idea was thought of as yet another urban legend or myth and nobody quite had tested it . Recently it turns out that it has been tested by a couple of Universities in the US and found to actually be not mere urban myth but very much true.

The testing involved getting a packet across from some of the remotest parts of the world to a particular person at Harvard University, Boston without actually having the address of the person in Boston. A couple of courier companies were recruited to fly packets addressed to that person for free, no matter from where it is coming and a notation was made as to how many hops the package made to get to Boston! Incredibly, some 27 out of 40 packets made it to Boston from far away villages in Kenya and India and Inner Mongolia in less than six hops!! In other words the network actually found the final address of the person in Boston as it went along its way!

So Six degrees is no more a myth - the concept has actually evolved into the science of Network Theory, a highly abstract, mathematical concept that has now become central to the idea of fighting stuff like terrorism and cancer!! A quick reading of the piece below will tell you how!! If you are too lazy to do that let me see if I can quickly summarise the concept for you here! A network consists of hundreds of connections, some connections have a lot more connections connecting to it than other connections - these are called hubs. Thousands of hubs and connections then form the network! The Internet works this way, as do networks of terrorists and this is the way cancer spreads in the body!! The beauty of a network is that if some connections fail, the network will continue to work, albeit a little slower! But if a hub fails, then the network begins to crawl and if a few hubs fail the network itself crashes! So does this concept tell you a few things about how to kill a viral infection in a computer network? Or how to knock out a terrorist network?

Albert-László Barabási and Network Theory

At one point or another, you’ve probably heard of “six degrees of separation,” the theory that, through social relationships, you’re only six handshakes from anyone on the face of the earth. Or, you may have heard of its pop culture

incarnation, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” a trivia game in which players attempt to link any Hollywood actor to Kevin Bacon through six films (or fewer). What you may not have heard is that an exploration of these concepts, which were

once dismissed as trivialities or urban myths, has led to a new, groundbreaking branch of science known as “network theory.” By examining the unexpected ways in which all things relate to one another – from musical crickets, to websites, to Hollywood actors scientists are honing on solutions to some of the world's most complex problems.

Network theory pioneer Albert-László Barabási, a Distinguished Professor of Physics in the College of Arts & Sciences, has emerged as one of the world’s foremost experts in the science of networks. Through such innovative undertakings as a complete mapping of the World Wide Web, Barabási has discovered that certain, basic patterns underlie all connections and relationships. In his book, Linked: The New Science of Networks, Barabási writes, “There is a path between any two neurons in our brain, between any two companies in the world, between any two chemicals in our body.

Nothing is excluded from this highly interconnected web of life.” Barabási’s work is already famous; Linked is available in eleven languages, and are among the most cited field. But his research will attain level of popular recognition this February’s U.S. release of documentary called Connected:The Power of Six Degrees (also known around the globe as “How

Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer”). The Connected documentary investigates the various mind-blowing applications of network theory in our everyday lives. In the film, Barabási and other scientists suggest that computer viruses, infectious diseases, proteins in the cell, and human social groups are all governed by the same fundamental concepts. And, through the application of these discoveries to the military, to technology, and modern medicine, Barabási has a guiding hand in research that may help us to control AIDS, break-up terrorist networks, and yes, perhaps even cure cancer.

What a week its been!

Indeed, its been a happening week this one - it all started with the news that our son Ashwin has made it to the submarine arm of the Indian Navy! The boy has been dreaming about this for some time now but he knew that it was not going to be easy given that the competition was going to be tough. Out of 16 that made it upto the Medicals in INS Ashwini in Mumbai the numbers were whittled down to 12 because 4 didn't make the cut on Medical grounds. Now it was going to be between the 12 that survived the tough Medicals and it would be upto the Training Officer to decide how many would make it out of the 12 remaining officers. Navy HQ obviously decides how many Submariners would be required in the year and that number was 6 - so out of the 12, only half would make the final cut. It was tension time for Ashwin but in the end all that tension was worth it because the Training Officer was convinced that he deserved to be part of the 6 that would go to Submarine Training School in Vizag for their 6 month submarine induction course in Jan 2010. We are so happy for Ashwin because he got what he wanted but it still beats me why anybody would want to spend the rest of his working life in the Navy under water!!

In the midst of all this important stuff happening in Ashwin's life we got word from a prospective groom's family that they would like to take forward a proposal for our daughter to marry their son! Massive debate erupted at home as to whether Ammu was old enough to be married - she will be 22 in a few days. My argument was that I think it was time for her to be married because she needed to have a slightly older man in her life to keep her feisty nature under control! I know she'll kill me if she reads this but truth must be told! So by my logic if we were to wait till she is older then the guy she marries will be older and may be into his thirties so it would make sense to find a groom for her while she is in her early twenties. Thankfully it seems like she is willing to bite the bullet. Horoscope matches have been done and there is this lad based in Mumbai, son of a Lt. General in the Indian Army who will see her on Sunday 6th Dec and we should have a go - no go decision soon enough!

Its been lovely to see the extended family rally around and call/email Ammu and tell her that she should go into this meeting with an open mind. Loved the way Veena from the UK, Bindu from Bangalore, my Mum from Kottayam, Sunil and his wife Ammu from Kochi, Gopichettan from Mumbai and so many others got in touch with Ammu to get her spirits up. So much so she's raring to go! Fingers crossed, lets see what the coming week has in store for us! Maybe there will be a meeting of minds in Mumbai this Sunday!

OGA Offsite Reunion Poovar 28th and 29th Nov 2009

The last few days have been a blur what with the build up to the OGA Offsite REunion in Poovar, Kerala and the travel to Australia in-between all the Reunion tamasha. But the Reunion happened and was most enjoyable.

Here's the low down on the build-up to Poovar, Poovar itself and post-Poovar! Somebody said 'theres never a dull moment with Georgians' - well there really couldn't be a more apt statement! The action started within minutes of us boarding the train for Poovar!! As the train pulled out of Chennai Vinoo had his pre-mix suitably camouflaged in Coke and was taking his regular swigs, he wouldn't put his bottle down and I think thats what attracted that Railway Protection Force policeman to Vinoo - he tugged the bottle out of Vinoo's hands, breathed deeply with his nose over the mouth of the bottle and motioned to Vinoo to see him outside the A/C compartment!! We didn't even notice what was happening until Vinoo was seen stepping out of the air conditioned area! Outside, Vinoo was told that it would be a 3000 buck fine and he would be de-trained at the next station for drinking on board the train!! After a little bit of pleading and coaxing the policeman settled for a bribe of 200 bucks and gave Vinoo his bottle back and told him to go into the loo and finish it!! Which ofcourse, Vinoo did without a whimper, glad that he got his vodka and coke back!! Soon it was time to hit the sack - I was billeted in the next coach while Sattar, Jen, Sudha, Kevin Lewis, Mary and Vinoo were in one area. I headed off and went to sleep - around 1030pm my phone (which was with Sudha) rings and Paan comes on the line almost desperately pleading with Sudha to put me on the line! She finds her way to my bogie and wakes me and puts Paan on the line - the man was charged with collecting 40 bottles of booze from the Naval Base in Kochi and ferry it to Poovar. It turns out he got busted by the cops the previous day - it is a non bailable offence to carry commercial quantites of booze without a licence in Kerala so Paan was about to go in to the cooler and be the guest of the Kerala Government!! He somehow worms his way out of that situation and calls me and says he cannot take the booze down to Poovar because it is too risky! His exact words were ' if you can ferry it please do so, I'm outahere'!! Now, our train would be passing through Kochi but we were to head straight to Poovar so how was this problem to be solved?!! The decision was taken that Vinoo and I would hop off at 0600hrs on 27th morning at Kochi and find Paan and the booze and find a way to get it to Poovar! Imagine a reunion without the hooch!! The thought was worrisome for every OG out there!! I called Sanil to see if he could arrange some police protection! He insists that we should not ferry the booze in a Tourist vehicle (Yellow number plates) and must do so only in a white number plated vehicle - he would try and arrange one for us but it would be past 10am when we have some news on that! It turns out that the Manager of the hotel that Paan was parked in was the husband of one of Sudha's 60 cousins! We latched on to the man who very helpfully offered to let us use his car to ferry the booze - that was very brave of him because if we did get caught, the car would never ply the roads again! But an ex-Army officer knows that some risks are worth taking! So Paan, Vinoo and I set off in a Maruti Esteem stacked to the roof with booze, headed to Trivandrum some 160 km south of Kochi. We smiled at every cop enroute so as not to look like a trio of boot leggers ferrying our booty! As luck would have it we got to Trivandrum without incident and headed for my cousin's home where Sattar, Jen, Kevin, and Sudha were parked. It was lunch at my cousin's place and Vinoo and Paan then took over and ferried the booze across to Poovar from Trivandrum! That evening all of us Chennai folks headed out to Poovar to check out the place for the games and other action that Sattar had planned. At dinner at the resort I get a call from Sanil saying that Ivan Jacob boarded a train from Calicut to Trivandrum with a ticket dated 26th October instead of 26th Nov!! Poor guy almost got thrown out but the TTE took him under his wings and provided him place to sleep - the train gets in at 0500hrs and the vehicles booked to ferry folks from Trivandrum station to Poovar wouldn't leave till 10am! So at 0530hrs in the morning my cousin's husband and I went and fetched Ivan! Now we were too many to fit in the car we were to bum from my cousin to get to Poovar!! Soon that was sorted out by arranging for Ivan to head back to the station to catch the vans ferrying folks to Poovar! In the mean time we hear that our man for all seasons - Thamilarasu was in Chennai on 26th instead of being in Poovar, so he was to fly to Madurai that evening and drive to Tuticorin, pick up his man Friday Vivek and drive out the same night to Poovar!! Mr Gardner and wife and Mr Wood and his wife were arriving with the Coimbatore gang next morning. There was another Chennai gang arriving at Trivandrum Station by another train - all these mind boggling logistics were beautifully handled by the Organising Committee consisting of NRK, Bhagee, Narayan, Singappa Raja, Rathinashekhar, Babu and a dedicated bunch of guys who worked their butts off to pull off the Poovar reunion. The Isola Di Cocco resort is a beautiful sprawling campus - we needed cell phones to pull in the foks to get the reunion going - which mercifully happened as per plan, under the shade of coconut trees on the backwaters of the Poovar river. Speeches done - Sattar took over in his own inimitable way with all the games and had the crowd buzzing in no time. The Treasure hunt for the kids was a terrific hit as also the other games arranged for the adults. It was quite hot and sultry by then which meant that beer could never taste better!! Lunch followed and what a spread that turned out to be - the mango fish curry was awesome as was the roast chicken curry! The EC Meeting was next - it was surprisingly well attended and the participation in the discussions was excellent. That was where the goody bags were distributed - super stuff - there was even a beautifully mounted Seashell with an individually personalised brass plaque! Ofcourse, there was lots of other goodies too - branded Sugar, Salt, Matches, Beedies, Curry masala and even a packet of condoms for good measure!! The beautifully personalised Appreciation Scrolls were also presented to those who helped put Poovar together. Hats off to the Organisers for the details they looked into. The highlight of the Poovar Reunion was the Banquet and Poolside Ball on 28th evening!! As usual Sattar had the crowd in party mood very early in the evening. The Live Band was fantastic - those guys deserve a big hand - they played on till 2am that night!! Because of the openness and large spread of the resort the music didn't affect any of the folks who wanted to call it a day early! The next morning folks were woken up by the Resort staff and told that the boat rides to the beach would begin at 0630hrs!! Many actually made it for the boat ride only to learn that the boat man had gone to church! So we hailed a boatman who was poling his way through the backwater and some hitched a ride in the boat which is actually used to ferry ducks about and it sure smelled that way!! By 1030hrs that morning it was time to start bidding goodbye to the 95 OGs and families who had shown up for Poovar 2009. Soon we discovered that a Mallu movie shooting was to take place in the resort and they needed some of us OGs in the movie! Paul and JC actually feature in one of the scenes of the movie - don't ask me the name of the movie - am sure one of those who attended will remember! The Valedictory address by Mr Gardner was short and sweet and basically focused on all the organising that had gone into the Reunion and terrific bonding that was on display. To put it in a nutshell - a great time was had by all! Click on the link below to check out some of the photos of our trip to Treasure Island Poovar 2009

http://picasaweb.google.co.in/Sailendra.Bhaskar/TreasureIslandPoovarOffsiteReunion2009#

http://picasaweb.google.com/vegaanba/IsodiLoCocooa?authkey=Gv1sRgCJWS1aGM0eeByAE#

Finding the Founder

Almost 18 months ago a few of us Old Georgians located in three continents set about to try and dig up more information on the Founding Principal of our old school in the mountains of South India! The people who led the charge were John Castellas in Melbourne, Monty Shroff in London, Bryan Mulley in Leicester, Brian McDonald in Coimbatore and a few others. We could find huge amounts of info on the man and his work, his movements in and out of India, his speeches from the pulpit and at fund raising events in India and the UK and so much more - why, John C even managed to locate and buy two copies of a book written by the good Reverend - one of those copies actually signed in his own hand is now in the School Archive! Over the months John and I realised that the Reverend must actually have been a reclusive sort, who shunned publicity and actually stayed out of pictures. The nearest we got was to a long shot picture (1914) of Lord Pentland , Governor of Madras Presidency the first sod at the foundation laying ceremony of the old school in Kodaikanal! There was a man of the cloth in the picture but his face was hardly recognisable! We plodded on, trawling through the internet and going after any lead we could get, we were told that the United Theological College in Bangalore kept detailed records of Missionaries who served in India - last July we checked the place out but only managed to find lots of material written by JB - no photos again! Last week John C was at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Archive where he finally came upon a group picture featuring Missionary Lecturers at the Richmond Exhibition, July 20 1907 - mercifully the picture was captioned and the Reverend's name was clearly visible. From that picture John zoomed-in and got a better look at the man and sent it out to me. Some months ago I had made a visit to the Egmore Wesley Church founded by Rev John Breeden in 1905 with the idea of trying to search its archives for a picture of the Reverend - they actually had 12 portraits of Englishman Pastors of the church but none was captioned so nobody knew who was who! One of the minions of the church actually told me to go ahead and chose any one of the pictures and caption it as that of JB!! 'Who is to know' is what he asked me in Tamil!!! Well, now that John C had obtained an image of the Reverend I went back to those 12 portraits and could very quickly identify the portrait of our man!! Here it is - the Founding Principal of the St. Georges Homes , my old school!

Ominous signs for Inglish!!

Driving to work this morning I saw this catchy advertisement on one of Chennai's bus shelters, of two girls cuddling a nice looking guy with a large tattoo on his arm with the alphabet S emblazoned on his arm and the caption read 'Seema = S = Sheila' - I didn't quite get it so I scanned the ad for more info and there it was the message - 'Now SMS on a diet, pay per character'!! This was from Docomo the Japanese GSM player who have tied up with Tata Indicom to offer GSM services in India.

Even without these inducements we have a hard time trying to figure out the SMS lingo (technical term is textese!) of kids and some adults but now with a 'pay per character' option in the pipeline me thinks texting is going to get awfully cryptic!! You may well need to carry along a SMS dictionary to figure out some of those incredibly cryptic messages that land on your mobile in future!! Hang on a tick, I just discovered a site which provides exactly this service - www.smsdictionary.co.uk!!!






Indian English, or Inglish, will never be the same again! Don't know whether to cry or smile at this prospect!!!

Hats off to these good people

Was away over the weekend in Kerala - Sudha's brother was opening a new wing at his eye hospital in Kochi so we had to be around! Sudha ofcourse, had gone on earlier as she was required to be at hand at the betrothal of a niece of mine in Trivandrum. So lots of traveling has been happening and as a consequence lots of mails to catch up with!!

I have to recount the details of an interesting thing that happened to me enroute to Kochi. I usually take out all the stuff in my pockets and put it in my pillowcase before I retire for the night on the train. Its an overnight journey from here to Kochi. So as usual I took out my wallet, my credit card wallet , pen, mobile and other little knick knacks and put them into the pillowcase and hit the sack. I woke up next morning and took out all the stuff from my pillowcase and put it right back in the respective pockets and waited for the destination station - when it did, I grabbed my backpack and a little shopping bag and got off the train and headed home for breakfast. After lunch I receive a call from a strange number on my mobile phone asking me if I had lost anything on the train! I said 'I don't think so' and the voice at the other end asked me if my credit card wallet was with me - that was when it struck me that it was missing!! All my cards were in that one wallet as was my ATM access card and a few airline frequent flyer cards and my driving licence!! I almost froze thinking of the enormous damage that could have happened if indeed the wallet was lost! The voice at the other end of the line turned out to be that of an Inspector in the Railway Protection Force (RPF) that travels on the trains these days. The cleaners at the destination station had found the wallet and handed it over to the RPF Inspector who found my visiting cards in the wallet and made that call!! He soon verified that it was indeed my wallet and asked that I send somebody to Trivandrum Central to collect the wallet! By mid day the next day I had my cards back with me!! Don't know how to thank the folks who arranged all this and am so glad that inspite of all the cynicism that surrounds us, honesty is still something we can find around us.

Stems cells turned into ova and sperm!

In the latest issue of the journal Nature a few Stanford University scientists claim to have devised a method of converting stem cells into ova and sperm and can therefore produce an individual by the combining of those two stem cell products! Ofcourse, it means that infertility is really a problem no more - it will be possible to produce stem cells from the skin of infertile individuals and then it is only a matter of making those stem cells into sperm and ova! But it also means that sex is now redundant and so are male and female couples! The mother (the person who gives birth to the baby) can actually be both mother and father! It also means that gay men can actually have children with their own genetic make up if they can find a surrogate mother to house their child in her womb until it is time to give birth!

Interesting possibilities are being thrown up by this development - I'm sure that to people in the legal profession it must appear like a problem wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a conundrum because this raises so many legal issues! Fancy a mother also being the father of a child, is that a legal quagmire or what?!!

But as a person of science I am a little perplexed by this development because ova and sperm are generally haploid, having only one set of chromosomes i.e 23 chromosomes and not 46 that normal human cells have. Now stem cells too are by and large diploid in nature so how do these scientists go about making ova and sperms out of diploid stem cells - the article doesn't dwell on this issue, wish they would have. Also there is the issue that if female skin cells are used to produce ova and sperm the sperm will always carry only the X chromosome because females do not have a Y chromosome, now this would mean that female skin cells can only beget female children! Is the male as a species doomed to be consigned to the dustbin of history? If only for the purpose of generating Y chromosomes the poor male may yet be needed! All this doesn't bode well for humankind it would seem!

Brussels, Belgium

This recent trip to Europe allowed me an opportunity to do a short side trip to Brussels to visit a nephew of mine who lives and works there. Off the net I chose an affordable place to stay near the Brussels Gare du Nord - my nephew checked the place (or shall we say the location) and said it was ok. I arrived in Brussels by an Intercity express from Frankfurt, on Nov 2nd evening and linked up with Timki who walked me to the hotel. I have to say it was a rather disappointing hotel and the room was a trifle worse! But guess what, the guy who managed the place was Nepali! I decided I would hang in there because I hoped to spend most of my time out of the hotel room and return only in the late evenings to sleep. Timki returned to his office (not far away) and I stepped out to check out the neighbourhood. I was a little surprised to see the trash on the roadsides and the general untidiness of the place - then it turns out that the area was home to the Turkish community and was full of these burqa clad women pushing prams around with atleast one or even two toddlers holding on to their burqas. Ofcourse, there were the Doner kebab joints all around and hundreds of small shops selling rather garish looking goods from back home in Turkey. Every one around spoke in Turkish and the youngsters wore T-shirts emblazoned with names such as Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe (Turkish football clubs). I was hungry so I stepped into one of those ubiquitous kebab joints and asked for a shawarma - was disappointed by the food but atleast I had got rid of the peckishness. I stepped into a Turkish grocery and saw some interesting looking candied Kiwi fruit - never seen those before so I bought myself some of that and quite enjoyed the preserved fruit. Soon I was beginning to itch on my face and neck and hives were developing on my face and neck - I knew what was coming my way - my dreaded allergy - dont know why it hits me when I travel but I do know that I don't look pretty when my face swells up and turns beet red. So I quickly hurried off to my room, called my nephew and requested him to get me some anti-histamine tablets and waited for him to arrive - mercifully he was there soon but by then my face was looking ghoulish, I popped a couple of those anti-histamines and told Timki I'm going to sleep. I woke up next morning with no sign of the allergy and was grateful it hadn't gotten too bad. Timki arrived and we headed off to catch a train to Heysel station to check out the Atomium - pretty much a landmark in Brussels. Its a 103 m tall steel model of a Ferric iron molecule made in 1958 for the World Expo - it was to have been taken down after the Expo but the public of Brussels would not hear of it so it stayed on to become one of Belgium's most visited locations. The view of Brussels from the top was awesome. The Exhibition centre in the area was having a Food Expo so Timki and I decided to check it out - it was well worth it. Some great stuff on display and we even got to sample some of Belgium's 2000 beers. One glass of Chamay Beer (made by monks from a monastery) was enough to make me woozy and unsteady on my feet - on checking the alcohol content I see it is a staggering 9% volume by volume!
The next day, Sunday 4th Nov, we checked out the Grand Place which was awesome - right in the heart of the Grand Place was a store named 'Gautam Diamonds' signifying how Indians have cornered the diamond trade which was once the preserve of the Belgians. Then we walked it to the Mannekin Pis - that famous Pissing boy monument, possibly the most photographed monument in the world - one expects to see a huge piece of bronze art but what one beholds is a 2 foot little structure tucked away in an obscure corner of the city - very disappointing to say the least. But next to the Pissing boy is the reclining statue of the saviour of Brussels, Everhard 't Serclaes who is supposed to have saved the city from the clutches of the Flemish back in the mid 14th century . Story has it that touching the statue brings you luck (and brings you back to Belgium!) so the statue actually shines while the rest of the art work around it is coated with the dust of centuries! We were awfully hungry by now so we stopped by the only place that was open at noon on a Sunday - a Pakistani Biriyani place! I have to say it was the best biriyani I have ever eaten - it was absolutely fantastic! By now it was getting to be time for me to take leave of this Brabantine city and make my way to Munich. Timki helped me lug my luggage to the train which showed up bang on time and before I knew it I was bye bye Brussels, hello Bavaria!!

Back home again!

One of the highlights of my recent trip to Switzerland was the visit to the Rigi Railway system in the mountains adjoining the Lake of Lucerne. This is the Railway system that was the basis for the building of the Nilgiri Mountain Railway (NMR) and it is the invention of the cog wheel system by the Swiss Engineer Niklaus Riggenbach that allowed railways to be built on the sloping terrain of mountain sides.

If you thought the NMR traverses a steep terrain you are mistaken - the little stretch of railway between the town of Vitznau on the banks of the Lake of Lucerne to the final stop on the line to the peak of Mount Rigi (Rigi-Kulm) at 1,752 m (5,748 ft) is only some 8 km but the gradient is an amazing 1 in 5!! That would mean that for every 5 feet you move forward you climb 1 foot! Whereas the gradient on the NMR at its steepest is not more than 1 in 12.5!! You have to see it to believe it because the Rigi train is almost at an angle of 35 degrees to the horizontal at some places - kind of makes you feel its going to roll back into Lake Lucerne!! And guess what, the line is even electrified, nowadays the old steam loco travels the track only on occassion while the electric locomotive is the one that plies on most days - so I had to be content with electric traction but I did get to see the old steam loco being exercised!

Its travel time again

Indeed, it is travel time again and I don't seem to fancy the idea of traveling like a blue-bottom fly any more. This time around its 10 days and seven cities! Doesn't sound very interesting, does it? Well, it really isn't interesting at all because its the same circuit every year. Hopefully, this year my Swiss clients will try and do something different by taking me up to Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps.

Its crazy but I have been traveling to Switzerland for 8 years now and have really not seen anything of this beautiful country other than a little of western Switzerland - the areas around Basel, Lausanne and Lake Neuchatel. Beautiful though the area is I feel I need to see the Alps in order to say I've been around Switzerland!

I'm pleasantly surprised by the fares available to Europe on Sri Lankan - its almost 40% cheaper than those of the other carriers such as Lufthansa and Emirates - I hope the experience will also turn out to be unbeatable in a positive sense!

The Schengen visa too turned out nicely for me in that I got a two year multiple entry visa without any fuss! That means I save on precious pages of my passport by not having to devote more of the pages for visas! And this time around it will be the first time I enter Switzerland on a Schengen visa - earlier I had to apply separately for one of those difficult Swiss visas which took ever so long to get and would be for 8 days, yes, 8 days!! Which again meant my old passport had a Swiss visa on almost every alternate page!!! Thankfully those hassles are over and done with given the new visa regime. Now lets just hope the trip is nice and easy and some work gets done!!

Unconditional love

Every morning for the last 7 years this friend of mine and I head off to the beach near our homes for our hour-long morning constitutional. Its been fun doing this almost without fail every day of the week except on Sundays. One of the first things that we encounter on our walk are a few stray dogs who look so happy to see us early morning when they are just about stretching their limbs and muscles to begin their day. One of them, a scrawny, small white bitch is so happy to see my friend that she goes into a barking spree that wakes up the neighbourhood people and dogs! All she wants is a simple petting and maybe a scratch under her belly and she is so happy that she's bouncing up and down and prancing about barking in that happy way.

Then there's another mongrel that actually breast fed her daughter's pups when they were little ones'! She too seems to just need a little petting and off she goes to start her hunt for food to keep her going for the day. As we get closer to the beach we encounter yet another white dog but this time its a male who seems to love to jump and rest his front paws on my belly, as he does so he makes this strange growling sound that almost makes it seem like he's angry with us! Being male he needs a little more than petting - he actually expects you to play around with a piece of rag or an old shoe that he expects you to tug at while he pulls in the opposite direction!

On our return leg of the walk we take a slightly different route from what we traversed on the forward trip - this is to meet with a beautiful specimen of the Dalmatian breed - he's huge and so full of life. He usually looks out for two people walking towards him and bounds towards the twosome but every once in while he bounds towards the wrong folks and the poor guys dont know whether to turn and run or stay their ground! The dog answers to the name 'Samsung' - I'm sure the owners meant it to be Samson!

These dogs dont get anything other than a few strokes of affection from the two of us yet they yearn for our company and affection and look forward to our presence every morning! It is indeed so heart-warming to feel the unfailing, unconditional love of these dogs - it almost makes me want to ask 'why cant people be more like these dogs'?

Back again

Its been a few days since I blogged and the hiatus was caused by a trip out of town and into the hills of north Kerala with some Swiss and German business associates. These folks are here in India to expose my team to a new technology they have put in place to manage thousands of square meters of building space over the internet. We have been in this domain of computer aided facilities management for some years now and little had changed in the technologies deployed in this domain but now we have some serious new stuff to handle and it was a pleasure to be working with these Europeans on the new systems they had developed.

The training done it was time to give the Europeans a taste of Kerala which incidentally they had read up about and were aware that it was one of 50 destinations that National Geographic recommends as a 'must see'in a typical lifetime. So off we went to Calicut from Chennai and checked in to the Kadavu resort on the banks of the Chaliyar river. I love this river for its pristine beauty and because I know that not so long ago it was a 'dead river' because of industrial pollution from a rayon factory that was built on its banks in the 60s. The local people protested and with a concerted effort they were able to close down the offending unit and within a few years the river healed itself and looks oh so beautiful today.

The European visitors feasted on the beauty of this part of Kerala and watched in awe as sand divers went down to the bottom of the river to bring up baskets of river sand to dump into their boats moored mid-stream. To fill up a typical sand barge a diver needs to go down atleast 200 times - this is hard and demanding labour that really could be done by a machine but local laws prohibit that lest people over-dredge the river and mess up the riverine ecosystem. Once bitten twice shy, I guess!

From Calicut we went up into the high ranges of Kerala to the Vythiri Resort - this is dense tropical rainforest area and is quite remote. There is nothing else around and the only sounds are those of a gushing stream, crickets, birds and the swishing of leaves as monkeys swing from tree to tree! The resort was full and it wasn't foreigners that filled the place it was people from all over India! It was a working day and the place was full - I'm wondering how these folks at this remote resort manage to get this kind of traffic even on working days. It perhaps has to do with word of mouth promotion. Whatever it is, I highly recommend a night or maybe two in this resort - take plenty to read because there really isnt much you can do in the place and guess what, no cell phone coverage!

The tree houses here are awesome - one is 60 feet up in the canopy of a massive silk cotton tree and the only way up and down from there is by a cage lift operated with a water assisted winch! And the food is to die for - guess they have to have it that way or else the guests who have no where else to go for food, would be a bitter lot!

Dis-respect for due process and systems

Not long ago I was charged with leading a search for the company's new International Data Centre (IDC) - this was necessitated by the fact that a US company that our company had taken over was to be wound up and its physical operations moved out to Singapore while the data centre would be re-located to India. We called in a bunch of known companies to bid for co-locating our servers in their data centres and I was expected to go out and inspect each of these facilities.

Data Centres these days go by Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 type - the higher the Tier number the more complex amd more reliable the DC is supposed to be. There are internationally acknowledged levels of compliance that these various Tiers entail. My job was to check if these facilities were indeed Tier 2 when they claimed it was Tier 2. One of the top companies in this space took a colleague and me on a tour of their spanking new DC where they had a huge amount of heavily air-conditioned space with raised floors to accommodate the cabling that goes with computers and the security was severe. They took away our camera phones, and they had us smile into a camera to generate a mug shot that would adorn our visitor's pass and once inside, CC camera's monitored our every movement. A hi-tech Siemens Building Management Systems (BMS) controlled the temperature, humidity, access and power and reports are constantly generated about the variance from set values in any of those parameters! CCTV camera images are channelled to screens every where and to a central security console!

It didnt take me long to discover that people working in the facility had camera phones a plenty! And the BMS that was the nerve centre of the whole facility was un-secured in that there was no password required to access the system! This makes a mockery of the crores of Rupees the company has spent in putting all this Tier 2 infrastructure together! This apathetic attitude towards systems and processes seems ingrained in us as a people. Little will change in the lives of people in this country if we cannot respect systems and processes. Even disasters like the helicopter crash that killed a Chief Minister are caused by due process (maintenance) not being followed - yet we don't seem to learn our lessons. Wonder how and where we start instilling these values into our people - would it be at home, or school or at work? I'm beginning to think that its a leadership issue - if the people at the top insisted I am sure people down the line would fall in line - isn't that how the armed forces maintain discipline and a respect for systems? Where have all the leaders of civil and corporate society gone?

Overseas visitor

The last few days have been busy thanx to a visitor from overseas, Australia to be precise! The lady is of Indian extraction, having been born here and moved to Australia at the age of about 21 - she is back here in India almost 40 years later to celebrate her 60th birthday in the place of her birth in Madurai. Now that's a nice, original way to spend your 60th birthday I would think!

This visitor had been to India once in between, some 16 years ago so she was seeing a new India, quite different from what she had seen one and a half decades earlier. I asked her what her initial impressions of the country of her birth were and she came out with some very original view points which I thought must be recorded lest we over look some of what we take for granted. She cited the industriousness of the ordinary people on the street as something that was striking - for instance the pin-men or the ironing man in our neighbourhoods who show up at our doorsteps and collect all our washed clothes that need ironing and return them all neatly ironed. Something she has never seen in the many countries that she has visited! She even noticed that these industrious folks don't use electricity, prefer charcoal, and noted that they have territories to operate in! I could bet that a lot of folks who use these pin-men are not aware of these issues!

The other thing that seemed to strike her is the complete acceptance of the driving public to animal obstacles they encounter on the road and the complete acceptance by the bovine species to traffic buzzing around them while they lie in the middle of the highway and chew their cud! She wondered whether it was a kind of 'live and let live' policy on the part of both humans and animals that allows such a situation to exist!! Now isn't that a unique perspective? After all its their world too, right?

Sometimes it takes a visitor to point out ordinary things in our lives!

Leaving the world and your surroundings a better place

Every person of faith has his temple or church or mosque or synagogue to revere and use as his guiding light in his or her life. Religion serves that one purpose quite well in that the fear of divine retribution keeps most people 'on track' shall we say. For atheists there really isn't a formal guiding light or principle to go by and for that reason most cultures tend to think the atheist is not someone you want to associate with, he/she must be evil. For this reason most atheists hesitate to announce to the world that they are atheists, much like people of alternative sexual preferences plying their sexuality without announcing it to the world for fear of being ridiculed or even cast aside by the public.

In western societies gay and lesbian communities have been reasonably successful in their fight against discrimination and have succeeded to a large extent to be accepted as normal people. Its a different story in our oriental cultures where being gay or lesbian can often lead to disastrous consequences, even death. Mercifully, us atheists are not stoned to death but shunned by most oriental societies as 'not so nice people'! So it was with some pleasure that I read of atheism becoming acceptable in many western societies so maybe there is hope for us here in the East!

But what really can be a guiding light for atheists who don't believe in a god that will show them the path? For me its about the laws of Nature - its about being respectful to Nature and leaving a place better than I found it. Starting with the washroom in a hotel or restaurant, I think it is possible to leave the place better than one found it when you stepped in to use the place. I find it strange that even well-educated people in these parts will wash their mouths after a meal and spit into the washbasin and think nothing about leaving the washbasin with food particles from their mouth lying all over the basin. I would think the least they could do is rinse the basin out after use so it looks presentable to the next person who uses it. One would imagine this is basic to most people but no its not so.

Cleaning up after ourselves seems anathema to most Indians - thats somebody else's job right? One wonders how this scenario can be changed in generations to come. Will we ever be able to make our people understand that spitting, urinating and defecating in public spaces is unacceptable in the 21st century? Can all these religious teachers and spiritual leaders prevail upon their people to atleast live clean and keep their surroundings clean? If that were possible I guess I'd become a believer too, in the goodness religion!!

Whats with us Indians?

My two kids grew up here in this city of 7 million people, they started with nursery school here and they went on to finish their schooling right here. The values we as parents tried to instill in the kids were the usual ones of respect for elders, honesty, compassion, fairness, loyalty and simple things like getting into line to be served. The children have long since left home, they have been away for over 6 years now and I often wonder whether those values that we taught the children stand them in good stead or do they actually hinder their progress through life.

These questions come to mind mostly when I drive to work every morning, there is a particular right-handed turn that I have to do to enter into a main road on my way to work - most folks driving cars stay to the left of the road and await their turn to take the right turn. But invariably there are those morons, some in fancy cars, who will ignore the line of cars on the left of the road, drive up the right of the road without bothering about the fact that they will hinder or even block traffic coming along that side of the road from the opposite direction. When the block happens, its chaos because vehicles cant come into the road from the main road and they pile up on that part of the main road and many think they should try and go around the traffic and block us who are trying to turn right on to the main road - the result is a grid lock and for may be 10 minutes its complete anarchy. All the while the inconsiderate violater thinks the guy who came in from the main road (on the correct side of the road) is the ass, 'he can see me, he should have waited for me to pass'!! Talk about self-righteousness!! We Indians as a people must be the most self-righteous people on the planet!

Those violaters can actually get through that traffic chaos and still ask whats wrong with the whole world - look at the mess 'they create'!! And we as a people can conveniently forget about those law abiders who chose to stay in line and await their turn - never mind that the idiot violater thinks they all must be fools to stand in line and await their turn to make that turn into the main road! Even the traffic cop thinks the violater really did not violate - he was just in a hurry to get to work you see!

Its the same thing in a ticket queue - theres always the violater who thinks its ok to jump the queue - every one in the queue are fools again you see! I wonder if I taught my kids the right thing by telling them to stay in line and never jump a queue - they must really look like fools to folks who think nothing about jumping a queue! Is it that teachers or schools dont teach these kids to await their turn? Will it help to hammer value education into kids in school? The cynic in me says that when there are so many people chasing so few goods & services there will always be people who will want their goods and services delivered out of turn and will even be willing to pay to get those goods & services out of turn - herein lies the root of corruption that we as a nation so bemoan - that then is my Queueing theory of corruption!

My city and me.....

The city of my residence (I can't believe I've lived here for 28 years!) turned 370 years old just three days ago. It was on the 22nd of August 370 years ago that a factor, Francis Day, of the East India Company was given a small piece of land on the east coast of India by a local Nayak chieftain, to set up a trading post. The English built the Fort St. George on this spit of land - the city of Madras grew around this Fort with the locals setting up a township outside the walls of the Fort (it was called, rather politically incorrectly, Blacktown). Fort St. George grew into an institution when it became the seat of the Government of the Presidency of Madras and the base of the Governors-General of the East India Company. These Englishmen were essentially called upon to ensure that the company made good profits while making sure the natives were kept in their place and trading lines were kept open. The Madras Presidency ofcourse covered pretty much most of peninsular India south-east of the Mahratta territories. It was a huge swathe of land to be governed by one man but the EIC ensured that their writ ran in all corners of the Presidency. It was only the other day that I actually paid a visit to the Museum at Fort St. George - I am ashamed to say that it took me so many years to get to see this fantastic collection of artefacts relating to the East India Co. It was after this visit that I was pleasantly surprised by the arrival of a courier in my office bearing a cover from Melbourne, Australia - it contained a book by Nick Robins entitled 'The Corporation that changed the world', sent by a friend from down under. It is truly an eye-opening book and I was gob-smacked when I learnt from the book that there is no memorial at all in England to the East India Company that very English entity that helped ensure that the 'sun never set on the British Empire' - even their huge headquarters building on Leadenhall Street doesnt exist any more. Its almost as if the British do not want to be reminded about the Company. True, the Company wasnt the most ethical in its dealings in India and China but it took home to the English nation untold riches and hastened the ushering in the industrial era in ye olde England. But it makes me wonder why a nation that takes pride in preserving its past would want to remove from memory all traces of a 274 year old Company that brought untold riches to Britain. Seems like our history books did not tell us enough!!

Sustainable agriculture in the midst of a drought

I'm getting quite perturbed by the agricultural situation in the country because it seems like farming is not a paying proposition anymore and financial distress in the farming community is rife. Add to this the drought situation prevalent in more than 200 districts in the country and we have a potentially disastrous situation on our hands.

I'm wondering if it is high-input agriculture that is the cause for distress among farmers - as somebody who has advocated hi-yielding varieties of crops to farmers I guess I am culpable but did we really have a choice at the time? With massive food shortages facing us in the 70s we couldnt possibly have consciously advocated continuing use of the traditional seeds of cereals and pulses, could we? At the time the higher yields and the greater incomes that farmers could garner from use of hi-yielding seeds and higher doses of inputs made eminent sense and indeed it ushered in a green revolution and saved us from becoming another basket case economy. But in hind-sight we know that what we advocated also resulted in massive removal of nutrients from soil and increased vulnerability to disease and pest attack necesitating even greater use of agro-chemicals which we now realise is a non-sustainable system.

But advocating sustainable agriculture in the midst of a drought doesnt seem like a workable proposition because yields are bound to drop when sustainable agricultural techniques are put in place. We may therefore simply have to carry on with the older hi-input format for atleast a couple of years before we implement Sustainable farming schemes. It is here that governments will need to step in and help farmers with inputs (not subsidies) to keep costs of cultivation within acceptable levels and to keep farmers out of the clutches of usurious money lenders.

Ramblings on atheism continued

A friend wrote in with this quote from Freud "The more I study religion the more I become convinced it's about mankind's unconscious desire to worship his egoistical Self". Now isnt that interesting - Man creates God in his own image possibly for the reason cited by the father of psycho-analysis! Every religion seems to do this - except perhaps Islam which refuses to put a shape on Allah but his intermediary Prophet Mohammed is ofcourse human in form. Freud's explanation is perhaps also the basis for all the wars that are fought in the name of religion - the ego is at the centre of it all!

Buddha preached that adherents of Buddhism should avoid focus on a form but by design or default, practitioners of Buddhism seem to hold the human form of Buddha in their minds while in prayer and prove Freud right! On the other hand Buddhism advocates detachment from all things material and mental thereby implicitly advocating atheism. Buddhists are therefore perhaps the closest to rationalism compared to adherents of other religions.

My quarrel is with ritualism - it is rampant in most religions - one wonders why. My pet theory is that it provides the priests of those religions with work in that they are the ones people look to to learn the specific rituals of that religion. Thus, there is employment for such priests and they in turn advocate orthodoxy and strict adherence to ritual as a means of self-preservation of the priest class. Nice way to ensure that you and your ilk are taken care of by the believers for their entire life! Once again Buddhism scores here because priests in that religion are supposed to live on alms (bhiksha) but then organised religious structures are quickly developed and hierarchies develop within the priest fraternity even among Buddhists and put paid to the concept of living entirely off alms! Guess its too tedious to have to live by alms alone - it doesnt leave the priests with enough time to perpetuate ritual! Religion therefore is 'of the priest, for the priest and by the priest'!

Random thoughts

If you have been following all the news happening in developed parts of the world you may have noticed the distinct anti-immigration stance that most countries seem to be taking of late. I find it strange and positively selfish when first generation immigrants, like some of the Indians who are naturalised citizens of the UK, Australia, USA, France and several other countries take up issue against immigration. Don't these folks realise that not too long ago they too were people clamouring to enter that country? Its almost as if these folks have gotten into this life boat and will not allow other poor wretched folks to get in for fear of the boat sinking!! Well, I guess once you are on the inside you dont want others to share 'your' space!! In my humble opinion, its alright for the indigenous people of that country to take that anti-immigrant position but completely unacceptable for immigrants to take that position.

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I thoroughly enjoyed this recent article in the Times of India on Atheism in India - the writer, Prakash Shesh actually brings up an interesting point about Hinduism which seems to have a God even for Atheists! Brihaspati, is the God of Atheists he says! Indeed, its nice to know that Hinduism openly tolerates the concept of atheism and is absolutely ok with the idea that there are people who will not be able to accept the concept of God in their lives. Not so with other religions I understand - in Christianity and Islam you either believe in their God (and no other) or you do not qualify to be Christian or Muslim.

In a recent article author R Jagannathan argues that "Hinduism is essentially agnostic in nature because it allows you to customise god to your requirements. If god can be whatever I want him/her/it to be, it must be my creation rather than something separate from me. This aspect of Hinduism cannot but be appealing to people who seek god without religion." Now thats an interesting take isnt it? But for a rationalist like me even that discount that Hinduism provides me doesnt entice me into buying into the concept of God & religion! Maybe it has to do with the biologist in me - I dont regard creation as something that requires a supernatural element (read God) to cook up!