I honestly don’t care about the Commonwealth Games (or any sporting event that doesn’t involve Dwayne Leverock for that matter). But if Commonwealth Games are what it takes to give Delhi better roads, a better airport, and Metro connectivity up to Green Park, I am all for them. I mean, it would be nice if the Kaangressi sarkar built infrastructure for the Delhi-ites who have to use it everyday, but as long as we get to use it eventually it’s okay if they build it for athletes and delegates.
As far as the Commonwealth goes, I wish it would do something more useful than giving Delhi better infrastructure as a second or third order effect. A good place to start would be to make travel between Commonwealth members visa-free. As a citizen of a former British colony, why the hell do I have to pay 10,000 rupees for a British visa?
Stella Artois, near the Tower of London. Recommended to me by Nega Maami.
Amstel, at Henry’s Bar in Piccadilly. Also a Nega recommendation. Dry and delicious.
Cobra, along with delicious paalak paneer at a place called… Punjabi Spice? Punjabi Spirit in Hounslow. As strong as Kingfisher, without the unpleasant aftertaste.
Warsteiner, on the Lufthansa flight to New York.
Heartland Brewery Wheat Lager once I got to New York. Not too bad. It was Masabi who suggested meeting at Heartland Brewery, and I have to thank him for it.
Heartland Brewery Pumpkin Ale. Delicious, but an acquired taste. With every sip, I thought to myself – ‘Is this really beer?’
Sam Adams, in the Dulles lounge. If this is the pinnacle of mainstream American beers, I weep for that unhappy nation.
Uerige Alt in Düsseldorf. Even more of an acquired taste than the pumpkin ale, and very difficult to get used to if practically all your beer till date has been lagers.
Franiskaner Weissbier at Frankfurt. This, I think, is the start of a beautiful friendship.
I tried nothing at all in Texas, mostly because I was far too zonked. Corona will have to wait for another time.
In F Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, the main characters are an American couple called the Divers who are Page 3 People in the 1920s. They live on a hillside Villa over the French Riviera, where they throw parties for American tourists and expats. Unfortunately up to the 1920s Riviera hotels were open only in the winters and there would be no tourists in the summer. So they convince one particular hotel owner to keep his hotel open in the summer as well, so that the stream of guests for their parties never dries up. Eventually the hotel starts getting so many guests that the owner doesn’t even need the support of the Divers to make the summer season profitable.
When I read this, I was reminded of what the Adanis have done while constructing the Mundra port. The Adani steel plant isn’t viable without the port, so the steel company has become a part investor in the port project and is financing the rail link between the port and the existing Indian Railways network. Once the rail link is completed, Adani steel will benefit of course, but so will everyone else who wants to use the port (and of course so does the port).
Project finance epiphanies aside, Tender is the Night is one of the most disturbing books about adultery and breaking down marriages I’ve ever read. Now if only it wasn’t so indulgent of its main characters.
Something which has worried me since 2004 is Euphoria’s Maaeri. Is it actually an all-time great song, or do I just think so because it was lucky with its timing and came out just when me (and my batch) were in the grip of teenage angst and susceptible to any decent song about pain, lost love, and fickle/ missing/ unattainable women. When you’re in an engineering college where the education sucks, the extra-curricular scene is a wasteland, and there isn’t a single woman worth talking to (and not that many men either); hearing other people sing about being crushingly alone or having lost the love of their life provides the schadenfreude necessary to keep you going through those four years. And after four years of exploiting your angst, the song sticks with you and gives ou goosebumps even when you’re in a college full of strong junta, or have a job you enjoy, or have a darling girlfriend.
So as I was saying the question of whether Maaeri was actually a great song or just a lucky song that exploited our generation’s collective teenage angst when we actually had teenage angst plagued me. Finding an objective answer to this question was of vital importance, otherwise any Best Songs of All Times list we prepared could never be accurate. At one time, I seriously considered having a son just so I could shield him from Maaeri through his formative years and make him listen to it only once he had gotten over his teenage angst. In this way I would have a controlled environment in which to test the emotional appeal of the song. Eventually I realised that this would be child abuse, and besides, I could do it to anybody else’s son instead. If he too would respond to it by becoming senti, getting down on his knees and singing along loudly, we would have proof that Maaeri was actually a great song for all times and not just for our generation.
But this week, over a long conversation with my parents, aunt and cousin-in-law (the one who my cousin eloped with, thus bringing honour to the family), I think I’ve settled the question once and for all and so raising my own children or kidnapping other peoples’ won’t be necessary. Maaeri is in fact an all-time great song.
I realised this when I compared Maaeri to another song from the same time that also played heavily on teenage angst – Chaandni Raatein(youtube link, embedding is disabled). That had angstmax lines like दुखिया आँखें ढूँढ रही हैं कहीं प्यार की बातें (these miserable eyes are trying to find something about love anywhere). But the song didn’t even need that – the chorus was enough.
चांदनी रातें, चांदनी रातें / सब जग सोये हम जागें / तारों से करें बातें
(On moonlit nights, while the whole world sleeps, I stay awake and talk to the stars).
It just lays on the angst and pathos. It’s the senti engineer’s kryptonite. And if said senti engineers weren’t cynical enough to lay on the booze and weed, but not despo enough to pile on to women from Bhatinda (pronounced Bathinda), they pretty much had to spend their nights sitting around in the lawns loudly and tunelessly yowling Chaandni Raatein.
So back in the innocent days of the early 2000s – before global financial crises, before extraordinary rendition, before DJ Aqeel even – Chaandni Raatein had teenage angst well in its grip and was applying the olive press treatement too. But where is it today? Nobody remembers it. When I did remember it, I realised that it no longer affected me the way it used to.
But Maaeri is still going strong. The song (with or without the video) still gives me goosebumps. If only the fresh batch at IIMB weren’t such maggus who never came to L-Squares, we could do further tests and see if they dropped to their knees and started singing whenever it was played. I bet they would, despite all the magguness.
And now, the video:
You know, the video leads to another insight. It is very cliched, but the genius of Pradeep Sarkar is that he deploys familar tropes so effectively that an entire story can be told in a six minute video. You can see that in the Piya Basanti video too, and the Aana Meri Gully video (which even without the storytelling is awesome just by virtue of having young cute Sandhya Mridul in it):
AIR has found fans like me — though let me confess that before I ‘discovered’ AIR, I was quite addicted to a radio spot in Mumbai called ‘Kamla ka hamla’, the random outpourings of a fast-talking transvestite — not because of a grand plan to counter the explosion of private radio but because it is a public broadcaster that is not beholden to the demands of the mass market.
Ideally, public-service radio must give voice to and reflect the needs of democracy’s silent majorities and minorities. It cannot be left entirely to the whimsical flick of a few hundred million wrists. “Broadcasting,” as Tony Benn, a British socialist politician once observed, “is really too important to be left to the broadcasters.”
…
An AIR with vision and verve could lead India’s radio revival. Imagine if it became a National Public Radio, the wonderful public-radio network in the US. There are many like us, waiting for lively, intelligent radio.
So because Samar Halarnkar is too cheap to buy an iPod and download podcasts (or a Worldspace receiver for that matter), the taxpayers of India must shell out their money to revamp AIR and the brightest people in government must go build a vision and verve for public radio instead of, oh I dunno, fixing the university system or conducting police reform or something.
Every other day I happen to speak to a colleague, acquaintance, long lost friend and when I tell them that I work in China the reaction invariably is “China; are you vegetarian? – it must be terrible for you there” or worse still “Are you eating cockroaches and lizards every day?” And this comment is invariably from people who have never visited China. For one to think that everyone in China eats lizards and cockroaches is akin to someone who would watch Slumdog Millionaire and think every Indian lives in a slum and has to beg for a living! I am writing this merely to highlight the reality in China today in terms of food. For most of the world and more so for India (in spite of being a neighbour), China remains an unravelled mystery.
When I visited China for the first time on a short trip, I came here with an open mind, not expecting anything but not carrying the notions that some of my friends/ acquaintances in India have about China. Born to a Brahmin mother and Jain father, I am vegetarian by birth and now by choice – and not because of religious reasons. I don’t mind sharing my table with people eating meat or having my food made in same utensils used for cooking meat and I don’t eat meat simply because I don’t like the taste. And it’s not that I have to eat only Indian vegetarian – I like all cuisines, as long as its non meat dishes.
When I came to live in Shanghai, It took me all of 2 weeks, speaking to some Indian acquaintances and some googling to figure out the following about Shanghai:
• There are more than 30 Indian restaurants in Shanghai and growing by the day (the Indian consulate website also provides details of Indian restaurants in China)
• There are hazaar American, Italian, Mexican restaurants with some good vegetarian options on their menu
• Most Chinese restaurants make vegetable fried rice, stir fried broccoli, Chinese cabbage, stir fried vegetable with mushroom, braised eggplant, spinach etc (In fact the Chinese also make spring onion chapatti and call it “congyoubing”)
• In Shanghai, there are more than 3 (that I know of) independent Indian chefs – who provide a dabbawala kind of service depending on which area one lives/ works in (Jain food also available)
• There are Indian grocery stores wherein one gets everything from basmati rice to all kinds of pulses, spices to desi daru
• There are Buddhist vegetarian restaurants where people who don’t eat meat but like the taste get mushroom/ soybean dishes cooked to taste like meat
Other cities like Beijing, Hangzhou, Suzhou have Indian restaurants; in fact Yiwu (frequented by lot of Indian businessmen) has a pure vegetarian Indian restaurant.
So one may think what about all those emails floating around showing pictures of lizards, cockroaches, and various insects sold as street food in China. Well, yes, those do exist but very rarely have I seen any of my Chinese friends or colleagues eating that and it surely is not available everywhere – I can’t find a single such place anywhere near my office or house in Shanghai. I know of the food stalls near Wanfujing walking street in Beijing and that is the only place in China where I have seen the insects being sold. Also, I am told that in interiors of China, rural China, especially in the south, people eat more “exotic” stuff including monkey, cat and dog. But in Shanghai; KFC, McDonald’s are surely more frequented than the roadside food stalls.
Let us understand why some people in China eat this “exotic” or “weird” or “unusual” stuff in the first place. It is said that because of food shortage in the past, the people ate anything and everything to fill their stomach – it was a question of survival! Also when it comes to normal food like chicken, it’s the Chinese style of preparation which is very different. For example, Chicken feet are eaten and the chicken is normally not skinned – which may not be acceptable to most Indian meat eaters. However, this still does not warrant the 5 kg basmati rice and other food stuff most Indians carry along with them when they arrive in China – almost as if there is no food available here!
So if you are an Indian vegetarian or meat eater looking to visit China, please do so just as you would visit any other country in the world – without having notions about the food – as global cuisine is available in most of the big cities here.
Because the whole point of the Internet is to complain loudly and gracelessly about everything that is wrong with the world, I shall now complain about the most exasperating drivers in India. They are the drivers who have greyed my hair. They are the drivers who add twenty minutes to my commute every day. They are the drivers who… fuck it, let’s just get on with the list. The five worst sorts of drivers in India, in ascending order of how much I hate them, are:
Truck drivers on the Chennai-Bangalore expressway, who drive only in the fast lane between 40 and 50 Kmph. In contrast, Jat and Serd truckers on the Delhi-Amritsar highway are angels of driving ettiquette who stick to the middle lane and don’t swerve or zigzag. On the other hand, because the Chennai-Bangalore truckers are consistent about sticking to the fast lane, you can always overtake from the slow lane without any fear. So they stay at #5.
Armed Forces Wives in the Willingdon Camp area, who go around an empty roundabout at 10 Kmph. Invariably they drive a white Maruti 800 with a regiment or squadron sticker on the rear windshield, where it probably blocks the rear view mirror’s field of view.
All Forms of Traffic in Calcutta. Calcutta is a nightmare maelstrom of twenty five year old Ambassadors that smell fifty years old, kerosene powered autos, and pedestrians putting dharna or hartal. Fixing it is best accomplished by taking off and nuking it from orbit. It’s the only way.
Indicabs in Bangalore: you know how I mentioned that the saving grace of the trucks on the Bangalore highway was that they were consistently in the fast lane and you could overtake from the left? Well, when it comes to cabs in Bangalore even that luxury isn’t there. The odds are good that the cab will be an underpowered dinky little Indicab going at 30 Kmph. The odds are also good that there won’t be just the single Indicab in the fast lane, but a phalanx of them forming a diagonal across all the lanes, so that even overtaking from the slow lane isn’t possible.
That brings us to the single most loathsome form of traffic, which is:
Cargo Three Wheelers between ITO and the Haryana border.
Where do I begin to describe the awfulness of a cargo autorickshaw?
With the combination of the centred driver cab and the ginormous cargo space preventing the driver from seeing anything behind him?
With the engine creating so much noise that the driver can’t even hear you honking?
With the fact that the bloody things pick up where the Indicabs left of when it comes to driving in all lanes?
Or that they’re unreliable pieces of junk which break down in the middle of the road, forcing traffic to flow around them?
Whatever. I hate them. Hate them hate them hate them.
I await the day my commute drops from 80 Kilometres to 20 with breathless anticipation.
In 2007, when the first problems emerged in CDOs, people thought that these relatively recent innovations were the cause of the problem. Pretty soon, we realised that a CDO is simply a bank that is small enough to fail and conversely that a bank is only a CDO that is too big to fail.
Both banks and CDOs are pools of assets financed by liabilities with various levels of seniority and subordination. As the assets suffer losses, the equity and junior debt get wiped out first, and ultimately (absent a bailout) even the senior tranches would be affected. In retrospect, both banks and CDOs had too thin layers of equity.
This is actually an incredibly strong insight. We are so used to thinking of a bank as an organisation and a CDO as an exotic security that it seems like a revelation when you realise that actually both have the same sort of balance sheets.
So if CDO’s weren’t the problem, what was? Bad credit practices in general. That said practices were probably caused by too much cheap money sloshing around is left unsaid.
It is becoming clear that what the US is witnessing is an old-fashioned banking crisis in which loans go bad and therefore banks become insolvent and need to be bailed out. The whole focus on securitisation was a red herring. The main reason why securitisation hogged the limelight in the early stages was because the stringent accounting requirements for securities made losses there visible early.
Potential losses on loans could be hidden and ignored for several quarters until they actually began to default. Losses on securities had to be recognised the moment the market started thinking that they may default sometime in the future. Securitised assets were thus the canary in the mine that warned us of problems lying ahead.
So basically, the exotic instruments were symptoms and not the disease. I’d add here that securitising mortgages into CDOs rather than pure pass-through certificates probably created an extra level of complexity, though.
Ajay Shah often talks about how financing through exchange driven markets (whether for bonds or equity) is preferable to financing through banks which are forced to deal with much more illiquid levels of risk. If you accept that as a basic assumption, then if a CDO is a virtual bank, it represents a throwback in the evolution of finance. Oh dear.
The problem is that investment banks were still able to create and sell CDOs rather than selling a simple package of pass-through certificates on mortgage-backed-securities. Hopefully, this is a generational thing that will die out soon – now that every chhappar in the world is getting an MBA, a CFA, and at least a basic knowledge of financial instruments, the power that investment banks have over purchasers of securities may dissipate once this glut of finance professionals starts trickling into treasury and fund management offices where they can do their own structuring, dammit.
Of course, the stranglehold that I-banks have over issuing securities is unlikely to go away. So we should have strong regulations to ensure that they only sell vanilla products and the customers do their own structuring.
Before I forget, do read the whole thing, especially for the last few paras, where Prof Varma talks about why we should embrace securitisation and the advantages it has given to American consumers.
Posted by Aadisht 
