Its a God-damn firang obsession

Inspite of all this hype and hoopla about India shining and doing really well and growing and all, I think we are still a firang obsessed country....

Lemme start with clothes - how do you create a great shirt brand? Firangize it.......show a chikna foreigner and give a great non-indian name to it....John Players, Indigo Nation or wahtever (Mufti being the only notable exception to it)....

Then there is this standard obsession with being fair - now with Fair and Handsome, its clear that the country wants to become fairer - just like the firangs who ruled us all this while.....You've Italian Leather and Swiss Chocolates and French Champagne.....when was the last time that the Indian vada pav was glamourous????

Streaking is in vogue.....everyone wants a tinge of blonde and other colors on their hair - yeah it sure looks better and more attractive.....but if you look at most of the things people are doing with their hair, its mostly european-american. No one's curling hair like africans or wanting to have them straight......

Then walk into any IIT-IIM and the hottest jobs and further education is firang. Day 0 is foreign companies (or foreign consults that operate in India). Here's we saying - our government made instis that produce the best in India are up for grabs - worldwide. come take us away - we think that's the best....no nothing wrong in choosing it but its again firang

All said and done we are still not at it - there's nothing world class we do (internet forwards apart) - the last great thing we did was mebbe invent the zero......

I want to go abroad and be proud of something more than our 'culture' ....... I want to belong to a country thats famous for something more than being a software sweatshop......(or IT super power if you will).........I want to belong to a proud confident country, not one that has this god-damn firang obsession


P.S. : As an afterthought I am reminded of the Rajnigandha Pan Masala ad - where the desi guy is sitting across the table with some firangs, apparently about to get acquired when he says "Hum aapko khareed rahe hain, aap hume nahin" - firangs get surprised and the guy eats rajnigandha! Another version of the hangover methinks.....

So what's the big deal about Art of Living?

AOL is a technology for breathing discovered by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Hyperventilation (scientific term for what AOL-ers call Sudarshan Kriya) is beneficial for stress, concentration and a number of diseases.....

Personally AOL has been amazing for me -why I even bunked a final exam in the gung ho enthusiasm to attend a course in Bangalore with Guruji.......Amazing wisdom from him as well and I've loved every AOL satsang I went to - so to that extent it is quite kewl.

But then I have my questions about a few things regarding AOL - I say this of course after having done the basic and advanced programes, interacted with Guruji and done some work for AOL too.....


For one AOL is a lot of hype about the man who discovered the technology......yeah its sure benificial and all, but Guruji as God - the be all and end all is something I find difficult to accept..... I mean yeah even if he's attained supreme conciousness, I still see him as very human......of course a blissed out happy soul but yeah thats about it....

In any other case, of course the scientist is acknowledged and all, but never hyped up so much by the users of the technology.....

Then comes the funda of devotion - it totally works for AOL-ites who take the word of the guru as the final. For someone who believes in questioning, its this very surrender that I find almost impossible.....I really cant imagine myself giving up all my thought and just act on command, even if it comes from an enlightened soul....

There are people around me (a very close friend) who'se dedicated his life to AOL and to spreading the technology......for no financial gain (there is so much of psychological return for him to do it for a living). I totally respect his choice, but its HIS life......to outsource your most critical life decisions (marriage, career) to the founder of just another yogic technology is something I just cant digest too


AOL may be a spiritual organization but its marketing is as good as any modern MNC. Differential pricing (a course in Ahmedabad is priced differently from Mumbai), hardcore viral marketing, register-by-this date kinda stuff is pretty in vogue. Then again if the guru is entering your city, the entire city gets plastered with his smiling pics - free ad space worth millions is just grabbed - on what pretext????

Then again AOL is a very closed source copyright kinda company - not everyone can become a teacher and you cant really tinker around with the technique to adapt it to your own style. The heart of the matter is in the tape which the guru hands out only to teachers he selects......why not democratize conciousness? Why not share it with all?

All said and done a hard core AOL-ite is going to be this closed minded guy who cant think beyond the AOL world-view. He thinks there's just one way to save the world, one answer to every problem and thats sudarshan kriya

And personally I think its just another technology thats helpful - like my bathing soap, my computer or NLP....why go to the end of the world for this one?

Economic control = Pschological control???

"He who controls you economically will also control you emotionally....psychologically"......Leslie said. Those words like so many of his others got locked away for later retrospection and chewing.....

They often surfaced as I pondered over the job question - to take up a job or to continue entrepreneurship. However I could not fully grasp what it meant really.......the thought of letting my pyschological control go away was scary to say the least!

It took me a few months of brooding, an Alibaug trip and some time with Kaushik ramu coupled with my own retrospection to grasp this idea fully......

It is quite an insight if you ask me.......

Let me first start with what do you mean by psychology or emotions? your daily feelings - curiosity....joy.....laughter.....grief.....everything that makes you human.

For me these are really precious....I want them to be mine.....only mine....

But when you observe people around you, its interesting. There's a friend who is with us on the trip. She starts to check retail stores in that town to find out if they store the shampoo brand her company makes (curiosity).......

She is really happy to see a few sachets of the brand she is working on right in the next shop (joy).......and yet the easiest way to get into a debate with her is to start critisizing her brand.....

She thinks for the company (like any other "GOOD" employee)

Think about this for a moment - isn't the huge lifeless corporation that has employed her, also taken over her thought and emotional control?

And isn't it natural - it starts from a very basic instinct - survival instinict. That, is now aligned to all of these behaviours - the more she exhibits these behaviours, the more she gets paid (by doing well on the job) and the better her chances of surival....crude but true :))

I dont want to take a judgemental stance on this one.....its just that I hope the choice is conciously made, and with the freedom to let go of it too......

The desh pardesh debate

Fart (creative genius and fellow IIM-Bian who should be at some creative ad agency but is slogging away at a consult...) wrote of a beautiful thought......if the dollar would not be so "STRONG" so many people would be in India......i could not agree more to that.....

This desh-videsh question has bugged me for long....

For me before anything at all, having a choice to go pardes is important....if you really had no choice then your evaluation is obviously biased....if you could not go pardes you have no choice but to love des....if you had to go pardes then again thats pointless....

So I had a choice.....and thats what gave birth to this debate...

Also that alone is not enough - you should have ideally experienced enuff of pardes to be able to take a call....like you've experts on why pardes is a bad place and the superiority of indian culture (like my hindi teacher who was an amazing teacher but terribly into conditioning us bachhas)

My internship @ singapore for 2 months and another stint @ Germany for 4 months gave me enough a chance to see and answer the question....quite a luxury I know.....

(at this point my computer had crashed 4 times - and each time I had gone ahead and written this post when it crashed.....so this is like a fizzled out version of the post)

Anyways so after having seen this, I choose desh.....

Desh has luxuries untold, for any guy making decent money....

In many ways you do live like a prince......I have naresh, our iron boy dutifully ironing our clothes @ 2 bux each.......my watchman washes the car for 15 bux (ever heard of a 30 cent car wash en notre Europe?).......the bai comes and does all in one - dishes, clothers, and the cleaning (better than the dishwasher, washing machine and vaccuum cleaner respectively)......

Everything's getting better and cheaper

Then there is desi food.....spicy and tasty

and most importantly desi people....

Yeah this was articulated so much better in each of the previous posts but i've just lost the damn enthu to write this for the fifth time.....

Bottom line is that over lonely festivals......multicolored people......alien plastic hygine....I prefer my des

My tryst with KB

I love my job - and who wouldn't love a job that lets you meet all kinds of interesting people, do what you love and more!

So today we happened to go to Pantaloon Knowledge House - the HQ of the man whose rocking the country. Kishore Biyani.

It was an amazing meeting that had many lessons.....really did not get an opportunity to chat with him, or even see him in action. But there was still a lot to learn.....

1. Have a dream larger than your own interest - Biyani ain't doing this coz he wants to be rich......not because he wants fame ....he's doing this coz he dreams of something bigger....to transform and rebuild India....and through something he understands - the consumer mindspace.....beautiful!

2. Biyani is strikingly similar in many ways to Satya, the dynamic founder of Career Launcher, and a great friend, mentor and role model. They apparently had a hard time having Biyani to upgrade from his esteem to his Honda Accord....for a man who is selling 2000 Cr a year, thats a modest one......frugality.....so much an Indian way (of course he's not an MBA ;) )

3. And then I meet him, shake hands. Say "Abhishek". He says "Kishore". Yeah right! I dont know you!!!! Apparently he's really modest - will talk when he makes it a 40,000 crore company (doesnt think 2k Cr is a big deal...)...interesting how achievers dont rest on their laurels....

4. And then right inside his cabin - a wall filled with inspirational people and their quotes...including apna Tony Bhai! And one of those is a mirror :))) Thats kewl....thats setting really high standards :)

Success sure rox......and lessons from successful people too :))

New ways to look at 'Goal Setting'

I am a self confessed self help junkie....so anything related to self help and new age are issues close to heart.....

Goal setting is a pretty basic idea in self help and again I'm sure most people do this in some way or the other......personally I've tried many different ways and come down to my own style....it works for me ...... but there are goals that you dont achieve too....I keep seeking for newer ways....


It was when I read Steve Jobs ka graduation address that got me thinking.....this guy's life story has a single message : You cant join the dots forward......the guy never 'Set goals' in the traditional sense....just followed his heart, did what he loved and things turned out the way they did....

When its one of those people who you admire so much doing this, you have no choice but to get up and take notice.......

The initial meaning I took out of it was that maybe its pointless to set goals - there are so many things beyond your control that happen. In fact setting goals might get you so focussed on this that you might not see the other possiblities that arise.....

It was only after some discussions with Ashok (of U & Infinity, an NLP training company) that I grasped truly what it meant.....

Essentially what I could extract from Steve Jobs' "model" was that you cant really factor in everything that will happen at the time of making a decision for or against something......

For example we joined Rotaract just for interaction and fun....little did we know that it would lead to us starting out another NGO which in turn would expose us to so many different ideologies and lead us to creating change....there was no way we could have predicted or even dreamt of this....it just happened

The common thing in all such things was that instead of sitting back and evaluating and trying to find the "maximum return" alternative, you just throw yourself completely - offer yourself totally to what you are doing....always works better if you love what you do but anyways do it whole heartedly.....

Sooner or later unexpected things are bound to spring up - and the challenge of course is to stay open to them as and when they happen. If your life purpose is always on your radar, you'll stay open to opportunities that take you closer to it - these will perhaps be better than what you could ever imagine yourself getting....riding on them you'll reach where you want to ....who knows, perhaps much faster?

For me it means that the decision making process just cant factor in all variables.....somewhere sooner or later its a leap of faith - done in the direction where your heart wants to take you.....

Today I cant imagine a life without my friends group (G7).......and yet when these friendships were being formed we had no damn clue they'd stand us in such good stead......what if we did know that its important to have great friends....would our efforts @ school then at that time hamper the overall effectiveness of the project? Is it sometimes better to just trust and apply, and go with the flow and trust the universe?

I think so....becuase just like a plant flourishes when given total ground, a bird flies when out of cage....my true nature becomes known only in that freedom.......

A nation fooling itself

A survey on sex in the Times a few days back was really stunning........

Now before I start on that let me tell you that being biologically wired for reproduction, sex is quite on my mind. I used to feel bad about it a long long back, but now I quite accept it as a part of myself.....

So this got me really interested....Durex conducted an international survey......Indians having 3 partners on an average....world average being 9!!!!

Average age for losing virginity at 19!!!

Either the survey was wrong or we (me and my circle) were way behind times!

This got cemeted by stunning research coming from The Buzz today......

If there's so much sex happening in the private space, the public space surely doesn't show it......

Maybe we want to act as a morally high society - and with the assumption that sex is bad. Or atleast enjoying it is.

So in a land of a billion buggers and kamasutra, we dont have a single decent sex shop - all you have are shady "Ayurvedic Davakhanas" that dole out at most just a tiny variety of condoms and stuff.......

I think there's an entire industry out there - you know in terms of what can be done....and add to the GDP ("Gross" Domestic Pleasure) of the country as well......

My college did not have a condom vending machine anywhere around it......being born in a generation cursed with AIDS, thats the least I could have asked for.....

I know its not possible for Mumbai to turn an Amsterdam over night, but atleast we could make a start by stop fooling ourselves......

The lines between sleazy mags and tabloids is blurring.....and item numbers are beaming all over the place......but these I think are all indirect ways....just nobody wants to come out in the open and say - hey, we're doing so much of sex all around and are not ashamed of it.......you know its like the story of the Emperor's new dress...everyone's playing along.......

It wouldn't really be such an issue but for the fact that AIDS numbers in India are rising......getting political mileage for closing dance bars is one thing.....right in your own backyard there's probably a teenager with access to net browsing away porn sites (they're no fun after 18 anyways!)

I think we need to handle this whole thing in a better way - you know not by acting innocent in face of surveys which constantly keep suggesting different (why even our population numbers show!)

And as with worldwide, the institution of marriage seems to be shaking.....maybe new forms will emerge......or the space that a couple gives each other will change.......atleast let it evolve it its own pace......

I think we need to throw out the notion that's somewhere crept up into the collective conciousness of our society - that sex is dirty......I think its beautiful.....Its cool....its as human as hunger or violence....to deny it would be to deny a very important part of ourselves......perhaps the most important one ;)

Rethinking social work

The Blue Ribbon Movement
New thoughts for a new revolution

The Blue Ribbon Movement started as a youth NGO in 2000. The original idea behind starting was “Together we are stronger”. The belief was that if a group of people came together, they could accomplish much more. Structurally it was modeled on Rotaract with an India avenue added.

Somewhere within its first year the philosophy moved to “Green India. Great India” – thus identifying the two changes that BRM sought to bring about. The aim was to create changes in civic and environmental areas.

After some projects the movement began to look inward. “Be the change that you want to see” got added to the core ideology. This meant that we needed to create a change in ourselves before we change the society. Alongside, self development became increasingly important and the key objective towards organizing projects and activities was to learn from them.

Eventually the ideology evolved to “Youth-India-Development”. This represented a consensus on the need to work with the youth. Developing them would lead to the development of the country.

While this was the paradigm, questions about a lot of issues kept coming up to members. Being India centric for example would be too nation-state focused. Some projects could be totally meaningless if seen from the larger context. Members too faced issues regarding their own commitment etc.

The evolution of this thought has now come to take the next leap. The aim of the new paradigm is to address some questions that have emerged in the past. At the same time it seeks to embrace current reality, and start to work from there on.

I have chosen to contrast the new ideology with that of a ‘standard NGO’ to help the reader understand the reason behind adapting this better.

Blue Ribbon: The UN-NGO?

Traditional NGO (NGO)
Selfless service by members for a greater cause

The New BRM (BRM)
Complete focus on and recognition of self interest of members

NGO
Pro-anti stands, reaction to events

BRM
No pro-anti stands.
Examine who is deriving benefit from current equilibrium (source of force against the change)
Arrive at alternative equilibrium that increases the overall utility of all stakeholders i.e. is more beneficial to all

NGO
Local solutions applied where the problem is

BRM
Systemic solutions applied at the point of the root cause

NGO
Serve greater numbers, grow in size to create greater impact

BRM
Do less ourselves, CAUSE more change to happen, make ourselves redundant

NGO
Donation Financed

BRM
Sponsored projects that provide benefits to the sponsor too

NGO
Use of force, protest and advocacy as primary tools

BRM
Use of creativity and flexibility with focus on outcome rather than effort

NGO
Guardians of morality, question others

BRM
Consistently question ourselves, moral principles totally a personal matter

NGO
Change the world

BRM
Change our ways till we can change whatever part we want to

NGO
Think and act on the same scale

BRM
Think big, act small

NGO
Work with timelines, execute after certain conditions are met

BRM
Work at our own pace to create change, begin as and wherever we are

NGO
Asking “WHY”

BRM
Asking “How”

The model draws inspiration from a variety of sources. NGOs like Praja and Phase Five, disciplines of Systems thinking, Gestalt and NLP, and most importantly our own experiences with social work and change creation. The challenge we now face is to translate this into action that creates measurable long term change.