Where have all the Litchies Gone?

The one thing I was looking forward to while taking charge in Muzaffarpur were the litchis. The day I left Cal to my everyday visits to the markets in Muzaffarpur, everyone spoke about the litchis and their tastes. Even TOI carried an article on the Shahi Litchies of Muzaffarpur. However, the rains keep playing spoilsport. Every day I think about the Litchies, some well wisher would come and ask me to wait till the first drops of rain fall on them. Today there was a ray of hope as a Nor’wester began to blow across the town. But the rains were no where to be seen and my wait for the litchis continue.

PS: Incidentally I’ve had the litchis today :-)

The Z Phenomenon

One good thing about my rather depressing hotel room in Bihar is the TV in my room. Even though there are only a few channels that have a clear reception and even fewer which are watchable, I love Z Classic. The Golden Oldies keep coming at regular intervals and the time between the movies are filled with the melodies of yesteryear. A beautiful Sunday night and in the heartland of Bihar I was enjoying An Evening in Paris. What more could one ask for?

Silence is Golden

Coming from me, this heading seems strange. However, sometimes few films make me wonder. While in Patna, I had the lucky chance to watch Pushpak - The Kamal Hassan classic; one of the many forgotten gems of Indian Cinema. The entire movie went ahead without a single word being spoken and yet the last scene of Pushpak left one with a heavy heart. As I watched Kamal Hassan lose the piece of paper, his last means of contact with the lady of his dreams, something seemed stuck in the throat.

And then there will always be Sholay and Jaya Bhaduri. To an Indian no more need to be said. Silence is indeed golden.

The Epitaph to The Queens’

A part of my Bosco Legacy was a certain snobbery over the impeccable Queens’ English that was ingrained in us from the very beginning. So much so that even today I shudder when I see colour spelt as color and whenever that happens, the MS Office on my work station/ laptop changes the language to English (U.K). As time goes by, often the good things in life get eroded. A part of the responsibility was my own, having failed as the School Captain to ensure a complete ban on vernacular while in school. A classic case of Rule Keepers being Rule Breakers. If there is one rule in school that I have broken it was this one and sometimes it does feel bad.

Then Pilani happened and the Ra and Da gained into the language that I spoke. Indian English was slowly gaining entry pushing the colonial legacy aside. The transformation was complete at IIMB. The language of business world over was English, but be it in Bangalore or Singapore, the local dialect of English was the flavour of the season and though the written language or the board room language remained more or less acceptable to the standards we set for ourselves in school, the spoken language was infiltrated with Guss, chuck, poda, whatda, light teesko, strong max.

The last hope of redemption was the corporate world. There was a hope that we would go back to the times when we spoke proper Queens. But while in Bihar, you speak in Hindi or even Bhojpuri. As I was speaking to Vishy, lost somewhere in Rural Maharashtra, I was shocked to realize that even the last hope was a lost hope. These days we speak about market share “degrowing”. In school we would have said the market is shrinking. And so tonight I write the epitaph of the Queens’ I once knew.

The Death of a Hypocrite

I knew a guy. He came in front of me whenever I looked into the mirror. He used to look at my Brand charts and prisms and say "Dude, get a life! You have no knowledge of the real market till you are out there."

On the 9th of May 2007, he was out on the real market and I could see him almost freak out. All his gyaan on how one should know the market had gone out of the window. But then, the reality of the situation struck him. He was doing what he had always dreamt of. And so the hypocrite who had been so psyched, sheepishly smiled and vanished.

My blog will be irregular but after long days in the market, hopefully my writing will be not. Muzaffarpur is what I would call the first step of reaching "there".