The delivery

He had only been driving for a minute before he came to a stop again. The road in front of him looked like a series of red lights. He again read the address on the paper and felt he needed another 15 - 20 minutes to reach the place if the traffic felt smooth. He had been to that same place a few weeks back. The fourth exit and then second right from where he was, would take him to a lonely stretch. A mile on that road and he would be at the place. He still had about 25 minutes but the traffic in front concerned him.

Though it was the shortest route, he always wanted to avoid this road due to the crawling traffic. But it was only now that he realized he’d been counting on it. He looked at the square box next to him. He had to deliver it to the address on the paper and he had to do it in the next 25 minutes. It suddenly looked like the world was trying to stop him from doing it and it frightened him more. He decided to take the first exit he reached and then make through the smaller road to that lonely road. That first exit was on his immediate right and he was already ahead of it by a few feet. Without wasting any time he took a sharp risky turn barely missing the concrete wall and tried to join the exit lane. A ticket was sure, if a cop had caught him in the act. He could sense the anger of the drivers from all the honking cars around him but this “had to do” situation had left him with no option. He drove fast to smoothly merge into the exiting traffic. His noisy rattling car had carried well. Again he started driving in the direction of the address and this time it was better, he was moving.

He drove for the next few minutes and the road seemed to be becoming lonelier. He wasn’t sure whether he had already reached or was yet to reach somewhere near, where the fourth exit would take him. The highway was no where in sight but he felt he was still in the right direction. He had never done this road before. The only part of the road he could see was lit by his car lights. Every thing was pitch black on each side with black lines extending into no where. Once in a while when he was closer he could make out the trees around him but there were no signs of any human life. He had another 10 minutes left with him and he knew he was lost.

Where was he? He should have at least brought a map.

Soon he knew he was just driving in the dark, heading no where. He had only 4 minutes left and the only way he could deliver the box in time was if a miracle happened which would put him right in the door way of the house he was searching. He gave up all hopes and decided to go back and take the crawling highway again. This was the only option left and he knew he had lost on the delivery. He stopped the car to look around him. There was nothing except darkness. He turned the car to head back to the highway when something shiny caught his eye. It was a sign board.

The road name on the sign board was same as the road of his address and directed towards his right. There was no sign of any road on the left. He realized the road he had taken had brought him at the other end of that lonely road and he now had to take that road but check on the opposite side for the house.

He started driving in that direction and he was once again in the dark country side. He drove for a few minutes when he saw a light at a distance; a trace of life, at last. He immediately recognized the house as he approached it. It was the same house he had come a few weeks back and it was the same house that was on his paper.

He parked the car in front of the house and walked towards the door with the box in his hand. He pressed the door bell and waited for the door to be opened. A lady opened the door and seemed to point towards the wall clock in the neatly laid room.

“You are late. I cannot pay” she said as she took the box from him.
“Enjoy your pizza ma’am” he said, and turned back to drive into the darkness again.



~Narendra V Joshi

Perils for a Software Engineer

I was trying to negotiate a deal for a new apartment with this sales representative. (SR)

SR: No, sir you don’t know the prices at which apartments are sold these days.

Me: But this is stupid pricing. How can you expect a common man to pay such huge prices for an apartment?

SR: Sir, this is a great deal. We have lots of customers who are ready to pay more than this. If you lose this, you will repent later. You can never again get such cheap deals.

Me: This is not cheap. You are trying to sell me something between earth and sky. I can understand if this was for a piece of land but if this is the price for some space in air, this is ridiculous.

SR: Sir, there are lot of people willing to pay more and buy this apartment. More over you say you are a software engineer. You should not be the one complaining about high prices.

Me: What do you mean I should not be the one complaining about the price? I am struggling day in and day out to make a living.

SR: I know; even we struggle. You work in software; your salaries will be very high compared to ours. And if you people start complaining what should we do?

I fell silent. His words were not uncommon. The land prices, house rents etc in Bangalore have become really absurd these days. The land lords check if you are working for a software company and if you are, the prices are doubled and more so if you are working for a famous company. They don’t want to know what your salary is, but just want to know whom you are working for. And if yours is a variable pay structure, you are doomed. You should rather go to the next apartment on your search list, than stand there and explain the concept of variable pay to these people.

Even if you make up your mind and take out your most recent pay slip to explain, can you really do that? Variable pay constitutes 30-40% of the salary and the pesky gross salary which people outside refer is really what you get when your variable component is 100%. How can you expect somebody to digest the fact that your company always makes profit and exceeds market expectations but the variable component is mostly 60-70%? It doesn’t matter how the company performs, bonus is a small fixed component in the salary. Gratuity is also a part of the gross salary and very few people are aware of the fact that an employee should have completed a minimum numbers of years of service at the same company before he can get his gratuity amount. If he doesn’t stay that minimum number of years, he will loose that entire component. Then there will be those interest free loan components. If you take a loan you cannot quit the company till you repay it, and if you don’t take the loan you have to take pains to explain the huge difference between your gross and your net salary.

At least this concept of variable pay should be adapted through out the system. Everything should be made variable. Home rent, apartment price, land price etc. If your company pays you 70% of the variable components then your rent should also be cut to 70%. If you by chance get 100%, then you will pay 100%.

Anyway I did not have my latest salary slip on me nor was I in mood to explain all this to the sales representative. I told him that I will get back to him on this in a few days and ended the conversation.

~Narendra V Joshi

And the headlines…

I was talking to a friend of mine and came to know that there was a proposal to tax the ESOP’s under the new budget proposal in India. I came home and got down to read the details on an online newspaper.

And there it was; the headlines of the day “Anna’s body flown in to Bahamas”; in bold. I looked around for the budget news and found this “Blair’s love Indian food”. The billion dollar question for the day was quick to find. It was “Abhishek-Ash to marry in Jodhpur? ” Finally I found the much needed topic “India Inc disappointed with Budget”.
It was really annoying. A very important topic like the budget and other finance news are at a corner. You have to really search to find them. News such as “What happened to Britney’s hair” or “Why is restaurant food bad?” is more prominent. I am not saying that nobody in the world is interested in these but, they are definitely not so important compared to the news of ESOP tax or stock market index. And it is not only with this newspaper nor was this the first time. I have faced this situation earlier too. I would want some important info, but will have to search through a maze of junkies. What has a common man got to do with where will Abhishek and Ash get married; unless of course he is invited for the marriage.

I think there is a problem with the way the media thinks and portrays the world to us. They design and tell us what to read and what is important for us. If the editor feels who wore what at the Oscars is more important than which highway is closed due to a car crash, then that is the headlines for the day. If the editor has a personal grudge against a political party or hates a sport, they stop at nothing to bad mouth them. A prominent news channel had predicted that the ruling party would lose the Gujarat state election in India. Even after a year, articles and news bits continue to appear in that newspaper trying to demean that government which won with a clean majority; many a times I have noticed, for no apparent connected reason. What this means is that people who are loyal to one newspaper would be spoon fed to think in the way the editor or the columnists wants them to think. Readers will skip a movie, or, go to a restaurant blindly based on the rating given in their favorite newspaper.

Maybe, blaming the media is not fully correct. The media focuses more on things which are in demand. If the public demand for what Angelina wore in her latest movie is more than how many people died of starvation in a remote country, then Angelina’s dress will be in the headlines. Leave an old copy of a film magazine and a new copy of a science magazine on a park bench and go back after an hour. You will find the film magazine missing but nobody would have even touched the science stuff. How many times have you found yourselves in parties or get together where you discuss about state laws or university education? Most of the time, discussions will revolve around the football team or a favorite show on TV. With this being the case who has the time to read the new laws or the budget highlights I was searching for?

The public accepts what the media gives and the media gives what the public demands. Blaming the entire system for this sorrow state I got back to the news on the Indian budget. It was a lengthy article with some bulleted items. I finished the first paragraph and thought to myself “Maybe the Blair’s might have found Indian food spicy”.


~Narendra V Joshi

Bengalooru: Is this the right time?

My plane had departed from Frankfurt, on its way to Muscat. I flipped through the pages of the airlines magazine and came across an article about the new destinations offered by that airline. Each of these destinations had 2 or 3 pages dedicated to that place. I was pleasantly surprised to come across a destination “Bengalooru” in India! Darn! The airline tickets, boarding card etc had all read Bangalore. So it had never occurred to me that I was actually traveling to Bengalooru and not Bangalore!!

I landed in Bengalooru early next morning. It was the same old, cramped, “Bangalore International Airport” and not “Bengalooru International Airport” as I was expecting it to be. In the next few minutes I was out of the airport and we were on our way towards our home.

Nothing much has changed since the time I left, of course except that the traffic has become more pathetic. The vehicular population has doubled but the roads are still of the same width. There is nothing to indicate a lane. People create and follow their own lanes. From the peddling bicycles to huge trucks, every vehicle is precariously perched on these narrow lanes. These lanes often double as parking lots as parking places house eateries, shops, religious shanties among others. The footpaths are used as filler roads when a parked vehicle is encountered on the lane. There will be no space which will be left unused. Any available space will be occupied by a vehicle of suitable size. It doesn’t really matter which lane this occupying vehicle comes from or which lane does the outgoing vehicle move to. What really matters is proving the theories of maximum utilization of resources and survival of the fittest. Pedestrians do their part by filling the smallest space which could not be occupied by any vehicle. Here you see man and machine in perfect harmony.

Every now and then you see boards of Bangalore Metropolitan Rail Network or the Bangalore Metro for short. There is really no metro or railway system in place. They are just boards which indicate that Bangalore city might soon get a Metro. The talk about Bangalore Metro is not new. The metro concept was first mooted in the year 1982!! Yes, 24 glorious years have passed since the concept was first proposed but there is nothing at all in place even now. I think a surcharge is collected on every liter of petrol sold in the city, which makes petrol prices in Bangalore among the highest in India. Wonder what use, this surcharge has been put to.

Bangalore Railway station, Bangalore bus stand etc have all remained the same. Same shape, same size and same age old method of working. Only their names will be soon changed to Bengalooru Railway… etc. Bangalore is not alone in getting its name changed. Other major cities like Belgaum, Mangalore, and Mysore etc too are getting a name change. Belgaum will become Belgavi, Mysore will be Mysooru, and Mangalore will be Mangalooru. Nothing else will be changed in these places either. In fact nothing much has changed in these places since the British left India 59 years back. Being the capital, if the condition of Bangalore is so hopeless you can very well imagine the condition of these other cities. I think the government of Karnataka wants to purposely retain the cities in this way so that if the Queen of England or some veterans of the East India Company ever visit this place, they can recall those age old days!!

Roads too get new names every now and then. You might be at the correct address but still searching for the address. People too change their names keeping in pace with time. You can find rows of ads in newspaper of new names and the person’s picture. One of my high school friends changed his name thrice. I call him with his name which he had when he was in high school. His college friends call him with his name which he had when he was in college and his work friends call him with his most current name!! Changing city names is also not uncommon. Bombay became Mumbai, Madras became Chennai etc.

You might have come across products, in which companies would have changed the product packaging to make it look more attractive. The product will however be the same. This city name change is also something similar. The roads, buildings, people, and language nothing has changed. Only the name has become Bengalooru from Bangalore. I think, a new rule should come in place which prohibits change in names without a major change in the product. If such a thing happens, Bengalooru seems to be way ahead of our times.

~Narendra V Joshi

It’s no more a Yes

I was at the health club watching the evening news on the raging fires in southern California. There were these 2 men sitting next to me who were talking about forest fires, environment pollution, deforestation etc. Seems one of them had watched a program on global warming some time back. Their discussion was like this-

Stranger 1 – You know, 1000’s of acres have already burnt down in this fire. The people, you know, where will they go, I mean where will they stay?

Stranger 2 –I heard this is the biggest fire that has happened in the last 5 years you know.
.
.
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Stranger 2 – I watched this program on global warming you know. They say earth is becoming warmer and by 2030 70% of corals will vanish it seems.

Stranger 1 – Yeah you know I heard there was a volcano in Siberia, sometime back. Seems it had covered the area of a football stadium.

Stranger 2 – A football stadium is big you know. I mean it had to be a big volcano.

Stranger 1 – Yeah, It said it was something like the Detroit stadium. That’s big you know. It’s a huge stadium. I couldn’t make it for the super bowl you know.

Stranger 2 – yeah that’s big. Did you watch the game between lions and ……

The conversation slowly shifted to football. I sat there thinking, as they discussed the Monday night football. It wasn’t the raging fires or the vanishing coral reef I was thinking of. It wasn’t the smooth transition from global warming to football which surprised me. What really caught my attention was the number of times the words “You know” and “I mean” were used in the conversation.

I am not complaining about the use of these “filler” words. Many of us do that. I think we use these to buy some time or make the sentence look lengthy. We need a word to complete the sentence but don’t have it. So one person assumes the other will know what to replace for “You know” or “I mean” and the other person somehow WILL get the exact meaning and the conversation goes on!! But what is never realized is that a language is being killed in the process. Words are slowly forgotten and a dictionary is needed even for a simple word.

This problem is not only with English. I know of many such filler words I use in Kannada or Marathi or Hindi. It’s just that we are slowly killing all languages we know. I had once asked my friend about the food at a restaurant close to our office. He had said “it tastes like sh%t.”. I don’t know what all our people eat but I am sure the “inventors” of English language would have never thought of so many different contexts for these words!!

Anyway it was really not surprising that the topic shifted so quickly to football. “I mean” we all talk about global warming, “you know” and we all know it is happening. So if somebody asks you if we are killing our environment, just say yeah or yo or yup!


~Narendra V Joshi

More than ever……

I was on the flight from Houston. It had been sometime since we had left Houston and we were now in mid air. I flipped through the pages of a magazine from the seat pocket and found an article on a new yoga destination somewhere in Mexico. ”Yoga in Mexico?” I questioned myself and immediately started reading it. I am not sure if I would have read the article with the same interest if it was “Yoga in India”.

The article had explanation of some basic concepts such as birth of yoga, meanings of some Sanskrit words, explanations of asanas etc. I finished the first 2 pages and was about to flip to the third page when I noticed the woman, maybe in her mid forties sitting next to me, reading the same article. She too had noticed me reading the article.

Woman: Interesting write up, isn’t it?

Me: Yeah. Good one

Woman: Where are you from?

Me: India

Woman: Do you do yoga? It says people in India do yoga.
(There was a picture in that article of a man practicing some asana near a river bank in India)

Me: Sometimes
(I forced myself not to say no. I remembered that the only asana I had ever learnt was the surya namaskara, and it was ages since the last time I did it)

Woman: What is this pran-yam

(There were names of some asanas in the article and Pranayama was the first.)
(I did not want to take this question though I knew something about Pranayama, because I realized where my answer would lead to; question to the meaning of the second asana in that list. I had not heard of any other asanas mentioned in that list. There was no explanation of these asanas in that article. I decided to answer the question on Pranayama and excuse myself back to the third page of the article)

Me: Pranayama is a breathing technique. It’s an asana involving inhalation, retention and exhalation…………
(The lady nodded her head and I felt she had understood something. She looked down at the article. I was sure she will ask me the meaning of the next asana in the list. I had to act quickly and decided to get up from my seat when I heard someone saying “Excuse Me”. It was the flight attendant who had come over to give us some snack packets and drinks. I heaved a sign of relief as I put the magazine back into the seat pocket to pull the tray table. The lady too put back the magazine to pull the tray table)

I was thinking about the conversation as I drove back home from the airport. I felt ashamed at my ignorance about such a great technique. It is from the same country I am from and my knowledge about it is close to zero. I don’t know what else exists that have become famous else where, which have their roots in India. India has such an excellent culture and we are forgetting it all. I think every county would have something excellent from the past which its people would have forgotten. We realize the importance only when someone else finds it and shows the world how valuable it is.

As I write this blog and think to myself, I don’t know if I can write this same blog in Kannada or Marathi, the languages which are closer to me than English. I don’t remember when was the last time I read a Kannada or a Marathi newspaper or a book. It would be really shameful to call myself an Indian just because I was born in India. I feel it has become more important to know our own culture before I try to learn others, more so in this era of globalization.

~Narendra V Joshi

A Chemical Cell

I had been to a restaurant with my friend the other day. The coffee I had ordered came with sachets of sugar and colorful sachets of artificial sweeteners. I had seen ads on TV of one of the sweeteners and picked it up to add to my coffee. Most of the sweeteners I knew said they were meant for diabetic patients. But this sweetener said it is nearest to sugar and is ideal for the whole family. My friend stopped me and asked me not to use artificial sweeteners as they are made of chemicals which give them the sweet taste. This one said it is made from sugar compounds and so I argued with him that it is not like the other sweeteners which are made of chemicals and I had seen ads of this sweetener since a long time. If it contained harmful chemicals it would have been out of the market by now. Both of us argued our minds and finally he went with normal sugar while I went with the artificial sweetener.

I got a mail today afternoon from the same friend in which he had sent a link to one of the sites which said, contained the truth about artificial sweeteners. It had a mention of the sweetener I had used the other day. It seems there is no tested data or any evidence to say that this sweetener was really closest to sugar. It also said no testing was carried out for knowing the long term effects of this sweetener. Now I am not sure if this is a gimmick from a competitor company or if it is for real but the supposedly long term effects of different such chemicals used in food was really scary.

Read through the list of ingredients of any food product you buy. There will be at least 2 or 3 items which you will not know. The bigger the list of ingredients the bigger is the list of unknowns. All these unknowns from so many different sources go into our body every day. Who knows what will happen when an unknown chemical from one product mixes with an unknown chemical from another product? I remember the color changes, the boiling and the spurting, the fumes etc which I had seen in the college chemistry lab when we mixed different chemicals. Maybe something like that might happen in our body too. Who know!

Do you know how the ripe red tomatoes retain that color even after 3-4 days? It seems at some places they are “fed” with some kind of chemical, due to which they retain their freshness for days. It looks like all my favorite vegetables can be adulterated. The chemical story doesn’t end here. Meat eaters too have their share. It seems at some places, animals which are reared for meat are fed with certain steroids and other chemicals which make them meaty and grow faster compared to those which grew without these chemicals.

Looks like the water we drink, the food we eat and the air we breathe are all contaminated with chemicals. Our body will slowly become a repository of chemicals!! A day will soon come where you don’t have to feed the animals reared for meat with separate chemicals. The chemicals will be readily available in what ever they feed. Humans too, will be at the receiving end.

Maybe a chemical might affect the brain of one person and the finger nail of another. Maybe it might not have any effect on someone. Maybe one day after years of chemical consumption and its reactions, the color of our blood might change to black or blue. Or maybe our blood might turn into some liquid similar to petrol or diesel and it might be used to run cars. Maybe human body might be used as a chemical cell to generate power. Maybe................I can only imagine.


~Narendra V Joshi