Yada, Yada

 The only reason I read the business paper each morning is because I am a deep follower of pulp fiction.  Since you have clearly not been reading the most interesting business news this week, here is a statement from the CEO of a biggish company after it published its financial performance for the first quarter of this year.

“The operating environment continues to be marked by unprecedented headwinds and commodity fluctuations. Despite these challenges, we remain resilient, agile, and committed to serve Indian consumers, delivering sequential sales growth this year. The execution of our integrated strategies of a strong portfolio, superiority, productivity, constructive disruption, and an agile and accountable organization structure, has empowered us to deliver these consistent results. Our strategy is fueled by balancing innovation and industry-leading practices, while driving productivity in everything we do."

He further added, “While the unprecedented market challenges and uncertainties remain in the near-term, we will continue to stay focused on our strategy of driving superiority and productivity and enabled by the strength of our organization and culture, to deliver balanced growth and value creation."
Unquote. 

I hope you are still awake. 

If you are, let me please translate this gibberish for you.  Here’s what he actually said:

“We are in trouble.  Sorry, big trouble.  I have no fricking clue on
What hit me
What will hit me
What to do

The only thing I can think of is to reduce the packet size from 100 ml to 3 ml (value creation /innovation /industry-leading practices /culture /constructive disruption /agile /balanced growth /yada yada /whatever /pink elephants).  We are reducing workload to 1 shift a day because the afternoon shift guys sleep after lunch (like someone I know).  I am working hard to ensure that there will be enough excuses the next time I have to write this gobbledygook.   

Now for some tennis.”
 

On World Orangutan Day

 

An orangutan sips from a pitcher plant. NatGeo

This is the most beautiful photograph that I have seen in a while.

  
August 19th was Orangutan Day - one for the Old Man of the Forest - but it isn't a day for celebration: in the last four decades, the population of orangutans has plunged into an abyss that precedes extinction because of deforestation, its home cleared principally for planting oil palm.

This arrangement - clearing of timber and planting oil palm - suits the oil palm companies well, for they make money in both operations.  The World has watched on silently....

India is the World's largest palm oil importer, earning this dubious distinction after having been completely self sufficient in our traditional oils - groundnut, mustard, coconut - and sunflower oil (and, later, rice bran oil) until the '90s.  

Read about it here...

https://thewire.in/political-economy/india-edible-oil-self-sufficiency

Palm oil is now a cheap, unhealthy option and palmolein - which you find in most bakery products and processed food - is outright dangerous for your heart.

...and for the orangutan too.  

In a sentence, we - rather, a silly change of policy - created this problem.  

Some years ago, I took the decision to avoid palm oil in anything I used or ate - soaps, shampoos and food - and the consequence was fascinating:  there were hardly any regular options left, which meant searching for truly sustainable ones. 

Here's one such option that I use (not doing a marketing pitch, but these products - and the folks behing the social enterprise - are top class.

If you'd like to be part of the solution, look for products - food, cosmetics, soaps, shampoos - that are palm oil-free this weekend.  It's the least we can do for the Old Man of the Forest. 

 
For a different, perhaps contrary view, do read this as well
https://www.orangutans-sos.org/learn/palm-oil/

Intel Decide

My laptop is so old that its camera needs a cataract removal the day-before-yesterday – that’s how urgent it is, not bad English as you have possibly surmised (having read earlier posts of mine with restrained tolerance).  

The sound emanating from it - the laptop, not my English - resembles a rasping cough of someone with a permanently fossilized tonsil that has merged with a free-floating collar bone.  And when I key a few words in, I go off, have a cup of tea and return in time to be informed that there was an error by an idiot at the other end of the keyboard.  The battery, of course, popped off long ago, which, if you did not know, is the second fastest known way to convert a laptop into a desktop (the fastest is to use Fevicol on the desk.  Is jod ka koi tod nahi. End of sponsored feature).

So, you are asking, what prevents me from buying another laptop?  Well, I don’t know if you are similar in this respect, but choices confuse the hell out of me.  After much hemming, hawing and hanging (not me, as you guess, but the old laptop), I decided to buy one.  This decision did not do much for the stock price of HP or Dell, of course, but I did get the distinct feeling that I was contributing to the World Economy In A Time Of Need.

 Everybody will tell you that there’s only one thing that matters in this decision: the choice of chip or processor, whatever that thing is.  I knew right away that it had to be Intel because there’s a good friend who works there and one always needs to know whom to abuse with those four words I learnt in Khan Market in Delhi, so that was sorted (he doesn’t know yet, so keep it to yourself). 

Once you decide that it’s Intel, you have a choice of

a) 11^th generation of Intel Core i5 or
b) 14^th gen of i3 or
c) 7^th gen of i7 or
d) the uncle-in-law of the 19^th gen of i-something (which would make it 18^th bloody gen)
..and on and on.

And I am just beginning.  There are heaps of generations of heaps of i-whatever-odd-number. A vital tip: if you plan to check with google chacha about which is superior to which, there are two periods of any day that you should not choose: before 11 am and after 11 am.   Because you instantly feel like a congenital condemned genetically-one-chromosome-missing dud. There is nothing – zilch, shunya, nil, el cero, naught, cipher, laddu - online that can tell a human being (not a techie.  The two species are mutually exclusive) anything useful; using geek-talk that reads suspiciously like a song played at 2X speed, you are told – hold your breath - …..that it all depends on what you use it for. Since this is true for toothbrushes as well, even I can tell you that (at normal, not 2X, speed) and leave you deeply impressed. 

So, all I now know is that I am 34^th gen of a matrilineal line of Mallus.  Let Intel try and match that and then we will talk.  Till then the World Economy Can Go Stick On A String (recommended: Fevicol.  Zor lagake haiyaa).

Give Us Today Our Daily Bread And Forgive Us Our Sins

 I don’t know if you have heard of a bakery called Lavonne here in Bangalore?  It isn’t far from where I live, so this morning, in a moment of certified insanity and excessive obfuscation of the brain caused by watching three minutes of Republic TV last evening, I went over to Lavonne to buy something for breakfast.  I had been there once earlier (these are intermittent episodes of lunacy and it has to do with the full moon, or so I have been told).

They have a signboard outside that offers personal loans to buy bread inside (easy interest-free EMIs, please note, so carry your Aadhar card, the last salary slip and your school-leaving certificate) and a Buy-Now-Pay-Later counter run by this fintech called Slice, which, if you have missed it in reading this too quickly, is a pun (like ‘A pessimist’s blood type is B-Negative’ – you get the pic).

In summary, Lavonne is the sort of place where, if you buy someone a birthday cake, you postpone your car purchase to next year.  

Everyone there wears white, with disposable caps and masks and gloves and acts as if they are in a neonatal ICU, rushing around with an air of decided importance.

“Do you have fresh bread?” I asked defensively.
There was this kid at the counter who’s probably done a Coursera session on baking and received a ‘Just-about-passed-with-D++’ grade.  She looked at me and sniffed – some people don’t deserve an answer, they need an education, she was saying to herself no doubt – and asked me to look at a crate with heaps of breads of all shapes in it.  There were some long ones that looked like useful walking sticks on a trek and something called sourdough, which I have once eaten at a breakfast buffet and therefore know that it is great if you cut it up into pieces using an axe and use them in catapults to harvest guavas high up on a tree.  But I liked the one with some nice twists on the top – somewhat like a Hitchcock film – so I asked what that was.

“Babka,” she replied, while staring at the blank face in front of her, now certain that I needed an immediate education-on-scholarship in the interest of larger society and the 75th anniv of Indian independence. 

“Is it bread or cake?” I asked, because it looked like a mix of both and it was immediately obvious that, in their exalted history, neither Lavonne nor this kid nor the French civilisation had been asked such a daft question.  Her boss emerged from the shadows and grinned the way people do when they see someone from Jhumritalaiya (district Koderma) buying an iPhone 13. 

 
“How can a bread be a pastry?” she asked, with a giggle.  For a brief moment, I wondered if this was a philosophical question in existentialism of course, but decided to not pursue this thread (they have a CCTV in there and a red button under the counter).  

The bread tastes fine (I haven’t given it an option after coughing up a ransom) and I will go back for more one day after I encash those two lottery tickets purchased in Trivandrum sometime ago.  
 

Photoblog: The Chitradurga Fort

 Here's a summary of the history of Chitradurga fort:

The first part was built about a thousand years ago.
Heaps of dynasties like the Chalukyas and Hoysalas and Nayakas - the usual suspects - have occupied it in the past.  Hyder Ali and Tipu jammed around for a bit here as well until the Brits got them out, the Wodeyars did a wall or two because they had more money than common sense.  Everyone generally added something (except for the Brits whose primarily skill in arithmetic was to subtract), so there's a lot of rock that has been cut in there.  Lots of rock left as well.  
End of history lesson.

7 am on a wet Wednesday morning in August.  Anand and I begin walking by the ramparts of Chitradurga fort, knowing that it will be a long walk in rainy weather, but we are looking forward to it (some people with advanced English in their genes would term such behaviour masochistic.  We know no such people though and are hence thankful).

Right up, I will tell you that the Archeo Survey of India has done a splendid job of keeping the place tidy.  Their information tablets are neatly done and are thankfully not defaced (yet), so we walked from one point to the other, learning our history from them, as we went.  

There were fetching low clouds hanging over the formations of rocks on the 'betta's or small hills that dot the landscape, many of which are enclosed by the seven lines of fort walls (succeeding dynasties seem to have found earlier walls pregnable, so they just said, 'What the hell, let's do another one'.  The result of such obsessive insecurity is 32 kilometres of walls (and some very sore hands)).

Here's one such wall.

To its credit, this part of the wall is aesthetic and done with a certain taste.  These views are personal: a potential invader is unlikely to focus on the aesthetics with an approving eye, the design being such that he'd have to be super human to scramble up. 

Just another picture to let you know what you missed.  This is the remains of the palace with granaries and baths and all the rest of it.  

The fort has a number of temples (in the distance), some under giant boulders, and an incredible tapestry of ruins, rocks and random rubble (which is the principal masonry style).  

And, for a change, the grass isn't greener on the other side (the other side of the fort is the town, so that sucks).

That structure up close - two pillars, with a beam on top, was apparently to host a couple of hooks from which a swing would dangle: for the queen, the princess or someone who was, at any rate, pretty loaded.    in comparison, the swings you see in a park look like Chihuahuas with protein deficiency.

A temple complex ahead in front, with the rocks in the distance.  If the only way of seeing this view everyday was to visit the temple, the most agnostic of rulers would turn deeply religious.   So, you kind of get the feeling that the folks who chose locations for temples had an early career in psychology.  

I take just a step to my right and am now in this verandah with pillars.  And this is the thing about photography: everyone just has to take a photo or two of a bunch of pillars in a straight line, its Pavlovian (about which you can learn more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning.  We believe in holistic education).  

The building held up by these pillars isn't arresting enough, so we look inside and see at a vast empty space with a strong suggestion of mice and bats that are competing to produce smells with higher pungency,  and move on.  

The structure to the left is a 'gaali dwar', for the royals to get the breeze and the one to the right is the entrance to the temple in front of which I stood while taking this photograph.  Isn't the scene surreal...utterly beautiful?  We just stood soaking it all in (well, literally as well...).

And the question that haunts me is: just how did those folks lift all the stones up a couple of storeys? Where did they get that superhuman strength from?

No, Horlicks has been around for a while, but not that long.  Even I know that.

Now, this is just the sort of photo I'd take to show off.  

Anand was blocking the doorway, so I asked him to crouch behind the pillar in the larger interest of Art and he nearly threw his slipper at my Nikon.  

After all that I have done for him over the years......

The pillars all over had some lovely carvings 

...but this one sort of freaked me out a bit.  Which probably was the intent anyways (not to freak me out, if you see what I mean, but humans in general).  

I wouldn't want to meet this guy in broad daylight on MG Road, let alone anywhere else.  Which brings me to contemporary dangers in the fort: leopards and bears are known to wander around, so stick to your paths and mind your language.

The panther is like a leopard

Except it hasn't been peppered

Should you behold a panther crouch

Prepared to say Ouch

Better yet, if called by a panther

Don't anther

(not me, Ogden Nash)

The stuff that I did not photograph were the outstanding rainwater harvesting ponds, carved and teased out of rock (a sure sign of genius this, missing the ponds for the rocks.  Runs in the family). 

Back to serious reporting.  This is where one of those Hyder-Tipu Universe Boss chaps set up a grinder for gunpowder, using circular grinding stones turned by horses and bulls, managed by, of course, humans.  I cannot think of a riskier thing to do in life, but, of course,  it's a free country (well, not in those times, I agree).  Plus, both those chaps were a bit cuckoo (else why would you conquer Mysore, for Heaven's sake?  The most innocuous folks around live there).

On second thoughts, I would rather grind gunpowder than cross Outer Ring Road.  

And, that brings us, finally to the tale of Onake Obavva (now, that's a name to have).  She was a warrior woman who fought the soldiers of Hyder Ali in 1779 and knocked off several of them with her Onake (a heavy wooden pestle that gets the shivers doing a decathlon on your backbone).  O2 hid near a narrow passage that they had to cross and then bumped them off (literally, of course) one by one.  Smart woman this, but looking at the passage - which is now called Onake Obavvana kindi - you do feel sorry for those soldiers, even if they were daft enough to be with the Hyder-Tipu mafiosi.  Getting your skull fragmented isn't (at the best of times, even with air-conditioning and Dettol invented) a pleasant experience.  At some point, she met her end as well, so that was heroic.  

We stood for a moment in silence as a mark of respect to O2 for what she had done and then hurried off towards the exit.  It was mid-morning - 11 am - when we left the fort, soaked to the 206th bone (it had been raining without a break all the while) and feeling just what a wanderer would feel without an agenda or mobile connectivity.  In a word, bliss.

About a kilometre down the road, at Lakshmi Bhavan - hugely recommended to us as a venerable eatery - idlis and dosas were calling out to be eaten, so one needed to be responsible and fulfill that duty.  

Someday, we might return to add an eighth wall.  Stay posted.