In a corner of the garden, lies this pot by the side
Into which I used to compost any food I’d want to hide
I kept it closed and alone, for a pot likes to brood
Anyways, you could argue, it makes compost out of food.

When I picked the lid up that day, I heard a buzzing refrain
But (being a genius, you see), I thought it was my brain
Out came a thousand petulant bees, in an angry mood to sting
That is bad manners, I think. The bell they ought to ring.

All the lessons that they teach you on diving from the bees
Are completely useless, I promise. They just want the fees
The only thing to do is Run, over land and over sea
Followed in your wake by a very determined bee.

So I sprinted (having seen videos of the Jalikattu Bolt)
Yet the visible parts of me were hit by a hundred and forty volt
Bees don’t like writers anymore (and they like poets even less)
And this is their malevolent display to rid themselves of stress.

A stinger here, a stinger there, treated with ice and salt
(The ice had been forming nicely for an evening’s single malt)
I now stick to Dire Straits and skip Scorpion and Mr Sting
Never push your luck, I reckon, for what will music bring?

But every cloud, they say, has a silver perimeter
I have a ghastly ex-boss, a Glassdoor history-sheeter
Who thinks he’s bright & capable (the idiot) and boastfully intrepid
I will call him home one day and ask him to open the lid.
 

AI For Washing Dishes: an encyclopaedic history of private equity in Bangalore

 In parts of Bangalore, until recently, when people were done with washing the dishes or online yoga, they registered a start-up and appointed an investment banker to raise a hundred million dollars or multiples of that modest figure.  Generally, everyone created an App to do something that has been done perfectly well since the Vijayanagar empire.  Like milk delivery.  

The next step was to write this idea down in a Business Plan, which is a document that nobody pays any attention to, unless they are done with work for the day and want to settle down with a cup of tea and some fiction. 

During this stellar period in human history, the only goal of every start-up was to burn cash in super-quick time, which process was - with the usual complexity that is intrinsic in private equity - called Cash-Burn.  The enriching idea was that once they had raised money and lost it, they could raise more money that they would lose quicker than the earlier pile, so that they could raise even more money - this is called Series C for the important and deeply intellectual reason that it follows A and then B.  The National Record in this Event, when reports last came in, was held by a company called Cred which, at a highly impressive stage in its life, earned Re 1 for every Rs 732 that it spent. Even a spendthrift friend of mine, who is utterly incompetent and runs a chaotic NGO, is in awe of such stellar performance.  

They kept on raising money till Series AH or something, at which point they became Unicorns. A Unicorn is a company that people who are permanently affected by smog-induced shutdown of the frontal cortex of the brain think is worth a billion dollars or more. Like the setup - which is run by a phony tail guy - that sells an electric scooter that has a front wheel which, like the yogis of old, believes in being detached and therefore has an independent free mind.    

Generally, anyone who made money from a business and therefore did not need multiples of hundred million dollars was considered a Supreme Idiot by everyone, including the critically-opinionated experts at WhatsApp School of Advanced Debris.  A typical Founder spent all his time pitching to investors, using words like Traction, Machine Learning and Network Effects which no one understood, but since anyone who does not use words like Traction, Machine Learning and Network Effects is considered to be Supreme Idiot, version 2.0 and escorted to the lift, everyone nodded sagely (especially if they were awake).  

And some of these investors have made money by selling to some other investors who then made money by talking up the story to more investors who will make money if they hold on till 2074.  This process has, like Cash-Burn, a technical name in private equity: the Bigger Fool Theory.  

My next update will be in 2074.  Stay posted.

Dad - A Tribute on a Day of Peace

May 12th
On this day, forty-one years ago, Dad was gone.

It took, of course, years for everyone - and that included his large circle of friends and family, with him in the centre, a larger-than-life gregarious, humourous figure- to accept his absence with a sort of detached equanimity.  In modern language, with its epithets and attempts at neat labels, it is often termed ‘closure’, but it never is, if the memory wishes it to remain, often preserved in the sepia of an old photograph and those conversations that begin with, ‘If Vasu were here…..’  

When the drumbeats of war shook us up this early May and the memes, messages and meandering underscored the restlessness of anxiety, I thought of him and, of course, I have thought of him today too. 

For he had faced conflict far more often than any of us who read this will have: twenty-five years old and returning from his day’s work in a train in the summer of 1947, with bodies of victims bearing the scars of conflict on both sides of that metre gauge track; being asked, at the age of forty, to drop his wife to an air field to be evacuated, while the men stayed back to face the possibility of a Chinese invasion that was reportedly hours away and, after which, the family would be gone forever; a 1965 war and another one in 1971, of which I have a dim memory of a darkened home, hooded headlights and a mum who had endured another sleepless night.  

It wasn’t just him, of course, most men and women of his generation had heard those drumbeats roll, their echoes a distant ominous portent, the beats conflating with those of the heart, so there was consolation in knowing that others were in the same boat on a turbulent river.  But little else.  Each such conflagration brought forth the likelihood of never seeing his beloved Palakkad again, with its palms and paddy and politics, and his family, particularly his grandmother, my mutashi, who was his life (and I have often wondered what she had gone through in her ninety-eight years, but all I remember is a fetching toothless smile, a hanging earlobe and that half-bent body). 

He loved Nehru, admired Mrs Gandhi and hated Nixon and he loved the idea of India above all else, for he had lived with it all his adult life.  That emotion extended to idealism, perhaps even quixotic idealism, with decency and kindness at its core.  I know he hated war because there is never a winner and he had seen enough of it.  He hated war for its consequences on simple, ordinary people who are the ants scurrying out of a battlefield of two raging deranged tuskers.  I know he hated war above anything else because his father, Dada, had been an officer in the British Army in the Second World War and a continuance of that tradition is taken for granted in the Nair community, with its history and pride and affirmation of battle.  

But it was, for Dad, never an option, partly because his grandmother took a promise from him that he wouldn’t fight and partly because of his idealism and resolution.  No, war was never an option: the armed forces were there as the crucial institution for defence, not aggression, a view that he had learnt from listening to Nehru, reading the Mahatma and those insightful books about partition, all of which formed his pacifist view where peace was the central tenet of human existence.  This meant that he was liberal too and could live comfortably with those who disagreed, as Major VR Menon, his best friend did, but those views of his would never change. 

Today, I think of those views - which are mine too - and realise, with some solace, that I remember Dad for much more than any gift he had given me.  Idealism and kindness can be preserved in sepia too.

The Fab Four: Uncles Sawant, Rathnam, Vish and Dad.  They saw it all. 
And they were kind and idealistic.

April for the Blues

It is a cool morning in end-April  in this part of our forest and as we walk on the track with prodigious quantities of dried elephant dung, one eye out for the pachyderm if he is somewhere, the trees and bushes draw attention.  Pongamia is everywhere here, yet, as we go in further and rocky outcrops abound, jalaari - Shorea rox - takes over.  This is my favourite tree and the flowering season was over about a month and a half ago, but thousands of light coloured winged seeds - those helicopter ones which twirl and twist as they fall - droop on the branches.

Today, I hope to see a variety of flowers though: Careya in all its beauty or perhaps Firmiana colorata (toes crossed and walking on stilts).  But then we come to a dense crop of these trees with tiny, beautiful blue florets in clusters of deep blue.  Aren’t they utterly beautiful!

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the iron wood tree, a small hardwood, called Memecylon something-something in Latin & Greek (I think that suffix is umbellatum, but it could be edule, no matter).  In Malayalam the tree is Kashavu or kannavu and the flower has a lovely euphonious name: kaayampoo

We stop to study the tree and, at a later point, I look it up in my book (Neginhal sir, bless you wherever you are). But it is when I search India Biodiversity Portal later that I see an entirely unexpected connection with a small piece of musical history.

In my collection of old playing records is an EP from the 1969 Malayalam film, Nadhi, with an immensely popular song sung by that maestro, Yesudas.  

Kaayampoo kannil vidarum

Kamaladhalam kavilil vidarum

(The kaayampoo blooms in your eyes

Lotus petals on your cheeks……)

Yours to listen to…

https://open.spotify.com/track/0Go3xe8Sdu27plq98uyxoz

This photo with three flowers: these are Shorea rox, Firmiana and the Ironwood tree, photo taken in March 2022

Just Another Story. Just Another Scam

February 20th 2024

I see the name of the driver on the app and it is clear, at once, that he is a Malayali.  He arrives fifteen minutes before schedule – which used to be a Blusmart feature (not a bug) – and I walk up to the gate and request a few minutes to get ready. ‘Aren’t you from Kerala?’ I ask, for we Mallus tend to pop that question sooner than later.  ‘Yes, sir,’ he replies, with an enthusiastic smile, ‘and I thought you were a Malayali too, from your name.  Please take your time, we can leave fifteen minutes after schedule as well, not a problem.’  A cab driver saying that; doesn’t the surprise make your day?

As I get into the cab, his dignity and bearing are evident.  He speaks fluent English, is courteous to a fault.  After I tell him the time of my flight, he thanks me for booking the cab three hours earlier.  He is at the fag end of a twelve-hour night shift and I feel deep sympathy for him (along with, of course, the hope that he is awake enough to drive a car).

So, we get chatting; the stories of mortal men and women – pedestrian tales of existence, resilience, connections and hope – are the most enthralling, aren’t they?  Those beguiling encounters of comfort and dissonance offer so much for reflection, certainly as an alternative to reading the short-term, high-intensity feeds of transient inanity on the media on my phone (which I cannot do anyways as it makes me queasy in a moving vehicle).

I learn that he is a Bangalorean and has been a Blusmart driver for a couple of years and enjoys the experience.  ‘I occasionally meet someone like you, sir, who speaks Malayalam and enjoys conversation, which is special (vishesham, in Malayalam).’  For two decades, he drove night buses to Mumbai – a twenty-hour journey – and rested for a few hours before driving back to Bangalore.  A seven-hour sleep at night was reserved for one day a week and he had made a deal with the devil on that, but then he missed his wife.  No kids, he says without my prompting.  He begins to speak about his wife and then checks himself.  I wonder why. 

Education did not really interest him, which was a source of great stress for his well-educated dad.  There was contrast too: his two siblings – a sis and a brother, both older to him – studied well and have done well in the Great Game.  While on the airport flyover, he points out an utterly grotesque apartment-city (no other term will suffice in vehemence for this apparition) and says his brother, who is a techie in the US, has a four-bedroom apartment in there.  

‘Yet, I am happy as a driver, no regrets’ he says, and there is a stubbornness, a sense of indignation in that tone which makes me feel that he is talking to himself, justifying, quieting the inner voice of dissent…..

An hour of conversation and we are on the final stretch to the terminal.  ‘My wife is a Maharashtrian,’ he says, ‘and she has a physical disability. Ours was a marriage no one wanted to attend. Yet, today, my parents are deeply attached to her. She has a job too, but this income from driving keeps us going.’  He pauses. ‘She is everything to me.’  

I can feel the emotion in the voice, sitting there in the back seat of a car driven by a stranger I will perhaps never see again. I hope my short reply, in words and tone, has been one with empathy.  We complete the journey in silence.

As I step out of the car with my bag, he smiles with that now-familiar enthusiasm.  ‘Please call me anytime if you need a car,’ he says, and I nod in assent, though we both don’t really mean it.  

And, today, I think of his future.

And I am angry at the flagitious and greedy men who ran this company and have played with human lives.

https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/who-is-anmol-singh-jaggi-blusmart-gensol-founder-banned-sebi-epc-11744787594839.html

Water From Stone

About thirty years ago, I worked in an investment team that was led by one of those superior types, who walked around with his nose at 45 degrees to mean sea level.  For the record, he had much to be modest about, as indeed all of us did, but that was lost on him (self-delusion cannot be suppressed with paracetamol – old jungle saying). 

One day, a proposal for investing in a textile mill in Coimbatore that had gone bust landed up. The company was up to its neck in debt (and it had the neck of an ostrich, lemme tell you), yet needed more money and the family that ran the business asked one of its own – a US-MBA type - to take over (the fact that he agreed was indicative of his IQ, but it did not occur to me then).

If you know anything about textile mills, you are probably in stitches by now and laughing yourself sick.  The general rule is, the more spindles you have, the higher your societal value in Coimbatore, and the more losses you show in the financial statements.  The only way to make money off a textile mill is to keep digging below the factory floor till you strike oil.  

Under every circumstance, we would have neatly stacked this proposal document in the weekly waste paper sale to the raddi-wala (which was at that time the only profitable activity we did), but that year we were hopelessly behind the annual investment target (those who set targets should be tried in a court reserved for War Crimes), so the team head – I shall call him Mr Vapour – decided that I should take a look.

…which in his language generally meant, We should take a Good Look and hit the Invest button.    

I was ok about it for two reasons:

- I had now some work to do to keep myself occupied

- I was heavily into reading Warren Buffett in those days and he too had begun with a bust textile mill (Warren, do note that’s where the similarity sort of ends).

(talk of vested interests)

Now, there were a thousand reasons to be cautious as hell about this deal, but Vapour had made up his mind (or what was left of it).  So, I waded through mindless stuff on spindles, cotton and jargon, without understanding anything.  What I did understand – the balance sheet – reminded me of Jaws 3, because it was terrifying.  We then made a case for investment (which must be under the Deep Fiction section somewhere in the archives of the company now), while I prayed for divine intervention (Indian Express headline, “Lightning strikes Coimbatore Mill, machinery to be exchanged for eighteen bags of peanuts”) and waited anxiously for the Big Day to present this basket case to our Board. 

If you have ever doubted the existence of The Higher Power, please note: He’s There, alive and kicking.

A day before the Big Day, the company’s MD – influenced no doubt by a kamikaze pilot or by something he had illegally inhaled – called me and set out a list of conditions if we were to invest. 

Hang on: we should have been setting the conditions! 

So, knowing what Vapour would do (which is to succumb to this lunacy), I went to his boss, i.e., my super boss – that’s nowadays called ‘doing a skip level’.  He let out a sardonic, low-decibel sort of laugh-cum-growl, used a string of rich, colourful adjectives to describe the MD, his parentage (which was cast in serious conjecture) and about most of Coimbatore's textile industry and asked me to tell the MD to fly a kite, which message I passed on at once, asking him to choose from either flying kites or digging for oil.  

ps: I did not actually do the last part, but it makes the ending sort of cool.  

ps2: Vapour may have forgiven me, I suppose, but he does not show it.   

…and, finally, 

ps3: and, here is what the Oracle from Omaha has to say in general:

When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

Kaziranga One Fine Afternoon

Kaziranga,
March 11th

Big Horn Buffalo with Bar Headed Geese

I am the only person in the Gypsy and the driver stops at Kohora gate to pick up the other three who have booked their safari with him.  They clamber on, a young couple and their friend who takes his seat beside me, camera in one hand, coke in the other.  

Now, I know they say you should not judge people at first glance.  Actually, they say you should not judge people.  And I say they speak rot.  

I promise, it is not the coke (which they finish in turns in about 30 seconds because the bottle has to be discarded outside).  But you learn to identify idiots when you see them, call it perverse experience. 

Mr Couple is full of questions to the driver.  Such as, will we see tigers?   Coke is not satisfied: will we see white tigers?  How many tigers are there?  So many?  Well, then why no white one?  How many rhinos?  So many?  Then, do tigers eat rhinos?  Coke does not ask why white tigers don’t eat rhinos, so I am deeply grateful.

It’s all that sugar in that bloody bathroom-cleaner drink that makes them delirious.

  

All three have their mobiles with which they are 

1. Sending messages

2. Taking photographs

3. Scrolling on Instagram

4. Combing hair (Mrs Couple) and checking if that seven-micron scratch on the nose is now visible.

We haven’t begun the journey yet and there is a rhino in the distance and Mr Couple asks Mrs to take his photo on his mobile with rhino as dot-in-horizon wallpaper. 

Then,

Mr clicks Mrs with rhino-in-horizon

Coke clicks both and shares with larger planet on Insta

Then Mrs clicks Coke and Mr

Then Driver clicks them

Then, our Gypsy is joined by another Gypsy at the hip, which has a large Bengali family of about 63 adults and 22 kids that are doing this team outing to have an incisive debate on why someone’s brother-in-law is not to be trusted with an agreement to sell a flat near Gariahat?  

I understand enough Bengali to not want to buy this flat.

Then, we begin the safari.

Then - immediately - we see a tiger crossing a lake.

Which I somehow feel deep inside is bloody unfair, though it is unfair, I know, to feel unfair.  

I am watching it swim through the binocs (the tiger is swimming in the stream, not through the binocs, hope you got that right), and the three are so excited that they forget that You Live For Reels.  As the tiger walks up the other bank and enters the bushes, about 84 Bongs want to know where the tiger is and are looking, with heightened animation, in the wrong direction, while, from the 85th, I learn that the lift isn't working in the Gariahat flat.  

The bird life is, as always, incredible!

The utterly majestic grey headed fish eagle

European Widgeon, Mr and Mrs.  
My first ever sighting

Bar headed geese are philosophers.  Always searching.

and we see a herd of jumbos by the side and they are chilled out (I wouldn't want them any other way, incidentally).

And one showed us his backside

All this while, the Couple pose, share, repose. Coke is impatient.

One more TIGER, says Coke (he is ok with non-white now).  And the more I hear about the brother-in-law, the more he makes Amrish Puri in Mr India seem like a Buddhist monk. 

I whisper a question to Driver: can we separate at the hip from Gariahat please and he smiles knowingly and slows down.  Sometime later, we are by a stream, I am staring up at the canopy and Mr Couple is standing, mobile video at work.  Something in the water, he says, in our area, we call it Oondh.  

I swivel and see smooth coated otters!  Three of them, swimming steadily in the middle of the stream and up close.  They have seen us too, the one in front popping up, periscope-like, the others right behind.  They are beautiful, graceful, effervescent and as enigmatic as ever  and to see them there on a lazy late afternoon in one of the world’s most beautiful wilderness regions! We watch - in absolute silence - until they are gone.

And all is forgiven.  

Maybe I will consider that flat in Gariahat if these three buy it along with me.

And the Great Hornbill.  What a magnificient species this is.