Cherry Blossoms on 12th Main

An incredible balancing act.

Beauty, harmony, balance ... on so many levels. A truly amazing balancing act. Dance artist Miyoko Shida was born in Fukuyama-shi, Japan. She performed as a dancer and choreographer at the Rigolo Nouveau Cirque in Switzerland and currently lives in Paris, France.
Click on the link to watch her balance several palm leaf stems with incredible ease and confidence. What does it take to do THAT!

http://bit.ly/1240WrI

The fascination of trains

Today's Economic Times:

India: works in progress

Sir Alex Ferguson

There are many things I don't understand. For example leadership this good,  this long,  in the world's best sport,  football. Just saw this in Economic Times today.

Dig your well before you're thirsty

Bangalore has about 10 million people supported by an extremely fragile water resource system. Everyday illiterate and corporate hires are trooping in for jobs and shelter. Double decker trains are pouring in people from neighbouring states lured by their well-heeled cousins flaunting their fortunes, stories of the local airconditioned weather and the supposed upbeat job market. Northeastern, UP, Bihar and Odisha states are supplying huge numbers of security guards,  roadside stall cooks and construction labour.

What about drinking water for all these people? An old adage is 'dig your well before you're thirsty' .  Bangalore's famous network of lakes and parks won admiration for Sir MV and he later built Secunderabad, Jaipur and Nagpur cities' infrastructure. Even today, all those old Bangalore lakes can be seen in old Raj photographs. 

But now, a poor sewage and water supply system run by corrupt officials is the only infrastructure for India's shining IT capital. Sometimes newspapers report that Cauvery has only 15 days drinking water reserve for our mega-city. Everyone is waiting for the rains! Depressing,  is it not?

Yesterday I went and saw something different. Just amazing. 10 km beyond Bannerghatta,  Ramakrishna Mission, Shivanahalli is creating a new chapter in ecology. Swami Vishnumayananda started planting tree saplings there,  brought from Western Ghats, back in 1980's against much scepticism and opposition. Now there are interested volunteers coming and taking it further in this amazing afforestation scheme. Google it and read for yourself. 

Their website: http://www.rkmission-shivanahalli.org/

I attach some photos.

The swami built lakes to make the forest sustainable.  His forest attracts all kinds of wild life as well as interested volunteers.
This could be a new chapter in our thirsty world.

The Economist: India's labour force

I just read the latest Economist online:

During the boom of the 1990s and 2000s it became fashionable to talk of India's demographic dividend – evoking the experiences of East Asia. There, working-age populations rose at the same time as the ratio of dependents to workers fell. An associated rise in the rate of saving allowed more investment, helping the vast expansion of manufacturing that employed those workers and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. India's fertility rate dropped substantially in the 1980s and 1990s, and its working age population is expected to expand by 125m over the next decade. But now India's GDP growth rate has fallen to half of its peak rate. The country's record on job creation has been poor, households are redirecting their savings out of the financial system into physical assets, and manufacturers remain wary of labour rules and infrastructure bottlenecks.

'You're going bald.'

We worship 330 million gods and goddesses with enough hair to cover the 3 worlds in a thick blanket.

Indians are the butt of jokes about this craze for whitening creams and hair dyes. But we call our gods as Keshava, Jatadhara, Neelaveni and Charukeshi. All words to show good hair.

When you hear the dreaded words that you're going bald, laugh. This article will help you.

Hair Is Wasted On The Hairful -

Bangalore's beautiful buses.

There was a time when travelling even a few miles by bus from Basavanagudi to Maharani's College near Majestic used to be an ordeal. After standing in a long line, my mother had to climb up into a crowded aisle and hang on to a strap from the roof as the overloaded, dirty, bus ploughed through traffic for the best of an hour. An ordeal she went through for many years. 

In most Indian cities people bought scooters and mini cars because the alternative of public buses was a mirthless waste of time. There would also be pickpockets and purse snatchers to boot. 

The bus driver would see a milling crowd hanging around restively at a stop and manage to draw them forward in a race of the fittest as he stopped several yards beyond the stop. Old people and women or those with any luggage had no chance of making it.

There is a sea change now. I see snazzy Volvo's cruising with people seated comfortably in air conditioned comfort. I see them reading,  chatting on mobiles, or texting, or listening to music. Many dose off as these luxurious liners move for long periods from one end of town to other. Tickets are not cheap but still less than auto fare. Anyway IT salaries more than take care of it. And for women and old people it is good to travel now. It is a better choice than driving in your large car and getting stuck in jams as scooterists nudge around and knock off rear view mirrors. 

Here is a shot of what I saw this morning. Such a nice bus indeed.

Broken Horses

Went to vote at the nearby primary school. After an eventful BJP rule in Karnataka we are electing a new state assembly. They had a Russian roulette of chief ministers and deeply excavated scams of huge amounts stretching to many digits and states.

I want a strong guy to rule India. I prefer an articulate and clean leader who listens to growth ideas and implements them well. Yes I mean someone like Modi.

Someone told me the BJP states have done rather well in implementing UPA funded central growth programmes even better than Congress governments in states. 

I want no communal politics.

I am sick of Karnataka being called endemically corrupt. 

I took this photo. It is a pile of rocking horses meant for primary school kids to play with in the school. They say we must choose horses for courses. These rocking horses all lie broken. Which one will resurrect and run to win?

Music and biscuits.

Folks,
OK, let me say it. Music is like biscuits.

As you let that sink in slowly, let me give you some context.

It is that unearthly hour of a dark silent warm cozy night. I have been listening to and watching RKM on ustream.tv. I have got IPL last over finishes and its zillion ads under my skin. And don't mind confessing that the music is swirling in my being and giving me a good feeling. How to describe it? Yes, how to name it, as Ilayaraja once asked?

I just got it! RKM's music is like a biscuit...

For NRIs, wannabie NRIs and ABCDs amongst us, a biscuit is that freshly baked little or big honourable calorie snack that you call a cookie. What makes the large modern mall attractive is its wafting aromas of freshly baked biscuits as I would call them or cookies as you might. Cookies or biscuits as I prefer do not go overboard like doughnuts or pretzels. They show the middle path in the modern world of instant gratification where man struggles for escape from his prison of ice creams, burgers, chips, and coffee. As Asok said in the Dilbert strip yesterday, we Indians love our bread and starchy food. So biscuits is God's answer to our prayers. From humble me to the big B, we love biscuits. Too much for our own good.

And RKM's music is like THIS biscuit: fresh, fragrant, not too sweet, not too creamy, yet so crunchily delectable and something I can savour every bite. Just for reference, imagine the famous Pune's Kayani's Shrewsbury, fresh from the oven at 10:45 AM, and make it even crunchier, with a touch of coconut, cummin, somehow hinting at caramel- but without oodles of butter and sugar- no orange or chocolate smears, no hidden nuggets, no layers upon layers you need to deconstruct, no cloying sweetness packed into Parle G like gujjus in Santa Cruz. The ideal biscuit is like a short comfortable memorable scenic train journey from Palghat to Shoranur,

So, can you relate to my thoughts? What kind of a biscuit is your favourite musician?

Sachi R

RKM is short for Ramakrishnan Murthy, a brilliant 23 year-old Carnatic musician.

Epilogue:

High time we said something about biscuits in Sanskrit:

BISCUIT nAmaka bhakshaNam
rasamayam lokE sadA-swAdanam
yAtrE gAyaka-ruchikaram bahutaram
atyaMta AmOditam

MARIE bodhita madhukaram
priyakaram svalpam sadA-sEvanam
rasyam snigdhataram gurubalam
rasika-janA-lambitam.

(Note: It seems Carnatic musicians have often relied on Marie biscuits during long train journeys to keep body and soul together.)

A 2013 IPL Prayer

Dear God,

Don't tempt me with so many ice creams and chocolates and
give me real mangoes instead of Maaza, Fruiti and Rasna.

Take away those poorly made-up dumbo bimbo cheer-leaders.
They are wasted and can be busy elsewhere.

Make commentators explain those Zoo-zoo ads to people around as I can't be bothered.

Send back Rameez Raza and such inane commentators to their homeland.

It almost seems except two or three teams everyone else knows how to win a game and so don't you think we have way too many matches? Why can't we play playoffs just now?

Phone stuff