A Lot of Romance over Coffee

A lot of romance can happen over coffee!

Call me old school, or just plain "old", but I often watch life, sitting in a Coffee Day, sipping my latte. The life I watch often involves young people getting to know each other, and sometimes it is their first date.

Two young things, the girl with an Andhra accent, the boy with a Malayali trademark stubble and accent, are getting to discover commonalities over coffee. They have both chosen to call this silicon garden garbage metro as home.

Boy: I work in a famous US brand offshore service center. It's surely exciting, answering to the name "Pete" and trying my call center accent!
Girl: I work for an Indian $1.5B telecom giant! It's not a direct Airtel job but our company has been running the subcontract for long now.
Boy: what's challenging in my role is to explain things to our customers who get pissed off easily. Other day, some guy was screaming that his toaster went kaput with the fifth slice of bread. How do I tell him we have no clue how long such a thing works? Not even our Chinese factory can figure it out. Just like a good old light bulb! As Edison has said, there is no science that can predict how long a filament bulb will burn.
Girl: Same here! Some nut was screaming the other day that we had billed him Rs 3748.84 excess for data usage. How can I explain to that moron that our billing algorithm came from IBM and runs a million factors to compute the bill, and no human can override it!? Only thing we know is it always bills more than what's fairly chargeable for the usage. That's how we became a $1.5B company.
Boy: Computers! That reminds me. We are running a tablet sale - you can get an 8"one with Android 1.0 at $56!
Girl: We are launching 4G in 200 cities now with a ₹250 up plan. We expect to touch $3B soon! Also new fancy algorithm!
Boy: Do you know we started a trade-in for old car tyres? We take them back and dump it in the Indian ocean for $50.
Girl: Is that why the sea is rising? I read it on our free NowNews app.
Boy: wow. We have so much in common!
Girl: They say marriages are made in heaven, through a common password for Wifi 😁

Mission Impossible 5 : It all started with Hanuman

Most cineplexes in Bangalore are running multiple shows of the latest  Mission Impossible 5 (released recently but grossed $300+M already!) Tom Cruise leads spectacular action and chases with several nail-biting moments and white-knuckles fight scenes. There's beautiful imagery of London, Vienna, and Morocco. There is an incredible bike chase scene. There is a superwoman Faust (Rebecca Fergusson) statuesque like Maria Sharapova and finessed in everything she does including fights. Opera and Symphony fill our ears through DTS surround sound with loud explosions and noises rending the air at regular intervals. Guns hidden in trumpets and stuff.

The MI formula for success is straight forward. Take off where Bond ends. A goulash of a super agent, American politics, international safety fears, almost invisible "devils", European and Mediterranean locales, chases, bombs, some arty scenes, encrypt/decrypt geeks and incredible sci-fi scenarios. All ends well as the totally self-less Ethan Hunt walks away into the dark until next time.

Do you see what I see? That super-dad of poets and script writers, Valmiki. That original super hero Hanuman. Danger, Vice, and Horror like only a ten-headed monster called Ravana can conjure up. A distant island where a damsel lies captive in distress. A good man lost in the forest, hell-bent on righting the wrongs and retrieving his beloved wife.

Comes Hanuman. First off, he jumps across the ocean. Several "minor" hurdles on the way. Clever and secretive, he discovers Sita. Gives her the good news. Gets a taste of the action and kills a few baddies. Encounters Ravana in his own den. Escapes unscathed. His tail is up, in fire, and sets Lanka on fire, too!

Change to the scene of the great battle. Lakshmana in the throes of death. What does Hanuman do? Leaps across to Himalayas, lifts a whole mountain, and is back before day-break.

Incredible action! Impossible challenges. Herioc Missions. The original Mission Impossible Hero was Hanuman!

Pichai vs. Nadella

Now that Google has chosen as CEO Mr. Pichai, the juggernaut wins my Indian attention.
It's now Pichai vs. Nadella, the battle of giants.
Kozhumbu fights gongura, or is it
Biryani pitted against thayir sadam?
One guy searches well,  the other opens my windows.
My choice is still confused. Google cloud etc. is always underwhelming me as a user. And Windows 10 didn't install on my PC despite much hoopla and emails promising me the best.
Neither Google nor Microsoft really know what to do with India, but Facebook of everything fame is their common enemy. Maybe things will settle when Zuckerberg names a Khosla or Singh as the new CEO. And Apple becomes Mango under a new boss who speaks Konkani. Let everything then cook in the tandoor!

God is an NRI

God is an NRI. Actually it is such an obvious truth that I don't even have to say it.

An NRI lives in a place other than India and comes for much-celebrated short visits. Reminds me of Ganesh Chaturthi, Durga Puja, Christmas and Janmashtami. Right? God is an NRI.

Where God lives, you have blue skies, bluer waters, flower and fruit filled gardens and smooth pathways where stylish vehicles glide carrying angelic beings. That's right, God lives elsewhere than in India.

In India we have ungodly filth, poverty, corruption and exploitation . Rotten people running our lives with ill-gotten wealth and ill-concealed incompetence. No God here!

When God comes, we celebrate with noisy joy and heap fabulous hospitality on Him in return for trinkets. Sounds like an NRI,  right?

The arrival of an NRI is at inconvenient hours, and when they emerge, there is hardly any resemblance to the selfies posted on Facebook. These fair weather visitors are here for the good food, good clothes, happy shopping and attention of doting people. They brag about how the 8ft snow pile in their frontyard was cleared in a jiffy on barely a thought (it means a mere phone call) by wondrous beings and wonderful machinery. It all sounds unbelievably like heaven and we imagine, what a mountain of ice-cream to eat! Sounds like where God lives, right?

Have you wondered why our godmen soon acquire a fake foreign accent and look listlessly as they focus their grace exclusively on their NRI bhaktas? Obviously they are in close touch with God.

Have you wondered why 90% of the time Modi is calling on NRIs to come and make in India,  believe in India, be proud of India? He is secretly saying all these things as a prayer to God.

Did you know crossing the ocean is a time honoured metaphor in India for becoming an NRI? Or becoming one with God?

Don't wait for God. Fix your life. Don't save the mangoes,  jackfruit, pickle and sandige for that elusive guest from far away. Enjoy it while you're here. Let's show what we can do here. God help us!