Sreeram Srinivasan

You know affluence in the country is up when....... 1. You see grown ups wearing designer shorts in important public places..... 2. There are at least 3 houses in your neighbourhood that have eitherexteriors painted with Lavender or bright green or very dark yellow. 3. People own cars with seating capacity twice that of number ofmembers in their house 3a. People have a driver even for their 800 cc car. 3b. People have 2 kids and put their names in italics on the backglassof their cars! 4. People drive their cars to holiday destinations that are even 1500 km away. 4a. But..... take a flight for destinations that are just 300 km away. 5. The per capita consumption of country liquor drops in favour of Rumand eventually Rum consumption drops in favour of Beer. 5a. The per capita consumption of vegetables drops in favour of fish and eggs and in time the consumption of fish and eggs drops in favourof chicken (broiled!). 5b. The per capita consumption of til oil goes up and is soon replaced b...

Blessed is this Mighty land  with its diversity,  a large human pool,  Greatness so near, let's build roads to  send even little girls off to school.  Country so rich, what it spends on  primary education so miniscule,  Give it all we can, let's build roads to  send even little girls off to school.  A headstart essential, to catch 'em  early, set them on their goal,  Delay no further, let's build roads to  send even little girls off to school.  Every child so special, tap into  ‘em  turn ‘em into a truly timeless jewel  by timely nurture, let's build roads to  send even little girls off to school.  Can't learn only from hard knocks,  teach 'em on a structured schedule,  to secure future, let's build roads to  send even little girls off to school.  Rural schools haven't even a teacher,  for the children, isn't that so cruel,  Nurture mentors,...

Ever wondered why so many brilliant people, celebrities, other famous people turn out to be, almost uncannily, from mixed parentages (let's call them hybrids for simplicity)? Now now.... I know many of you are saying, "hey, wait a minute".... but look around and you will see for yourself. When I first came across this some years back I felt the hybrids simply try harder to make it in life to get over their apparent "handicap". I call it handicap b'cos many countries / communities do discriminate or even ostracize children of mixed parentage. But look carefully and you will find that while that is true for any successful person, these hybrids certainly stand out in their abilities. The early example is the story of the "Brahma Bull" in the ranches of western US. Apparently, bulls from India were brought in in mid to late 19th centuries to cross-breed with cows in the US to have hybrid cattle that had better resistance to disease, heat and pests. Let...

The past week has been an eventful one for outrageous news items andso I thought it was a good time to pen down some thoughts. History has been unkind to men. It remembers all the outrageous menthat walked this planet. Could be the various Asuras we know from theyore to Atilla the Hun to Mohammed Ghaznis to modern day dictatorslike Franco, Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler. The saga continues to thisday with the ever growing list of the infamous - Zia ul Haq, SaddamHussain, Prabhakaran of LTTE, Osama bin Laden and more recentlyIranian President Ahmadinejad. Sports has also thrown up its own kingsof the Outrageous like tennis aces Ilie Nastase, Jimmy Connors, JohnMcEnroe, Andre Agassi in their heydeys. Even the Gentlemen's game hasthrown up its share of outrageous men of the likes of Douglas Jardine,Intekhab Alam, Javed Miandad, Harbhajan Singh, and the ever (in)famous Sreesanth. There is also this anecdote about the suave General Manekshaw remarking to Mrs. Gandhi the then PM in a high-...

I continue with my theme that we as a Nation could laugh a little more at ourselves and also wonder at how amazingly similar we all are across the 28 states + 7 UTs. (Disclaimer: We have in history several famous titles with the word "minute" in them like "60 minutes", "New York Minute", "90 minutes at Entebbe" etc. Nevertheless, the title of this is not intended to be either thought provoking or in the same league as above!!! ) Travel across this country and u will find we are always "a bit late" but somehow we are always only "2 minutes" away. Call up the milk or paper guy in the morning and he is just 2 minutes away. Call him back 15 minutes later and he is still 2 minutes away. Wonder if Albert Einstein would be proud of this patron of his relativity theory or would it be Heisenberg - to see our common Indians prove his uncertainty principle each day. You live through the day and it is the taxi or the driver of your car, ...

We the people of India deserve a column, in my view, and hence this. While we are so diverse from North to South, East to West, the ethos we share across this 1 billion+ strong expanse are more or less the same and the bungle as well...... So if we can laugh at ourselves a lot more, I feel we will become a great country yet again but only faster. So I decided to compile some of our most interesting (stupid?) practices. It never surprises me how we are all so uncannily similar across these 3.2 million sq kilometers of spread. Here goes.... So you know you are in India if 1. housewives put toothpaste in their husband's and children's toothbrushes in the morning only to reduce paste consumption by the wonderfully unique and patentable "squeeze and pull" technqiue!! 2. you have at least one red+white hand-woven towel in your house 3. you always meld the last little "paper thin" piece of old bath-soap to the new one you just unwrapped 4. you always block the en...

We, the people of India or Indians or desis, are a proud lot and there are certainly enough reasons to be (and enough not to be as well). Historically, our country has been the purveyor of knowledge, of discoveries, and even some very clever inventions and innovations to this World. However, I daresay, we as a country have never been known for our punctuality or for our ability to meet time targets in anything we do. We seem to be always late..... We somehow simply and mysteriously "hasten slowly" as a nation... Let us analyse this.... Are we constantly late because we are not industrious enough? Do we dither? Do we procrastinate? Do we make haste and end up tripping over ourselves? Or do we simply don't care for time? My sense is none of above (but some of you may make a case for "a li'l of all the above!"). I feel as a country we are so brilliant a people that we start to build, at least in our minds, a "Rolls Royce" even for the simplest of ta...