The Weird Indian

A Newbie Husband's Guide to Dealing with Women

2011-11-11T07:54:00.004+05:30

As a man who's been married for a year now, I've gleaned some insights into dealing with women that I thought I should share. You may have read these before and you may be arriving at them on your own. But if your'e a complete noob who's having trouble, I'm hoping this will go at least some small way towards helping you along. If you disagree or have something to add, feel free to comment. In particular, I do realize that my exposure has only been to a small fraction of womankind and so if I'm over-generalizing, I'd like to know. If you have reinforcing impressions after your experiences with women, I'd like to know as well.

1. In conversations, women speak with their heart not their mind.

When a man engages in conversation, there's a linear flow usually stemming from logic. Women don't talk like that. They weigh and judge what you say not just from the content, but how you say it, your body language when you say it, your tone, your look, everything. I would say, the content may not even matter if the rest is right.

When I quarreled with my wife in the early days, I would be saying the nicest things, in some cases admitting her point or trying to get us both to agree we were wrong and move forward, but since we'd be in the middle of a fight, my tone would be all wrong or I would be speaking loudly rather than softly. And this to her would mean I was fighting back.

So men, whatever you do, speak calmly and lovingly with your wife. Even if you're disagreeing or fighting back or explaining to her your own point, tone, volume, body language will mean to her that you still love her, and that is when she will finally weigh the actual content of your words. The moment you lose control of these others and go into male-style fighting mode, you will have lost her engagement in the discussion.

Also, when I speak her these days, I too engage my heart a lot more than my mind. So the discussion may be completely devoid of logic or any kind of connecting logical flow, but to her, it's a loving discussion. In the appropriate circumstances, let the heart lead your voice when talking to her. Engage your mind when making your decisions obviously, but engage your heart when discussing them with her, or conveying them to her. This makes a huge difference to making her feel closer to you.

Because one engages one's heart, the discussion also has no flow or logical structure the way us men are used to. But that is completely okay. Have a meandering conversation with her, saying whatever your heart feels, or listen to what she says and she will get closer to you.

2. Women feel better when they let it all out.

As a man, when I have a problem, or there's something that's bothering me, I see no point in going on and on about it since that's not going to solve anything. Instead, I go quiet, find a place I can be by myself, focus on the problem, weigh it and try and come up with a resolution.

Women cannot keep what's bothering them bottled up. It drives them nuts. They have to let it all out. Talking about it and letting it out helps them examine each thread of what's bothering them and let go of it. The solution is not the goal when they're doing this. It's purely to let the pressure out. When women are in this state, that's the time they need your support the most. I try to just listen to my wife while she lets it out. Sometimes this venting involves blaming me, calling me or my family names, taunting me and lots of other extremely provocative things that seem designed to make me yell at her or call her names. In the early days, this is exactly what I used to do. But these days, I've instead decided that one of us needs to be the mature one here. I've weighed how my life is with and without her and decided the positives outweigh the negatives. As a result, I decided to take the high road and calmly, with loving tone and voice and body language, explained my side of the issue. Quite a few times, this appears to have no effect on her and she goes on venting. I've learned that this is quite normal and that the effect of my words will manifest itself only she's let it all out. It has become evident that all the things I say, as long as I say them right, *do* have an effect but only over time and that the effect will manifest later (see point 4).

As times like these (particularly during their monthly time), they value your support immensely. If you are their rock, standing by while they vent and scream and work it out of their system, they will love you more than anything else. Knowing this, it's become super-easy to endure this since I don't take any of it personally.

Another point to keep in mind is that until something completely resolves itself in her mind or is worked out her system, it will keep coming up again and again in the next session. This is why it's helpful to be her rock and help her let it out. Listen carefully and really sympathize with the right words, and it will help her a lot. It will also help her get something completely out so that you don't have to be bother with it again.

3. Over-grown children

In a lot of ways, women are like over-grown children. You may have read this elsewhere and admittedly, it's a sexist thing to say. But to balance it, I'll say that in many ways, men too have their childish ways.

Women love gifts. They love surprises. They take it personally if someone doesn't wish them on their special days or doesn't give them a gift when they feel they deserve it. They judge people's goodness and worth based on gifts given and received.

Women keep score in all their relationships. They keep track of who's given them what and what they've given them. Who has invited them and what was made that day for food, how the occasion, who else was invited. Slights are never forgotten and will be paid back in equal measure at some point in future through some means.

Women need protection and caring. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. I read recently that when a man engages in a relationship with a woman, hormones kick in that build up the protective caring instinct in him and these hormones are part of what make a man a man. As a man, I love making my wife feel safe, loved and secure. It just makes me feel good.

4. When they're venting or fighting, what you tell them may appear to have no impact but it actually does and its effect manifests over time. Once they've resolved all the issues, they will retain what you said to them, good or bad. If it's bad, it will bubble up in a future venting or fight session so that it can be worked out of their system. If it's good, it will benefit you as they will give back the positivity in good times. My lesson from this has been that in fights, always say positive things. Because the negative things will not win points, but in fact cost you in the next venting session.

5. Women perceive more than men and have better memory than us

Things that have completely escaped me, of how people behave or how people are, things that I do that I didn't even realize, my wife perceives. It is said that this is because women observe much more than men. They don't only focus on a speaker's content for instance but the whole picture - how he or she is standing, behaving, their tone, volume, their actions everything. This tells them much much more about what's going on than us men who typically will only focus on the words to get the gist of what the speaker is trying to say. I've also noticed that my wife has an amazing memory. And researching it, I've found that women in general have better memories than men. My wife remembers the minutest details of what happened 12 months ago at a particular instant in time, who said what, who was wearing what, the exact words that were said etc. She remembers exactly where she has put her particular set of earrings 12 months ago. Kinda mind-blowing! And this is why I've learned not to argue with her memory because I don't even remember what I wore yesterday or who said what, usually not even if I met a particular person or not unless I try and recall if there was something of significance that happened with the person. In discussions with her, I never argue about something that happened. I just say I wasn't aware that had happened, and if it's something she's hurt / venting about, I sympathize with her. This does wonders.

I've received some comments about this post saying that they've managed to "shut their wife's yapping" or something to that effect. I would say that you may definitely have shut her up but you've also probably started your wife down on the road to depression. This is what typically happens to women when they can't express themselves the way I've described - they lose the ability to love and that usually concludes in depression.

Marriage has become much smoother after learning these things. And I hope to learn even more going forward.

21st century India hitting 20th century roadblocks

2010-12-20T15:12:00.008+05:30

The announcement that the Planning Commission envisions spending ₹4500 crore ($1 trillion) in the 12th Plan (the period from 2012-2017) on basic civic infrastructure – roads, airports, ports, power plants – comes as welcome news to citizens who encounter the early 20th century every time they step out of their houses and attempt to drive or fly or flip a light switch and to investors attempting to set up shop here. The RBI plans to assist by developing a strong corporate bond market for infrastructure financing. Infrastructure is key to propelling Indian growth into the double digits. What the Planning Commission is promising here is effectively a "Marshall Plan"-scale effort to reduce the infrastructure deficit while providing collateral benefits. The spending will not only boost growth and reduce inflation (as transport costs will go down) but will also result in the creation of millions of new jobs and new businesses. (Tip: Investing in global infrastructure majors – cement, steel, construction – might be worthwhile at this time as this Indian spending bonanza boosts these sectors worldwide).

The problems with Indian infrastructure are many since the country has underinvested in this area for the last 60 years. Just one 5-Year Plan is unlikely to fix everything, but it should improve things.

Here in Mumbai, while we do get 24 hour electricity unlike the rest of India, other infrastructure is severely lacking. Roads are choked with millions of new vehicles as everyone, from dhobis and maids to the fisherwomen, buys new cars, scooters and motorcycles with their new-found money. Road development and public transport is lagging far behind. The new rapid-transit metro lines are behind schedule – the Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar phase is now expected to run its first train end of 2011! And the other phases are still having their precise routes decided, and haven't even started with the land acquisition and environmental clearances. In the meantime, everyone's pouring out onto the streets in their scooties and cars and going every which way whenever they find a stretch of road. Roads are cemented these days and they tend to last for many monsoons, but the old ones which are still essentially just a splattering of tar are more pothole than road and provide an experience in bone rearrangement as one gets jostled around while the vehicle stumbles over the tar splatterings.

Airports are chock-a-block too, as Laloo's promise of high-speed-rail in India hasn't materialized and so everyone's flying instead. Even the new airports being built all over are expected to run out of capacity within 5 years! Landing into Mumbai these days means an hour or so of cycling overhead waiting for landing slot – the airport is choking under the deluge. And the number of gates and capacity of the airport buildings is woefully inadequate as well. Massive improvements needed here. In order to distribute the passenger load, the railways would do well to compete better as well. High-speed-rail would be a great environmentally-friendly way of transport for the new India. Imagine covering the 1180 km from Mumbai to Delhi in under 5 hours without the hassle associated with flying! Or doing the 3600 km from Srinagar to Kanyakumari in less than a day. China is planning a pan-Asian high-speed-rail network to improve connectivity and trade and is hoping to rope India in (news item). Essentially trains would run from Mumbai to Shanghai via Thailand and Indochina. Getting on board this project would benefit India a lot. But it needs a domestic network in parallel.

Finally, the story of power in India is a sad one. We're one of the most power-deficient countries in the world. All of India, aside from metropolitan regions like Mumbai, see at least a day of blackouts and brownouts every single week. The loss in productivity and GDP is unimaginable. India is literally dying of thirst for power. There are both economic and geopolitical risks associated with foreign oil (gas pipelines going through places like Pakistan and Afghanistan can be blown up by Islamic radicals, oil prices are highly volatile). Solar, wind and nuclear power are the safe clean alternatives that reduce dependence on foreign oil and are environmentally friendly (the pollution in India these days is a common concern and one needs no advocacy for environmentalism in this country today). The plans for augmenting nuclear power in particular are very bold. Today, India is not a pariah in nuclear trade. We have pacts with the US, France, Russia and other countries and this is an extremely promising area. France has 70% of its power coming from nuclear, and consequently has the best air quality in Europe. India would do well to follow this example. The Jaitapur protests are a pointer that the concerns of the local population will need to be addressed before the country builds these plants all over willy-nilly.

India is somewhat where China was 10 years ago. It had a severe infrastructure deficit that threatened growth. It launched a massive infrastructure drive that launched the country into double-digit overdrive. While India has many more challenges when it comes to infrastructure development, due to the democratic nature of decision-making and planning in our country, it is refreshing to see infrastructure getting this kind of attention at last after decades of neglect and one hopes the Plan will be able to achieve at least part of its vision over the next five years.

सुखाचं मंत्र

2010-12-11T11:22:00.003+05:30

This is making the email chain rounds and for once, it's both worth reading and forwarding. Very well written by Dr. Vijaya Vad.

चला सुखी होऊया…

१) रोज दहा ते तीस मिनिटे मोकळ्या हवेत चाला आणि हो! अगदी सुहास्यवदनाने.
२) रोज किमान दहा मिनिटे स्तब्ध…शांत राहा. एका जागी! शांत!
३) रोज ७ तास शांत झोप काढा. शांत झोप…सुखाचा मूलमंत्र!
४) जगताना तीन गोष्टी नेहमी लक्षात ठेवा, स्फूर्ती, उत्साह आणि दिलदारी.
५) रोज थोडे तरी खेळा. मनोविनोदन होईल.
६) गेल्या वर्षापेक्षा मी थोडीतरी अधिक पुस्तके वाचीन असा निश्चय करा.
७) खूप मुबलक पाणी प्या. पाणी म्हणजे जीवन!
८) फळे, फळभाज्या, पालेभाज्या असे शेतातले, बागेतले, डोंगरावरले पदार्थ रोज पोटात जाऊ देत. थोडे समुद्रातलेही! तन सुखी तो मन सुखी!
९) जरूर लक्षात घ्या की सकाळचा नाश्ता राजासारखा, जेवण राजकुमारासारखे नि रात्रीचे जेवण मात्र भिकारऱ्यासारखे असावे! म्हणजे काय राव? नाश्ता दमदमीत. दुपारची लंच राजस; पण रात्रीचे जेवण मात्र अगदी अगदी थोडे, पुरते तेवढेच. कारण झोपेत कुठलीच शारीरिक हालचाल नसते.
१०) रोज ध्यानधरणा करा. प्रार्थना करा. आपल्या धावपळीच्या, दगदगीच्या जीवनांत तेच एक इंधन आहे जे सुख-शांती-समाधान देईल.
११) जागेपणी स्वप्न बघा. त्याचा ध्यास घ्या. त्यांच्या पूर्तीसाठी प्रयत्न करा.
१२) खूप आनंदी राहा. हसून खेळून, मिळून मिसळून! आप चंगा… तो जग चंगा.
१३) एक नियमच करून टाका. रोज मी किमान तीन लोकांच्या ओठांवर स्मितहास्य फुलवेन.
१४) आपले चैतन्य, आपली बहुमोल ऊर्जा लोकांबद्दल वायफळ बोलण्यात, त्यांची कुचेष्टा करण्यात वाया घालवू नका.
१५) ज्या गोष्टी आपल्या अखत्यारित नाहीत, ज्या परिस्थितीस तुम्ही बदलू शखत नाही त्याबद्दल दुःख करीत बसू नका. त्यापेक्षा माझे वर्तमान कसे सुधारता येईल, ते पहा.
१६) ७० वर्षांवरील वृद्ध माणसे आणि ६ वर्षांखालील छोटी मुले यांच्यासमवेत दिवसातील थोडातरी वेळ नियमित घालवा. वृद्धांना जगण्याची उमेद द्याल नि छोट्यांकडून ऊर्जा घ्याल!
१७) हे जीवन फार छोटे आहे. दुसऱ्याचा हेवा, मत्सर, द्वेष करण्याइतके खचितच मोठे नाही.
१८) स्वतःचा फार गंभीरपणे विचार करू नका. इतरांना तुमची काही पडलेली नाही. ते तुमचा इतका विचार अजिबात करीत नाहीत.
१९) भूतकाळातील अप्रिय घटना विसरून जा. आपल्या जोडीदाराला त्याच्या भूतकाळातील चुकांसाठी टोकणे, चटकन लागेलसे बोलणे, टोचत राहणे सोडून द्या. त्यामुळे आपला जोडीदार पुन्हा पुन्हा दुखावला जाईल आणि आपले वर्तमान बिघडेल. त्याचे काय हो! सो? लॉक द पास्ट, एन्जॉय द प्रेझेंट!
२०) रोज विद्यार्थी शाळेत जातात. जीवन ही आपली शाळा समजा. एनी प्रॉब्लेम? अहो तो बिजगणिताचा तास समजा. एखादा प्रॉब्लेम नाही सुटला तरी तास संपतो! संपते ना? पण त्यातून आपण काहीतरी धडा शिकतोच! तसेच जीवन आहे. काही समस्या सुटत नाहीत; पण त्यातून मिळालेल्या धड्याने आपण शहाणे होतो हेही नसे थोडके!
२१) प्रत्येक वेळी तुम्हीच कसे जिंकणार? इतरांनाही थोडी संधी द्या ना!
२२) दुसऱ्याच्या आयुष्याशी आपली तुलना नको. त्याचे वरवरचे सुखविलास पाहून मत्सरग्रस्त होऊ नका. तो आतून काय 'भोगतोय', काय 'सोसतोय' ते तुम्हास कोठे ठाऊक आहे?
२३) क्षमाशस्त्र ज्याचे हाती त्यास काय तोटा? आनंदाच्या वाटा शोधा आनंदाच्या वाटा!…क्षमाशील झालात की सुखाची रांगोळी आपल्याच दारात!…
२४) दुःखाचे, तणावाचे दिवस आहेत? संपतील राजा! परिस्थिती कायम बदलत राहाते. लाल सिग्नल नंतर हिरवा येतोच की!
२५) तुमच्या आयुष्यातला सर्वोत्तम काळ अजून यायचा आहे! हे धरा मनी. पहा… कसे आशादायी नि प्रसन्न वाटेल.
२६) तुमचे कुटुंब तुमचा सर्वात मोठा आधारस्तंभ आहे. त्यांना प्राधान्य द्या.
२७) काय वाटेल तो पसंग येवो! धैर्य सोडू नका. उठा, उत्तम वेश परिधान करा व धैर्यांने जगास सामोरे जा.
२८) तुमचा आत्मा सुखी आहे! मग तुम्ही दुःखी? का? कशासाठी? सुखी राहा.
२९) हे सारं आवडलं ना? मग आपल्या आवडत्या मित्रांना कळवा जरूर! मला हा सुखाचा संदेश माझ्या आवडत्या मित्रानेच पाठवलाय जो मी आवडत्या वाचकांपर्यंत पोहोचविलायं! बी हॅपी!

Salute to Rahat Taslim

2010-12-07T11:58:00.018+05:30

Nothing gladdens one's heart more than a story of one woman's courage and determination to make it despite all odds. Rahat Taslim's winning the ₹1,00,00,000 (Rs. 1 crore!) grand prize in the 4th season of Kaun Banega Crorepati (India's version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire") is one such story. With her win, she's catapulted herself into the history books. She's the first and only woman to win the grand prize in all of KBC's four seasons. And thus far, the only winner in KBC4.

And her story makes one leap for joy! Rahat is from a very small town called Giridih in Jharkhand, one of the most backward and destitute states in India. Her mom thought her to be unlucky because she was born a girl. In spite of being very intelligent and smart and with grand ambitions, being from a Muslim family, she was married off at 18 and had two children in quick succession. She still graduated with honors with a BA after her marriage, while juggling house and kids and a side-business. With a fire still inside her, she studied for two government exams which she was prevented from appearing for because her husband did not want a working wife. She settled for being a housewife but still ran a tailoring school business which supplemented her husband's meager ₹8000 a month salary. Her husband worked in Kochi while she and kids lived in Giridih. They were barely scraping by running two houses and bringing up kids on his salary and the small income from her business. But Rahat had bigger dreams. On an off-chance, just as the lines were about to close, when she happened to have ₹3 worth of talktime on her phone, she decided to call up KBC to try her luck. She was quite confident she would know the answer and when asked a question about Hindu mythology, she made it in and was asked to come for an audition in Mumbai. All contestants were told they had to have a bank account and a PAN card to participate. Rahat had never had a bank account nor did she have a PAN card (a taxpayer ID card in India) and the first thing Rahat had to do when she got back from Mumbai was to open a bank account in her own name and file for a PAN card. The rest is history. On the show, filmed on November 8th and aired on the 18th, she made it to the hot seat in the nick of time before the week ended, struggled in the beginning, but made it after using her lifelines very intelligently. And beyond the ₹3.2 lakh mark, she breezed through the questions. Asked later, she said she really knew all the answers as she'd studied hard and was up-to-date on current affairs. With a final answer on who was the first African woman president, she won the big prize of ₹1 crore, catapulting herself into the history books and immediately becoming a nationwide celebrity.

Watching her on the show and afterwards, one senses a humble, genial and very straightforward woman who has become the toast of the Nation, a symbol for Indian women, a path for economic movement for the underprivileged, a lesson in how life should be lived and a heartening story for the New India establishing intelligence, smarts and merit as the path to success. Madhuri Dixit, appearing on this Tuesday's KBC, said the first thing she wanted on the show was to meet the woman who has made all Indian women beam with pride. Rahat doesn't appear to have realized (it probably hasn't sunk in yet) just what she has achieved, the full significance of what she has done and why she is now a household name and a celebrity in India. One wishes her the most success for her future plans to use the ₹67 lakh (post-tax) wisely to open a clothes boutique as a designer, and her wish to spend the money on giving her kids a good education. One hopes her husband will support her and not prevent her from the grand things she's envisioning for herself and their family.

Rahat Taslim, I salute you!

An Asia with a different Pakistan

2010-11-16T10:44:00.005+05:30

Following the Pak media these days, just out of curiosity and interest, I've come across articles that express worry about being left behind as the rest of Asia powers on with high economic growth, led by the twin engines of India and China. And I felt I needed to express, in the hope that Pakistanis read this and see what is possible, how I've always been baffled at how Pakistan has squandered all the opportunities it has for becoming a prosperous country at peace with itself and its neighbors, and I've tried to see what could have been and could still be, were Pakistan a different country devoid of its twin self-destructive obsessions of Islam and hatred for India/Hindus.

As a premise: Imagine that Pakistan was not a fanatic Muslim country with a raison-d'être of being not-India. Imagine that each and every one of their policies was not about being anti-India - whether it was controlling Afghanistan to gain strategic depth against India, the nature of their budget-spending or obsessing over territorial issues.

From my Mumbaikar perspective, such a country would have been and could still be a paradise on earth.

1. It has vast natural resources and a relatively small population (imagine the population is not Islam-obsessed). This makes for a great combination to launch a modern educated country.

2. It is geostrategically well-situated. Imagine freeways and railways allowing people to drive or travel from Mumbai to Paris, and on to Indo-China and China. In fact, until the 60s, it used to be commonplace to travel by road between Germany and India. We used to get European tourists all the time who had traveled by road via Greece-Turkey-Iran-Pakistan. The attendant economic benefits to Pakistan would be enormous in terms of tolls, roadside malls, eateries where people would stop to shop and eat, leading to employment for Pakistanis, a construction boom, lower prices and better products due to speedy transport of goods, and tax for the Pak state, not to mention that the country would be well-integrated into the global economy. India and China are building highway and railway systems connecting the two via Indo-China. There is no reason why these should not be extended to West Asia and Europe. It is a known fact that the American freeway system built in the 50s led to massive economic growth by creating new employment opportunities and speeding up the transport of people and goods.

And of course, Pakistan would also stand to get a lot of revenue from ushering gas from West Asia to energy-thirsty countries like India.

3. Pakistan's upper reaches like the Swat and Neelam valleys could easily become Asian tourism destinations, dare I say, akin to Switzerland in Europe.

4. As a neighbor to India, Pakistan has such a gigantic and hungry market right next door for all kinds of goods that it produces from simple foodgrains to sophisticated stuff like automobiles. Again, leading to huge employment and prosperity for Pakistanis.

5. Kashmir could become a place that Pakistanis could visit just by driving over or taking a bus or train, like they used to before Partition.

6. Pakistan would be standing shoulder to shoulder with India, China, Indonesia etc as we define the Asian future and secure the interests of developing countries that we all are.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that were Pakistanis to leave (or had they left) their anti-India obsession aside, as well as their state's mission to impose supremacy of Islam on all of us non-Muslims (and let's not be under any illusion that this isn't exactly what is being attempted), it could very easily (have) become a paradise on earth and a model to emulate for the rest of the developing world. The early years were a pointer that this was a possibility. So much time has been wasted for absolutely no reason, fighting a windmill and wallowing in a stupor of Islamic purity. It is really up to Pakistanis to decide if the next 50 years are going to be more of the same.

A dilemma over washing machines

2010-11-15T12:10:00.009+05:30

So it's time for us to buy a new washing machine. And the way the market has exploded these past few years, there's plenty to choose from. For the first time ever, Indians like us have a dilemma of choice. While it doesn't quite make me hark back to a simpler time when there were just 2-3 options to choose from, it does make the prospect of buying a new one a lot more daunting. I wasn't involved in the purchase of the old one which was about 8 years ago, and so I start with scratch on researching this fascinating gadget, and thought I'd post some brief findings here in case it helps some other soul looking for similar info.

Besides the usual differentiators for electronic gadgets (like brand, warranty and support characteristics in India for both domestic and international manufacturers) and specific ones for washing machines like size and features, there are two main types to choose from: front loading and top loading, depending on where the door is.

Secondly, the machine can be an horizontal axis (or h-axis) one or a vertical axis one, depending on how the washing drum in the machine is oriented.

Typically, front-loaders are h-axis machines and top-loaders are v-axis. However, in Europe, particularly in France, top-loading h-axis machines are popular. And my research tells me that they're the best of all worlds.

As distilled from Wikipedia and Google results, front loaders are universally better than top-loaders when it comes to the actual washing. They are ultra-efficient in using water, electricity and detergent. They're also much more gentle on clothes because they use gravity to shake clothes around rather than have a harsh motor-driven agitator that stretches clothes and reduces their lifetime. And they also supposedly result in much cleaner clothes than top-loaders. In addition, because they're capable of much higher rotation speeds than v-axis machines, clothes come out much drier than top-loaders. All these advantages come from the fact that they have h-axis drums.

Front loaders do come in second however, when it comes to ergonomics and price. Because the door is usually low, one needs to kneel or bend to put clothes in or take them out. For elderly people or people with bad backs, this is a deal-killer. They're also generally more expensive than top-loaders – top-loaders start around ₹6000 and front-loaders start around ₹15,000 (check out the latest pre-discount prices at compareindia.in.com/products/washing-machines/). Top-loaders are much better for loading and unloading and for your wallet, though they are a bad deal when it comes to all the other aspects. There are innovations like the Godrej Tilt Drum Washing Machine where the h-axis drum is slightly tilted upward to make it easier to load and unload. I haven't been able to see one of these in person however anywhere in Mumbai - I've hunted for them at Vijay Sales, Croma, Sony Mony and other places all over the City.

Imagine my delight when I found out that there are machines which combine the best of all worlds, the advantages of top-loading with the benefits of an h-axis drum. They're also called top-load h-axis washing machines. Made by Miele or AEG, they're ubiquitous in places like France. Unfortunately, they haven't made it to India. Not yet, anyway.

Researching the world of washing machines, and all the amazing advances made in this technology, seemingly mundane on the surface, has been fun and quite revelatory. While we take them pretty much for granted these days, it's been interesting to delve into the nitty-gritties of how they actually work, and the minutiae of their various features and USPs. As for me, I finally decided to go with a front-loader as I'm too much an environmentalist to reconcile myself with a top-loader v-axis machine. As for the bad back issue, we're going to put the machine up on a platform so that the door is at stomach-height, making it easy to load and unload clothes. A decidedly low-tech, straightforward and Indian solution to the problem :).

Reserve Bank of India to issue ₹10 (10-rupee) polymer notes

2010-10-22T17:53:00.005+05:30

While Googling around for news on the Rupee, I found some interesting articles about how the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been trying to improve the production and distribution of currency. I was surprised to learn that a note only stays in circulation in India for 6 months before it is so dirty, torn or crumbling that it gets turned in to a bank for a replacement with a fresh one. We've all noticed that in the past few years, the number of such mutilated dirty notes that we handle has gone down drastically — none of the notes in the my wallet strikingly enough are in so much as a creased state which was unheard of a few years ago. I used to put this down to luck, but was enlightened by this article about the RBI's Clean Note drive that puts this down to active effort by the RBI than random chance. It also talks about how the coin situation has been drastically improved. In the past, coins used to be Holy Grail material. People would hoard them and would be loathe to part with them. Transactions would end up abandoned because neither party was willing to part with their much-prized 50p, ₹1, or ₹2 coins. While the tendency to hold suspect anyone who hands out a whole amount note expecting coin change in return, as having nefarious designs to finnagle coins out of you is still there due to the history of our experience with the dearth of coins in circulation, it is disappearing due to the abundance of these coins these days, again due to the drive mentioned above which has dramatically improved production capacity. As part of this drive, the lifetime of a banknote has also been extended as banks have been prohibited from stapling notes which they used to do with abandon earlier, leading to mutilated notes being put into circulation right at the bank.

Also interesting and the reason for this post, is that the RBI is expected to issue 100 crore ₹10 (Rs.10) polymer or plastic banknotes by the end of the year (another article about this). These notes have loads of top-of-the-line security features such as the see-through plastic feature seen on Australian notes which is nearly impossible to counterfeit, have much higher durability (RBI estimates a polymer note to last in the Indian market for 5 years as opposed to the 6 months a paper note does), can be washed and are very difficult to tear or otherwise mutilate. It is expected to save the Exchequer ₹580 cr (Rs. 580 cr) per year in production and distribution costs due to the frequent need to replace paper notes. I understand that the polymer technology would need to be licensed from the Reserve Bank of Australia which was the first central bank to introduce and fully convert to polymer notes in order to beat counterfeiters. While there are definitely problems seen in countries like Thailand and Mexico with the print on polymer notes fading in a couple of years, sticky notes being difficult to handle and so on, I'm still looking forward to the ₹10 issue - it's great technology, clean washable notes in my wallet will be a plus, I'm curious to see the design for these new notes, and I wonder how Indians will react to them.

Secularism rules!

2010-10-21T09:37:00.001+05:30

I am so glad that the constituent assembly that wrote the Indian constitution gave us a secular republic. Yes, they did many things wrong - they should have called for a complete reconstruction of the civil services (the police for instance), should have written a uniform civil law and should have called for better structuring of affirmative action policies — but by clearly separating religion from state, they gave India, a country of myriad different religious viewpoints and identities, a stable polity to build on. Debates like this one where Pakistanis endlessly and fascinatingly debate the role of Islam in the country, just bring out in relief (pun intended) just how much Indians have benefited from a secular polity. And I say this, as a practicing Hindu.

Rupee symbol (₹) now part of Unicode

2010-10-19T10:14:00.003+05:30

The newly minted Indian Rupee symbol (₹) is now part of Unicode and has been assigned codepoint U+20B9 in the Currency Symbol block.While we await the OS manufacturers to ship out updates to add this symbol to their system fonts and also make it available for typing in when one installs Indian locales - the Indian government has apparently mandated ^⌥R (Ctrl-Alt-R) as the combination to be used to input the symbol - individual font designers have already come out with easily usable fonts for the symbol at the correct codepoint. The first one to be published is the Rupakara (रूपकारः) font designed by Mr. Michael Everson from Ireland and made available for free via an open licence. You can download it from these locations:

http://www.evertype.com/fonts/rupakara/

http://blog.foradian.com/rupakara-first-font-with-indian-rupee-symbol

To use it on a Macintosh, download the 4 TTF files, select them all and open them in FontBook, and click on "Install Font" to install the font on the system. After you do this, you should be able to see the symbol correctly on any documents or webpages that encode it at the Unicode codepoint U+20B9. As a test, the following sentences should make sense to you and display the symbol correctly:

The evidence of massive runaway inflation is all around us: In Mumbai these days, you can buy a litre of dairy farm milk for ₹36 and a kilo of dahi (Indian yogurt) for ₹60 which is almost double the price a few years ago! Onions have gone from ₹7 a kilo in 2008 to ₹36 today!!
आजकल मुंबई में एक लीटर दूध का भाव ₹३६ है और एक किलो दही का ₹६०, जो कुछ ही सालों के मुक़ाबले दुगना है!
₹36/litre = ~$3.15/gallon @ $1 = ₹43 as of today.

While you can view the symbol, in order to type it, you need to jump through a few more hoops, until Apple releases a keyboard shortcut for the Rupee (ideally, it should be⌥ (Option) followed by some key in keeping with the Mac custom). In the meantime, you have two options:

Use the Unicode Hex Input utility: This allows you to type in Option followed by the codepoint (20B9 in our case) to have the symbol encoded at that codepoint to appear. It's available in the Input Source viewer once you have enabled it through  > System Preferences > Language and Text > Input Sources.
Use the Character Viewer utility to pick out the Rupee symbol and add it to Favorites. Whenever you need to insert the symbol, pick it from the Favorites list and click Insert. You can also use the Clipboard for convenience.

If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to send me a comment. It's quite simple and straightforward, so Enjoy!

Success with making delicious tangy dahi (दही, yogurt) at home!

2009-02-23T02:57:00.003+05:30

I miss having home-made dahi, that staple of Indian meals. I've been making do with Pavel's Russian plain yogurt which comes very close though the consistency is thicker than our dahi, and Verka Dahi, which again is thicker and sweeter than the home-made variety.

I made one unsuccessful attempt to make it at home using the culture from Verka. There were three possible reasons why it went wrong:

I microwaved the milk too much - it had boiled over.
I didn't cool it enough - it tried the finger in hot milk for 10 seconds test and at the 8th second, my finger was burning hot but I mixed in the culture anyway. I probably ended up killing the yogurt bacteria.
I didn't maintain the temperature of the container between 100 and 120°F for 8 hours.

I think the 3^rd reason is likely the largest contributor to the failure. The problem is I didn't quite know how to maintain the container at the said temperature; what to use to do this. I considered a few possibilities. A crockpot that can stay warm for hours on end, a toaster oven that I'd set up to stay on at the lowest temperature (which was 150°F unfortunately), the big oven that I'd preheat to 350° and then keep the light on. I wanted something convenient so that I could repeat this forever with minimal trouble. There are directions on the web on keeping ovens within the said temperature but they require one to constantly adjust the settings so the oven doesn't get too cool or too hot, and I was looking for something that did its job overnight. Finally, I settled on a ceramic bowl inside one of those soft thermal lunch bags. I moved the contraption inside my heated room so that the thermal bag didn't have to work too hard. Next morning, I went and looked and it looked like the culture had died too soon because there was a layer of curdled milk on top but the rest of the milk was untouched though slightly sour.

Well, yesterday, I decided to try again. This time around, instead of 300 ml (~10 oz) of good fresh milk, I chose a small glass of milk (about 150 ml, 5 oz), wholefat and non-homogenized, since if it didn't set again, I didn't want to waste so much milk. And besides, I figured that it'd be easier and more likely for bacteria to work on a smaller volume of milk in potentially inhospitable conditions. Microwaved it for about 1 minute 40 seconds at which point the milk had steamed but not boiled over. Then, I made sure to cool the milk enough. I didn't mix it with culture until I could keep my finger in the milk very comfortably for 10 seconds. Once it had cooled to this point, I poured a bit of milk into a separate bowl and mixed it with about 2 heaped teaspoons of yogurt (containing live cultures). And then poured this starter into the glass and stirred lightly so that the culture was well-spread-out through the milk. Remembering a tip from my mom, I lightly rubbed some of the yogurt on the sides of the glass. I set up a heating pad at medium, put the glass (with cover) on it, then rolled the pad over so it covered the glass, and also bundled the glass with towels to preserve the heat. I didn't touch the contraption until morning. The key, I hear, is to not disturb setting yogurt and let the bacteria work their wonder in peace or you will end up with runny yogurt. When I went to check in the morning, what I found was a delicious well-set glass of dahi. Spooning out a morsel, I was amazed to find that it had a nice, subtle tangy taste, the kind we have with home-made dahi in India. I'm overjoyed with this success, and especially because it seems like this could be repeated - there was nothing that was awkward to set up or left to chance.

I've had a nice glassful of delicious yogurt today, with just the taste I like. I've taken out a couple of spoonfuls to use as the starter for tomorrow's glassful. Hope this experience helps others who're experimenting with home-made dahi too.

CrockPot™-cooked Butter Chicken (मुर्ग़ माखनी)

2009-02-17T00:01:00.000+05:30

I'm a recent introductee to the CrockPot™ - the slow cooker that cooks at low heat for hours. There are so many delicious Indian recipes that require low-heat simmering for long periods of time, that the CrockPot should be perfect for them. The one that comes first to mind is Biryani. It requires low-simmering for a day in order for the food to deeply absorb the subtle taste and result in the wonderful flavor we all know as Hyderabadi Dum Biryani. Well, since I'm not too well-versed in the usage of the CrockPot, I'm going to go with this recipe of Butter Chicken (Murgh Makhani मुर्ग माखनी) that seems to be presented by a slow-cooker expert. I will report back in a few days once I've tried it out.

Bliss! Goodbye to "Lactose Intolerance" …

2009-02-16T11:40:00.000+05:30

I love milk. Whether it's simple hot milk spiced with saffron, almonds and elaichi. Or a rich creamy basundi or kheer. And I've been deprived of it since I came to the US. In the US, what is sold in stores is something called pasteurized homogenized milk. It's milk made by Holstein cows who're fed corn and grains (not something cows digest naturally without antibiotics - you can read all about how animals are treated in this country under factory farming techniques by doing a Google search). The milk is then pasteurized and homogenized - homogenization involves pulverizing the cream on top under high pressure so that the fat molecules get suspended and uniformly distributed across the milk. Homogenization single-handedly destroys the taste of the milk, turning it from the delicious brew we enjoy in India to a yucky-tasting insipid and watery beverage. Apparently, there was massive negative reaction to homogenization when it was first introduced in the US, because the milk just tastes so obviously bad when it's homogenized. If only taste were my only problem with milk in America. For whatever reason, drinking milk here used to make me ill. One glass of milk and I'd run to the restroom with diarrhea. The symptom suggested 'lactose intolerance'. People with lactose intolerance have digestive systems that can't handle lactose which is found in ordinary milk. But to label someone like me, who has been drinking cow and buffalo milk since toddler age, 'lactose intolerant' seemed baffling and a bit unbelievable to me. Regardless, I stopped drinking milk with all the adverse consequences - I started falling sick more often, lost my digestive immunity and just had problems with food all round.

That is, until some American friends of mine suggested I try local dairy milk, made from cows that are grazed on grass and hay, the ruminants' natural food. This legendary milk was non-homogenized to boot. It came in glass milk bottles with the cream on top. And you returned the bottles to the store after use so they could be recycled. With memories of my beloved dairy farm milk floating in my mind, and with a twinkle of hope in my eye, I went to Whole Foods the very next day and got this all-natural organic cream-on-top, grass-grazed-cow milk produced by Straus' Family Creamery. And discovered heaven :). I swear by this milk. The milk is fresh, with natural cream on top (you can mix it in by shaking if you want, though I love scooping the cream out and topping my cereal with it - yummy!). I get the pasteurized version (for safety), but they also sell raw milk, the kind we get in India from farmers and that we heat to boiling almost immediately before refrigerating. And the most amazing thing of all - I can drink oodles of it without any digestive problems. I don't really know what it is about the milk. Is it the diet of the cows? Is it the non-homogenized nature of it? All I know is that I can drink milk again. And boy, has it restored my health! I'm glowing with health again. All my digestive problems have disappeared (well, skipping HFCS and partially-hydrogenated fats seemed to have helped as well). Woohoo! There's just nothing like being able to drink milk again!

US Postal Service switching to new mail barcodes

2009-02-16T06:09:00.000+05:30

So I just found out that the USPS (United States Postal Service) is about to switch over to a new barcode system called the Intelligent Mail barcode. Thus far, we've all been familiar with the POSTNET barcode. We find it on all our mail. Sometimes, even the sender's ZIP is encoded in POSTNET (for quicker returns, I suppose). When I first discovered these barcodes, I experimented with mail trying to see if barcoded mail really is routed faster - it is; OCR'ing handwritten addresses at source before they're barcoded does indeed add delay. Most word processing programs (Word is the most common - use Insert > Field > Numbering > Barcode or check "Add Delivery Point Barcode" in the Labels dialog) allow one to generate POSTNET barcodes without any problems. Snail Mail is another program that handles envelope printing with barcodes quite neatly - and it handles barcodes from many other countries besides the US.

Back to POSTNET, there are 3 primary types: ZIP (6 digit barcode), ZIP+4 (9 digit barcode) and ZIP+4+DP (11-digits). The ZIP code is a coarse-granular code that defines the post office that's in charge of the address. ZIP+4 appends 4 digits to the ZIP that define the specific area/block for the address. And ZIP+4+DP includes a 2-digit delivery-point (DP) which specifies the precise mailbox. The +4 and DP are used by the mail system to sort mail in an order that makes delivery by the postman (mail carrier) efficient. The carrier doesn't need to sort his or her mail manually when getting ready to go out on his delivery route - his stack of to-be-delivered mail is sorted so that s/he can just deliver it in the order it's stacked. Pretty cool! All mail that enters the US postal system is barcoded (presumably at the originating post office). Handwritten addresses are scanned by an OCR system and a barcode sticker pasted on the envelope (that's the yellow barcode strip you see on handwritten mail at the delivery point). Needless to say, mail handling and routing is superfast and completely automated when all mail is barcoded right up to the delivery point. And now, with Intelligent Mail, additional services are being provided to businesses through a new 4-state barcode. Implementing Intelligent Mail barcodes is mandatory for companies starting in 2009, if they wish to avail of mailing automation discounts. The old POSTNET and PLANET are expected to be phased out by 2011. Here's a picture demonstrating the impact of the new barcode.

I wonder when India will start using this kind of technology. It's pretty basic and even if OCR isn't advanced enough or too expensive to handle all our scores of language scripts and the mail needs to be barcoded by someone manually at the source post office after reading the destination address, it'd speed up postal routing tremendously.

The Hindu-Muslim divide

2008-12-25T08:12:00.000+05:30

It's always amusing to see a discussion between Hindus and Pakistanis go awry as it descends into the usual hate-filled mud-slinging. Both sides operate with their unique perspectives on their history which results in much talking past each other.

From the most common Pakistani perspective, Muslims are the innocent victims of Hindu hate. They find it baffling why for no crime of theirs, they are constantly the victim of hate directed at them by Hindus. The perspective is formed from hearing about events like the destruction of the Babri Masjid, the regular riots and killings between Hindus and Muslims in India, the supposed persecution of Muslims by a Hindu army in Kashmir, the constant mention of discrimination against Muslims that makes its way to Pakistani newspapers. They find it a betrayal of sorts that after an Islamic rule of a thousand years, where Hindus were allowed to practice their religion (with some limitations), Hindus should hate and discriminate against them, and should feel themselves to be the rightful rulers over and superiors of all others in the subcontinent. In their view, Indian history or the history of any region in the world is one of conquests and counter conquests, so they don't understand why Muslim conquests should be singled out as a reason for hatred. The extremists among Muslims feel that the Ummah is the only Nation to identify with, that an Islamic society is the only right answer and that Islam needs to rule over India again, and that the kafirs need to be converted to the One True Faith.

From the most common Hindu perspective, Hindus are the innocent victims of Muslim hate. From being subjected to mass murder and conversion for centuries simply because they don't believe in Islam, derided as idolators, cow-worshippers, backward, caste-ridden and inferior to Muslims, to being victims of campaigns against them in Kashmir, they find the Muslims to be constantly looking to trouble them. The perspective is formed after learning about how brutally the Muslim conquerors of yore subjugated ancient Hindu kingdoms, killing hundreds of thousands in one day as part of their conquests, or of hearing Muslims glorify their rule which was extremely painful for Hindus, of experiencing ethnic cleansing at the hands of terrorists in Kashmir who emptied the valley of Hindus in the 90s with gun-backed calls of "Kashmir may rahna hai to Allah-u-Akbar kehna hai" among others, of hearing about how the Hindu populations in Islamic states are treated, of hearing about terrorist attacks constantly claimed by Muslim extremists as glorious victories against the "infidels". This view holds that India is a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, diverse and ancient civilization whose potential success with a successful and prosperous Muslim minority negates the idea behind the creation of Partition and forces Pakistanis to try their best to bring it down, by constantly pointing out the faultlines in India's not-so-ideal present state of the achievement of the vision, be it riots, Kashmir or other situations, while simultaneously Pakistanis simultaneously live in a religiously exclusivist country and so are seen to have no locus-standi to speak about problems with equality or secularism in India. The extremists among Hindus want an India where only ethnic faiths flourish excluding such converting faiths such as Islam or Christianity which by their very nature deride other faiths in order to gain converts, a perfect Ram Rajya of prosperity, peace and justice. They find it unfair that Muslims in India demand equal or better treatment (as is constitutionally sanctioned) while Islamic societies around the world legally discriminate against non-Muslims, especially those who are seen to be idolators (freedom of belief be damned). After Muslims demanded and got Islamic states for themselves in the subcontinent, Hindus holding this view find it unfair that Muslims should continue to live in India enjoying government coddling in the form of quotas and Haj-subsidies, while simultaneously creating an Islamic society in the new states. They also think Muslims will constantlt attempt to take over India again, with the Muslim population in India acting as a fifth column to support the takeover.

With such contrary viewpoints, a discussion between the two, especially extremists of either variety is an exercise in frustration, though it makes for some amusement to others who prefer to understand the context behind each statement and the historical perception with which it was made. Unfortunately, there are very few of us, and even those that are, are given to occasional failures and frustration when the other person isn't operating with the same aim. So such dysfunctional discussions go on, and will go on in the foreseeable future, and amusement is my only recourse when I encounter them.

Two Muslim views on Partition

2008-12-25T07:42:00.000+05:30

From my interaction with Muslims from all over the subcontinent, there are two primary viewpoints that I can distinguish when it comes to Partition, that watershed event in the subcontinent's history in the last century.

The first one sees Partition as a painful but glorious event, whereby a homeland was created for Muslims where Islamic culture of Mughal and other origins could flourish, where Muslims could keep their customs and traditions alive, free from being submerged and assimilated into the multitudinous multi-religious but Hindu-majority mainstream that was India. This view also holds that if Partition had not happened, Muslims would have been constantly persecuted in India by the majority Hindus. And in support, people holding this viewpoint point to the regular riots and tension between the two communities in India, and point to how the creation of Pakistan and Bangladesh keeps the Muslims in these countries safe from such trouble.

The other view is that Partition was a colossal mistake. Instead of a united Muslim polity in the subcontinent, it divided the Muslims across three states that are pitted against each other. This view holds that this was a grand strategy of the enemies of Islam to keep the religion weak in India and prevent it from ever taking control of the subcontinent again. The event also forever restricted Muslim areas to be those of the new states, and condemned the Muslims who chose to stay behind to a minority existence. They point to numbers where instead of a 500-million-strong (500 million = 50 crores) united Muslim population that would have formed 1/3 the population of a united India and would have had the shared power with the Hindus to decide Indian destiny, what you have today are 3 divided populations, spending billions of dollars in fighting their neighboring states. Instead of a united shining India that would have been the envy of the world, given its rich cultural heritage, its land rich with natural gifts, with enough arable land and food aplenty to feed everyone, Partition left a legacy of squander and death and sadness. A subcontinent this rich, with people so sweet, civilized and cultured to each other in normal times, would have made unbounded progress to quickly take its place among the leaders of the world. With a diverse population, with strong and friendly links with the Islamic world, while being fully confident and proud of its millenia-old heritage embodied in the Hindu, Buddhist and other populations, the country would have been a magical place, to rival the United States in terms of diversity and equality and justice. And Partition, in this view, destroyed all that. That the India that remains aims to achieve just such a vision is small comfort to people who hold this view, typically progressive urban Muslims in India.

Both views to me, are fascinating. Has Pakistan achieved the dream of a just, equitable, loving Islamic land? I hope Pakistanis can comment on this. Would India united have achieved the vision laid out by the latter view? It's something to wonder about.

Hello, World!

2008-12-25T07:36:00.000+05:30

Hello, world! The quintessential greeting from the mists of computer history is a good start to this blog which will aim to cover topics of interest to Indians and other people of the subcontinent, from the perspective of a Mumbai-born and -educated Indian who now lives in the United States, giving him a clarity on Indian issues that only distance affords. So stay tuned, for the first post..