Remembering Tagore - What Music should be About

We live in the era of commercial music. An era in which musicians are highly skilled professionals, who work tirelessly on their craft to produce perfection day after day. Each error is ironed out. The musician has more tools at his disposal and access to an almost unlimited digital music library. Albums are more professionally recorded and edited. We live in the era of ultra-editing, auto-tune, mixing and remixing.

And yet, when it comes to promoting an artist, or an album, most of the marketing effort is not really about how good the music is - partially because it is subjective, and also because the album cover will then be forced to walk the thin line between marketing and unabashed braggadocio.

In fact, most of the promotion for any album involves the artist talking about the music - how close it is to his heart, how much it means to him, and what he is trying to say with his music. Most promotional tours and cleverly managed interviews revolve around the artist trying to promote his work by successfully 'selling' the emotional connect.

Some are able to achieve this better than others. U2 springs to mind as an example of a band that succesfully 'sold' the emotional link between the band's origins, their music and their vision of What The World Should Be. It is not my intention to suggest that Bono and his friends did not feel a stab of pain while writing 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'. However, Bono himself would not deny that his repeated references to the song and its significance in countless interviews and media events helped him sell more records.

We enjoy beautiful music, produced by proficient professionals. The sounds flow through our ears and activate all the 'happy spaces' in our brain, and yet, we are not fully satisfied without the emotional connect. We don't really care how hugely successful U2, how hard they work to produce the music that they do. We don't really care about how many Grammy Awards they have won.

We want to hear about four boys from Ireland singing a raw, angry song about the evils of a war that tore their country apart. It wouldnt quite have packed the same punch if the members of U2 were born in Canada instead of Ireland.

I came across a beautiful song today, something so touchingly innocent in its non-commercialism and so genuine in the depth of its emotion. It was a song by Rabindranath Tagore called 'Amar Sonar Bangla', which literally translates to Our Golden Bengal.

The song itself is fabulous - Bengali can be such a sinfully sweet language when it is blended with lilting melody... and Tagore was a Master Blender. The song had a plaintive, poignant touch to it, a tune that somehow made you feel a pang of sadness, and a little research tells you why.


It was composed in 1905, when Lord Curzon proposed to partition Bengal into East and West Bengal, largely on the lines of religion, ostensibly to ensure that there was better administrative efficiency. Tagore was among those who couldn't bear the idea of splitting Bengal.

The song itself was not composed with pen and paper - Tagore just sang out his love, despair and agony, and those around him scrambled for paper and pen to write down every precious word, and record every note in the tune.

The song is an outpouring of Tagore's love for Bengal. And it is not the love of a martyr or a patriot. It is not a cry for freedom, equality or justice. It touches a far more basic chord - it is the love of a little boy for his mother. Consequently, it is not one of his more cerebral or inspirational literary efforts but has to rank among his most emotive and emotional creations. It is an expression of emotion, unhindered and unedited by cerebral processes and ideas, straight from the heart of a man who loved his homeland.

In a truly ironic twist of fate, this song, composed in anguish over the proposed partition of Bengal was later adapted as the national anthem of Bangladesh

A hundred and nine years after he composed this song, Tagore touches a chord, reminding us what music should really be about.

I reproduce a translation of the lyrics and the version of the song that I heard below:

My Bengal of Gold,
I love you.

Forever your skies,
Your air set my heart in tune
As if it were a flute.

In spring, O mother mine,
The fragrance from your mango groves
Makes me wild with joy,
Ah, what a thrill!
In autumn, O mother mine,
In the full blossomed paddy fields
I have seen spread all over sweet smiles.

Ah, what beauty, what shades,
What an affection, and what tenderness!
What a quilt have you spread
At the feet of banyan trees
And along the banks of rivers!

Oh mother mine, words from your lips
Are like nectar to my ears.
Ah, what a thrill!

If sadness, O mother mine,
Casts a gloom on your face,
My eyes are filled with tears!
Golden Bengal,
I love you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEKLr437pY0

The Indian MBA

My uncle, who lives in America asked me a few months ago if I thought it was a good idea for his daughters to do an MBA in India. He reasoned that it would introduce them to a different business culture and would expose them to exciting new business ideas in a growing economy. 'A Distinctly Indian MBA' would teach his daughters a lot more than a typical American B-School could, simply because it gives exposure to a whole new culture. Moreover, because of the sheer competitiveness of the rat-race to get into a top B School in India, the average IQ and drive/hunger/ambition for success would be higher in a 'good' Business School in India than it would in a school of similar standing in the US.

In theory, his argument made perfect sense. However, in practice, it doesn't.

An MBA in India itself isnt really an Indian MBA, especially if you choose electives like 'Marketing Management', 'Retail Management' and 'Brand Management', as I did all those years ago. You end up discussing cases from Harvard Business Review, reading Philip Kotler, Jack Trout, Al & Laura Ries and go to bed every night firmly believing that 'Modern Format Retailing' delivers 'a better consumer experience' than India's traditional formats of retailing. You are told, almost axiomatically, that while standards of service in India were poor earlier, the 'opening up of the economy' has exposed India to a more Western Consumerist mentality. You believe without question, that any multinational product has the right to succeed in India purely because it has succeeded in other countries. Any brand from the West is perceived  to be 'aspirational' when it first comes to our shores, even though it isnt really aspirational in its own country of origin. Sure, you have a course or two about Rural Marketing, which you get through by vaguely talking/writing in boring cliches, but you dont feel like you have gained any real insight from them. Retail Management is all about planogramming, aisle-space management, display layouts, ease of check-out, completely tuned towards a modern-format retail store. Of course you have just started shopping at Big Bazaar, so you suddenly start noticing all of this stuff around you and you suddenly realise the tremendous value and insight that you are gaining from your Retailing Management course.

You complete your programme, surrounded by similar enthusiastic 'front-bench-fighters', competitively spewing ill-digested ideas & cliches, never once bothering to question the underlying assumptions, ensuring that you use the right buzz-words without even asking yourself if you really need to use these words. You take Ries and Trout far too seriously, remembering their 'Immutable Laws' as if they were The Lord's Commandments handed down to Moses, instead of seeing them for what they really are. This culminates in your placement interviews. More spiel, more Harvard Sage Wisdom, interspersed with cliches, and you get through.

You begin working in the real world. And Reality opens your mind with a crowbar. It is prised open roughly and without warning, cruelly exposing the inaccuracies of your assumptions, laying bare the fundamental weaknesses in the foundation of your beliefs.

You notice, for example that for all the pages and pages of stuff you read about Modern Trade, it only accounts for 10-15% of your sales. And inspite of your lecturers labouring the point, you notice that the big modern-format retailers arent really raking in the moolah. Subhiksha is slowly bleeding to a standstill and your distributor's money is held up in outstandings that Subhiksha cannot pay up. This wasn't supposed to happen. Subhiksha was held up as a wonderful example of a 'Value-Based-Business-Model of Modern Format Retail' that was 'Easily Scaleable' and offered remarkable convenience and superb value to the consumer.

You also notice that even though Modern Format Stores have invested in remarkable Inventory Management Systems with Central Godowns, you still find more stock-out situations in modern format stores than the Kirana Store whose only inventory management system operates within the brain cells of it's unfashionably attired proprietor. Perhaps, you wonder, as you notice the kirana shopkeeper extending credit to known customers who live around his store, the level of service is better in Traditional Retail formats than in Modern Format stores?

Perhaps 'customer experience' and 'customer service' should not be defined by carpeted aisles, large posters, mood music and air-conditioned interiors. Is it really the format for the future in India? Not so sure any more. The traffic becomes more maddening in every big city in India. Parking space is hard to find, and increasingly, anything close to home, like the kirana shop that you can walk to in five minutes without worrying about parking a car, presents a better 'customer experience' than driving for half an hour to cover a distance of 3 kilometers, spending another 10 minutes finding a spot to park your car, waiting in line to have your  items billed, staggering back to the car (which is parked 3 streets away) and then driving back another half an hour to get home. Oh, and in case you are frustrated by it all, please derive comfort in the knowledge that while you were in the store, a combination of Kenny G and air-conditioning made your wait in the seemingly never-ending queue a little less un-pleasant.


You dont have to drive, fight for parking and wait in long queues. You dont have to buy stale looking fruits and vegetables. You can get your staples delivered to your doorstep. And if you are a frequent enough customer who lives around the store, you can even buy on credit from the kirana shop. He knows your name, greets you with a smile, will keep his shop open for an extra half an hour if you arrive just as he is pulling down the shutters. He does this all for 5% extra, and if he knows you well enough, not even for that.


When you consider how much of a premium you are willing to pay for the convenience of pre-cooked, ready to eat/frozen fast food, purely on the basis of the time that it saves, why would you not be willing to part with a little more margin for the kirana retailer, who saves you just as much time?

You begin to wonder if Traditional Retail formats have perhaps evolved over time to create the best value-proposition you are ever going to get. And that maybe Modern Format retailing will never quite 'boom' as many 'experts' said it would, because even though you run a promo on stock that is approaching its sell-by-date and play Kenny G on your shop-floor, in some ways, you cannot compete with a kirana shop owner. Maybe the Kirana Shop represents the smallest, fittest unit of Retail and will never die.

During your sales stint in India's-Great-God-Forsaken-Interiors (very very few people escape this stint), you notice a few other things that make you Question the Immutable. Coca Cola is the ultimate Hero of 'The 22 Immutable Laws'. It is a remarkable brand that has grown to gargantuan proportions, conquering the World. It is supposed to symbolify Happiness. And the Marketing Guys at Coca Cola India have used the 'classical approach', using methods and strategies outlined by Trout and Ries in their book. Cocal Cola is the Flagship Brand. It is the imagery builder. It drives the category and is promoted aggressively during festivals like Diwali, Navratri, Dussehra, Christmas and New Years. Just as it is in America, Pepsi, is an aggressive No.2.

Except for one major difference. The single largest Cola Brand in India is Thums Up - a cola brand with a strongly Indian DNA, and a distinctive taste that is hugely appealing to the Indian palate. Thums Up outsells Coke and Pepsi combined. The Worldwide Champion of the 22 Laws and the Runner up, who did everything that Ries and Trout approved of, roamed the world, conquering one country after another, until they both came up against good old Thums Up

Coca Cola acquired the brand from Parle in the 90s, when they started looking at the Indian market seriously. Evidence suggests that they originally wanted to kill the brand, because Coca Cola was 'The Flagship' and the 'Umbrella of Happiness'. They also felt that once the brown people of India tasted 'The Real Thing', they wouldnt want to drink Thums Up anymore. After all, didnt Indians want a taste of Happiness in a Bottle? There was very little activation, brand inputs or adsepnds on Thums Up for a couple of years after it was acquired. Coca Cola wanted to focus its considerable wealth on promoting Coca Cola, believing that Indians were yearning for it.

It never really took off. Thums Up has a uniquely Indian twinge in its fizzy taste. And India was hopelessly addicted. When Coca Cola realised that if they were to abruptly kill Thums Up, the beneficiary would be Pepsi, they wisely decided not to shut it down, but reposition it as a 'Flank Attacker' of Pepsi. In other words, while Coca Cola would continue to be the focus, and the promotion would focus on Happiness & other such beautiful feelings, Thums Up would be a vehicle to poke fun at Pepsi. They werent too concerned about building the Thums Up Brand; after all, India would eventually embrace Happiness. It was only a matter of time, they assured their bosses in Atlanta.

It has been almost 20 years now. And India still Loves Thums Up. It still outsells Coke and Pepsi. Maybe it's because Indian men care more about 'Manliness' than they do about 'Happiness' or about 'Youngistan' (whatever the hell that is). Or maybe because a taste formula developed in Bombay is more likely to work in India as compared to one developed in Atlanta. Maybe its because Parle did such a good job distributing the brand, that it already had a strong rural franchise. Whatever the reason, it was too big to shut down, too big to ignore, and now Coca Cola have wisely realised that they cannot do without it. They have increased the activity around the brand - increased adspends and on-ground promotions and activation. It is still nowhere near the collossal amounts of money that are spent on Coca Cola and Pepsi. And yet it continues to outsell them both.

And now comes the funny part. Because of the 22 Immutable Laws, Coca Cola continues to be the Flagship. We cant allow small things like market realities to get in the way of the Immutable. So in Rural Maharashtra or in Rural Gujarat, you will see a Coca Cola Signage above the shop entrance. The Visi-Cooler will have Coca Cola branding and Visuals. And inside the Visicooler, you wont find a single bottle of Coca Cola. Because the Shopkeeper only stocks what sells. He isnt too concerned with 'Happiness' or 'Youngistaan'. And what sells is .....Thums Up. So, Mr. Consumer, If you see a Coke Board, and see a Coke fridge, it doesnt really mean that Coke is available. Confused? Well, you obviously havent read enough Brand Strategy, and therefore have failed to understand that 'The Flagship Brand must be promoted'....even if it isnt sold!!!

Thums Up has, in my humble opinion achieved Nirvana, a Brand-Building-Bliss-point. A brand that refuses to die, even when it is starved of adspends, even when its owners are trying to kill it. A Brand that survived because its consumers simply loved it - whether with a dash of kala-namakh, or jeera, or laced with Old Monk, or just with a couple of ice-cubes.

And yet, we only had examples of Coca Cola and Pepsi by the dozen in B-School. Our professors, who should have latched onto Thums Up and held it up as a beacon of what Brand Building is all about, instead discussed case studies about how Coca Cola tried to launch 'New Coke' in an attempt to attract Pepsi-consumers who preferred a sweeter taste, and would show us remarkably creative combative ad-campaigns by the two Global heavyweights in several entertaining attempts to outpunch each other. Not one single case-study on India's Market Leader, a brand that attained and maintained it's position by spending a fraction of what Coke and Pepsi spent. A brand that won because of it's Indian-ness. And we didnt really pay much attention to it, because Trout, Ries and Kotler hadnt heard about it.

We didnt stop to think if Kotler, Trout, Ries and the rest didnt just use the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, exalting everything that worked, retro-fitting a 'principle' and trashing everything that didnt, by claiming that they 'violated a basic law'. Studies show that the Big-Decision-Makers at Coca Cola and at Pepsi, are both very similar in terms of IQ, qualification and background. When Coke steals a march over Pepsi, or vice verse, analyse their decisions, but dont dumb-down the discourse/debate by using the benefit of hindsight to say that a 'basic law' was violated. The top executives at Coke and Pepsi are smarter than that.

Far more valuable than the oversimplified, semi digested, hind-sight 'wisdom' of those books would actually be an analysis of the data itself. To analyse consumer data, sales data & distribution data that lead to a decision, and debate that decision using only the information that was available to the decision-makers at the time, without being biased by the outcome, would make for a valuable Marketing Class.

After selling and marketing for a few years, you are forced to come to the rather cynical conclusion that Marketing, like cycling, cannot be taught. To believe that there are Laws, and that these Laws are Immutable is delusional. Brand Management requires a strange mix of intuitive understanding of consumer insight and an appetite for data-rigour to support your hypothesis. It can only be learnt, and never taught. You can teach someone how to analyse data, how to plan distribution, how to work out the logistics. You cannot build brands 'by the book' or 'by formula'. Just ask the guys at Coca Cola India.

(And I do realise that this idea puts the considerably large 'Brand Management Education Industry' in severe risk. If most people believe what I believe, Messrs Ries and Trout's sales would dry up and rather more unfashionably titled books like 'Qualititive and Quantitative Techniques in Market Research' and 'Inventory Planning: a Quantitative Approach' would pick up in sales.)

So, to return to the incident that brought upon this flood of thought and reflection, I advised my uncle against sending his daughters to India for an MBA. A Harvard MBA is better taught in Harvard than it is in India. If I ever came across a really 'Indian MBA Programme', I assured him, I would sign up for it myself first.

The Sad Demise of Balance

India has been gripped by election fever for the best part of the last four months. The World's Largest Democracy has launched into a cleansing cycle to determine the People's Will. It's time to reflect on what a wonderful thing democracy is, especially if you are one of those the-glass-is-half-full-and-the-birds-are-singing type of people.

If on the other hand, you are of a slightly more cynical/realistic nature, as I am, you will feel a sense of pure relief wash over you, now that the election itself is over. Relief because you are sick of the stupidity that the election-fever has brought on - stupidity that manifests in every election rally, television studio and political press conference, and most editorial pages in dailies across the country.

If, like me, you are sick of rhetoric and slogans, of the posturing and the total absence of any sort of cerebral filtering mechanism on the gymnastics of the mouth, you will find this post to be of some value.

I grow weary of television studio debates. I am particularly intolerant of stupidity and pomposity, and find it quite difficult to process some of the nonsense that our democratically elected representatives spew on a regular basis.

I am particularly weary and wary of the phrase 'Gujarat Model of Development', a phrase which somehow implies that Narendra Modi has discovered a secret formula, a model for development that can be blindly applied to any given situation, that he is Getafix, Asterix & Obelix rolled into one. I lived in Gujarat between 2006 and 2008, and my work took me all over the state. I have witnessed the boom, the buzz and the prosperity of the state. I saw a dynamic, decisive state government in action that was decidedly pro-business and pro-investment, but it is foolish to oversimplify Gujarat's success and attribute it all to one superhero. There are larger factors behind Gujarat's success, factors which have nothing to do with Narendra Modi. Indeed, it could be easily argued that 'the Modi Factor' was not even among the most important factors for success.

People would do well to remember that it is the economy that grows. Governements cannot 'grow' economies, (but they can in many ways, stifle growth, by creating hurdles, red tape and foolish restrictions). Put slightly differently, the most that a Government can do to 'grow' an economy is just to stay away and not interfere. Rely on the ingenuity, enterprise and creativity of your people to make the best of the cards dealt to them, and growth is an automatic result. The Government's role is to stay away and make sure that the law isnt being violated.

Narendra Modi understands this principle better than most. Clearances, project approvals and governmental 'procedures' were shortened, people didnt have to hang around government departments endlessly waiting for 'files to be cleared or passed on', and bureaucratic corruption/inertia was reduced to a minimum. It isnt rocket science, and it certainly isnt some sort of Magic Formula. A regression analysis between time taken for governmental/procedural clearances experienced in different states and growth rates of these states would back up my premise. If anyone has access to credible data, it would be a truly fascinating study. But, I digress.

 There were lots of other factors behind Gujarat's growth that had nothing to do with Modi - Gujarat has the longest coastline, the most number of airports, oil & gas resources and a historically established primacy in some industries like diamonds and textiles. Gujarati businessman have also migrated to other countries in Africa, Europe, Australia and North America to establish extremely successful businesses, resulting in a more prosperous Gujarat, with strong foreign trading links and an inflow of foreign currency. Many of the wealthiest businessmen, stock-brokers and traders in the city of Bombay are from the Gujarati community. Gujarat has a strong entrepreneurial culture, with a significantly higher risk appetite as evidenced in investment patterns. In a country where retail stock-market investment has very low participation and penetration, Gujarat stands out as one of the exceptions, a state with a significant risk-appetite and a remarkable understanding and awareness of how money works and how it can be grown. The Great Indian Stock Market Boom of the last decade has contributed in no small measure to Gujarat's growth, largely because so many Gujaratis are invested in the Stock Market. (Take a walk down Dalal Street after trading hours and you will hear more Gujarati than Marathi or Hindi). I have watched disbelievingly as Gujarati paan-shop owners, cobblers, vegetable vendors and grocers follow share prices on CNBC and in newspapers, evaluating their equity portfolios every day. A cigarette whole-seller, tucked away in a slummy little lane, in one of the ghettoes of Kalupur, (located in 'Old-Ahmedabad'), advised me on how to identify IPOs, and how to build and diversify my portfolio. He had multiplied his wealth several times over and was hungry for more. I have never experienced anything quite like it, before or since. It is a culture of wealth-creation, an atmosphere which encourages risk-takers. The vibrancy, the buzz and the adrenaline of Capitalism throbs through Gujarat's veins.

Gujarat's entrepreneurial culture, its natural resources and its 'foreign' diaspora have nothing to do with Narendra Modi. Yet, his publicity machine has ensured that he is given sole credit for Gujarat's growth, projected as a white knight with a magic wand - a truly foolish notion.

The rebuttal to this notion, was even more foolish than the premise itself. The Congress, Janata Dal and the Aam Aadmi party (to name a few) tried to point out flaws, trying to argue that Gujarat wasnt really developed, that development was somehow 'skewed' and that Narendra Modi was 'pro-rich' and didnt care about 'the poor'. They tried to find fault with the truly dramatic growth that Gujarat has witnessed, nit-picking and throwing around inane statistical trivia instead of arguing the underlying assumption. The argument to 'Modi has grown Gujarat' shouldn't be 'Gujarat has not really grown'. This is a ridiculous argument because the state has indeed prospered over the last decade. Modi has built a bastion of political strength because wealthy people are happy people and happy people do not rock the boat. His popularity in the state is largely due to the fact that his voters grow wealthier every year. The more powerful argument in my opinion should have been 'Yes, Gujarat grew, but it didnt grow because of Modi alone'

I find debates on 'communalism' and 'secularism' dangerously poisonous. On the one hand Modi's detractors warn of a Hitler-style-Holocaust if Modi should ever come to power because of his 'role in the 2002 riots'. Educated young people fall over themselves to condemn Narendra Modi to establish their own 'intellectual liberal' credentials. The issue in question lends itself to dramatic rhetoric, allowing India's elite a chance to launch into flowery prose condemning Modi as a fascist and a butcher, drawing inspiration from a wealth of World War II anti-hitler rhetoric. I did a little bit of research on the history of communal rioting in India, and the results are interesting albeit worrying.

Gujarat has had several largescale riots break out in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and most recently in 2002. The riots of the 70s and 80s were the most bloody in terms of death-tolls. Gujarat had a Congress government in the 60s, 70s and the 80s and had a BJP government in 2002. The data is suggestive of a state that has a troubled history of communal violence, where anger bubbles over as a riot every so many years, irrespective of the party in power. If you hold Modi responsible for the deaths in 2002 because he was the Chief Minister and he should have acted, you have to hold the Congress governments responsible for the deaths in all of the riots in Gujarat in the decades gone past.

In fact, Modi-men will point out that while there have been been more than 200 instances of reported communal clashes in Gujarat when it was governed by the Congress, there have been just a handful of instances, the most recent and significant being Godhra 2002, during the reign of the BJP. The same Modi-supporters will point out that the Congress was in power during the Bombay riots of '92-93, the Bihar riots in the late 1988-89 and of course the anti-sikh riots in 1984, to name just a few and they will go to great lengths to point out that each of these riots had a death toll far higher than the death toll of the 2002 Gujarat riots.

The one common factor to all of these riots (including the Gujarat riots), is the 'inaction' of the police force, which is strange when you consider how sensitive and well-networked the police are about tension in the city. Their inaction could be due to fear, callousness or a diktat from a political master to refrain from squashing the tension. If you can accuse the Chief Minister of Gujarat for wilfully turning a blind eye to the bloodshed, or not doing enough to contain the damage, you could just as easily accuse several other Chief Ministers and even a few Prime Ministers of the same wilfull inaction. None of these charges can be proved beyond doubt in a court of law, which is why those at the top remain untouched by the law, be it Narendra Modi in 2002 or Rajiv Gandhi for the anti-sikh riots which occurred during his watch. (Rajiv Gandhi is said to have said during the the anti-sikh riots in 1984 that 'when a big tree falls, the earth shakes', a remark that must surely go down as one of the most callous responses to human tragedy). In both cases, junior colleagues like Maya Kodnani (Gujarat 2002) and Jagdish Tytler and HKL Bhagat (Delhi 1984) have been found guilty. (Maya Kodnani was found guilty by a court of law, while Bhagat and Tytler were found guilty by judicial enquiries conducted by eminent judged probing the riots) While it is irresponsible to make wild accusations, it is equally naive to believe that Maya Kodnani and Jagdish Tytler acted purely on their own.

Here again, I feel the crucial point is being missed. History suggests that communal riots, inaction and large death tolls occur just as much under 'secular' governments as they do under 'communal ones'. To those who argue that there have been more riots under Congress rule, my response would be that they have ruled more. It would appear that riots are an ugly fact of life in India, irrespective of who is in charge. Thus, contrary to all the flowery anti-modi prose that floats around, Narendra Modi is not the most communal politician in India. Nor is he an ogre of Hitlerian proportions purely because of 2002. He is one of several Indian politicians, across party lines who has presided over a riot. He wasnt the first. He wont be the last. And that is an indisputable fact.

Herein lies the hypocrisy of those who claim that the minorities are 'safer' when a 'secular' government is in power. The frequency of riots has, if anything, been higher under 'secular' governments than under 'communal ones', even after you take into account the fact that the Congress has been in power for a longer period of time than any of its political rivals.

Instead, the debate has been about whether 1984 was worse, or 2002 was worse. Modi Haters accuse him of actively encouraging the mass murders of 2002, while his defenders point to court verdicts of 'not guilty' and 'insufficient evidence' as their lines of defence. The Modi Brigade instead points fingers at Delhi 1984, quoting statistics of death toll, destruction of property, etc. Neither is better. Court verdicts are neither here nor there. A cabinet colleague was found guilty for her role in 2002 and senior congressman were found guilty of inciting mass murders in 1984.

The key question that should have been asked is this: While riots are not uncommon in India, among all the Prime Ministerial options open to you today, Narendra Modi is the only one who has presided over a riot. Do you still want to vote for him?

While on the subject of riots, there is yet another faction of Modi supporters, from the extreme rabid right, who feel proud of the horrors of 2002. I have heard phrases like 'we taught them a lesson and they deserved it'. I find myself truly disgusted and sick to the stomach when I hear this. There is also the suggestion that 'there are no more riots in Gujarat because the muslims are scared and know their place'. I find this suggestion to be even more monstrous and wildly inaccurate. Admittedly these views havent been aired on television, but social media trolls hurl these horribly offensive statements around with gusto, threatening to create an India that I would not care to live in.

If I seem critical of some of Modi's claims, then I hasten to add that I find his opponents' claims and statements to be equally foolish and inept. Claims of Rahul Gandhi being a youth-leader and a whiz-kid are not founded on reality. He has presided over one disaster after another - UP, Rajasthan, MP and Delhi Legislative Assembly elections to name a few, and appears poised to plumb new depths in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014. At 42, and with his track record, he is neither 'whiz' nor 'kid'. Most people lose their jobs after one disaster, some get a second chance but almost no one gets more than 2 'strikes' before they are 'out'. And yet, it seems improbable that he will be sacked because the Congress is bereft of genuine leadership. A party culture that encourages subservience to one family, can never produce hungry, ambitious leaders from the ranks. The Gandhis control the party as if it were their fiefdom, a fiefdom which, I might add, appears to be dwindling rapidly.

The Congress has given India its most corrupt government to date, irrespective of all the stupid soundbytes about 'zero sum game' and 'zero loss'. Admittedly, like riots, corruption and financial malpractices have been intertwined with Indian Politics. The key question here is phrased similarly: Given that corruption is not uncommon in India, would you rather vote for a party that has presided over some of the worst scandals in India's history, or would you rather vote for a man whose past record doesnt suggest impropriety on anywhere near the same scale?

India has paid the price for the Congress Party's fiscally irresponsible populist schemes, and, with its fundamentals looking shaky, is undoubtedly worse off than it was in 2004. We had an Oxbridge Economics scholar as our Prime Minister, the man who 'opened up' in 1991. It seems like a cruel joke. When the economy was booming between 2004 and 2008, we were told that it was because of 'the governments policies and pro-active stimulus measures'.  Various Congressmen (including P Chidambaram) have appeared on television claiming that 'While we delivered great growth between 2004 to 2008, the economy slowed down on global cues in the last few years'. The arrogance of that statement and its hypocrisy take my breath away. Governments do not 'deliver growth'. Growth is not some sort of package or gift that can be 'delivered'. It requires a special blend of arrogance and hypocrisy and self-delusion for a group of a few hundred individuals to take the sole credit for superior output generated by a nation of over a billion people and then blame the rest of the world for a slump in performance.  

Low growth, high inflation, sluggish industrial output and weak global cues mean that Modi, riding into 7 RCR on his white horse, waving his magic wand, is faced with the herculean task of reviving India's flagging economy. The weathermen speak of the effects of the El Niño formation on India's rainfall in the coming months, and make grave predictions of a poor monsoon, which will drag down India's economy further.

In the meanwhile, after the 16th of May, I hope some sanity returns to our lives. I have heard enough rhetoric to last me a lifetime.

Across the Atlantic - II

Las Vegas is bizarre. There isn’t any other word to describe it, really. And quite honestly, I thought it was remarkable and, yet, somehow simultaneously revolting.

I suppose someone thought it was a good idea to try and build the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel tower, the Pyramids of Egypt, a mall that has ‘venetian’ canals and gondolas, and a hotel called Caesar’s Palace within a few miles of each other. Look at what money can buy, folks – Culture, beauty, hundreds of years of history, heart, soul, love, poetry and romance. Except that it can’t. You have the money and the engineering to recreate these beautiful monuments, these works of art. Except that you cannot really recreate them. A colour printout of the Last Supper, isn’t really the Last Supper. You recreate touristry photo-opportunities, but you cannot really bring all of the World’s beauty into one disgusting little ‘strip'.

It brought back memories of my first visit to the Taj Mahal, the real one, in the country that Columbus actually wanted to go to, as opposed to this imposter, in the country that Columbus stumbled on by mistake. When I first saw the Taj Mahal, I was among a throng of hundreds, being jostled and pushed and constantly being asked if I wanted a guide. I had to wade through millions of pavement vendors selling touristy replicas of the mausoleum, for ‘special price’. It is a nightmare, laced with sweat, heat and constant contact with other human beings surging through an unimaginatively designed queuing system.

Except that when you are finally confronted by the Taj itself, you forget everything else. You don’t really remember how angry the crowds and the souvenir-sellers made you. You don’t even register the hundreds who are crammed in along with you, sharing your experience. You don’t remember how polluted the Yamuna is, or how much it smells. You don’t remember the disgust you feel when you work your way through another queue of sorts to relieve yourself in a public toilet.

All you remember is the beauty of the Taj, the magnificence of the artwork, the majesty of the marble, the serenity of the final resting place of the queen and the immortality of Love itself (even though it seems ludicrous, ridiculous and hypocritical in today’s context for a man who probably slept with more women than Ozzy Osbourne, who maintained a harem comprising several wives and several hundred concubines, with free and un-questioned access to any woman he desired, to build a monument of ‘Everlasting Love’ for one woman ). Your brain tells you that Shah Jahan wasted a huge pile of tax-payer’s money on creating an asset that was of no real use to anyone, and that you are romanticizing history, swallowing a package-deal designed for tourists. You tell your brain to shut up, because you want to wallow in the sentiment for a while. Forget the history and dwell on the legend. You feel a warm glow when you think of the Emperor of India building the most magnificent resting place for a woman that he loved. And whether you want to admit it or not, you find yourself filled with warm, fuzzy, drippy sentiment.

When you stand in front of the replica in Vegas, there are no jostling crowds, no scamsters screaming in your face, asking you if you want a guide. There is no polluted river, or decaying monument. And yet, somewhere deep down, you feel sick, revolted by the brazenness of what has been attempted, disgusted by the arrogance of wealth.

And yet, Vegas is remarkable in its own way. Imagine someone suggesting, two hundred years ago, that it might be a good idea to build a few hotels in the middle of a desert. The conversation between the investor and the entrepreneur would probably be something like this:

Investor: So whats the plan?

Entrepreneur: I believe that if we create an attraction in the middle of the desert, if it is unique and bizarre enough, we can generate HUGE revenues.

Investor: OK..so what is the big attraction?

Entrepreneur: Gambling houses. We create a zone of gambling houses.

Investor: What else?

Entrepreneur: Well, maybe a few bars, brothels and strip clubs too. But we don’t want to lose focus here.

Investor: Everyone knows that the House Always Wins, right?

Entrepreneur: Yes, but people are so stupid…

Investor:  So this is what I have understood of your big business plan - you expect people to travel hundreds of miles to the middle of a desert, just so they can get drunk, gawk at naked women and give you their money?

Entrepreneur: YES!! Now can we count on your investment?

Investor: (falls of his chair laughing hysterically)

And yet, miraculously, it worked. Las Vegas is a massive monument of Human Stupidity and Ignorance of the basic rules of probability and arithmetic. It represents the triumph of Titillation over Logic, of Stupidity over Pragmatism. Queue up, folks. Welcome to Sin City. Gambling isnt really the sin here. Stupidity is. The stupid little thought that makes you think that you are the anomaly to the curve, that somehow you can beat the odds.

I have to attend The World of Concrete tomorrow.. should be lots of fun… stay tuned for more…

  

Across the Atlantic - I

A few months ago I went to Las Vegas for 'The World of Concrete' convention - most people find that statement funny/lame/nerdy/phony/flat-out-untrue.. But the reality is that it is the single largest concrete expo of its kind in the world, and, if concrete is your business, there is no better place to network/learn/update yourself... and so I packed my bags for Vegas, excited about my first journey across the Atlantic.

American culture is so all-pervasive - the food, the clothes, the movies, the TV shows, the slang - that you tend to think that you already know a little bit about the US before you have actually been there. In reality, nothing can be further from the truth.

Its a bit like thinking that you know a little bit about India after watching a Karan Johar movie where everyone lives in palatial mansions, drives BMWs and yet, gets hand-fed hot roti-dal by the doting,saree-clad mother, crying tears of pure maternal love and glycerine. Or a Ram Gopal Varma/Madhur Bhandarkar movie where everything is sleazy/connected to politicians, who are ultimately connected to Dawood. (I notice that it is not cool to say 'Dawood Ibrahim' anymore -  you refer to him as D or Dawood to show that you are following his career so closely that you don't feel it necessary to use a surname when you talk about him.)

I was flying out of Bangalore (The Lufthansa flight out of Bangalore was a lot cheaper, even if you considered the cost of travelling to Bangalore from Madras). It was easily the longest flight I had ever been on, the chief highlight being the smelly blue-cheese (looked like hell and tasted like heaven) and the wine (looked like heaven and tasted like heaven)

What struck me about the US as the plane landed in Washington, was the 'same-ness' of the suburbs. All the houses in the same locality looked like they had been cut-pasted from one approved model. They were of exactly the same dimensions, with exactly the same style of roof -shingles, with the same plot-size and perfect geometric orientation with respect to the road. (Probably because of strict plan approvals, discipline in design and bulk development)

I had only half an hour to make my connecting flight and so I rushed to the gate for the connecting flight to Vegas, only to discover that it was delayed by an hour. The television screen above me was showing live telecast of The Superbowl - the most American Tradition of them all. The airport seemed deserted - maybe because most Americans were propped up in front of TV screens across the country. The handful of passengers who were waiting at Gate #9 were glued to the screen.

I plonk myself next to an elderly gentleman, who seemed totally absorbed in the action

'Er..excuse me.. but can you explain the rules of the game to me?'

He looks at me with a kind smile and proceeds to explain the broad objective of the game as well as the basic strategies that teams adopt. He tries to relate it with whats happening at the moment. I am truly astounded. Its almost like going to war, advancing your army across enemy territory. You have strategies and specialists to go forward, strategies and specialists to hold your ground and strategies and specialists to defend. The amount of thought that goes into pummeling the human body into pulp is truly amazing. It must be a fascinating cerebral exercise to plot strategies and plays for your army.

However, the sport has too many breaks - and consequently no tempo. I explain this to my new friend and he smiles back at me, the benevolent smile of an indulgent parent  - 'If you are playing a game where you don't stop to think, plan and re-assess the plan, you are playing a game meant for children'... I think of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo who get paid millions to play non-stop for 45 minutes, without stopping to think, plan and re-assess, without timeouts, without a coach on walkie talkie..and I smile back at him. Maybe he does have a valid argument in favour of breaks in play to reassess gameplan, but to dismiss any sport that doesn't have such breaks seems a bit extreme.

There is a break in play, and the ads are on. The Superbowl seems to be unabashedly commercial - every brand associated with it (and there seem to be literally hundreds of them) seem absolutely determined to extract every last drop out of the event. And then there is the added razzmatazz, the show and the glitz that adds to this annual spectacle. I overhear two women talking animatedly about how they dont really care so much for the game itself, but watch the Superbowl every year for the excitement, the atmosphere, the ads, the national anthem, who is going to perform it and how they are going to perform it. They discuss animatedly how Janet Jackson's breasts made a special, albeit accidental appearance all those years ago, and how Mariah Carey's version of the National Anthem 'just makes me cry, y'know, coz it seems to really come from the heart'. And then I realise that they have their own special memories of this tradition, and that none of those memories have anything to do with the sport itself.

The Superbowl is about much more than American Football. It is, quite simply, the most spectacular event of the year. You can sneer at its commercialism and turn your nose up at the 'American-ness' of it, but in reality, it is a spectacle, not unlike gladiatorial contests in Ancient Rome - Lots of excitement, glamour, senators in special seats and warriors out in the arena, wrestling each other into submission to amuse the roaring mob. As much as you want to sound intellectual about it all, you end up gawking in amazement at the sheer grandeur of the show.

I heard the announcement, and was jolted out of Wonderland. It was time to go... Las Vegas, here I come...

The Last Hurrah

The Mumbai Indians were playing the Hyderabad Sunrisers... I dont really follow the IPL too closely any more, but today was different...

I plonked myself into the couch just in time to watch Sachin Tendulkar whip Dale Steyn over mid wicket for a boundary.. and then follow it up with a lofted drive over mid on that crashed into the advertising boards... ahh .. He is in form today, I thought...and allowed myself to dream of possibilities, fairy tales, the sort of dreams that we have grown accustomed to dreaming everytime Tendulkar gets a start...'Looks like its going to be his day'...'He can turn the clock back'...'He can turn it around'.... And who could blame us for dreaming? Over the last twenty five years, this man lived the dream. And we have lived it with him. Our very own Cindarella Man.

Just when it looked like the great man was getting his groove back, it all ended when Ishant Sharma got one to nip back and knock back the great man's leg stump. Tendulkar had gotten himself into an ugly tangle, and , in keeping with a depressing recent trend, had his furniture disturbed by the sort of delivery that he would have played in his sleep a few years ago.

And, as I have done for the best part of the last two decades or so, I switched the television off as he started walking back and sank back into my couch, gazing up at the ceiling... Images flashed across my eyes - Tendulkar slaying Warne out of the rough, the legendary Desert Storm blitz with Tony Greig shreiking in the background, that masterful knock against Wasim, Waqar and Saqlain in Chennai when he almost won a test match on his own, the breathtaking assault on Shoaib Akhtar in the World Cup ... and then I thought back to the last time I saw the great man in the flesh, also coincidentally, the last time I saw him get a decent score.

It was hardly a few weeks ago. India were playing Australia at Chepauk. It was a Saturday. Ashwin had just run through a woefully inadequate Australian line-up. It was a splendid effort from the off-spinner with very little support at the other end. Harbhajan Singh , in his 100th test, couldn't land six balls in the same area,  Ravindra Jadeja was steady and economical without looking too dangerous, while Ishant Sharma had bowled with all the intensity and fire of Daffy Duck.

Virender Sehwag (with spectacles and without any sort of form) and Murali Vijay took guard against the Aussie quicks. And they were unleashing thunderbolts. On the same surface where Ishant jogged philosophically upto the bowling crease, and struggled to haul himself up to deliver lifeless floaters, Pattinson and Starc were steaming in, hitting the crease hard and letting it rip. Vijay was cleaned up with a screaming yorker, and Sehwag was late on his defensive prod. 2 down for less than 20.

He strode out to a magnificent ovation as Chepauk rose to welcome this old battle-scarred veteran. But this wasnt really the time for sentiment. James Pattinson had tasted blood and was pawing the ground, straining at his leash to get stuck into the new batsman. Tendulkar took his time, and went through the gardening routine and the trademark crotch-adjusting routine before he settled into his stance.

Pattinson steamed in and pitched up. Tendulkar has a weakness to fast bowlers pitching up early, the analysts said. Except that this time, the great man leaned on it, caressing it between cover and point for a boundary. The stadium errupts, but this is not wild jubilation. There is tension - we arent even thinking about the match now. Can our Sachin, almost 40 years old, handle this 25 year old tyro? It is a one-on-one bout between the ageing maestro and the young tearaway... We move to the edge of our seats and watch with bated breath. Pattinson stomps back to his mark, whirls around and thunders in again.

He pitches it up, just as the laptop ordered him to, and the great man leans into it again, with a delightful wrist adjustment that takes it to the point boundary. Eight off the first two. And a couple of balls later it is twelve off the first 4, as he deftly moves inside a delivery that was on leg stump, to glance it to the boundary with minimal effort. Pattinson glares and stomps off. The momentum shifts with those three boundaries and
Tendulkar is on his way.

What follows is a cultured innings - polished, assured and classy. After the initial counter-punches, Tendulkar nudges, drives and pushes his way past fifty and ends the day on an unbeaten seventy one, and has us all dreaming of the possibility of the century.

 It is 'our' century too, in a strange way. We have grown up with the Boy-Wonder and our lives somehow seem intertwined with Tendulkar- memories. We remember the brands that he used to endorse, the corny commercials, the sublime strokes and even the words used by commentators to describe them with a clarity that is often lacking when we try to put together sketchy memories of our own lives. I don't remember too much about my first date, my first drink or even my first job interview. And yet, I recall with amazing clarity, being glued to the television even as Tony Greig screeched on about how 'They are dancing in the aisles in Sharjah'. And I remember exactly how old I was, and where I was, and what I was doing when Desert Storm happened. Sunday will bring with it fresh validation and proof that our God still Lives, and that Father Time, like Warne and McGrath, can be thwarted by our Hero.

Sunday dawns and it seems as if all of Madras has turned up to watch him score our century. He doesnt. He is bowled through the gate by Nathan Lyon, with the off-spinners dream delivery -tossed up, inviting the cover drive, sneaking through the gap between bat and pad to crash into the stumps. As he walks back, we stand to applaud him again .. The walk back is slow...and we understand the disappointment because we feel it too..we fell short of 'our' century...damn that Nathan Lyon...

Dhoni strode in and took the game by the scruff of its neck, thrashing the bowling into oblivion, manipulating the strike as he batted with the tail, in one of the most memorable innings that I have ever seen. I was privileged to have been among the spectators on a day when he bullied Australia's bowling into a state of total submission. He was scoring runs at will, turning down five singles because he was just that sure of thrashing the sixth ball for a boundary. It was calculated carnage - brilliant, unorthodox and glorious. And to our delight, Nathan Lyon was at the receiving end of the hiding of a lifetime. Dhoni scored a double century that day, and it was one of the most brilliant displays of batting that I have ever seen. But at the end of the day, it was Dhoni's double hundred, not 'ours'.

Immersed in Caalture - Part I

Of all the cities that I have been fortunate to visit, Calcutta would have to be the most interesting. And before you ask, its not because I like rosho-gullo (note my authentic Bengali spelling), because I don't. For the record, I hate it.

I love Calcutta because I love history. And Calcutta is full of it. The city has been ruled by Mughals, Muslim Nawabs, The East India Company, The Queen of England, The Congress, Communists and now by Mamta Bannerjee - and each has left an indelible mark on the city, their own specific fingerprints on the Calcutta of 2012. Calcutta boasts of some of India's oldest Orthodox Churches, Presbytarian Churches, Catholic Churches, Mosques and Temples. 

Most Indian cities have a 'split personality' - a seeming co-existence of the traditional with the modern, the rich with the poor, the slums and the massive IT-parks, and so on. Most white visitors to India - and I am referring to the 'culturally sensitive-immerse-embrace-William Dalrymple-Mark Tully' sort of white visitor here - write about this at great length. 'There exist not one, but two Indias - One is The India of The Urban Rich, full of opportunity, brimming with confidence, and a fast-growing powerhouse, while the Other is the Slummy India, the India ridden with bride-burning, dowry harassment, untouchability, illiteracy, poverty, wretchedness and backwardness'. Or variations of that line anyway. It never ceases to amaze me that every visitor/writer/traveller writes about this divide, this seemingly 'split personality', as if he is the first to notice it, and proceeds to fill up pages and pages with extremely well-written prose, bursting with beautiful English, but totally lacking in originality or insight.

Nowhere is this  'contradiction' and 'co-existence of opposites' more glaringly obvious than in Calcutta. I can think of no other major city in India which has old, ancient banyan trees bursting out of the pavement and stretching onto the road in the heart of the city, or no other city where swamps, marshes and fields of paddy fall within the greater limits of the city. Nor can I think of any other city, where well-dressed, affluent people eat as much street-food.

Its a weird, old, dusty, dirty city, and a city that is unafraid to show you the truth. Delhi hides away its slums and wretchedness into hovels which are invisible when you are driving down wide roads, lined with beautiful old trees, with beautiful buildings on either side. Bombay's slums are away from the commercial hotspots..and are misleading anyway - some slum-dwellers make a lot of money, while some lead miserable lives. Anyway, its hard to focus on people in a city where everybody seems to be rushing to catch a train or bus all the time. Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad have 'clean new parts' and 'slummy old parts' - each distinct from the other... It is only in Calcutta where the distinction blurs. Calcutta is not embarassed by her poor, nor is she ashamed of her rich. She does not feel the need to shroud away street dwellers, beggars and cripples from the so-called 'posh' parts of the city. There is a certain honesty, an inescapable truth that you experience as you weave your way between beggars, pimps, roadside book-sellers and the fashionably rich as you stroll down Park Street, the same honesty and truth that is missing when you drive around a place like Gurgaon, where everything around you is multi-storeyed-aluminium-glass, and everyone drives a car (very fast). You are lulled into a cocoon that isn't real. Calcutta is real. One hundred percent in your face, and an experience that captures all your senses... from the sight of beggars, pimps and cripples operating with remarkable efficiency just outside a five-star hotel, to the sound of Robindro-Shangeeth, the faint smell of urine intertwined delicately with the waft of road-side chow-mein, to the crackle, zap and tang of jhaal-muri, exploding in your mouth, sending your taste-buds into orgasms of sensation...Calcutta is more than a city - it is an experience... and an experience that overwhelms

And running through as a common theme .. is 'Caalture' ...(the rest of the English-speaking world would describe it as 'Culture')... The Calcuttan is proud of his art, culture and heritage. I found Victoria Memorial, a gorgeous memorial built in a classical Indo-Saracenic style of architecture, as the name would suggest, in memory of Queen Victoria, bursting to seams with Bengali visitors on a Sunday morning. And this wasn't for a 'sound'n'light-history-for-dummies' sort of show. This was for a tour of the building and the exhibits. This was a crowd that appreciated it's history, and valued its heritage. And this was a crowd that stopped and absorbed each exhibit, each statue and each tablet. There was a smattering of white tourists and some tourists from other parts of India, but the majority of the crowd was from Calcutta. I overheard a young father tell his daughter about the beauty of the building, and explaining the historical significance of it. He explained with remarkable clarity the effects of colonialization, from the tram, to the train, to the English language, to the names of some of the roads, explaining to an awestruck little girl, the magnificence of Calcutta's Heritage and it's role in Indian History. Calcutta's Caalture.

 In direct contrast, Fort St George in Madras, is at least 150 years older than the Victoria Memorial, just as magnificent, with much more on display. A far older, wider collection of old statues, portraits, coins, medals, documents, manuscripts, cannons, weapons..not to mention that grand old fort itself. It is reasonably well maintained, but noone ever goes there. If its not Rajnikanth, Cricket, Carnatic Music, Religion or something-nerdy-to-do-with-engineering-entrance-exams, the average Madras-dweller doesnt really care. The only visitors are foreign tourists, trying to unravel the fascinating history of the East India Company. Most people who have grown up in Delhi or Bombay don't bother to appreciate the historical treasures that they grow up around, either. And yet, they will storm in like a bunch of wild bison into India's first Starbucks. Because Starbucks is a 'cool brand'...and History is not. Thankfully, the average Calcuttan feels otherwise.

The accent is mesmerizing as well... Most recently I was in Calcutta for a US Visa Interview, and while waiting in the seemingly-never-ending queue, you hear snippets of other conversations...you hear of 'project faanding at Paardue Unibhersity', you hear of someone's son whose 'leg was heaart in an accident' (leg was hurt in an accident)..and more than the words themselves, is the lilting music of the up-and-down-intonation. Bengalis dont speak English - They recite it, they perform it, they sing it. And it sounds sexy. Almost as sexy (but not quite as sexy) as when they speak Bengali, which, along with Urdu and Malayalam, form the Holy Trinity of Sexy Sounding Indian Languages. 

Calcuttans are passionate about what they hold dear - threaten, abuse or disrespect this dear-to-the-heart-stuff at your peril. Its probably the only city in India to have rioted at a football game... huge demonstrations when Sourav Ganguly was dropped/sacked/censured... the only cricket ground in India which had to be evacuated by the police because of crowd trouble, so that the match could go on (which was weird, because the entire stadium was eerily empty, patrolled by the police - and it was India V Pakistan). If, in Delhi, you said that Virendar Sehwag was an idiot, your interlocutor will respond by saying 'something'-chod (Delhi-ites are really creative at this), and if he is a passionate Sehwag fan, he may just slap you, but that's about it. You will also find the same so-called-fan joining you in abusing Sehwag when Sehwag struggles for runs. Not so in Calcutta. Sourav is still the greatest. Was, is and will remain the Royal Bengal Tiger. And dont you ever, dare say anything to the contrary. Because you will be lectured on the Greatness of Ganguly - in a passionate oration that ignores, facts, statistics and cricketing history, and stretches on until you have begged for forgiveness. It will all be about the passion, the haanger for success and the grace of the Ganguly-special-booming-cover drive. VVS had a pretty decent cover drive too, you venture, tentatively? Na Na Na, you are told, Be-Be-S was all wrist, superb on-side player. But Dada was Dada. 

More Calcutta stories to follow... stay tuned