A Little Night Reading

2012-01-27T07:53:00.000-08:00

Three Odd Comments

Vancouver House Prices:

It was reported on Monday that Vancouver residential real estate is among the least affordable among the major cities of the world. The reason is obvious to any one who has the least familiarity with the city. While the number of properties, particularly in higher price range, being purchased by absentee citizens of Asian origin is not insignificant and helps to raise the prices, the main reason is the size of drug trade. The unreported income from local and international drug traffic impacts on calculated affordability in two ways: it is not included in the income in statistics making the affordability factor lower than it really is and much of drug trade income is invested in housing pushing its price up. It is a similar situation to many Italians owning luxury cars and residences while reporting paltry incomes to avoid the taxes. It makes the life of honest Vancouverites harder but one may consider it a just punishment for tolerating, even supporting, the drug trade.

Banks and Risky Ventures:

Mark Carney, Governor of Bank of Canada, has expressed reservation on several occasions about the proposed law south of the border restricting the banks from indulging in risky trades. It is this kind of activity that caused the banking to freeze in 2008 globally and cost hundreds of billions of dollars to activate it again. Mr. Carney argues that banks are needed to trade government bonds because there is no other agency to ‘make the market’ in government bonds particularly when the risks are high and without it the cost of borrowing by the governments will rise. The argument is simplistic and its three components have easy answers. First, the main reason for restricting banks from such activity is that their actions have impact on all aspects of our lives and no one can afford for them to fail by indulging in risky ventures which sometimes turn sour. Second, if the banks are forbidden to do it, the slack will be picked up by large investment funds who would not freeze all business activity if they failed and would not need to be bailed out. Third and most important, if the governments have to pay a premium to prevent the repeat of 2008 crisis, it is not a great burden considering the value of the insurance. Surely, the Governor of the Bank of Canada realizes that the problems in Europe have been exacerbated by the large holdings of risky bonds acquired by the European banks, no doubt, because of their higher yields, without thoroughly evaluating the ability of the governments to repay them. If banks were restricted by law to stay away from risky ventures, governments of Greece and other troubled countries would have been forced to mend their finances when it could have been done instead of borrowing money to bribe the electorate and delaying the outcome till it may be too late.

Why Second Marriages Succeed?

The second marriage of two people who had messy divorces is often happier than most lasting marriages at their later stage. I am not a psychologist and I am known for not having any Emotional Intelligence. Therefore, I should not be expressing an opinion on the issue but I can’t resist being an undisciplined person that I am. After years of demanding jobs and daily chore of bringing up the kids, each partner has a memory bank of events during their time together. Human nature being what it is, pleasant memories are pushed to the back; at least the contribution of the partner to make them pleasant does. On the other hand, the role of the partner in unhappy recollections is at the front of the stage and each time there is a disagreement the movie of them all is replayed in the mind multiplying the grief caused by the event itself and drowning all other pleasantness in life. For a new couple with not much history behind them an unpleasant episode is just one bother. There is no load of accumulated misery of past years to bring forth and it is forgotten as soon as something good happens as it most often does.

2012-01-20T07:21:00.000-08:00

Keystone Rejection: A Blessing in Disguise

President Obama announced the rejection of the application of TransCanada Corporation to build a pipeline to carry bitumen from Alberta to Texas. This was expected by many observers and the reasons, whether political or environmental considerations, are immaterial. The rejection has upset our political leaders and has caused a big brouhaha in our media. The push is on to find alternate markets for the oil, regardless of legal or environmental considerations.

In spite of such kneejerk reaction some cool thinking might show that this decision may actually be a blessing in disguise. By exporting the bitumen to the U.S. in its crudest form we are also exporting the jobs and profits in the processes of refining it into more usable products. The only reason for exporting the crude is that it suits the infrastructure of oil companies who extract the bitumen from oil sands. It is understandable that major international companies want to use the excess capacity on the Gulf coast for refining the crude rather than build new facilities in Canada for this purpose. But why should our governments be so willing to go along with them is an issue that needs to be explained to Canadians, particularly those looking for employment in well-paying jobs.

Refineries in Central and Eastern Canada import approximately 800,000 barrels of oil from overseas while we export around 2.000,000 barrels from the West to our southern neighbour. Whether it is history or the economics of several decades ago, the governments of the day were complicit in the implementation of short-sighted policies that caused us to import so much oil rather than use some of our own production. The rejection of the pipeline with coincidentally the same capacity as the volume of imports offers an opportunity to remedy the situation. While we need to explore ways to broaden the scope of market for excess production, our governments in Edmonton and Ottawa should implement policies which encourage the use of Canadian production for our refined petroleum needs and the phasing out of imports. If this were accomplished, not only would our security of supply be enhanced, we would be beholden to a lesser extent to the politics in Washington now or in Beijing or Delhi at sometime in the future. If this point is driven home and we adjust the trading pattern of crude oil accordingly, all Canadians will be better off in the not so long run.

Yet another issue to consider is the possibility of at least some of crude oil consumption being replaced by natural gas. Vast resources of natural gas have been discovered over the last decade in North America and elsewhere and prices have dropped to astounding three dollars or even less per thousand cubic feet while crude oil has stayed in the range of $100 per barrel. In addition, the clean coal technology is making rapid advances and emission free coal powered electricity generation in near future is a distinct possibility. It is only a matter of time when electricity will be more affordable because most of it would be generated by cheap coal and natural gas. This will promote the use of cars and trucks powered by electricity or natural gas and the demand for oil will decline. Add to this the reserves of recoverable shale oil being discovered in the U.S., South America and the Middle East, the future price of crude oil starts to look less rosy. It can be argued that the falling demand in the West will be offset by increasing consumption in Asia. However, Asian countries have simmering political and social problems and projections of recent growths into the future are likely to prove dangerous.

In this scenario of declining demand and falling prices, do we want to continue building new oil sand plants at huge environmental and economic costs? Should we not be planning for the changes we see on the horizon? It is time we took off our rosy glasses and looked at all possibilities rather than wait till it is too late.

2012-01-15T19:18:00.000-08:00

An Arrogant Post

For some reason I can only guess at, Canadians are more interested in Republican primaries in the U.S. than they are in the leadership races of two Federal opposition parties. Surely, the actions of government in Ottawa have more impact on average Canadians than the President of the neighbouring country, let alone who opposes him in the next election. Could it be because most Canadians watch American TV channels and read American magazines rather than the local offering? Around the cooler or in the coffee shop we share the stories on American media and are generally ignorant of happenings around us.

I have lived in Canada for 38 years and I love this country. Disregarding some instances of colour preference, Canada has been good to my family and we have been made quite comfortable. In return, we have done what we could to help the country’s economy and artistic endeavours. Canadians are reputed as a tolerant people and they forgive misdemeanours of foreigners readily. They are proud of their country and for very good reasons. Yet, I have a suspicion that we have a little of the mentality of the populations ruled by foreigners for long periods - Others know more than us and it behooves us to follow what they do without much thought. This subconscious feeling leads us to foreign products, stores, TV stations and magazines in preference to our own and in celebrating foreign royalty. That in turn perpetuates our sense of inferiority we inherited from our great grandparents who were forced out of their homelands by somewhat desperate circumstances there and the promise of a better future in a far-off frozen Tundra. They survived somehow, worked hard in difficult environment and prepared the ground for the prosperity of future generations. We owe them much gratitude and it would be preposterous to blame them for the psychological complexes of current generation. But we can face the truth without assigning any blame to ancestors long gone to heaven. Along with the wealth they generated, we also inherited from our forbears the attitude that the people in mother countries were our betters and we can do worse than imitate their social, political and economic order.

It is quite possible that I am transposing my Indian inferiority complex on the kind people who have been more than fair to me. If this is indeed true I apologize for hurt feelings. On the other hand, if it provokes some discussion, something useful may come out of this arrogant post.

2012-01-06T09:29:00.000-08:00

Investing Philosophy for the New Year:

While the New Year will bring prosperity, health and happiness to some, almost as many will suffer from impoverishment, ailments and grief of loss of the dear ones. There will be moments of joy and periods of sorrow in every life. It is impossible to predict what the climate change, terrorism or political upheaval will dump on us and where. These are uncertain times but that is how every year has been and 2012 will be no different.

The issue in the minds of all investors is simple to state: How to handle our investments in the stock market under different scenarios we are likely to face? Extreme downside is not a consideration because if the world comes to an end what happens to our money doesn’t matter. We invest in a system which is moving forward whether stumbling or running at full tilt. Investment in commodities and real estate has undue risks because there trading tends to be quite irrational and prone to hype. Yes, the stock market too is not rational but only on a day to day basis. Over the term of a few months one can see the patterns and relate them to reality. This has worked in the past and should work in the New Year too.

The indices for the U.S. and Canadian exchanges rose sharply in the first quarter of 2011 to give up these gains and some more in the third quarter. In the fourth quarter they fluctuated in a 1000 point range, centered at 12,000 for TSX. Many acute hedge fund managers made money by shorting when the index was 12,500 and covering the shorts at 11,500. This trading by large funds may have played a part in the volatility. The U.S. economy, shaky banks, the problems of Euro and heavily indebted European economies were perhaps the reasons for drop from the peaks of the second quarter but their ups and downs did not correspond to the volatility in the last few months and may have had little to do with it. I suggest that the market will trade in the same vein for next few months. This pattern will change downwards if there is a catastrophe like a repeat of 911 in the West, political upheaval in China or India, major confrontation in the Middle East or unforeseen significant weakening in a major Western economy. Conversely, there will be an upward move if Europe resolves its problems convincingly (not likely in the short term) or the U.S. economy shows signs of life (possible if President Obama stands up to Tea Party Republicans and taxes are raised to reduce the budget deficit) or India and China reverse recent declines and commodity markets begin to rise again. Isolated natural havocs like Tsunami in Japan don’t seem to have a lasting impact on the economy except on the communities of the region. What a series of such disasters in quick succession will do is too awesome to contemplate and plan for. That said, an investor who watches for and reacts to the signs around him will reap profits whichever way the economy moves.

Rather than balance the portfolio for different sectors of economy or for geography, it is better to balance it on the basis of yield, risk and the prospects of individual companies. Even a seven figure account can own only one or two companies in any sector. For example, which bank or insurance company to hold to represent the financials is a key issue and needs the attention of the investor. Generally, it is better to invest in second tier companies than the largest in their industries for two reasons. First, second tier companies are often bought at a premium by their peers or by the leaders in the industry. Second, these companies are usually not on the radar of hedge funds and are not as volatile as the top tier companies. It is often profitable to put a small percentage of the portfolio in companies which have either hit the rough spot and have a good prospect of recovering or the start ups which have an unusual and proven (as much as anything can be proven in this business) potential. In my experience, many of the big losers of last year are likely to be big winners this year. It helps to sleep better if an investor remembers that over the short term, performance of the portfolio is critical, not that of each individual component, because these may fluctuate in a large range for no good reason and trading based on daily price alone causes grief more often than joy.

There are many tomes, media columns and blogs advising investors but there is no proven technique. Generally, buy and hold is better than day trading even when trading expenses are negligible. On the other hand, there is a time to buy a stock and there is a time to sell. Long term investors develop an instinct which guides them on when to trade which works for them more often than against them. Not every investment in 2012 will work even for the sage of Omaha. However, more of them should succeed than fail for a good investor and the portfolio should be ahead at the end of the year after counting for inflation and taxes. Any gain on top of that is gravy.

Throwing stones while living in a glass house:

Picking junk may have made Smiling Barracuda rich, as Mr. Delaney claims (Smiling Barracuda, Globe and Mail, Dec. 17), it has not done much for his his investors. Stock of Sherritt was $8 in 1996; This week, fifteen years later, it trade around $6.00.

Another company loved by the media is Westjet. In five years its stock is down from over fifteen dollars to around eleven. Yet, watching the CEO being interviewed you would think that it has made its investors fabulously rich. Running down your competitors sounds better when you have something worth shouting about.

2011-12-31T06:32:00.000-08:00

An Indian Holiday

My post last week was written as an observer of sociopolitical scene, not as a person returning to visit his family. This piece is a personal documentation of the trip and may be of some interest in a personal way.

I have two brothers, three nephews, one niece, innumerable cousins and their progeny living there. By and large, they are all doing well financially and belong to what is termed upper middle class. They all have cars, some with drivers; own their comfortable homes and no credit card debts. Older relatives are retired with good pensions and/or substantial investment incomes; younger ones in good jobs in industry. Money is not the issue with any of them, except a nephew and his wife who deliberately chose to be a political and social activists living frugally on contributions of supporters to their cause. I don’t believe any of them feel they have done worse financially than yours truly. They have servants for housework and don’t use washing machines for clothes and dishes even when they own them.

Delhi was hectic, partly because going anywhere is time-consuming. It takes an hour or more to go to my brother’s home in Noida from Delhi airport a distance of 15 kilometers. During a stay of four days there we saw my other brother for half an hour, visited a cousin for the afternoon, attended a wedding and visited the village of Sarurpur. The village is located 35 kilometers from Noida, it took almost three hours to get there in a private car. A Calgary family has raised funds to build a maternity clinic in the village. The clinic was officially opened in last October. Although equipped with beds in several rooms on two floors and accommodation for the medical personnel on the third floor, the hospital is working as a day clinic because it is unable to attract qualified staff. The village has electricity for eight hours a day at unpredictable times. Thus, the medical equipment is inoperable and the hesitation of professionals to live and work in the village is understandable. Two doctors and a nurse currently operate the clinic and plans to operate it as a hospital are on hold. My wife Evelyn is a doctor and has an international reputation as a human lactation expert. She was welcomed at the hospital with great fanfare and spent seven hours attending to about fifty patients with a variety of ailments, only a few related to lactation. Still, she had always wanted to work with the poor and this was one of the many high points in her career.

We attended a wedding reception for the brother of the wife of my nephew. In middle class business communities grooms are bought in something like a silent auction. Parents of eligible girls bid for the grooms euphemistically stating what they will ‘spend on the wedding’. Since most of the money is spent on the dowry, a price is being set for the groom. In this wedding, bride’s father gifted the family a home in Delhi, a car and unstated amount of gold and diamond jewellery. Most of the relatives of the groom received the gift of a package of expensive candy and an envelope with five hundred rupees (ten dollars). Total money spent on the wedding was estimated by my sister-in-law at five hundred thousand dollars, a huge sum in India where a cup of tea costs five cents. Traditionally, daughters do not share in the inheritance; the wedding expense is usually much more than their share would be. It is not unusual for a bride’s family to take on huge debts to place her in a ‘good’ home.

The weddings in other communities are simpler. We attended another wedding in Dehradun. The marriage was arranged in two families of prosperous ‘warrior’ community. The dowry was not a consideration. Ceremony was much simple and the reception was elegant but not pretentious. Total expense on the wedding was a few thousand dollars. Father of the groom was gracious and thanked the family of bride for the gift of their daughter, a gesture unthinkable in most Indian weddings.

We travelled in Kerala for a week. Flight from Delhi to Kochi was cheap and comfortable. However, the flight of nephew and his wife from Bombay was delayed and we waited for four hours at the airport for them. We drove to a resort located on the inlet of Arabian Sea. We got up early to visit a bird sanctuary, heard many bird songs but saw none. We did see the village life on the other bank of the inlet with women washing clothes, pots and pans and men themselves and getting ready to face the world. The homes were small but looked neat. Later in the day, on a three hour boat trip we saw a number of kingfishers, egrets, snakebirds and millions – yes millions- of ducks in the inlet, rice fields and coconut groves. The musicians of considerable talent performed to an audience of four to six in the evenings. The swimming pool was not heated but it was warm and the view of the sunset while floating in it is an unforgettable experience.

Train ride to Trivendrum was followed by a car ride to the southern tip of India called Kanyakumari. There were almost as many churches and mission schools as the temples and quite a few mosques. The hotel room had a view of the temple of Swami Vivekanand, an Indian sage of late nineteenth century who preached Hindu philosophy in California. There was also a magnificent towering statue of Tamil poet Periyar. Both are located a few hundred meters from the coast and small boats ferry visitors to them all day. However, unseasonal monsoon rains cancelled all boat trips and we could not visit either. We did have a pleasant walk down and up the crowded market with stalls on both sides of narrow streets. We spent a couple of nights in a beach resort but couldn’t do much due to downpours. We had dinner in a restaurant with thatched roof and makeshift appearance where one course of a ‘catch of the day’ cost more than all restaurant meals on the whole trip.

We returned to Delhi by air and took a train the next day for Dehradun, the capital of a new province Uttarakhand. Main reason for the visit was the wedding of the granddaughter of a very close family friend since the days of our childhood. We were treated royally by the hosts and the wedding was a grand affair without being showy. The day before the wedding, four artists spent several hours decorating bride’s arms and legs with green henna paste which left red designs after it dried and peeled off. The artists hid the name of the groom in the design and he was expected to find it when they met. Evelyn also had her arms and hands decorated and the colour lasted a week. There was no mention of the dowry but the groom’s party did arrive with the usual pomp, groom on a horse surrounded by a band and followed by about two hundred guests. The bride came an hour later looking like a princess dressed in a gorgeous red sari and jewels from head to toe. She was conveyed on a palaki carried by her brothers on their shoulders to the groom waiting patiently for her on a divan. The cameramen, amateurs and professionals hired for the occasion, got busy snapping all possible combinations of the families. Soon it was almost midnight and the groom was having a hard time staying awake. The word spread that the ‘phera’ ceremony in which couples go round the holy fire seven times while the priest chants Sanskrit mantras praying for the couple’s happiness and advising them on how to cope with whatever the future brings, was to be delayed till several hours after midnight. The guests who had eaten a sumptuous meal long ago now started to take their leave. The members of close family rested for a few hours before the final public ceremony in the midmorning when the bride leaves her home to become a member of her new family. Plenty of tears were shed by every one present and after the bride had departed with the groom. It was at this moment when the father of the groom thanked bride’s family for the gift of their daughter.

One of the highlights of our trip was the visit to the home where I was born and lived till I was eight. Once an elegant home, it was now dilapidated but almost as I remember it in general appearance. It has been divided into three apartments and is habited by families in difficult circumstances. We were invited in by the elderly lady owner and treated to tea and snacks. She told us all the hoops she was going through to make one of the tenants leave and of the plans to renovate the house after the tenants had left. The city as a whole, just like most buildings in the country, has a worn out look.

We spent a few days in Nainital, a popular summer resort since the glory days of British Raj. Again, the streets are crowded with vehicles, even on the mall which used to be an avenue for pedestrians only and where the families strolled around the lake admiring the beauty of the turquoise water reflecting the surrounding peaks and enjoying the cool fragrant air. The distant Himalayan peaks are visible only rarely now. Still, the views of lakes and surrounding peaks are wonderful and visitors return home to their humdrum life refreshed.

Day after returning by train from Nainital, we flew to Calgary with a five hour stopover in Frankfurt. It took more than two weeks to get over twelve hour jet lag. The trip was tiring but refreshing too.

2011-12-23T11:33:00.000-08:00

A Bad Dream

Lying on a couch with the remote in his palm to flip through five hundred channels is Laxman’s favorite activity. But he was not facing the big screen TV; he was in the clinic of Dr. Mac, a psychoanalyst known all over the continent for his interpretation of dreams. Laxman was fortunate to get this appointment. Actually the fortune was in having Sophia for a wife who had many strings to her bow, one of them connected to Dr. Mac.

Sophia had a problem with Laxman which was getting worse by the day. In fact, she had two problems. First, Laxman did not concentrate when she talked to him. Not only did his eyes wander, even when there were no pretty faces around, he tapped pencil on the table, clicked his tongue, hummed some rotten Indian melody or made other disturbing sounds. The consequence was that he bought meat at the grocery store when she had asked him to buy milk and drove over to the hardware store at the other end of town to buy nails when she wanted him to pick up the mail. Second problem was his speech. He spoke to her facing away as if mumbling and the strange accent was not bad enough and then sulked when she complained. It had got to the point that Sophia was losing patience with him every hour of the day and even their sex life, never great at the best of times, had hit a new bottom.

Then came the last straw; the dream. Laxman had frequent dreams of being at his college in India. In these dreams he was having problems like not finding the wash room, shower running out of water, long line up for meals and losing large sums in the games of bridge. He would wake up sweating all over as if from a nightmare and describe it in great detail. Sophia listened patiently and patted him back to sleep as she had done with their sons when they were babies. But this new dream shook her up; she had read in a magazine article that older men in early stages of senility start craving for what they were fond of in their childhood and wish to return to places they loved then. She wondered if her husband of forty years was, in addition to becoming partially deaf and inattentive, also suffering from some mental disorder. After Laxman had gone back to sleep she made a note in her bedside memo pad to investigate the issue. She let it simmer in her head for a couple of days before discussing it with a few of her friends knowledgeable in such matters. On their unanimous advice she arranged an appointment for Laxman with Dr. Mac a month after the nightmare although the waiting list of the celebrated dream surgeon was known to be longer than nine months.

Dr. Mac’s opening gambit in the examination surprised Laxman. “Are you comfortable? Does the headrest need adjustment?” the famous doctor asked.
“Thanks you for your concern, sir. I am so comfortable I am afraid I might fall asleep,” Laxman replied.
“Please don’t do that. I might think you are considering a reply to my query and time will be wasted. My time is precious although I only charge five dollars a minute. Now let us get down to business. Am I right in thinking that you had a dream recently that has your wife worried about the soundness of your mind?”
“Yes, that is true although I do not really see it that way. I have often had dreams of my old haunts in India which wake me up because I don’t really have any pleasant memories from those days. This new dream sends me back to earlier days but there is nothing particularly creepy about it.”
“Interesting, very interesting. Goes back to earlier days. How early?
“The frequent dreams are from my late teen years in college. This dream is from preteen days.”
“Interesting. Before we go into the dream itself, have you had it again?”
“Yes, several times. It scares Sophia every time.”
“And not you?”
“Not really. It does wake me up and I am happy to realize that it was but a dream. Unfortunately, Sophia wakes up too and she insists on knowing what disturbed my sleep. I happily go back to sleep after the episode.”
“And Sophia doesn’t. Interesting. Does it appear again when you have returned to slumber land?”
“No it doesn’t. In fact the sleep is unusually sound, no dreams whatever.”
“It is like letting the steam out. Once it is gone you can relax.”
“I never looked at it this way. This is also true about my scary dreams of teenage years.”
“Interesting. Now you can describe the bad dream, or the nightmare, whatever you call it, in its most usual form?”
“First a preamble. I was born in the foothills of Nilgiris in a then small town called Anmora. Tall peaks dominated the view in the South, white in the winter, grayish blue in the summer. An hour by bus, about 30 kilometers is a famous summer holiday town called Sensous where the rich families of south India spend the summer to avoid the scorching heat of the plains. I was never impressed by Sensous even when I was a child. It seemed too pretentious somehow. The hill town that I loved was Rotipur, about a hundred kilometers from Anmora on a narrow road which looked from the top like a winding ribbon lying on the side of mountain. It took three hours and every passenger on the bus was sick at the end of the journey. But what a view once you got there. I was there only once and only for a week when I was ten. But the memory of the majestic mountains all around me at the glorious sunrise in the East or the fantastic colours of the sunset in the West; and yes the rainbow after the noon drizzle. It was as if a great artist had taken his pallet and brush and drawn an arc of seven distinct colours in the bright blue sky. It is perfectly possible that the time has improved what I saw, but this is what I remember. I felt throughout my teens and twenties that I was born to live at Rotipur. Not like a poor boy that I was then but like a rich man of independent means with maids and servants to look after my every whim. Strange thing is that the prospective family never made an appearance when I day dreamed of this life – no wife, no children. However, Rotipur receded from view when I migrated to Canada and married Sophia, only to reappear a month ago.”
“Interesting, very interesting. Carry on.”
“As I said in the beginning, the dreams of late teenage life at college persisted, mainly reminding me of the struggles in those days. In the dream that Sophia suspects is indicative of approaching senility, I am standing on the balcony of my palatial home on a hill top looking into the distance. Sometimes I have a glass of red wine in my right hand, sometimes a cup of steaming tea but most often nothing. My appearance is similar to what it was twenty years ago, in my fifties. Mountain peaks are without doubt Rotipur peaks. I look right; I see the sun rising slowly from behind the peaks, the sky becoming brighter as the white disc rises above the horizon. Then I turn left and see the sun going down behind the peaks in the West, sky becoming darker as it grows pink. There are no clouds, no rainbow and of course no stars. Then the sun sets completely and everything goes dark. The curtain falls on the dream and I wake up.”
“Very interesting. The dreams as vivid as yours have some meaning. We have to work together to find out what it could be. One thing it is not. It is not the onset of senility. You said you look in the dream as you did in your fifties. Can you tell me what was happening in your life around that time?”
“Those were the good years. Our two sons were at colleges in Toronto and Montreal. Sophia had her business under control and I had enough time for afternoons at the club most days, golf or bridge, depending on the weather. Perhaps it was the best time of our lives.”
“How is your life now? How do you get on with Sophia?”
“Sophia has two distinct personalities. She is an angel when she is relaxed, you would not find a better person anywhere. She makes every body around her feel good. She makes me look a great father and a good person altogether which in itself is a miracle. But when under stress she becomes temperamental and has outbursts worse than a cannon fire. That is why our life together has its ups and downs, more downs than ups in recent years. We are from very different cultures and have never been a homogeneous couple like many of our fortunate friends. Over last twenty years we have been growing further apart because our interests have been diverging further. We do things together on occasions but it is more to be obliging on part of one or the other than out of his or her personal interest. Sometimes it works, other times it adds to the stresses.”
“Interesting. Is this divergence the only source of stress or there are others too.”
“Illness of a son and the grandson, the marriage break-up of the son and the illness of Sophia have all contributed. They continue to stress Sophia and it adds to difficulties between us because I want to detach myself from situations where I can’t help. Sophia has deep emotional roots and she frets when her interventions are misinterpreted.”
“How do these stresses impact on you?”
“It is not the events themselves; it is the reaction of Sophia to them. She gets upset with sons or the daughter-in-law, becomes tense and takes her anger out on me. I understand what is going on but feel pretty depressed all the same. I am not willing or able to stand up to Sophia and fight when she is being unreasonable. I take her snapping and bullying without protest – in fact I try to appease her. But it does hurt and I wonder why I stay in that situation.”
“Why do you appease her rather than stand up for yourself?”
“There are several reasons. First, I think her temper tantrums are more extreme due the almost fatal disease she had five years ago and the effect of drugs prescribed for it. Second, she has been very kind to me in our first few years together. She helped me settle in the West by helping me when I needed it. Not only that, she uprooted herself to move when my career was helped by it. Third, she was an excellent mother to the children and a great role model to them. Fourth, she showed great concern as if her world was falling apart whenever I was ill. There is so much gratitude I owe her I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“This is an interesting angle. Nothing you have said so far gave the idea that you were sensitive enough to have such feelings.”
“I am often told that I need to be sensitive to others and I have been trying.”
“You have had some success. Any thing more to add?”
“I have been thinking of late that there may be some truth in what she often says when she is angry – she would be better off without me; a butler would be cheaper and better in every way. If that is indeed true I would be doing her a favour by leaving. If she is indeed better it would offset some of the burden of gratitude that I carry.”
“Yes, one could look at it that way.”
“Then the old American saying – Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Should we be making each other’s present and future miserable because of the past kindnesses?”
“You have a point. A relationship can be great at one stage of life and a misery at another. While raising the family, couples work out how they share the load. As they start wilting in old age one may start to feel burdened by the other not doing his share.”
“What you say is frightening. What happens to the notions of love and understanding in such cases?”
“Love is an abstraction and understanding is fleeting. Practicalities and burdens of daily life are always the first consideration.”
“Social implications of what you just said are immense. Marriage is for raising children, not for life. After kids grow up each is on his own.”
“Not always. In old days people did not live long and this was rarely an issue. These days many couples adjust to new realities and carry on. Not because they love each other more but because adaptation is easier than the complications of a break up. Some struggle but carry on regardless. Separation and new relationships may be better when both are driving each other mad. No one can tell you where you stand and what the best course is for you. That is for you alone to consider. Anything else!”
“I think I have said all there is to say on this issue.”
“Then let us move on. Do you have any financial stresses?”
“I wish we did. Then divergence in temperament and hobbies would probably take the back seat. We have ample funds for our retirement in our separate accounts for all foreseeable needs.”
“Interesting. Well, I can have you in that couch for several consultations and charge you a bundle. But I won’t because I do not have time to waste. I will tell you my interpretation of your dreams. After you have given my summary some thought we can meet again if you wish.
“Your dreams of late teen college days are expressing your fears of returning to India and reverting to being single. I am certain you had them after unpleasantness in the family and when you were wondering ‘what am I doing here’. Those dreams encouraged you to work at pleasing Sophia in spite of poor results. A month or so ago you concluded that your relationship with Sophia is beyond repair and your future happiness lies in being single. This is why your dreams carry you to an earlier happy period. They show the idea down deep in your mind. Yet, you are not certain what to do. That is why you look to the right and the left and not straight at the rainbow. To help you in making a decision is another issue and I am not in the right profession to help you with that.”
“It is not far from what I was thinking. How to present it to Sophia is indeed a problem. I need to give that some thought too.”
“Sophia is no fool. She has her suspicions and she arranged this visit is to confirm them. Tell her the good news that senility has not touched you yet. Then discuss the issues between you. As I indicated I am not qualified to tell you how to do it. In any event, my next patient has been waiting for ten minutes and I must say good bye.”

Dr. Mac opened the door with left hand and offered Laxman the right for a handshake. Laxman accepted it with a wry smile. He stood still outside of the door, not knowing whether to go to the right or the left, East or West.

2011-12-16T06:54:00.000-08:00

Return of the Native 2

I left India in 1961. Over fifty years of my life as immigrant in four countries I have returned on average every four years for about three weeks each time. I was there for nineteen days this year in November and December and my previous visit was in the same months of the year 2007. I was keen to see how the country has changed during this interval. According to the media reports the economy there has grown annually by 10% for many years. It has been pointed out by some that the middle class has expanded while others have insisted, and I shared this opinion, that just like the West, rich have grown richer while poor have grown poorer and also more numerous because the economic growth has not kept pace with the population growth over the long term. The population has indeed grown at an alarming rate; at over one billion it is three times it was at the time of independence in 1947. Although there is a small decline in the growth rate, population is no where near stabilizing. An unfortunate side of this growth is that it is concentrated among the poor who have no incentive to limit the number of children they have and more of their children now survive, thanks to the availability of better basic services and medical care in the villages and slums.

To get some idea of the real situation, and to spend time with the family as well, I spent four days in Delhi visiting relatives, a week travelling in Kerala at the southern tip of the country with my social activist nephew and his wife and a week in Uttarakhand in Himalayan foothills to attend a wedding in a village near Dehra Dun, my home town and enjoy the beauties of Nainital, a celebrated mountain resort since the glory days of British Raj. India is known as a country of contradictions and true to form it offered many surprises. It was pleasant to find that there were very few beggars except near the temples where begging is big business operated by the Indian mafia. There was little cow dung on the roads because most of the unclaimed stray cows have been exported to the Middle East. There are fewer mangy stray dogs but plenty of well-fed monkeys. Contrary to my fears, poor in cities and villages I visited or passed on my travels were better fed and clothed than ever before. Majority of women now wear salwar (baggy pants) kameez (knee-length long tunic) rather than cumbersome sari, jeans are worn by some teenage girls and a few young women in major cities. Niqab (face covering) is rare indeed, even in villages. A simple proof of trickling down prosperity is that there were very few bare feet on the streets and children looked healthier and cleaner. Groups of teenage girls in school uniforms going to or coming back from schools were a pleasant sight every where. Even the coolies proudly talked of their children, girls as well as boys, going to private schools at their expense. One of our cab drivers had a post graduate degree but he did not complain about his lot. He is happy that that he and his school teacher wife can afford to send their two children to private schools. The sad aspect of this story is the general distrust in public schools who suffer through siphoning off by corrupt officials of already meager funds.

The other side of the happy economic situation is that even the medium size cities like Kochi and Dehra Dun are choking with ever growing vehicular traffic clogging their narrow streets. Large cities like Mumbai, Calcutta, Delhi and Bangalore with population exceeding ten millions are virtually at a standstill for many hours in a day. Thankfully, majority of buses and trucks have converted to natural gas from diesel and ancient cars have largely disappeared. Therefore, obnoxious fumes these cities were notorious for in the past are now rare. But breathing is not any easier anywhere in India, not even in pristine Himalayas. The air is heavily polluted with dust and invisible but deadly gases emitted by stalled vehicles. Fogs are a constant presence throughout the year making air and rail transport unreliable. A heavy mist almost completely masks the Himalayan peaks which were a sight to behold only a few years ago in Nainital. The sewerage is dumped untreated into the streams which people use to wash themselves and their clothes and to draw water for cooking and drinking. The ground water level in areas surrounding the cities is dropping fast; for example the wells go down to more than four hundred feet in suburbs of Delhi rather than a hundred feet a decade ago. Major population centres have uninterrupted electricity most days but towns and villages are lucky to have power supply for eight hours. Therefore, professionals like doctors and teachers stay away and hospitals and schools can not offer services citizens need. The solution of the shortages appears to be a long way off since the plans for nuclear power generation are facing insurmountable local opposition after Fukushima disaster.

Indians are generally outgoing people. Yet, although there is great awareness of cleanliness inside the home they do not see the dirt, dust and human and animal refuse beyond the front door. In spite of economic boom, most streets have more dilapidated appearance than on previous visit. Beautiful temples and mosques which are visited by thousands of visitors daily are spotless inside but their surroundings are repulsive to any one concerned with hygiene. To add to the hardships of dense population, residents live in constant fear of theft which is rarely reported due to a general distrust of law enforcement officials. Rule of Law is embedded in the constitution bit it is of little practical value for general public.

Corruption is visible at every level in India from an orderly who must be tipped for a message to be conveyed to the receptionist to cabinet ministers, even senior judges. Ironically, educated and intelligent persons claim to be honest while taking pride in how they avoided taxes or secured other favours by cozying up to the right officers. A new high in two-faced attitude was reached when Rahul Gandhi, son of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who was murdered (martyred?) by Tamil Tigers and Rajiv’s Italian wife Sonya who now runs the government through her puppets. Rahul is next in the dynasty which has ruled ‘democratic’ India since independence except for a few short terms when Congress party lost the election. Unfortunately, he has shown little aptitude for anything other than claiming his right to rule the country. In an address to the delegates from the youth wing of the ruling party he preached that the only way to eliminate corruption in the country was to modify the democratic system. He did not care to elaborate but one would be forgiven to assume that he wishes to be given a free hand when he ascends to his rightful place at the helm. No one in the audience, either the delegate or the media, dared to ask the questions on the lips of ordinary citizens – How did his family accumulate the fortune estimated in hundreds of millions of dollars without ever having been in a successful venture or what qualifies him for the positions he occupies in the ruling party and the government?

My overall impression is that the drastic reduction in state controls on production in final decade of the last millennium liberated the suppressed native ingenuity and the economy developed rapidly. It helped most of the population to live better in a material sense. While there is optimism among people I met, there is also a growing awareness that rapid exhaustion of basic resources like water and clean air, corruption in administration at every level and governance focused on shortsighted economic goals are driving the country towards a cliff and no one has an inkling of how to stop it.

2011-12-09T07:54:00.000-08:00

Having just returned from India after a three week trip I am writing my impressions of travel from Himalayan ranges to Kanya Kumari. To set this in context here is what I wrote after our last visit in 2007.

Return of the Native.

1.

A new immigrant from India has a hard time. First, he must learn to drive on the wrong side of the road. Then he has to get used to the freezing weather and all that goes with it. If he is young and hot-blooded he falls in love and marries a wonderful local girl. Before he knows it, she is training him. He learns to enjoy the fine points of bland Western food and to honour her wishes unlike in India where a wife anticipates her husband’s whims and fulfills them before they are expressed. What is worse, he can’t join his wife for holidays to exotic places on this continent because he must go ‘home’ to see his family.

I was not your typical immigrant though. I did marry a Western girl and undergo strict training. But I went on holidays with the family and gave my former home a skip. Last time I was in India was four years ago and Monica was there with me part of the time. Monica is currently recovering from a debilitating illness and needed a long rest. My sister-in-law Nirusha invited us to visit her in India. We were in complete agreement except that I suggested three week recuperation under Nirusha’s care while Monica wanted to travel to explore opportunities for volunteer activity. After long discussions carried on in bed instead of more interesting activities, we reached an agreement – ten days in Delhi with Nirusha, a visit to the ancient Jain temples in Northwest India, a few days with my social activist nephew Rajneesh, a safari to a tiger sanctuary and a few days in Singapore with my niece. I sent the provisional itinerary to Rajneesh and he made reservations accordingly. There was a last minute scare. The visas did not arrive and I had to make several cajoling calls to the Indian consulate to receive them on the planned day of departure. Finally, we set off on a twenty hour journey made to appear even longer by the twelve hour jet lag. Thanks to travel during midweek, we had empty seats on our flight to Frankfurt and slept comfortably all the way when we were not being fed. The combination of long sleep, good food and favourable jet lag is hard to beat. We were bursting with energy when we pushed our luggage cart to the reception area at Delhi airport a little after midnight. My niece Sarala and Rajneesh’s wife Manju were there to greet us with broad smiles and open arms.

The realization that we were in Delhi struck with a new force when we walked out of the building and breathed the heavy warm air. Taxi that had been arranged to take us to my brother Vijay’s home did not show up and after waiting for an hour Manju engaged another one at the exorbitant rate of five hundred rupees (thirteen dollars). The trunk was loaded with the driver’s personal belongings but a little rearranging made room for the large and heavy case. Four of us squeezed in with smaller cases on our laps. The roads were busy even at this hour and the fifteen kilometers ride took an hour and a half. The journey from the airport was more tiring than the twenty hours of flying. I was snoozing and Vijay and Nirusha waiting in the driveway when we turned the last corner. Their heartfelt welcome made Monica’s nervousness and my weariness disappear in Delhi’s thick air. We jumped out of the car as soon as it stopped and hugged each other like the long lost kins we were. In view of the late hour detailed exchanges were postponed till the morning and after a drink of hot creamy milk we hit the comfortable bed under the canopy of a mosquito net. Sleep was not in the cards though. Noise of continuous traffic in which blowing the horn every ten seconds is de rigueur, recorded prayers blaring on a microphone in the nearby temple, call of a muezzin, again on the microphone, in a mosque across the main road are not conducive to a restful slumber. Fortunately we got used to it in a couple of days.

A tropical travel specialist in Calgary had prescribed a number of pills to be taken daily and some others as required. The need arose after a few hours of tossing and turning. Monica was attacked by Delhi Belly – diarrhea by its Western name. When pills did not help she started the course of antibiotics. After two days she could keep the delicious food in again and we breathed sighs of relief. A little too soon, as it turned out. At the breakfast table the next morning, I coughed gently with a handkerchief on my mouth. Every one noticed it and a barrage of questions were let loose.
“Do you have phlegm?” asked Vijay.
“Did you cough in the night?” asked Nirusha.
“Were you cold in the night?” asked Kamala.
Manju, not to be left behind shot the final arrow, “Did you sit under the A.C. vent on the airplane?”
Monica, a real doctor and most concerned with the health of her only husband, tried to interject but no one let her. They did not listen to my replies either. Vijay rushed to a cabinet and returned with a musty old bottle and shoved in my mouth a tea spoon full of green syrup spilling some on my sparkling white new kurta (long shirt). He did not notice the spill and confidently assured every one “His cough will be gone in ten minutes.” Nirusha went to the kitchen and brought an Ayurvedic powder wrapped in a brown newspaper and a bowl of tomato soup with a liberal sprinkling of black pepper. “Take these” she commanded and assured all who would listen, “The cough will be gone in ten minutes.” Kamala produced a yellow tablet from her handbag and handed it to me, “I took this last week and my cough was gone in ten minutes.” Manju watched me consume all this medication and thankfully did not produce any herself. But she did offer this bit of advice, “Stay in bed and drink a lot of sweet chai with cardamom. The cold will be gone by the evening.” Her prescription seemed to me the most attractive because duration of her treatment was a shade less unrealistic than that of the others.

Monica watched in consternation as I consumed all the offerings and prepared to stretch on the sofa with a cup of prescribed chai. The doctor was the only one who thought that the much ballyhooed cough was merely a sneeze and was nothing to worry about.

I later discovered that the duration of every event in Delhi is ten minutes whether it is a two hour drive to visit the relatives at the other end of the city or an hour wait for a visitor who announced his imminent arrival on the ‘mobile’. As for my illness, every one turned out to be wrong though no one admitted it. It was indeed the cough but it took much longer than ten minutes to go away. In spite of gaining several inches around my waistline due to the consumption of syrups, pills, powders, gells, soups, teas and miscellaneous brews, the cough persisted during the whole stay in Delhi and left only when the dusty grimy air of India’s bustling capital city was a memory.

Apart from Monica’s diarrhea and my cough, the stay in Delhi was most pleasant. Nirusha loves to spoil her family, particularly her husband’s younger brother. Monica and I were not allowed to do anything that could be construed as work but were expected to consume massive amounts of delicious curries, parathas, gulab jamuns, burphies, pealed apples, guavas and pears and varieties of nuts every hour we were awake. Somehow we found time to see an excellent performance of a ballet based on the Hindu epic Ramayana, the museum of modern art with some paintings by the celebrated poet Rabindra Nath Tagore and the local fair to celebrate Deewali, the festival of light. We also managed to arrange a visit to the local government hospital and a private clinic which gave Monica a great deal of pleasure as well as the information about the delivery and range of medical services in India.

2.

Our visit was planned around the holy festival of Deepavali, or Deevali. It is timed to be a harvest festival and celebrates the victory of Ram (one of many incarnations of God) over the devil Ravan. It is a good time to visit India. Weather is pleasant, heat of the summer is a thing of the past and the cold of the winter is a few weeks away. Monsoons are over but the ground is not parched and the vegetation is still lush green. However, there are a few problems. Delhi has grown to be a city of five million inhabitants with infrastructure for one tenth that many. Therefore, the roads are clogged, water and electricity supply irregular and air heavily polluted. Not surprisingly, the diseases are so common that every fourth store on the main street was related to medicine. Illnesses of the individual and the family dominate all conversation. This may be an indication of another perversion in society. Corruption in all walks of life, the favourite topic in previous visits, is now accepted as the rule of law of the mighty and there is a general realization that complaining about it is futile, if not dangerous.

Our arrival nine days before the festival was a welcome news to my extended family. My neice Sarala and her businessman husband Amul had come over from Nagpur to see us. Rajneesh and Manju came from far off Pune. A stream of visitors from Delhi culminated in a big party thrown by Nirusha for seventy guests. Monica in her new pink Salwar Kameez was the toast of the party so much so that few noticed their male relative from Canada. In accordance with the ancient custom, we visited the older relatives to pay our respects. Invariably the hosts were most insistent to feed us the creations of their servants and were offended if we, Monica especially, showed any hesitation. On every visit the hosts legitimately complained of the shortness of our one hour stay although it took us more than four hours including the travel time. All because Vijay estimated that every one of them was a mere ten minutes away although it took longer than that to get the car out of its parking spot.

On the festive day itself, Manju made a beautiful ‘Rangoli on the floor near the front entrance. It is an artwork approximately one meter in diameter made with fine white and colourd powders. Its sole purpose is to make the entrance of the home attractive and welcoming to the visitors. Lunch that followed was a veritable feast with dozens of dishes loaded with spices, sugar and fat. A snooze in the afternoon was mandatory, even for ever busy Nirusha.

After sunset, the small store room which also served as prayer nook became the hub of activity. Earlier in the day, clay statuettes of various gods, which the family worshipped in spite of Jain edict forbidding it, had been arranged neatly in an arc on the floor. Tiny earthen lamps were filled with vegetable oil and placed in front of the idols. I was assigned the job of lighting their wicks which required lying prostrate on the floor. Then Nirusha handed Vijay a ‘thali’ (round metal plate) containing more lighted lamps and offerings of rice and coconut. All believers now accompanied Vijay in chanting a prayer in the glory of all-caring and all-loving God while the patriarch waved the thali around the idols. Every one had a turn with the thali and chanting, self-proclaimed atheists and the lonely Christian included. After the prayer Nirusha, as the lady of the house, applied the ceremonial tika, a mark with red paste and grains of rice, on all foreheads and gave cash gifts to Manju and Monica.

After the religious ceremony we sat around the dining table doing justice to the lunch leftovers. Vijay and Nirusha talked of how nice it was to have us all, particularly Monica, with them. I reminded Nirusha of her instruction to me, “Bring Monica with you, don’t come without her.” She laughed, happy that her threat had worked.

As the midnight approached words became few and yawns many. It was time to wish good night. Another Deewali had come and gone leaving fond memories, especially for Nirusha whose life revolves around her extended family.

3.

After twelve restful days with the family in Delhi, Rajneesh, Manju, Monica and I said our long goodbyes and left for Udaipur leaving a long stream of tears behind. After a smooth two hour flight we arrived at our destination in the late afternoon. A van and the driver were waiting for us. We drove for five hours to the holy city of Mount Abu which is also a summer resort. The views of mountains and the sunset were refreshing and the towns and villages we passed through showed signs of economic revival. Our hotel was located on a hill top and had a marvelous view of the city and the surrounding area. The sunrise next morning was something to treasure in the memory bank. There are numerous temples of various Hindu sects in the vicinity which attract pilgrims from all over India. Our focus was Jain temples of Dilwara about twenty minutes by car. The temples were built in twelfth and thirteenth centuries and are deservedly renowned for intricate sculpture. Monica wore a saree for the visit out of respect for the pilgrims’ sentiments. This also allowed us to claim her as a Jain believer and we were permitted entrance in the hours reserved for Jain worshippers. The vast courtyard houses three main temples, two with statues of the last and the most revered Tirthankar (messenger of God) Bhagwan Mahavir for two Jain subsects and one of Adinath, an earlier Tirthankar. Small cubicles were built along the perimeter of the courtyard which had beautifully made statues of each of the twenty four Tirthankars, many repeated several times. We left when the crowds of non-Jain visitors started pouring in and it became impossible to appreciate the art works. Next stop was a lake with crocodiles where the attraction of the afternoon was a small snake tightening itself around a mouse. Then we drove to the foot of a hill and walked a long way to the top. There were small shops on each side of the narrow cobbled path. However, the merchandise was no match for a Gori (white woman) in a Sari. Almost incessant questions to her were courteous and Monica’s Hindi improved appreciably by the end of the walk. There was a famous but small and unattractive temple on the top. However, the sunset across the Aravali mountains with the winding Banas river in the valley was magnificent and the clicking of cameras competed with the chirping of a variety of colourful birds.

Next day we drove to another set of Jain temples in Ranakpur on a circuitous way back to Udaipur. The temples are a little older and if anything more magnificent in design and art work than the more famous Dilwara temples. There is one main temple for Bhagwan Mahavir in the centre with smaller temples for all Tirthankars along three sides of the periphery of the courtyard. The marble idol of Mahavir was magnificent as were all the intricate carvings everywhere. There were two older temples in the grounds which were simpler but interesting if only because they were a few centuries older. Another feature was Dharmshala adjacent to the temple, a large number of small rooms around a vast courtyard where the pilgrims of limited means could stay for whatever they could afford.

On our way out Saree clad Monica was surrounded by a crowd of school children in immaculate uniforms. Children talked to her in Hindi all at once and she reciprocated with good humour. This event prompted a strange dream that night. Monica, surrounded by hordes of children was exhorting them on a manual loudspeaker to march to Delhi to demand the end of poverty and more important – longer holidays. She then led the crowd who were shouting slogans in Hindi “Remove poverty, give us longer holidays” out of the temple grounds. I was by her side giving moral support. However, when we got the main road neither of us knew which way to turn for Delhi and the procession ended in utter confusion.

After the temple we made a short stop at a museum commemorating the great battle between Maharana (king) Pratap of Chittor and the forces of the Moghul emperor Akbar. After a night in a hotel in Udaipur we visited the fort of Chittorgarh three hours away on a four lane divided highway. Although the traffic was rather sparse, its variety was even greater than in Delhi. There were camels and elephants walking regally to their masters’ destinations along with usual pedestrians on the tarmac, horse and bullock carts, bicycles, dogs, cows, bulls and bare foot ladies in colourful lahangas (long skirts) with a variety of loads skillfully balanced on their heads.

Chittorgarh is the fort of the longest ruling dynasty in the world – from sixth century to the present day. We hired a guide who claimed a reasonable command of English. It turned out that he could string sentences using some English and many Hindi words with verbs of whichever language suited his fancy. He showed us most of the 130 temples the fort is famous for, the museum, the thirteenth century victory tower with beautiful carvings inside and out and, believe it or not, the wash room of Padmini, chief queen of Maharana Sanga who built the victory tower.

The wash room boasted nothing grand. All it had was a hole in the ground with two thin marble blocks on which the queen squatted to do the dirty work. What caught my eye about the room was its size. It was bigger than any such facility I have had the opportunity to use in any of the countries I have traveled in. The reason, the guide told me with complete equanimity and no explanation: ten maids assisted the queen in performing this vital function.

On the return drive a problem of great historical interest occupied my thoughts. What could the possible duties of ten maids be in the Queen’s wash room? The drive was almost over by the time I worked these out. Two maids were required to take off the silk lahanga, one to untie the knot in the string holding it up and the other to pull the garment over the majestic head. Third maid washed the royal bum with all reverence due to it. Fourth dried it with soft rose petals, fifth disinfected with haldi (turmeric) lotion, sixth applied sandalwood paste deodorant, and seventh perfumed with chameli oil. The eighth maid pulled the lahanga back on over the queen’s head and ninth tied the string. Tenth? She was the supervisor who made sure that the queen was not inconvenienced in any way by any maid’s slackness in her duty.

It struck me that there was no reason why this queen would be the only one to have this privilege. Other queens of Maharana must have had the maids in their wash rooms too although their number probably declined in proportion to their mistress’s importance. As for Maharana, there is no record of the number of attendants, male or female, that accompanied him to his wash room. I suspect that the wash room entourage became customary in all royal places in India and the European monarchs followed suit with great élan to outdo their primitive counterparts in the luxury every claimant to royalty deserves.

Just in case you think that the maids had easy lives, they had other duties too. After appropriate rest to recover from this exhausting but necessary task, the queen took her place on a suitably padded marble bench and opened her beautiful mouth which was to launch a thousand horses one day and interrupt, albeit briefly, Maharana’s reign. The maids took turn in cleaning the pearly teeth with a brush made out of a neem twig and helped in washing her mouth with water from the holy Ganges. According to some reports, at least one modern prince in Europe has taken this leaf from the medieval queen’s diary. To keep the princely mouth in shape to launch enough hot words to keep the kingdom warm, a qualified dentist and his well-trained assistant are in attendance every morning and evening. It will be too low a stoop for the prince whose forefathers ruled the waves to brush his own teeth. As to the royal bum, all lips are sealed and there is no word on how the issue is handled.

4.

The plan was to catch the afternoon flight and reach Mumbai in good time to spend a couple of hours with a nephew there before driving to Pune. However, the flight was six hours late. A frequent traveler on the route told us that we were lucky; the flight is often twelve hours late due to a dire shortage of pilots. We missed seeing the nephew and arrived at the apartment at 3 AM instead of expected 11 PM. We went straight to bed and woke up around ten. Rajneesh accompanied Monica to a missionary hospital to investigate the opportunities to volunteer her medical services while I rested to complete my recovery from Udaipur Downer – a less severe form of Delhi belly I had caught on my last day in that city with a glorious past and the potential of a bright future. Two days in Pune went by quickly as we visited the social projects of Rajneesh and Manju – organizing volunteers to teach slum children, showing documentaries to raise awareness of social problems, meetings with volunteers to maximize their impact and recruitment of new ‘social activists.’ We also had an opportunity to attend a social activist wedding in which most of the formalities were discarded in favour of a simple brunch and performances of classical dance and semi-classical songs of a very high standard.

Our last stop in India was a tiger sanctuary located on Kabini River near the border of Karnataka and Kerala provinces. To get there we flew to Bangalore where another van with a driver was waiting for us. It was a six hour drive on dark and often treacherous dirt roads. We arrived just in time to ‘freshen up’ before dinner. The cabins in this forest reserve were luxuriously appointed with, among other unexpected comforts, a western toilet with a somewhat appropriate brand name Hindware. On each of our two day stay we had jeep safaris in the jungle at dawn and boat rides on the river in the afternoon. The promised elephant rides did not materialize because the elephants were ‘in heat’. In the mornings we saw hundreds of spotted deer, one leopard hiding in the bush, couple of elephants, some coyotes and many egrets and cormorants in the lakes. As for tigers we had to console ourselves with the video of the reserve with these magnificent creatures in it. In the evenings we saw more egrets and cormorants and a few crocodile snouts and one elephant. The sunset was spectacular on both evenings. The meals and service in the resort were very good, particularly in view of its remote location.

On our way back to Bangalore for our midnight flight to Singapore we had the opportunity to visit the historic city of Mysore with its magnificent nineteenth century palace, Brindavan gardens with lovely fountains and a majestic temple on the top of a hill with the superb view of the city and the surrounding countryside. A traffic jam on our way to the airport threatened to derail our travel plans but the driver’s skill in negotiating the heavy traffic saved the day. Looking back, this day was the appropriate summary of our Indian experience – beauty in its many forms if you look for it mixed with confusion that is miraculously resolved at the very last moment.

.

5.

We arrived in Singapore with the sun after a four hour flight. The airport facilities were amazing and we had completed the formalities and collected our luggage within twenty minutes of leaving the plane. A half hour cab ride took us to the apartment of my niece, Vijay’s daughter Maya and her husband Pritam. We spent four days with them chilling out, as Maya instructed us to do.

Singapore is a small island of about 700 sq kms and less than five million inhabitants. About 70% of the population is of Chinese origin, the rest are Malays and Indians with a few Europeans. The difference in an Indian city of the same size, say Bangalore, and Singapore is like night and day. Overcrowding, dust, garbage, smell from open drains, beggars and potholes are nowhere to be seen in Singapore while they are omnipresent in India and worsening as the economy grows. I got the impression that Singapore was growing without any pains while the cities in India were choking due to wholly inadequate transportation systems, utilities and general services.

Singapore is a city state with a small base of industrial activity focused on electronic assembly and legal drug production. Being an island, winds refresh the air constantly. The prosperity of last few decades has led to the replacement of horse and donkey carts and rikshaws by relatively new low emission cars. There are very few trucks on the roads. Hence, the traffic flows smoothly and noiselessly. The culture of cleanliness inside and out of the home means clean public places and roads with hardly any litter.

The dense living in high rises with 100 – 400 apartments in an area occupied by ten homes in an Indian city leaves room for large open spaces. While the side walks in India are strips of dirt which pedestrians avoid adding to the congestion, the roads in Singapore are immaculate with paved sidewalks and potholes as rare as concrete on some Indian roads.

When Singapore became independent in 1959 it was not much different than any Indian city. In two generations it has been transformed to match any in the first world while the cities in India have noticeably deteriorated. There are several reasons for this anomaly. First, Singapore is a compact city state, much easier to administer than a vast country like India. Total budget of the state is focused on the city. There are no long stretches of road and rail connecting far-flung population centres and no countryside to send its millions to overcrowd the city. Second, the defense needs are met by a small army whose budget does not siphon off funds from necessary services. Third, a benign dictatorship rules with a firm but fair hand. Punishment is swift for the law breakers whether they are drug traffickers, litterbugs or in between. Fourth, the corruption in public services so common elsewhere in Asia has been rooted out and the rule of law prevails like nowhere else in the world. Last but not the least, the geographic location of the island is ideal for a trading hub for Asia.

Singapore has prospered because firm rule from the top first enforced discipline and respect for the laws and then created conditions suited to the talents of its citizens by providing physical infrastructure and economic and tax incentives to promote trade and entrepreneurship. Companies trading products of foreign countries pay taxes on income in Singapore even when the traded items do not touch its port. Low tax rates attract multinationals to set offices here to advance the trade. New shopping malls attract tourists from Indonesia and Malaysia. The city state of five million residents prospers without any polluting industry and provides unparalleled services to its citizens.

Small is indeed beautiful when the rulers and the ruled concentrate on what they do best.

2011-11-11T08:11:00.000-08:00

What Music Means to Me?

What does music mean to you? It is a question I have often asked the musicians I became acquainted with, not only to have their opinion but also to find out if music should touch me in some deeper way than merely provide a superficial enjoyment. The answers covered a wide range – from ‘a long hard slog to pay the bills’ from older orchestra members at one end to a ‘conversation with God’ from some composers and conductors at the other. If you ask the audience members, even those who are steeped in culture, the responses will vary from ‘nothing specific’ to ‘giving a meaning to life’ although they find it hard to explain what that phrase means.

As a music aficionado it has meant different things to me at different stages of my life. In childhood I sang the songs I made up when I was happy. As a teenager the music became an avenue to stroll along for solace; I focused on soulful music relating the misfortunes of the singer or the society which suited an introverted studious youth trying to survive in difficult circumstances. In contrast, the pampered youths from well off families were mostly interested in the music of love – read sex – profane and ethereal by turns because, for whatever reasons, that was their major preoccupation. As I grew older, I went through the stages of ‘spiritual’ hymns and chants, light-hearted operas and ‘heavy’ Mahler symphonies and Wagner operas laden with several layers of the ‘meaning of life’.

It is nothing new or original but I will say it anyway just because it needs to be said yet again. One likes a certain type of music because it touches something deep inside that is already there. Young and carefree men and women preoccupied with finding someone to love want songs of love and what love will do for the person it would be bestowed on. When underemployed and worried about how to feed the family (which that love may have created) they listen to the lament of how difficult the human existence is. Individuals fond of classical music are Haydn and Mozart fans when life is humming along but when daily struggles make them downhearted they switch to Mahler’s later symphonies. The truth is that the music does not make a listener happy or sad if s/he is not that way inclined already. In fact, if the mood of what is being performed is contrary to that of the listener, a curtain falls over the ears.

English composer Frederick Delius is quoted to have said, “Music is an outburst of the soul”. It is no doubt true for a composer, after all what is in the heart has to be in consonance with what echoes in the brain and comes out from the pen. But it is also valid for laypersons like me. The music one is attuned to reflects the state of the ‘soul’, does not alter it. Simply put, it is not the music that sets the mood, but the mood that selects the music one listens to, any thing else is ignored. Music played at wedding celebrations is joyous and it is enjoyed by the happy participants but it would not make the spurned lover of the bride less unhappy. Similarly, music at a funeral is sad because the tone of the event is sad. The music of longing is loved by those who are feeling unwanted; the ecstatic music is for people who are in love with life and feel that their love is being reciprocated. It is the feeling that is important; the actual situation is by the way. A café will play Bach’s Coffee Cantata and the tea house Coward’s Tea for Two because their customers are in mood for one and will be put off by the other. On a serious note, a devotee of Mozart or Puccini will not love Mahler so long as she does not know of her husband’s affair with her best friend and a lover of Mahler will move into Strauss Waltzes when he gets a big pay raise and his family life has settled down. It is the same in other art forms. I read (and write) tragedies when my heart feels the chill winds of autumn and turn to comedies when roses are in bloom.

If the premise of this essay is true, it has a lesson not only for psychoanalysts but also for the programmers of the orchestras. When the local economy is in a slump, you want to go heavy on Bruckner and Mahler as they should be doing in the American cities this season. On the other hand, when the jobless rate is low and audiences are feeling prosperous you want to load up on waltzes, marches and Eine Kleine Nacht Music. Opera companies should stage Parsifal around Easter to capitalize on the prevailing atmosphere just as ballet ensembles perform Nutcracker in December. The organisation that goes against the mood of the audience courts financial disaster.

Finally, arts in general and music in particular do not make me a better or worse human being, nor do they bring me in touch with the Lord or with the devil. Of course it may be so because I do not ‘understand’ art. On the other hand it is quite possible that I refuse to imagine what is not really there and do not wish to appear more knowledgeable than I really am.

‘Art for art’s sake’ is a good slogan for artists but it doesn’t work for me.

White Collar Crime and Punishment

In last two decades of last century Philips Environmental was a high flying public company listed on Toronto Stock Exchange. It was in the business of disposing garbage. It made money by separating marketable items, especially metals from what it collected. The stock price fluctuated based on the price of metals in the short time frame but the general trend was upwards. However, the bottom fell out in 1998 when it was discovered that the management was siphoning off company funds for their personal use on a massive scale. The company declared bankruptcy in 1999 and gullible fools like me lost all their investment in the company.

Two top executives of the company were prosecuted. Twelve years later, on October 24, 2011 one of them was sentenced to a long jail term and fined several million dollars. However, the punishment was suspended pending appeal to a higher court. It is anyone’s guess how many years it will be before The High Court and then the Supreme Court have had their say. The possibility that the accused would still be alive then is not very high. This case is an example of many other similar cases. The case of Livent CEO Garth Drabinski was in the courts for thirteen years and it is still waiting for an appeal to be heard by the Supreme Court although Mr. Drabinski is now in jail.

Compare these cases to those of the media mogul Conrad Black and billionaire hedge fund operator Raj Rajaratnam south of the border. Within a couple of years of the crime the cases were heard, appeals dealt with, sentences passed and guilty put behind bars. In these cases justice was done and seen to be done. For a severe punishment to be deterrence, it has to be prompt. Canadian laxity where it takes several years for a case to be brought to court, another few years for the judge to hear it, and after all that the culprits are almost certain to spend their days out on appeal unless they are blessed with exceptionally long lives. And here is the rub. Even when they are in jail, they have almost all the comforts of their home including television, computers with internet connections and email privileges. If this pampering was not enough, the sentence is generally reduced to as little as one sixth of the original as a reward for ‘good behaviour’ whatever that means. Given a system like this one wonders why white collar crimes are not present everywhere. I suspect that they are much more prevalent than we naively think; just that the regulatory bodies are not interested in uncovering them and it is only by accident that the most blatant ones come to light and are reported in the media.

Another example of white collar crime which no one cares to investigate and report is in the city halls, particularly in planning and development departments. One small example: mansions have been and are being built in my till recently upscale neighbourhood in Calgary which violate all building codes of the city, leave alone looking like a London (England) W.C. from the street. I do not believe for one moment that the officers in the city hall who approved the structural plans were not motivated by some extraneous considerations. Corruption in construction industry is not limited to Quebec and not to blue collar workers alone; it takes two to tango. Moreover, municipal corruption is a world wide phenomenon; there is no reason for Canadian cities to be immune from it.

Thought of the Week:

Does Sarah Palin’s withdrawal from the race for Republican nomination together with the drop in support of Perry-Bachman duo show that an iota of sense is returning to the Republicans and the pendulum is swinging against the Tea Party extremists? Or I am dreaming in Technicolor.

A Day Like Any Other

Ravi had a tough day at work. His boss was in a bad mood for one or more of various reasons: working at night on the files he had taken home, teenage daughters staying late with their boy friends or wife being upset at him for working all hours of the day and not paying her the attention she deserves – in her view anyway. Whatever the reason, the boss was more demanding than usual and blamed every one but himself for losing several important contracts in last few days. Ravi bore the brunt of his temper, being the only brownie in the department and less likely to pick up his coat and leave because it was not as easy for him to find another job as it would be for others. To top it all his Cheddar cheese and tomato sandwich was soggy when he managed to take a moment off work for lunch and the milk had gone off; not enough to throw away but to leave a bad taste anyway. On the way home he got wet in the rain, the bus was late and then it was held up in the traffic. However, Shalini was home as usual with a cup of Red Rose tea made with actual leaves not the tea bags from which all the flavour has been processed out and the colour of the back of his hand. As a good wife always does, she listened patiently to his troubles. After he had unloaded them on to her, Shalini suggested that he went to bed to rest for an hour. She even brought him three course dinner of mushroom soup, not from the can but home made with a mixture of black and white mushrooms which were forming amazingly accurate circles on the grass in the yard, fried chicken and chips with coleslaw and a selection of Indian sweets. The chicken was not the Colonel Sanders variety but from a recipe handed down from her grandmother, by all accounts a wonderful lady whom Ravi never met; she had passed away before he had the good fortune of marrying Shalini in a wedding ceremony in Mumbai which lasted ten days and cost her father hundred thousand rupees when one rupee could buy earthen mugs of tea for ten friends from a roadside stall, not that he would have ever stooped so low as to take his friends for tea anywhere other than Shahjahan Café and Tea Room.

All this attention revived Ravi, just as well because the rest hadn’t made much difference. Shalini took away the dishes and he picked up ‘Man’s Day’, a monthly designed to help men cope with their daily problems. His good wife had her dinner alone and joined him after cleaning up. No one knows who did it, doesn’t matter anyway, but the game of Master Mind was suggested. Shalini went to get the game from the cabinet in the basement and Ravi called their son in New Orleans. A chat about his problems with his ex and her children from her previous liaison revived Ravi. A discussion on his swing with his golfing buddy Andrew was next. Just as he put the phone down David from the office called to offer his sympathies about the rough treatment he had received from the boss and suggest ways of handling it in future. Then it was his bridge partner Victor calling about the tournament next month. Shalini read the Vanity Fair during these calls. She deserves a lot of praise, which she didn’t get, for waiting all this time without losing her cool. More so because it was now late for the game; she had an appointment with her hairdresser at the other end of town not much after dawn. Ravi felt really energetic now and went to the computer to catch up with messages and play internet poker with mixed results. By the time he got to bed Shalini was asleep. He watched the heavenly expression on her face for a while, thanked God of the Atheists, wherever he is, for granting him such a wonderful wife and rolled gingerly into slumber land.

Next morning, a Saturday, Shalini was out when Ravi woke up. He was pouring milk over Cheerios when she came in looking glum. Her expression worried him because it couldn’t be due to a bad cut; her hair looked great. “Is everything all right?” he asked with some trepidation. “Of course it is, except that every one who has any sense is going away to their cottage for the long weekend,” she answered unwittingly rubbing salt in his wounds – he was a failure who could not even buy a cottage his wife had wanted so much. She served herself some coffee, picked up the newspaper and disappeared into the small room which served as her home office. Ravi took his time finishing the breakfast and spent rest of the morning puttering in the garden.

Meeting the Rich Neighbour

The homes in Mountainview were built more than fifty years ago during the first wave of prosperity and growth in what was then known as a cow town. The detached houses had two or three bed rooms on one or two stories, modest even by the standards of those days. They did have a few strong points. It was a community of young middle class professionals and communal spirit was strong. There was, and still is, a good bus service to down town, educational institutions and two major shopping malls. We didn’t notice it then as something special but it has turned out to be that way. The community is located next to a park surrounding a man made lake that also served as city’s water supply. The views of rising and setting sun are spectacular and people came from all over the city to watch them. That is why homes backing on the park along Orange Grove Drive sell at a premium even though they are the same size as others.
The city has grown to quadruple the size over the years and the community is now regarded as the fringe of inner city rather than one of the suburban communities which are located up to an hour’s commute in all directions. The lake and the reservoir are untouched though and it still takes ten minutes to get to work downtown. The community now has an established old world charm with tall trees and established gardens in most homes. The house prices have gone up accordingly, up to ten times what the original buyers paid for them.
Every cloud has a silver lining and every blue sky has a dark cloud. Our dark cloud is a new fashion among the successful bankers and oil magnates. Rather than buy huge acreages around the city and build fifty room mansions with ten car garage and four swimming pools as they did till recently, they have started buying the homes backing on to the park. The homes are then demolished, in rare cases the building is sold and carted away to Nowhereland. The hole sits there for months till plans for a mansion are approved by the city. Many of these mansions are in gross violation of the building codes and there is a general suspicion among old-timers that a substantial amount of money is passed under the table to the right hands before the construction can begin. In any event, the residents of the community have suffered the disruption in their otherwise sedate lives by this destruction/construction process taking place in a sequential order across the Orange Grove Drive.
The mansions, about five times as big as other homes near them, face the park and from the street they have the appearance of public toilets in London or Paris. One never meets the residents in communal gatherings; their kids, if they have any, do not go to neighbourhood schools or play with other kids in play parks, they do not shop in the community plaza and no one ever has the good fortune of seeing any one who lives there. The whole street would become a ghost street if it were not for the families living in their humble homes across from the mansions.
The treasurer of the community association called me the other day with sad news. The lady who knocked on the doors and sold the membership in the community lost her husband last year and moved to a ‘senior’s village’. “Will you take over her job?” he asked me. I am not a community minded person and do not volunteer my time or money unless there is something in it for me. Therefore, my initial reaction was to refuse. But for once the brain was quicker than tongue and before my mouth opened it occurred to me that this will give me an opportunity to meet some of the mansion owners, in all likelihood not all of them had butlers working late in the evening on weekends. So my mouth changed its round shape to an elliptical one and ‘yes, of course’ popped out. A couple of days later, a stack of books of receipts was in my mailbox. On the following Saturday I went to all the older homes, had pleasant conversations in most of them and had checks totaling more than a thousand dollars in the bag.
After a discussion with my wife who is exceptionally conversant in such matters I set out at eight in the evening to knock on the door of the mansions. The idea was that the owners must be back by now from their weekend cabins and should be sitting down in front of their wall size screens with vintage port in their hands. Alas, what do we know of the ways of the rich? There was no response to my knocks on any of the doors and I was getting disheartened. Was nobody in the house because they are driven straight to schools and work on Monday morning or they had no time for ordinary folks? I do not know the real answer, it doesn’t matter anyway. This is when my prayers – sorry knocks – were answered and a young man dressed for a date with a star stood before me, a cigar in his hand. I was rather nonplussed for a moment. “I am selling membership for Mountainview Community Association. Will you be interested, sir?” I said after recovering my bearings and with respect due to someone living in the biggest mansion in the area even though he seemed to be younger than my children.
“We don’t really have much to do with the community. We are so busy – my wife is a Criminal Defense Lawyer and I am the President of Canadian division of the Universal Bank. We don’t have time to breathe, leave alone participate in community activities,” I heard.
“The association helps residents in several ways, sir. It represents the interests of the community to various levels of government. For instance, we are working hard to preserve the pristine nature of the park from a road they want to build with a bridge across the lake,” I presented my side of the argument.
“Yes, that is interesting and very worthwhile. How much is the membership?” I heard.
“It is fifty dollars for the family, forty for individuals, sir. You would want the family membership I expect.”
“Not so fast. Considering that our children are too young to use community facilities and will not use them any way and that we ourselves don’t have much use for the community either, is there something like honorary membership at reduced fee, say ten dollars?”
I was dumbfounded. I am certain no one had ever made this argument before. Still, it was better than plain no and having the door banged on my face. I scratched the bald spot on my head and said, “It is a great idea and I will present it to the President in the next meeting. For now though, family membership is your only option, sir.” I did not want to tell him of the obvious option of outright refusal.
“Look, I did not get to be where I am in the world for nothing. I earn my million dollar bonus by watching every penny for the bank. That is what I do at home too. That is why I am answering the doorbell – paying a butler double time on weekend evenings is waste of money. You get them to have a cheap membership for people like us and come back. Thank you for dropping by.”
He turned back but not before blowing the cigar smoke in my face. I saw what was coming and jumped back before the door closed. On the way home I had a chuckle. So, I do not live in a mansion with a butler to answer the door because I give money to support the community association. Does that make me a wastrel? Perhaps, but only in the eyes of the banker living in a mansion.

2011-11-04T07:51:00.000-07:00

Encounter with a Bull Dog

Halifax, Nova Scotia is a city of three hundred thousand people. Although it would be relatively new in Europe and spanking modern in Asia being founded by the British settlers in 1749, it is considered an old city in Canada. There is a lot of Canadian history here but its main claim to fame is the biggest manmade disaster of all times that happened in 1917. An explosion of a ship loaded with ammunition destroyed everything in a two square kilometer area around the harbour and killed 2000 people. Thanks to that explosion and the fire that followed, every street in the city has freshly painted bright red fire hydrants a few meters apart. The paint is so new that a visitor would be forgiven to assume that the dog owners of the city carry a can of paint and a brush with the mandatory scoop when they take their pets for the walk.

Ravi’s latest visit at the end of October was not the one he would have looked forward to. His childhood friend, Komal, has lived there for thirty years. Komal’s only child, daughter Bimla, moved to Vancouver soon after finishing college and the wife passed away a few years ago. He has a lot of very good friends but there are times he feels lonely. To make the situation worse, he has had various health problems over last five years. A few months ago he gave in to the entreaties of Bimla and bought a condo near her home. However, no sooner had he packed and shipped most of the furniture, his kidney failed and he had an operation to remove it. He needed help and Ravi and Monica were happy to be useful. Komal is fond of Monica with good reasons. She is a doctor and, among other things, her medical advice to that family has been very valuable in the past. They felt that tender loving care of Monica after he was released from the hospital will accelerate the recovery process even if the visit lasts only five days.

Monica and Ravi spent their time in Halifax tending to the needs of Komal as well as doing odd jobs to facilitate his departures later in November. Only time they got out of the house was to drive him in his rarely used Saab to the doctor and to the clinic for blood tests. They also called on an influential medical friend to push for a special medical treatment Monica felt Komal must have before his flight. They cleared the driveway of droppings from the chestnut tree and put scores of charity items and bags of garbage and recycling on the side walk.

Alas, much too soon the pleasant and hopefully useful stay came to an end. Monica was leaving for San Diego for a conference on a noon flight and Ravi was to catch an evening flight. Ravi drove to the airport to see Monica off. They were at the airport in good time and had a pleasant conversation after depositing her suitcase with the airline. Monica mentioned how she waited in the line for coffee for more than ten minutes but no sooner a man showed up an extra cashier was called in. Ravi pointed that as a brownie he has had trouble getting used to being invisible most of the time. They talked about Komal looking well in the morning and what he should do to keep the recovery on track. It was now time for Monica to head for Gate 28. They walked hand in hand towards security. Ravi noticed a rather short plump man with pasty complexion and shaggy hair sitting on a stool twiddling his thumb, yet trying to look important. At the entrance Monica presented her boarding pass and was directed to a short line of passengers waiting to be stripped for the check up. Ravi stood there waving. At this point the lady who ‘manned’ the entrance pointed out the back of a sign and asked Ravi to move behind it. Just as he turned around to follow instructions, as he always did irrespective of who the instructor was, he heard a growl. The bulldog of a man began shouting, “You are not supposed to be here. Get out of here.” Ravi was shocked at the outburst. The man did not seem to be the authority figure, perhaps he was showing off his might by screaming at some one he expected to sneak away. Ravi slowly walked out of the dog pan. Then he turned around, returned to the man who tried to shoo him away and said, “Sir, Can I ask you a question?”
“Get out of this area and then ask your question, will you?”
“I can’t shout as loud as some people so I will ask you here, ‘Would you have been just as rude if I were a white man, especially if I were young and six foot tall too?’”
“Go out. Or else I will call the guards to put you away. Do you hear?” The man was waving both his arms.
“I have got my answer. Thank you.”
With that comment Ravi walked to the parking lot and drove to Komal’s home. Two old friends had a pleasant few hours discussing what needs to be done for Komal’s recovery. They hugged in a fond farewell when the cab arrived to take Ravi to the airport. When Ravi entered the security entrance he noticed that his nemesis from the morning was not there. He prayed that the temerity of a short, fat, bald, aging brownie had not caused a heart attack.

2011-10-28T07:51:00.000-07:00

White Collar Crime and Punishment:

In the last two decades of last century Philips Environmental was a high flying public company listed on Toronto Stock Exchange. It was in the business of disposing garbage. It made money by separating marketable items, especially metals from what it collected. The stock price fluctuated based on the price of metals in a short time frame but the general trend was upwards and investors were rubbing their hands in glee. However, the bottom fell outwithout any warning in 1998 when it was discovered that the management was siphoning off company funds for their personal use on a massive scale. The company declared bankruptcy in 1999 and gullible fools like me lost all their investment in the company.

Two top executives of the company were prosecuted. Twelve years later, on October 24, 2011 one of them was sentenced to a long jail term and fined several million dollars. However, the punishment was suspended pending appeal to a higher court. It is anyone’s guess how many years it will be before The High Court and then the Supreme Court have had their say. The possibility that the accused would still be alive then is not very high. This case is an example of many other similar cases. The case of Livent CEO Garth Drabinski was in the courts for thirteen years and it is still waiting for an appeal to be heard by the Supreme Court although Mr. Drabinski is now in jail.

Compare these cases to those of the media mogul Conrad Black and billionaire hedge fund operator Raj Rajaratnam south of the border. Within a couple of years of the crime being discovered the cases were heard, appeals dealt with, sentences passed and guilty put behind bars. The justice was done and seen to be done. For a severe punishment to be deterrence, it has to be prompt. Canadian laxity where it takes several years for a case to be brought to court, another few years for the judge to hear it, and after all that the culprits are almost certain to spend their days out on appeal unless they are blessed with exceptionally long lives. And here is the rub. Even when they are in jail, they have almost all the comforts of their home including television, computers with internet connections and email privileges. If this pampering was not enough, the sentence is generally reduced to as little as one sixth of the original as a reward for ‘good behaviour’ whatever that means. Given a system like this, one wonders why white collar crimes are not present everywhere. I suspect that they are much more prevalent than we naively think; just that the regulatory bodies are not interested in uncovering them and it is only by accident that the most blatant ones come to light and are reported in the media.

Another example of white collar crime which no one cares to investigate and report is in the city halls, particularly in planning and development departments. One small example: mansions have been and are being built in my till recently upscale neighbourhood in Calgary which violate all building codes of the city, leave alone looking like a London (England) W.C. from the street. I do not believe for one moment that the officers in the city hall who approved the structural plans were not motivated by some extraneous considerations. Corruption in construction industry is not limited to Quebec and not to blue collar workers alone; it takes two to tango. Moreover, municipal corruption is a world wide phenomenon; there is no reason for Canadian cities to be immune from it.

Thought of the Week:

Does Sarah Palin’s withdrawal from the race for Republican nomination together with the drop in support of Perry-Bachman duo show that an iota of sense is returning to the Republicans and the pendulum is swinging against the Tea Party extremists? Or I am dreaming in Technicolor.

2011-10-21T08:02:00.000-07:00

Wall Street Protests:

Two items of news about our southern neighbour should worry us here in Canada. First, the protests against the excesses of Wall Street have gained strength in New York and spread to other centres in North America and Europe. Second, the median income in the U.S. has dropped nine percent over last ten years in real value of money. There can be no doubt that the two events are connected. Young men and women who were brought up in relative comfort in middle class families with an assurance that college education was a guarantee of good jobs are now working at minimum wage in fast food outlets or stacking shelves in aptly named Target stores, if they are working at all. Older men have been laid off because the factories can not compete with cheap overseas products and can’t find other jobs. These people have good reasons to be unhappy with the financial system as much as with the government. They expressed their anger with the government by supporting the TEA party candidates in the last election which has brought Washington to a halt. Now it is the system’s turn. Wall Street is a symbol of banks, insurance companies and stock traders where incompetent young punks make millions in bonuses while having fun with other people’s money and indulging in unethical and often illegal business activities. The senior executives walk away with tens of millions after being terminated for incompetence and short term profits are all that matter with no concern for long term. Bosses get big raises for ‘making companies more efficient’ by lowering wages and firing workers even if such actions on an industry wide basis reduce demand for their products by reducing the buying power of consumers.

Human nature is to blame for some of our economic problems. Capitalism thrives on selfishness and greed and those in power do all they can to feather their nest. Another reason for our troubles is that the theoretically wonderful idea of Globalization seems to have misfired badly so far. The expectation was that worldwide free trade will increase the prosperity everywhere by lowering prices and increasing production and trade. It is possible that in the long term this will happen and the developed countries are going through a period of adjustment pains. However, in the first decade of Globalization, trade has been mostly a one-way street. China has monopolized the production and supply of goods helped by its currency fixed at an artificially low level while manufacturing has shrunk in most of America and Europe. This has eliminated a large number of high paying jobs and reduced the wages of remaining industrial workers. Contrary to expectations, there are few new industries to hire the newly unemployed or young people joining the labour force. Even in China and India, increased production levels helped some to get out of poverty but caused many of the poor to become poorer because unskilled labour is no longer much in demand. This is where the promoters of Globalization went wrong – they had a long term vision but no idea of how the transition will pan out.

The protesters do not know what can be done to help them except that they are angry for banks having been bailed out at their expense in 2008 with no visible constraints placed on their operations and on payments to failed executives. And they are afraid of this happening again. They also believe, correctly it turns out, that instead of paying old debts and building the reserves in good times the governments have accumulated large debts by cutting taxes on business and wealthy and thus helping the rich get richer. Now that these debt levels have reached the stratosphere and must be reduced to keep the same rich happy by repaying the bonds as they come due, it is the workers who are losing their jobs and pensions. Their grievances are genuine and must be addressed if the system is to survive.

To save the system we need to create new well paying industrial jobs in the West. These must come from revival of traditional manufacturing as well as newly invented products. Revaluation of Chinese currency will help. But it would be more important if there were a general realization in the West that buying locally produced goods helps us keep our jobs. Buying the cheapest saves money now but it may be the root cause of someone dear to us losing his job when a factory shuts it doors. Bankers have to take a long term view when lending or calling the loans and businesses have to look beyond the profit in the current quarter and work for long term viability. The governments have to save – not reduce revenues by cutting taxes – in good times and spend the savings to create jobs in hard times. Even if the worldwide protests do nothing more than focus light on these fundamentals, future generations will thank them for it.

2011-10-14T07:33:00.000-07:00

Appraisal of Life

Mr. Layton penned a message to his followers two days before his untimely death at the age of sixty one and a few months after achieving an incredible success as the dynamic leader of a perennial also ran National Democratic Party. It captivated the nation, even those who opposed what he stood for in his life.

For an average citizen to attempt the composition of a message which will inspire a community would be a folly. If it were in him to lead and inspire he would have transcended mediocrity long ago. All such an individual can hope for is to lay bare his soul to those near and dear to him in the hope that he would be forgiven for the sins he has committed and his accidental good deeds would not be given undue credit. It stands to reason that the individual should review the misdeeds and the temperamental, intellectual and moral deficiencies which were at their root. If he were fortunate to have lived a long life, the list of such deeds would be long and it might be better to group them to keep this memorandum reasonably short. The circumstances that prompted them and the consequences for all concerned should be analysed, albeit briefly, so that the survivors may benefit from the ‘wisdom of age’ if there is indeed such a thing. Obviously, this should be done before the senility sets in. For this reason alone it is too late for me to do so. Apart from that, all those who had the misfortune of coming in contact with me know all my follies much too well and reminding them of these only makes their wounds fresh, something they would wish to avoid at all costs. They know very well that the veneer of gentility only created a good first impression but did not eliminate wickedness deep in the soul.

If the belief of my forefathers is correct and there is reincarnation of souls based on actions in this life, I dread to think what form my next life would take. To make up for this indulgent life I could return as an ant that labours for the community every moment of its life without any thoughts of reward. However, my few good not altogether selfless deeds do not merit an inner satisfaction such selflessness bestows and I seek consolation in believing that death is the final curtain of the only show one is allowed to stage.

Dexia Bank Crisis

There were two lessons to be learnt from the 2008 economic crisis. First, the financial institutions should not be allowed to become so big that their failure endangers national economy. Second, they should not be allowed to invest (?) their capital in highly risky hedge funds and trading ventures where a downturn in the stock market, a bad bet or a crooked trader can risk their capital base and endanger their stability. Neither of the lessons was put into effect and now we have a crisis that puts whole of Euro zone under a hammer. This inability to learn coupled with greed for short term gains and total disregard for long term consequences will destroy the capitalist economies unless we control the greedy and put stringent regulations in place. But the banks are too big to control even when they are failing and our leaders depend on their contributions for their reelection. Given this scenario our future is dark indeed.

Poor Americans

A study by learned professors from elite Universities concluded that as the literacy, gender equality and prosperity increase, the society becomes more peaceful. The study must have omitted the U.S. from its considerations where the level of homicides (18,000 deaths annually, 60 per million of population) is four times the rate in U.K. and Canada, twice that in Afghanistan and comparable to some developing countries going through a civil war. If the conclusions of the study are correct, Americans are generally either poor or illiterate or both. Wide support among the population, many of them at the bottom of the ladder, for the arguments presented by Tea Party leaders for receiving services only a government can provide without levying appropriate taxes on the rich or permitting the government to borrow funds for meeting its obligations certainly puts level of literacy in doubt. And if most Americans feel poor they have a justification. When media broadcasts almost every day the bonuses of tens, even hundreds of millions structured to minimize, even eliminate, the income tax and separation allowances of the same magnitudes for senior executives who are fired for poor performance, living on a hundred thousand does seem like barely scraping by.

2011-10-07T07:28:00.000-07:00

Two Addresses

The Gettysburg’s Address, 1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The Washington Address, 2011

Two centuries, three decades and five years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty for landowners, and dedicated to the proposition that all white men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great economic war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived yet so divided, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of Washington, D.C. We have come to contribute a minute portion of our wealth, as a last resort for those who have lost everything they owned that the rich of the nation might get richer. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this but no more.
Yes, in a larger sense, we will not contribute more. We can not support, we can not encourage, this group. The foolish men, living and dead, who lived on credit, have maintained economic level, far above our poor power to sustain or destroy. The world will little note, nor long remember what little we do for them here, but it can never forget how they consumed here. It is for us the thriving, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who withered here have thus far so naively advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that, from these misguided heroes we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last borrowed cent-that we here highly resolve that these impoverished souls shall not have lost their all in vain- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom for the wealthy- and that government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations, shall not perish from the earth.

Thoughts of the week:

The election of Ms. Redford, a Red Tory in the Joe Clarke mold and a single mother to boot, confirms the movement of Albertans from far right to the centre of the political spectrum. No doubt it will send the disaffected red necks to the Wildrose Alliance but there numbers are not as large as many party stalwarts may fear. As the poor showing of Ted Morton in leadership campaign and the election of liberal mayors in Calgary and Edmonton show, Albertans are not the lookalikes of TEA party advocates south of the border. They want a government for all Albertans rather than only for those who are in a fortunate position not to need a helping hand. Last but not the least, it also sends a note to Mr. Harper and gives him ammunition to control his rabid former Reformers.

Makes sense:

Every person above a certain age should have married someone younger – by ten years for those above seventy and by twenty years for those in eighties.

2011-09-30T06:51:00.000-07:00

Can China Save the World?

Globe and Mail declared on September 24, 2011 that by injecting 570 billion dollars in its economy during the recession of 2008 China saved the world economy from collapse and wondered if it will do so again during the current downturn. It may be noted that the U.S. injected nearly a trillion dollars in its economy with no clear uptick although many have argued without proof that it may have averted a much worse disaster.

Before wondering about saving the world this time we have to question the premise that China saved the world the last time. Yes, the injection of a large amount of cash in building infrastructure created employment there, supported industry and maintained growth momentum albeit on a slightly smaller scale and it helped the energy and raw material suppliers of Australia, Brazil, Russia and Canada. But it did nothing for much of the developing world, the consuming countries of Europe and America. In fact, by keeping its currency fixed at an artificially low level it exacerbated their problems. China followed the rule of Keynesian economics: the governments should save money in good times to reduce the possibility of overexpansion and spend during the recession to provide jobs to the people. The reason the massive state investment worked in China was that the country had money in the savings accounts of both the state and the citizens that it could spend. It did not work well in the U.S. and Europe because they had to borrow the money they used in their attempts to prop their economies. Keynes’ principle works only when both sides of the advice are followed. Disregarding the first part by cutting taxes in good times and causing the economy to balloon rather than building reserves and following the second part by borrowing to the hilt in bad times misrepresents the advice of the great economist and it does not work for long. Such misguided policies are the cause of recession in the U.S. and the current debt crisis in southern Europe.

If you look at the statistics, Chinese intervention in its economy did not save the economy of the West any more than buying American bonds saved the U.S. from bankruptcy. Any yardstick you look at, the situation is worse in the resource poor industrial countries than it was at any time in this millennium. The incomes are declining and the employment situation is unprecedented – 16% real unemployment would be scary in a socialist economy, in a capitalist country with the social philosophy of every one on his own it is catastrophic. The clamour for change in Washington and the increasing support for the contradictory policies advocated by TEA party are the symptoms not only of the decline of a once great country but also of a desperate population ready for measures certain to be disastrous in the long term.

The truth is that China has saved its economy by its self-serving policies while hammering a nail in the economic coffin of the West. Without the revival of manufacturing industries and with continued shifting of the technical and managerial jobs to the East, the only jobs available to a large portion of the population are serving hamburgers and loading shelves in Wal-Mart with cheap goods made in China and they are unlikely to satisfy ambitious Americans for long. Replacement of middle class used to buying bigger and better cars and homes every few years by hordes of college graduates scraping an existence on two or more part time minimum wage jobs in a country with the military might to destroy the planet several times over should cause more anxiety about the future of humanity than it seems to be doing. While growth of China along with the growth in the West as dreamed by leaders of recent years would have been a most welcome development, recent events have demonstrated that the domination of China is increasing over declining Western economies. This is a portent of major conflict in the offing because a nation with the pride and destructive capacity of the U.S., including the ability to kill anyone anywhere by missiles fired from remote controlled unmanned aircraft, will not tolerate economic subjugation for long.

Comment of the Week

True love can stand the onslaught of intolerance and impatience.

2011-09-23T07:03:00.000-07:00

Stock Market Gyrations:

The stock market indices all over the world had a precipitous drop this week. Thursday’s close was the bottom it hit in August after nearly 20% drop within a few days. For a month since then it has gyrated within a five hundred point range touching that bottom again at Thursday’s close. If the index closes on Friday a hundred points below Thursday’s mark, expect it to drop another five hundred points before forming a platform. Where it will go from there is any one’s guess.

What should an investor do in this environment? Honestly I don’t know. I won’t blame any one for folding his tent and going home. It depends on your ability to stand after taking some blows. That said, my hunch is that the things will not be as bad as in 2008. I think that most companies, even the financial institutions, are in a better place now than they were then. Companies in other business sectors are much better placed with much less debt and generally strong cash positions. Balance sheets are much stronger and even if some Euro national debts are downgraded and some banks fail, there is no danger of debt market seizing again.

I am staying put in the market expecting a revival in the prices of good companies sooner or later and continued payment of dividends in almost all of them. To enhance the prospects of capital gains my portfolio has a sprinkling of small companies which are takeover candidates. I have no assurance that the portfolio will keep its value in the short term nor the certainty that it won’t recover to some extent next week. The problem investors have is the unpredictability of the markets and that when they go up you have to be in the game to enjoy it. I do have complete faith that in the long term the stay put investors will be smiling. There is just too much money floating around to stay on the sidelines for long.

I am sorry I am not offering any firm advice. One final word: if you are losing sleep over it, sit down with your financial advisor and decide on a course of action that will get rid of the creeping insomnia.

Government Budgets:

Why does every Conservative leader emphasize cutting deficits by reducing essential services and public service employment? This is not the only way to balance the budgets. It can be done just as well by increasing taxes, marginally in many instances. This may reduce sale of some luxury items but will keep more people employed and will reduce the possibility of recession. Let us face it. poorer schools, less Medicare, crumbling transport infrastructure and lax regulation and law enforcement hurts business more than the general population.

As for debts, if the governments of countries most in debt taxed appropriately and the citizens paid the taxes they owed, the problem wouldn’t be there. For debt and budget problems in the U.S. and Europe blame the cowardice of the leaders of last two decades, not eliminate the jobs of people who have been working hard in difficult circumstances.

Response to the speech of the President of Iran at the U.N.:

United States has never done anything wrong and never will. Americans have always set an example and most people are happy to follow them. Anyone who says anything different should have his mouth sealed for good and be made to attend TEA party rallies for the rest of his life.

You won’t believe it!

Netanyahu informed a private meeting of his supporters in Washington that he turned down Harper’s request to join the Union of Israel because there is nothing in it for him and that he will present Obama’s application to the Knesset but only if the Security Council veto can be transferred to the Union and Chinese accept to convert the bonds they own at a reasonable discount of 50%.

Bad Joke of the Week

Oncologist: Studies practitioners who are often on call.

2011-09-16T08:14:00.000-07:00

Terrorist Attacks: We Need Appropriate Security Measures and No More

After ten years of what has come to be known simply as 9/11 it may be instructive to look at its impact on the society and the economy. Americans and the world were shocked by the magnitude of the disaster; death of nearly three thousand people when two planes owned by the American airlines and carrying a large load of passengers were hijacked and crashed into two of the tallest buildings in the world which were reduced to rubble. The official and public reaction to the tragedy was to treat the hijacking planned and executed by a jihadist group as war and elevate the status of the unfortunate victims to heroes, notwithstanding that a hero is someone who puts up a brave fight against the invading forces while those in the towers and planes had no opportunity to do anything but surrender to their fate. They were unwitting victims deserving of our sympathies but not the admiration that the heroes are accorded. The true heroes in the tragedy were the individuals who died in the rescue effort in horrible circumstances or contacted disease and died prematurely later. The respect to their sacrifice is diminished if they are considered on the same level as those who died trying to escape the collapsing towers or tied helplessly to their seats in the crashing planes.

The U.S. administration decided on a response with two goals: make absolutely certain that the events will not be repeated on American soil and bring the perpetrators, El Qaeda and their leader Bin Laden, to heel. To achieve the first, an ever expanding all encompassing department of ‘Homeland Security’ was set up which put in operation measures to safeguard all public buildings, national and international flights and scrutinize all visitors to the country. It also set up elaborate systems to listen to and records all communications whether on phones or the internet with total disregard to the constitutional rights of citizens. Whatever this department budgeted for personnel and equipment was approved. It now employs 230,000 people and its annual budget exceeds 50 billion dollars. Although opinions differ on whether such expenditures are needed to keep El Qaeda and its cohorts out of the country, Americans do feel a sense of relief that there were no attacks on American soil after that day in 2001; a few rather crude attempts were made but they were easily quashed. Many give credit for this good fortune to the extensive security system and perhaps it is deserved. On the other hand excessive security checks at every turn have made the travel an unpleasant experience instead of a thrill it used to be. More glaring is the human cost of the process. Assuming that every traveler spends on average an extra fifteen minutes on security checks at various points at the airport, estimated 800 million passengers in a year in the U.S. spend in total the equivalent of more than 23,000 years, 300 lifetimes. Over ten years the number of wasted lives adds up to more than those lost on the towers and this count does not include land and sea transport. Add to this the number of security agents at the airports, shopping malls, offices and those guarding the leaders and the inescapable conclusion is that the number of lives being consumed in the U.S. alone by our fear of the repeat of 9/11 is staggering. It is not hard to imagine what it would do to the economy and general social welfare if even a fraction of this resource could be spent in productive and life enhancing work instead of mothers travelling with babies worrying about how to pack the milk bottles before leaving for the journey or the agents looking for tubes of toothpaste in the bags of seventy year old ladies.

Bush administration started two wars to eliminate the evil forces behind what he called the ‘war of terror’. No constraints were placed on the budget of the Defense Department to fight the wars on another continent. Iraq war cost 4,474 American lives and the Iraqis are worse economically and more divided than they were under the hated dictator who, by the way, was no friend of El Qaeda. The war in Afghanistan is still being fought after ten years. The Allies’ casualties there were low for the first few years but they have dramatically increased over last three years and now total 1,766 Americans and 955 allies. The civilian casualties in the two countries are in hundreds of thousands but they don’t count in our calculation. Total cost of the two wars to the US treasury so far is estimated at 2.5 trillion dollars and another 1.5 trillion is yet to come. Including Homeland security budgets during its nine years of existence, total costs to fight the ‘war on terror’ so far exceeds 3.0 trillion dollars, $10,000 for each American and twice as many American dead as the number of 9/11 victims. It has been estimated by some US academics that if this money were spent in supporting the infrastructure, education and industry, it would have created one million jobs.

There can be little doubt that three trillion dollars spent on the security abroad (wars) and at home (Homeland Security) have contributed significantly to the precipitous decline in the economies of the U.S. and the European Union, its industrial and resource-poor trading partner. Since the taxes could not be increased for ideological reasons, budget deficit and the cumulative debt ballooned even though budget allocation to essential services was cut to the bone. The same pattern was repeated all over Europe. The human, industrial and technical resources which would have been more gainfully employed in improving efficiency to compete with the consumer goods exported by China and commercial services offered by India were diverted to enhance ‘security’. The obsession with ‘war on terror’ offered a golden opportunity to Asian countries and they took full advantage of it to expand their markets in America and Europe. There was a huge transfer of wealth from developed West to developing East and China, India, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia had unprecedented economic growth. We saw a bizarre spectacle of Chinese and Indian companies buying the mainstays of Western industry to firm up their foothold and their governments offering to buy distressed Euro bonds of near bankrupt nations to help them out.

There is universal agreement on the need of measured security steps against a real threat. But the methods adopted to counter the threat must strike a balance between the expected damage and the cost of protection in actual dollars, human resources and the demands made on the public. A concerted effort to achieve such balance could in fact enhance our security rather than reducing it and if it had been struck instead of the knee jerk response of the Bush administration, the US economy would not be hovering near collapse and there would be a million fewer Americans looking for work. And Bin Laden would not be laughing from his perch in Heaven surrounded by three thousand virgins.

CBC at its most memorable

CBC is celebrating 75 years of service to Canada. I have been an admirer of the radio program CBC2 for most of my 37 years in Canada. As a tribute to all the people who have made the organization great, here is one of my cherished memories.

It must have been about twenty years ago. I was driving to visit a client downtown. As usual the radio was tuned to CBC2 of good old days when it was devoted to classical music. It happened to be playing one of my favourite pieces, Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll. It was an outstanding recording, better than any I could remember. I scratched my head wondering which great orchestra it was; Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, Vienna Philharmonic or Berlin under von Karajan, Abbado or some other great conductor. I sat in the car mesmerized till the piece came to an end. To my utter surprise, the recording was a performance by CBC Vancouver orchestra under Mario Bernardi who was also the conductor of Calgary Philharmonic in those days. I was disappointed to learnt that the recording was not for sale to the public.

Unfortunately, that great orchestra is now no more and maestro Bernardi is not conducting any longer. But the orchestra and the great Canadian conductor will live in my memory through that performance till the senility sets in.

Decline in Gold Price

It tickled me to observe how media have disregarded the drop of more than a hundred dollars in the price of gold this week. In previous two weeks, it was the news of the hour, latest quoted price being broadcast on the radio, on the internet and commentary on business pages. Now that the decline, sorry correction, has set in there is a deafening silence.

Setting of new records is always news and if the investors get carried away by the hype and buy the overpriced metal it is their decision. Some of them are now losing their shirts but it is not an interesting story and not worth a passing mention. Maybe just as well. If media made a fuss about the drop, the decline could cause a stampede of sellers and the banking system, thanks to huge losses the investment arms of banks would suffer, could seize again as it did in 2008. Let us thank Media Moghuls for small mercies.

2011-09-09T07:43:00.000-07:00

Odyssey of a Self-Centred Man

David woke up at eight, the usual time for a Saturday. Sylvia was off on a camping trip with her friends and he was by himself this weekend. He brewed the blend of Kona coffee that he particularly likes and had a leisurely breakfast of French toast with loads of butter and drenched in maple syrup from the trees of a business associate in Rimouski. He read the weekend edition of the National Post and attended to a couple of chores. It was ten, a good time for a long walk in the park before it got hot – the forecast was for a sunny day and a high of 28. He drove to the parking lot after dropping by his bank on the way.

Glenhill is one the largest open spaces in a city in North America. It has an amazing variety of flora and fauna and paths for walking, jogging and cycling with well placed benches with wonderful views of the skyline of the downtown for those in need of rest. In a city of more than a million people one would expect a large number of people enjoying the outdoors on an unusually fine day but there was hardly any one there. It seems that the shopping mall is the place to be in on a beautiful day, just as it is in foul weather. There are always sales one has to take advantage of whether or not he/she needs, or is ever likely to need, the items on offer at 35% less than their inflated price. While ‘saving’ on these things, you might just as well buy some gift for Cousin Millie in Moose Jaw and Uncle Tom in Red Deer, there birthdays are on the horizon. Of course you have to stop by in the food court and grab a hamburger with a mango milkshake. Once in the mall, one might as well check on next season’s fashions which are beginning to arrive in the shops from the fashion houses. It won’t be a bad idea to pick up the special chocolate the spouse loves; it will divert attention from the shopping bags.

In any event, there were only a few individuals in the park. Single walkers or joggers were absorbed in their music on the headphone; some were talking animatedly on the cell and there were also rare examples of young people using both. Most interesting were couples. The sample was too small for a statistical study but it was interesting all the same. Most common were the pairs walking a few steps apart, both on their phones. Not uncommon were the cases of one with the instrument glued to the ear and mouth open and the other walking ahead or behind. The remaining few odd couples were agitatedly arguing on the topics of vital importance to them. It must have been an unusual day; Ravi did not see any couple amicably chatting together.

On his way home, it struck David that the gloomy observations are nothing new to him. On their recent car trip to visit the parents in Winnipeg, he couldn’t think of one pleasant conversation – Sylvia remembered the trip with great pleasure while he only thought of the times when Sylvia had the temper tantrums and he felt like a mosquito watching a slap about to land on him. All he remembered of the long drives were the arguments; about driving too slow, two fast, passing dangerously, being stuck behind a smoking truck, God forbid missing a rest stop or even worse a turn. That is not all. Sylvia is excited about two long cruises they are planning in next six months. David is scared to death. Snappy responses wash over him with little perturbation but how many blow ups will there be, how many times will he be sorry that the handful of Tylenol 3 he took a while ago did not do what he expected them to do, how many times will he wonder how to have the courage of making a decision that will release him, and Sylvia too, from their tense lives together. After thirty three years together it may seem a bit late to change the course drastically. Yet, is it worth ending up in the mad house even if they have an excellent cafeteria there? On a larger scale, why do the spouses carry on relentlessly making each other miserable on every opportunity rather than look for the ways to live a less conflicted life?

When he got home, David had a long cold drink. For lunch he had a bowl of heartwarming mushroom soup prepared by Sylvia especially to his taste and a sandwich made with cream cheese and tomato she had brought from the local produce market. After putting the dishes away he picked up Isolde’s Dream, a collection of stories recommended to him, and made himself comfortable in the hammock under the shade of a maple tree. A sense of guilt now overpowered him - morning’s negative thoughts needed examination. Were the couples as unhappy as they looked or he was projecting his own unhappiness on them? If this is indeed the case what is the source of his unhappiness?

David fell asleep with the question buzzing in his head and the book protecting his face from mosquito bites. When a magpie woke him up he realized that his subconscious had worked out the answer. Sylvia is an extrovert with a large social circle, her friends love her and want to be with her. He is just the opposite, an introverted, solitary person, buried in his books and the music. Whatever social life he has is determined by Sylvia, he has none of his own. Whether the introversion is due to a mild depression or it is due to the lack of Dopamine in his brain is really not the issue. What matters is that the misery on this particular morning was prompted by his inexplicable wish for company on the walk, not to share any news or discuss any particular idea but merely not to be alone. This was one of those few times when an introvert wants to reach out, or wants someone to reach out to him/her and if there is no one there it sinks the spirit. It had dawned on him over breakfast that there was no one he knows well enough to ask to join him for the walk. This would rarely be an issue because Sylvia is usually available. But this morning it became one and created the unhappiness, even sparked the envy towards the wife who has always been kind to him.

Only solution, David said to himself, is to reach out and create a circle of friends. However, friendship means he being available to them, not only they being available to him. Here is the rub. He is getting on in life, there are not many good years left and there are a great many things he wishes to accomplish. Yet, he must make room for friends in whatever time is left to him after attending to family. He must strike a balance in his life between work and social commitments if he wants to keep his sanity. Not much different than the problem of his youth. More things change -------

2011-09-02T06:57:00.000-07:00

Charlie, the New Author

Charlie had an unusual idea of what was fun. As a child he invented tricks which embarrassed the old relatives or teachers who upset him without them suspecting Charlie as the source of their discomfiture. For instance, his uncle Gordon was hauled by the police and kept in jail overnight because they had received an anonymous phone tip that someone was dealing drugs from his home. An old and much respected teacher was reprimanded because the Principal received a compromising note in a student scribble. So it came as no surprise to me that he would pull off another such trick in his old age. Unfortunately, it backfired.

Charlie had a comfortable life although he only held a junior position in the civil service. His wife was a successful criminal defence lawyer. They lived in a prosperous part of town and he drove a recent model Volvo. After retiring as soon as he could, Charlie became a prolific writer of stories and essays which he sent by email to all his friends. Though most of them hardly ever opened any of the files, they replied praising his work as great and deserving to be published in leading literary magazines. Thus encouraged, he sent them to every magazine in North America whether he had ever seen it or not. The negative response from them did not discourage him at all. He collected the stories in a book and submitted this to publishers whose publications he had come across. Next, he sent it to the publishers who accepted submissions from unknown authors. But, unlike his friends these publishers were blind to the charm and humour in his writing. After keeping the manuscript in the ‘Priority Z’ stack for a year they sent a curt note wishing him success with some other ‘house’. His friends suggested self-publishing but he resented the idea of paying several thousand dollars of his wife’s money to a ‘vanity’ publisher. At last a solution to his problem emerged when he was surfing the net, as he did most of the day when he was not writing or reading. He saw an ad which claimed that New World Publishers did not charge for publishing and even paid the writer for giving them the privilege of putting their great work in front of the public. What is more, they did not want double-spaced printed sheets in strange format with self-addressed stamped envelops which cost a bundle to mail. They insisted on email delivery. Here was his chance to get the book published with all the expense borne by a stranger in a foreign country. “The book will sell millions and I will get my revenge on all those who rejected my works in the past. They will be sorry to have missed the obvious best-seller,” he thought rubbing his hands in glee. Before many people could have batted an eyelid the manuscript was on its way to Susannahtown with inflated claims of his contacts in the local media and the number of friends who would buy the book. The acceptance was duly received in two days and after he had reviewed the basic conditions in the acceptance message and agreed to them within specified 24 minutes, a contract was in his mail box the next day. He had a day and a half to review 50 pages of bold print in font 14 and another 50 pages in font 6. He missed his meals and slept only an hour to make sure there was nothing unexpected in the contract which would come to haunt him later. It was what he had expected more or less. He was responsible for the validity of the statements and legally responsible for any claims made against the publisher resulting from the book. He would be paid a royalty advance of one cent and 2% of the publisher’s income from the book for first 10,000 sales, 4% for next 100,000 and 5% thereafter but only if the royalties were one thousand dollars or more in any calendar quarter which of course they would be, Charlie thought. To top it all, he retained the copyrights and all proceeds of the sales of film rights – very likely in his opinion – would accrue to him.

He signed the contract and emailed it. Next day he was advised to send the final copy of the manuscript. No changes were allowed once it was set in a book form. He sent the file he had sent previously without even opening it, leave alone checking for typos or other errors. A week later he was told that in view of the backlog it would take a year or more for his book to be published. But he could go to the top of the waiting pile if he agreed to pay $249. Charlie is not known for his patience and the amount was charged to his credit card before he had discussed the issue with his financier – wife Monica.

Two days later he received the design of the book, with the cover showing an older man in a red jacket and rather scantily dressed young well endowed woman in a tight embrace, very appropriate for the spring autumn love theme of most stories in the collection. On top was his name in big letters, title ‘Stories of Love’ emblazoned across the picture and the logo of the New World Publishers on the bottom right corner. Charlie was impressed to say the least. He printed it and showed it to Monica and all his friends who he hoped would buy the book. Along with the cover was the text. He was to check it for any errors by the book designer. His own errors would be corrected for a modest fee of $10 for each letter to be altered. “Of course there are no errors in my manuscript. But who knows what formatting errors may have crept in?” thought Charlie as he opened the file. The first page was an absolute delight to Charlie; it said in bold writing “The publisher has not edited the manuscript due to her regard for the author.” However this did not last. To his utter dismay, he found one hundred and seventy three typos and only five possible formatting problems. “I can not let a book with errors go into the world. These must be corrected,” said soon to be famous author to himself and sent the list of corrections. Promptly came back the request for his credit card details. The charges from the no-cost publisher were now in the two thousand dollars range.

Three days later the request to send email addresses of likely fans and the local media outlets arrived. He collected the addresses of his friends, the libraries, television stations and radio programs. Later in the day a list of several hundred addresses was in the inbox of the publicity department. Next came the invitation to order advance copies at reduced price. Charlie had to take advantage of this offer and asked for one hundred copies even though the shipping cost was almost as much as the cost of the book and was charged per copy irrespective of the number of copies ordered. His total expenses, he considered it an investment, on the venture had now reached five thousand dollars.

But this was not all. Within next seven days he received invitations to have the book mentioned on SBC TV stations, put on the shelves of 400 Best Sell Book Store chain, be represented by the most successful literary agent in Dollywood, each for a modest fee of $499, tax included. Having come this far, Charlie was not the one to fold his hand. $1,497 was added to his debt to the credit card company without a second’s thought. “If you want to sell a million copies and have a film made from your story you need publicity and a good agent” he told Monica.
“Why should you be paying for the publicity, they get almost all the money from the sales, not to mention profit on exorbitant shipping fees?” Monica asked.
“They are a business and publishers are having a hard time these days. They have to find ways to break even and sharing with the authors is one way to reduce their costs”, Charlie pleaded for the publisher.
“They should pay a more reasonable rate of royalty then. How much have you spent already anyway?” Monica wanted to know.
“Not all that much. It will be nothing compared to what is coming,” Charlie was non-committal.
“Do answer my question. I want to know how much of a hole we are in”, Monica was adamant.
“Hum, let me see, something in the range of six thousand,” Charlie was still not specific.
“That is the royalty on twelve thousand books. Most books of stories by unknown authors sell a few hundreds. What makes you think you will sell tens of thousands?” Monica’s anger was now on the surface.
“I have been dreaming of the sale in millions. I suppose we will have to wait and see,” Charlie was shamefaced.
“You also dream of winning the jackpot every month. That is a few dollars and relatively harmless. Where did you get all this money from any way?” Monica wasn’t letting go.
“It is charged to my card. I was hoping you would advance me the money against the royalty check when the payment becomes due” Charlie said with humble tone he adopted when asking Monica for money.
“I shared dreams with you for first two years of our life together but not since then. You dream in bright colours. Not me. My dreams are in black and white, no in shades of grey. Dream as colourfully as you like and as often as you wish. But you are not allowed to spend a penny more on the book till the royalty check arrives,” Monica put her foot down with a click of high heel.

Regular messages continued to arrive from the New World suggesting ways of dramatically increasing the sales of the book for a ‘modest’ fee. But Charlie’s hands were now tied. He read them with a pang before pressing the delete button with a shaky finger. As for the royalty check it never arrived. Presumably sales did not reach the level needed to earn a thousand dollars in royalties. Monica must have really loved Charlie. She never mentioned the money she advanced against the royalty check.

2011-08-26T07:30:00.000-07:00

Implications of the Dysfunctional Political System in the U.S.

Experts have been pronouncing on the subject every week yet no commentator has pointed out one of the main reasons for dysfunction in the US political system. One-third of the members of the House and the Senate are due for election every two years. These lawmakers are fighting either the Primary race or the election itself over most of this period. They are in no position to support unpopular decisions no matter how important these are to the country. That is why there are never any meaningful cuts in expenditures and no increase in taxes. Add the lack of party discipline to the mix, you have a recipe for the economic disaster the country is facing now and has little chance of avoiding.

Earlier this month, three wings of the U.S. government cobbled together an agreement at the last moment which increased the debt limit and averted the disaster but did nothing to solve the basic problem. A bipartisan committee with no authority to enforce its conclusions has been given the job of identifying savings. In the meantime, the TEA party republicans are as determined as ever to hobble the government by opposing any meaningful legislation to increase the revenues. With industry in doldrums, growth near zero, unemployment high and the citizens scared to spend on things most of them don’t need and a President too weak to stare down the belligerent opposition it will take a miracle to solve fundamental problems in the economy which have persisted for some time.

The system of government with three evenly weighted wings was designed to neutralize the prospect of any region or community dominating others in the eighteenth century for a widely dispersed agrarian society with no means of rapid communication. It served the country well for a long time but it does not meet the demands of an industrial society with a population a hundred times larger and infinitely more diverse than it was in the days of the Founders. It is the failure of this antiquated system still venerated by much of the population and paid lip service to by those who know better that has got the U.S. into such a mess. The recent events show that the government is unable to take strong unpopular steps that are needed and therefore has become ineffective and is incapable of even trying to solve serious problems. United States is a great country in so many ways and is blessed with many natural resources and incredible human talent much like the other Super Power of not so long ago. The situation of President Obama may not appear as serious as that faced by Secretary Gorbachev in the Soviet Union in the late eighties but it is not much different. The capitalist system is more flexible than the communism was and it is possible that the U.S. would emerge stronger from the crisis. Still, as the situation stands today, we may be looking at the beginning of the end of the United States, much as the end two decades ago of the other great Federation that brought its economy to near collapse by spending more than its means allowed. The emergence of a strong anti Federation Tea Party candidate in Rick Perry, whose support in the disgruntled former Confederate states seems to far exceed that for President Obama, could hasten the process as Yeltsin’s obduracy did in Moscow.

Leaving aside the politics and focusing on the U.S. economy, is it possible that the consumerism is hitting the ceiling? There is only so much one can consume before the pills for indigestion fail to work. This has been the case with many developed economies for a while. Rather than a stronger medicine to fix the sickness, there is a need for a change in the life-style. We should devise a new economic system that does not demand growth every month but is based on stability – permitting a stable or declining population of workers to produce what is needed for comfortable living without suffering from over indulgence. Such a system will be consistent with ecological limits of the planet, emphasis on reduction of human population to a sustainable number and the long term survival of all life forms Mother Earth gave birth to. There will be no need of Super Powers, Economic Engines, Wall Street and other destructive paraphernalia we can’t seem to manage without at present. Although the likelihood of it happening is perhaps miniscule, one can only hope that the current system can gradually evolve to achieve these ends without a major catastrophe.

A new profession

Doormatologist: Helps in dealing with the psychological issues of subservient spouses.

A new Definition

Freezer: Storage for leftover food till you don’t feel guilty throwing it out.

2011-08-19T07:42:00.000-07:00

Flight of Fancy

Shots scare me, those fired by members of the gangs to remove competition as much as those given by a nurse to keep some future calamity at bay or given by a dentist to alleviate the pain she would inflict a little later. That is why I avoid vaccinations and get the altogether unavoidable dental work, even root canals, done without freezing. To cope with the discomfort I let my imagination take wings. Giving free rein to the only cell in my brain in order to minimize the anticipated suffering is a trick I learnt at school when our short and stout teacher took out a long thin cane from his desk to teach me a different lesson than he had expected me to learn from the book, if not from his guttural speech. That ploy comes in handy on occasions, especially when my mouth is wide open and a naughty tooth is being subjected to a dentist’s whip. That was about to be my situation one morning last week. Waiting for some deep drilling in my wisdom tooth, I was lying on a chair, comfortable even by the high standards of classy dental clinics, looking out of a raised window at the chirping birds and the blue sky with silvery clouds floating by languorously. The footsteps of the dentist brought me back into the room and my eyes moved down to a framed photograph about two feet long and a little more than one foot wide hanging on the wall below the window. It showed the reflections of the downtown office towers on the gleaming black trunk of a Bentley with its insignia prominent at the centre of the photograph. The car was parked on the road side with no driver or passenger in view. This was the ideal starting point for the brain cell to work from and carry me painlessly to the point of facing the bill for an hour in the chair.

This is where the flight of fancy took me.

The car as expensive as a new Bentley with the gold insignia can not be driven by the owner; there has to be a chauffer, who was perhaps smoking a cigar just out of the scope of the camera or polishing the hood to remove the speck of dust only he could see. If one can afford a Bentley, he (wealthy women prefer Rolls Royce) couldn’t live in an ordinary house, not even a big one. He must live in a mansion with indoor swimming pool and two hot tubs, dining room to seat fifty, ten bed rooms, twelve 'powder rooms' and a six car garage to accommodate the friends of his pride and joy. There must, of course, be well manicured gardens with roses, blue bells and chrysanthemums in the front and on the sides and an orchard with apple, peach and pear trees, raspberry bushes and grape vines at the back. To maintain them there must be a head gardener with at least two assistants. And of course there must be staff of ten to manage the household – a butler, a chef, some maids to help them, and not to forget a special assistant to the butler for jobs like polishing ornaments and to answer the door bell. It is not the nineteenth century; one can’t expect any one to work more than regulation thirty five hours a week. Even with careful management of schedules at least two shifts are required at a minimum. Once you have got it all organized, or some business you hired has done it for you for a suitable fee, wouldn’t life be grand. You wake up not to the harsh sound of an alarm clock but the musical tinkling of the tray butler is bringing to your bedside before setting out the apparel appropriate to the activities planned for the day and running the bath. You spend the morning in meetings with your asset managers before a leisurely lunch with one of them. Depending on the weather the activity for the afternoon is a few holes at the golf course or bridge at the club. When you return to your relatively humble abode after a gruelling day, chauffer opens the door of the Bentley and takes the not quite empty flute from your hands. You get out, nod to the doorman as he holds the front door open and slump on a sofa. There is the butler to pour you the cup of tea just as you like it – its colour matching the back of your hand - when his assistant is taking your footwear off to soak the tired feet in hot water enriched with soothing potions prescribed by your naturopathic practitioner and then dry and massage them. Enter the chef with a slice of freshly baked pecan pie with a dollop of whipped cream on the side. Ah! This is the way to live. “Thank you Grammie for making all this possible” I say to no one in particular becoming the owner of Bentley for a short but glorious moment.

The flight over, the brain returned to Earth. I handed my overcharged credit card to the receptionist. Unpleasant formalities thus looked after, I took a bus home. When I arrived, my wife was at the door ready to leave for a day in the mountains with her hiking club. Without asking how the visit went – she always has a lot on her mind - she said “I am so glad you are back before I left. You must not go to work with a sore mouth, you need to rest at home. I would suggest a couple of things you could do to while away the time. The lawn needs a cut and the trees along the fence need pruning. Don’t leave the clippings for me to clean up; I have enough to do as it is. When you have done them, you may not have noticed but the laundry is piling up, mostly with your clothes. Oh yes. There is a list of odd jobs on the kitchen table. It will be nice if you made a start on them. You will perhaps be asleep when I am back. Have a good day.”

I have been lucky in my wife who, thoughtful as always, arranged my schedule to make sure there was no spare moment to feel the pain in my mouth but not so in my grandmother. Why couldn’t she leave it all to me?

2011-08-11T19:23:00.000-07:00

Retirement and Market Gyrations

The turmoil on the stock exchanges all over the world has caused a lot of anxiety, particularly among retired or nearly retired people. Unless one has a guaranteed pension of a senior civil servant or corporate executive, the savings play an important role in how comfortable the retirement is going to be. A drop of 50% in the lifetime saving, as looked likely last week made a lot of people feel quite poor, though not to the extent of giving up dining out or cancelling the cell. A recovery since then has put a smile on some faces but there is a worry behind the smile - what is coming next week; week after that?

There are several issues to be addressed here which may impact on how one feels about the stock market gyrations. First and foremost, it is the governments of the United States, Greece, Spain, Italy and others whose credit rating is being downgraded, not the public companies. The companies will be impacted by the downgrades of government debts only if the tax rates were hiked excessively. But given the globalisation of industry this is out of the question. By and large, as is clear from most recent financial reports, the companies are making money, they have hordes of cash and many are increasing dividends. The drop in their stock prices is a sad commentary on investors' nerves, not on their management or their prospects. After all, even in the most desperate Western countries, ninety percent of the population is employed, most of the rest has support of social welfare agencies and no one is starving unless she is trying to lose weight. Restaurants are busy, cash registers in stores are tinkling, not many maids or butlers have been laid off. In this situation, the investors will return to market sooner rather than later and price recovery is weeks away, not months or years.

Second issue of vital importance is the state of heavily margined accounts. At least some of the fall last week was due to desperate sells to meet the margin requirements - i.e. pay back the broker money borrowed when price was higher. Pensioners do not believe in margin accounts and their balances may be diminished but are not wiped off. Except for the 'nervous Nellies' who sell at the bottom, most invesstors live to collect their dividends and reap the gains as the markets improve. They don't really have any reason to lie awake at night waiting for the other shoe to drop in the form of opening bell of the exchanges.

One should consider the savings as the capital which will provide income for a certain period. If you have a hundred thousand dollars and expect to live another twenty years, you can draw ten thousand a year (assuming modest gains over the duration)for the period. During these twenty years there will be several boom and bust cycles; no one knows when, how long or how severe; only that these cycles are as certain as death, hopefully not before twenty years are up. The bust occurring right now has no different impact on the account than that two, four or eight years later. Similarly, if it were a boom time, the daily growth should not influence your decisioon to retire or how much to withdraw. These are determined by the actual value of the savings and your life expectancy. Only thing you can be reasonably confident of, from the history of last two hundred years, is that a well-constructed portfolio will double every seven to ten years with ups and downs over short time frames.

There is a temptation to sell off when the indices are trending downwards with an expectation to buy back at the bottom. By all means do this if you can divine the trends and the bottoms. I have no crystal ball and my only judgement on buy and sell is based on a company's stock price vis a vis its revenues, income, dividends and prospects. If I suspect that the price has run far ahead of those factors, it may be time to sell. Similarly, if the price has dropped below that indicated by revenues etc. it may be time to buy even if there is selling pressure (that is why the price is down).

One final comment: Don't get caught up in individual stocks - evaluate the whole portfolio. Individual stocks will fluctuate much more than their total value which should be your focus. Remember: The biggest losers of today are the biggest winners of tomorrow.

2011-07-30T13:43:00.000-07:00

Dysfunctional American System

While the arguments put forth by Jeffrey Simpson and Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail (July 30, 2011) are beyond dispute, I am surprised that no commentator ever points out the basic reason for dysfunction in the US political system. Because one-third of the House and the Senate members are due for election every two years, one-third of the lawmakers are always fighting either the Primary race or the election itself. These candidates are in no shape to support unpopular decisions no matter how important these are to the country. That is why there are never any meaningful cuts in expenditures and no increase in taxes. Add absence of party discipline to the mix, you have the recipe for the disaster the country is facing now and has little chance of avoiding.

In any event, the economies in the West are suffering, not from shortage of any thing, but from over indulgence. The economic system demands growth every month at every level. This is simply not sustainable on a planet with seven billion humans demanding more and more of resources and emitting more and more pollution. I suggest that the limit has been reached in the West and expecting continuous increase in consumption by overfed, overdressed, overentertained citizens is living in the sixties. What is needed, and soon, is a new economic model, one based on shrinking population and reducing or stable consumption. In this system, stores will stress best quality, not the lowest price; job satisfaction is valued much more than fat salary checks and bonuses; individual craft is appreciated rather than the efficiency of manufacturing on a vast scale and simple living is prized, not ostentatious palaces and cars. One can only hope that the planet does not have to die and be reborn for such utopean changes and these can occur without the armageddon promised in the scriptures. I am afraid the current trends do not lend credence to such hopes.

2011-07-29T07:07:00.000-07:00

Eva’s Aria and Quintet from Die Meistersinger

Wagner wrote 13 operas which are parodied even by the legions of their admirers for almost everyone dying just before the final curtain comes down. But the death of heroes and villains wasn’t enough, in the last scene of seventeen hour drama “The Ring Cycle”, the whole world is flooded and the Heaven burnt down albeit to be born again. He did write one comedy if only to show that his genius was well-rounded. No one dies in Die Maestersinger von Nurnberg, although Beckmesser probably wished that he had at the end. The lovers unite against all odds, old shoemaker poet is celebrated by the populace and he in turn exhorts every one to work for the glory of Art because, after all is said and done, it is Art that brings lasting glory to a nation.

Eva and Count Walther fall in love within a few minutes of the First Act. But to win Eva Walther must conquer his opposition, particularly the town clerk Beckmesser in a song contest. So he must first learn to write poetry and then how to sing it. Hans Sachs, the shoemaker poet much respected in Nuremberg, is fond of Eva who is the daughter of his friend and neighbour, Pogner. Sachs promises to help Walther and assigns his apprentice David the job of teaching him. David himself is in love with Eva’s maid Magdalene but he can only marry her after he qualifies as a craftsman. After the turmoil of second act, there is certain despondency in the third act till towards the middle of this very long act, longer than most operas, Walther completes his poem to Sachs’ satisfaction and every one can feel hopeful. This is when Wagner presents his most wonderful music in the form of a short aria by Eva in praise of the song crafted by Walther “As blissfully as the sun of my happiness laughs, a morning full of joy blessedly awakens for me; dream of highest joys, heavenly morning glow;……” And then others join her in ones and twos “A melody tender and noble ought to succeed propitiously ……..” for a heavenly quintet with musical accompaniment unmatched in classical music.

Somerset Maugham named Die Maestersinger as the greatest of all operas and the quintet the pinnacle of musical achievement. Music is a matter of personal taste and mood; and it follows that others have their own favourites. There are days when I would rather listen to one of the duets from Die Walkure, Siegfried and Aida, Isolde’s Liebestod, last few minutes from Gotterdammerung, last verse of Das Lied von der Erde, Beethoven’s last quartet, Goldberg variations, the list is long. But if I were allowed to take just one short piece of music with me to heaven or hell wherever I am destined to go, it will be the Quintet from Die Maestersinger if only because it is a celebration of impossible becoming possible by disciplined hard work under able guidance.

Canadian Corn:

A Canadian edition of Ann Patchett’s novel “State of Wonder” is in the works. It will be called “Province of Wonder”.

A Sweet Repartee

It had rained all night and the morning was cold and wet even at the height of summer in mid July. But the sun came out at noon and dried the grass and trees. On this bright and pleasant afternoon, a happily married rather middle-aged couple was dressing for a lawn party in the Indian community. Ravi had put on tight white trousers and a brown shirt down to his knees, both of handspun cotton which was very fashionable among immigrants from his part of India, while Monica was wrapping a light blue silk sari with gold border around her tall, trim figure. Monica had all the jewellery lined up on the dressing table and, for once, it was Ravi who didn’t know what to wear to complete his attire. He had to shield his bald head from the sun but Monica wouldn’t let him use any of his fashionable hats, baseball cap or the Tilley sun hat, “you would look like a buffoon’, she said. Only recourse was the cap his sister had sent from India a few years ago for the occasions such as this when he wore an Indian outfit. However, it was much too tight to stay on and there was no reason to think it would fit after resting for a few years on the top shelf of the wardrobe. But Monica was firm and Ravi tried it. Lo and behold it fitted, a little loose if anything. “Did you do something to stretch it or my head has shrunk over last few years?” he asked Monica half in jest.
“Wouldn’t surprise me if it is your head - with that growing vacuum in there,” Monica replied with a smile.
“You are saying I am losing my brain,” Ravi protested.
“Yes, but only because I know it wouldn’t hurt your feelings,” Monica tried to soothe her husband.
“Now I have lost my heart as well as the head. Where will it all end?” Ravi was really down in the mouth.
“Oh dear! How you misunderstand. I did not say you have lost your brain or did not have a heart, only implied that they may be the wrong place,” Monica made another effort to calm Ravi.
“Perhaps in my big feet. Or in the knees. That is why I have trouble in running to catch the bus,” Ravi was sarcastic.
“More likely around the ever expanding waistline. You could accommodate an Einstein’s brain and Mother Teresa’s heart there,” Monica didn’t give up easily.
“OK I take the hint. This waistline has to shrink so the brain and heart can move back to their proper places. No beer, no pies for dessert, no fatty foods, no Indian dinners after tonight,” Ravi got carried away as usual.
“Hooray for you. I will join you and do the same,” Monica was supportive.
“Even if you don’t need to. That is indeed a sacrifice. And all for the love of a short, fat, bald, brownie! I always thought I married an angel. In truth I married a twogel, two angels in one” Ravi acknowledged and gave Monica a tight hug and a long kiss.

2011-07-22T08:25:00.000-07:00

A short goodbye

Monica was going away on a cruise with her book club. The group of twenty academics planned an annual two-week cruise to fancy places; Baltic coast, Central America, Eastern Europe, Mediterranean islands, you name it. They hardly had time to relish the glorious scenery surrounding them although they did enjoy four very square meals served in elegant dining rooms and returned a little rounder, let me not be rude and say less skinny, than when they boarded the ship. The time they didn’t spend in the dining room was spent in the library of the ship. The club chose a topic for each cruise, this time it was Nineteenth century English literature. Before each cruise the members read the books from a long list containing sometimes ten, other times twenty titles. Each day on the ship they chose one and discussed its fine points till everyone was exhausted. It had often been suggested that they record the discussions for future generations but the general feeling was that this would put a damper on free expression of opinions, particularly by members of the shy sex.

This year the cruise was going to Alaska. Ravi went to Vancouver to see Monica off and to make sure that all her cases including the box of novels by Dickens, Carroll and Thackeray, criticisms by Ruskin and poems of Hopkins among others were properly loaded. After checking in a modest hotel on Saturday afternoon and playing tourist in the evening, they got to bed late but Monica was not at all sleepy. Who knows whether it was the anxiety before a long trip or the coffee that she had after dinner not having been the decaf she had asked for. After tossing and turning for a while she sat up straight and asked, “Where is my camera? I am sure I left in the restaurant.”

Ravi got up to look for it. It was not on the table, not in the suitcase lying open on the floor and not in the pocket of clothes they wore that evening. Just when he opened the phone book to find the phone number of the Greek restaurant where they had excellent Moussaka, Meat Balls and salad followed by heavenly baklava and the treacherous coffee, he noticed something peeping out of her shoes lying next to the case. There it was, the digital camera she had bought for Ravi a few months ago.

Ravi fell back in the bed, adjusted his pillow, pulled up the covers and closed his eyes. But closing the eyes is easy; going to sleep is another matter when you had stuffed yourself with spicy food. Not only that, Ravi was responsible for the important job of making coffee before waking Monica up with a steaming cup. Although he didn’t need to be awake till nearly eight, the weight on his shoulders was heavy and it did not slide off even though he was lying down. He opened his eyes every few minutes, looked at the clock on the side table and closed them again. He noticed the snoring on his left but it did not bother him, he was used to it. At long last it was 04:07 on the clock. He got up, went to the bath room and fell back in bed really tired. Now there were two people snoring a little out of synch and totally oblivious of the modern music they were creating.

Ravi woke up in shock. The clock showed 8:49 and there was no sound on his left. He was relieved to see Monica stretched out with a blissful smile, dreaming perhaps of the great arguments she would present to her gathering. He got out of bed quietly, poured water in the Coffee Mate and brushed his teeth while it was gurgling. At 9:01 he presented a steaming cup to half awake Monica.

They finalized the packing, she for the ship and he for the trip home. After a leisurely breakfast of poached eggs, yellow not green, and ham with toast saturated with butter and the cold coffee restaurants serve with breakfast, they loaded their stuff in the car and headed for the port. Most of Monica’s group was already there chatting gaily in a cluster. Someone asked Ravi why he wasn’t joining them. “English is my second language; I learnt it late in life. Cricket is my thing. Somehow literature never caught my fancy. I do think that my presence on the ship would have distracted Monica. That is why I offered to stay behind and look after the dogs and Monica kindly agreed.”

The reply seemed to satisfy them and the conversation moved to more interesting topics like weather forecast for next two weeks. Soon the ship hooted three times and passengers moved towards the loading planks. Ravi watched Monica chatting with Kate, the cofounder of the club as she boarded the ship. On the deck she turned towards him and waved. Ravi blew the kiss, in fact two kisses, and walked back to the parking lot. In a few minutes he was on the highway. With a Sousa march on his lips Ravi set the cruise control just when the ship had made its way out of the harbour.

Breaking the Law

It was past our usual time for dinner and the tummies were protesting. We were still about half an hour away from home and an hour away from dinner, assuming it would take Monica a while to throw something on the pan and then on the plates. No wonder I took my eyes off the speedometer. Soon I was wishing I hadn’t. A tall slim figure in a police uniform moved to the middle of my lane and flagged me to stop. When I opened the window, he bent down and spoke humbly but in a tone assumed by men in control, “Sir, you were exceeding the speed limit by forty kilometers an hour.”
“That fast! I am sorry officer. I am not generally so heavy footed.”
“Yes, that foot will cost you a lot,” he replied flipping open the notepad and then added while taking the cap off the pen, “One hundred and seventy nine dollars to be exact.”
“Plus GST, I suspect,” I said.
“Thank your lucky stars there is no GST on traffic fines. Can I see your driver’s license and car registration please?” He stretched his open hand towards me.
“There goes my wife’s birthday celebration. Now she will have to cook for her own fortieth dinner,” I said to the car whistling by behind him.
“I suggest you barbecue a steak for her and serve it with peas and baked potatoes and a fine red wine. She will appreciate that more than a restaurant.” He was sure good at out of this world suggestions.
“No she won’t. Last time I cooked she said never again and she has stuck to it. That was twenty years ago,” I was almost down to a whimper.
“I don’t believe it. Not in twenty first century,” the doubting officer looked straight in my pleading eye.
“Ask her. She is right here on the passenger seat,” I countered.
“Is he right madam?” The officer asked looking through me.
Monica vigorously nodded to confirm last part of the story. She looked sad as any one would who had the visions of cooking spaghetti and meatballs on her birthday while her husband watched old hockey reruns on the Sports Channel. The officer folded the pad and put it back in his pocket. His officious tone now assumed a gentle quality, “I will let you off this time with a warning sir. Be careful please. There are some more of us down the road who may not be as considerate.

I thanked the officer for his kindness, promised to drink to his health at our celebration and drove off, slowly at first and then just above the speed limit. We did see two other police cars but they were busy with crazies who, for some strange reason, can’t stay within the law.

This was not the first time I had tried this trick. It is amazing how often it works. Impressions to the contrary, not all law enforcement officers have hearts of stone.

2011-07-15T23:24:00.000-07:00

What is Behind Mumbai Massacres?

We live in a time when hardly a day goes by without some terrorist mayhem somewhere. Still, the news of three simultaneous bomb explosions in busy markets of Mumbai which killed at least 21 people and injured hundreds more was deeply disturbing. It is not the number of casualties that is worrisome, more than that number die and are hurt in traffic accidents every day in that city, it is the inhuman nature and apparent futility of the acts. Why would any group of sane persons spend time planning and then commission their colleagues to give their lives in executing operations that kill and maim a large number of innocent civilians of all social and religious backgrounds including their own? What do they hope to achieve by inflicting such damage?

Three massacres in 2008 in the same city were worse. They killed hundreds of people including foreign tourists, damaged a major hotel and a Jewish centre and lasted three days. But they did not frighten the government of India into conceding Kashmir to Pakistan. If the idea was to cause communal disturbances in India, it failed too. They did not incite Hindus into revenge killings of Muslims although some extremist Hindus must have had hard time resisting the temptation. There was no report of any Hindu boss dismissing his Muslim employees nor did any Hindu change his faith out of fear of being murdered. Therefore, assuming that the planners have some ability to reason, it is fair to think that the terror was not inflicted to frighten India or to cause communal rift there. It seems to me that the only idea behind this carnage was to bring recently resumed peace talks between the two countries to a halt. If the talks succeed, and that is a big if, and the peace between the two countries were to hold, it could lead to a shift of massive expenditures from military complex to industrial development, more trade between the two countries and possibly a reduction in gaping difference in the level of economies of India and Pakistan. In such environment it could occur to the leadership of Pakistan that they would be better off in a federation with secular India, after all more Muslims live in India than in Pakistan and generally in less poverty and have better education and medical services. This could, with some luck, lead to eventual reunification of the two countries. It is not difficult to imagine that there are agencies in Pakistan whose existence is entirely dependant on the friction between the two countries; the army, intelligence services and misguided organizations like Lashkar–e-Taiba who covertly work with defense services. I suggest that it is not the ordinary religious fundamentalists who support the perpetrators of this carnage, leave alone organize them, but the leaders of these groups who use religion as a shield. After all there are many Islamic teaching institutions in India which cover a broad spectrum of fanaticism about religion but who also promote patriotism towards India in their followers. Some of these achieve great success and positions of leadership in all fields of endeavour. For example, India’s leading woman tennis player is a Muslim and India has had two Presidents of that faith. It is possible, albeit remotely, that foreign countries who have interest in promoting conflict between the two neighbours have supported the terrorist groups.

Given the politics in that country, it was an act of courage for the government of Pakistan to promptly condemn these acts. It should go further and find the guilty parties rather than shielding them as they did in 2008. However, howsoever much we may hope, there is no reason to believe that the political leadership is strong enough to take on the army. Therein lies the tragedy of Pakistan, past, present and the near future.

2011-07-08T07:55:00.000-07:00

The Royal Visit

If you were to believe the hype in our media, Canadians have been mesmerized by the visit of newly married Will and Kate. The pictures of the handsome couple are everywhere often flanked by our beloved Prime Minister and his devoted wife whom all Canadians adore. I look at the two couples and wonder whether our tax money is being spent like water to celebrate the British monarchy or to promote our glorious leader even though the election is four years away.

If raising the profile of monarchy among Canadians of non-British heritage were the goal, I would have thought that the Governor-General would be playing the role of the host of the future monarch of little he surveys and even less he would be able to assert. What else is the G-G there for than for such ceremonial duties? The only time I heard the Governor-General mentioned in public was when he delivered the speech from the throne, a speech written by the Prime Minister and it seemed from the delivery not even read by the G-G before he delivered it to the parliament. If that is the only function expected of this august position, what is wrong with the Prime Minister assuming the throne for the afternoon and reading it himself? Why not abolish the office altogether and reduce the deficit which seems to haunt this government so much rather than cut essential services or further raise admission fees to the National Parks.

While talking about abolishing a high office which the modern practices have made superfluous, why not do away with the Senate too. Why have a hundred highly paid failed politicians and cronies of the Prime Minister, their staff, the travel expenses, Senate chamber and other paraphernalia just to rubber stamp every bill passed by his government? Let’s move with the times and get rid off both these expensive hangovers from the twentieth century and balance the budget before we go the way of the great trading partner and only world super power to the south where schools are closed every few weeks because there is no money to pay the teachers for the whole month and nation’s government is teetering on the edge because no one has the power to make necessary decisions.

Why stop at the senate when all that the honourable members of the Parliament do is to scream at each other to make an impression on the TV which no one watches and after all that fuss decide what the Prime Minister, hallowed be his name in every home as it is in the ‘House’, has instructed his members to do. We may just as well eliminate the House of Commons as well along with the G-G and the Senate. Just think how much money Canada will save if we did not have all these diversions - not only in what it costs directly but what the government has to spend to make sure that the leader gets the exposure he does not deserve on hugely expensive events like G20 meetings and yes, the visit of a young couple floating in vast inherited wealth and who do not really know what to do with their time other than waving to the adoring crowds in their fancy uniforms and designer dresses.

2011-07-01T06:48:00.000-07:00

An Evening with Art Lovers

It was raining hard and quite cool for June, Yet, the evening was memorable at so many levels. A former chairman of the board of Calgary Opera invited us and another couple for dinner at their palatial home. One half of the other guest couple was a former senior executive of a large bank and a colleague of the hostess on the opera board. What I was doing in this distinguished gathering is not such a mystery; my wife is a well-known physician, a supporter of arts and a wonderful company. Obviously my presence was not a large enough negative in this instance as it often is.

The cocktails and hors de oeuvres were excellent and dinner was superb. But they could not match the brilliance of conversation. Our normal dinner companions talk of nothing but the families, as indeed we do with them. However, the families were not mentioned on this occasion even in passing. It was all about the exotic places in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, books about the travel and Arts, lamentation on how television and movies have descended to the nadir to cater to the lowest common denominator; and finally about the hardship opera companies were facing all over North America. Not being an artist and only superficially interested in Arts and Literature I found this far above my comprehension but I have learnt that silence and occasional nod can keep me from being noticed, it can even create a favourable impression. Good conversation is the art of listening to others without interruption, whether it makes sense or not and making your contribution when appropriate. With five people around the table carrying their share of this burden so admirably my presence was really of no account. Perhaps they did not have any expectations being well aware of my ignorance in the matters of culture, not to say social inaptitude in elevated circles.

During a discussion on the impact of HDTV transmission of performances from Metropolitan Opera in New York a suggestion was made that this may be the final nail in the coffin of opera companies in smaller centres. Why would any one pay a hundred dollars for a relatively mediocre performance of one of the ten operas presented by these companies routinely when they could choose from a wide variety on offer with top artists and world’s best orchestra on the screen as wide as the opera stage for ten dollars? Looking not so far into the future, how long will these transmissions be patronized and when will the death knell of major operas ring are questions related to a larger question: Is the all consuming passion with social media and absorption with personal lives of media celebrities rather than with their real artistic achievements coupled with absolute neglect of classical music in school systems an harbinger of the death of music and opera as art forms when the current generation passes the torch to the next one? Coward that I am, I did not raise this issue although it crossed my mind. It may also be my tact, although I am not known for having any sense of it, more so the realization that devoted supporters of Arts are not ready to face the eventuality of such a tragedy yet, which, if I may be so bold, or foolish depending on your opinion of me, makes this all the more likely.

2011-07-01T06:47:00.001-07:00

2011-06-24T07:06:00.000-07:00

Do We Live in a Democratic Country?

Several news items last week should be bothering us:

1. A pollster suggested after analyzing his surveys on the May 2 election that the result would have been very different if the participation rate was similar in different age groups and that the Conservative party won the majority because they catered to the older group that votes at twice the rate of younger group who were more inclined to support the Liberals.

2. The Conservative party organizers gloated that they focused on winning the support of minority communities in seats where they were the crucial swing votes.

3. Disregarding the fact that 60% of actual voters did vote for the opposition parties the ruling party crows that the majority of Canadians support their policies while proposing legislative changes which most Canadians find unpleasant.

4. The sole ‘elected’ member of the senate said that it was the duty of senators to support their leader, thus implying that the chamber of sober thought was in reality to become a rubber stamp.

In addition there is the issue of candidates promoting reduced taxes, lower regulation of businesses, reduced social services, cuts in infrastructure spending and higher defense budget as policies in the interest of all voters with full knowledge that their agenda only helps their few wealthy supporters at the expense of vast population and the future generations. The success of such campaigns in recent elections in the U.S. is the main cause of economic plight of that country and the tendency of our government to copy this trend is a major worry for many Canadians.

These considerations raise the question: Has the democracy been subverted by the politicians to the point that it is no longer the representation of the will of the majority but the representation of the interests of wealthy individuals and professional politicians who have the means to manipulate the election process to their advantage. Making false promises during the elections is a practice as old as the elections but new strategies are now coming to the fore. Changing policy pronouncements during the campaign based on the polls, heavily concentrated often false negative projection of other leaders in media advertising, raising funds for election campaigns in return for government contracts and enactment of favourable policies, making it convenient for supporters and inconvenient for likely opponents to vote and other shenanigans have been taken to new heights by the well heeled right wing candidates in the U.S. in the past few elections and in Canada in the last two elections with great success. It is true that one does whatever he/she can to win and on the face of it there is nothing wrong with it. But it is fair to question the validity of claims that a government elected after such tricks in the elections is a true representation of the wishes of the population.

If we wish our system of government to be democracy in fact, not just in name, and the government of the day to truly reflect the wishes of citizens we need to take the election process away from professional politicians whose only aim is to gain power and stuff their ideologies down the throats of indifferent, if not unwilling, citizens. To begin with, we need a fixed date for elections. We need strict limit on spending by the parties and their supporters and a stringent code of ethics in advertising. Every voter must vote even if he decides to vote ‘no opinion’. And finally, we need proportional representation, not first past the post system we have now which allows a party with minority support to assume dictatorial powers. We may have some justification to topple foreign dictators only when we have a true democracy in our country. Till then our participation in the civil war in Libya and elsewhere to promote democaratic governments there is hypocrisy at its worst.

2011-06-17T07:17:00.000-07:00

A New Activity in the Old Age.

In my first decade on Earth I learnt to walk and talk, though most of my friends wish I hadn’t learnt the later. In the second decade I learnt to speak English with an accent that still flummoxes most listeners and graduated from an elite technical institution. Next ten years saw me take two post graduate degrees, marry a fine English woman and move to Libya. My thirties were blessed with three wonderful daughters and our final emigration to Canada via the United States. Forties saw me prosper in business and save enough for a comfortable retirement. Pendulum swung in the fifties, my savings disappeared as the retirement loomed and the daughters moved to far away places. In the sexy sixties I retired, assumed the persona of a fiction writer and published a collection of stories. On the flip side the family survived severe illness of three family members. Now in seventies I have a serious issue. What can I do that I have not done before and is a contribution to the community. I have written a novel, a new book is with the printer and several stories are looking for publishers. But all this is old hat – a continuation of what I have been doing for a while. A month ago the answer to my prayer arrived from an unexpected source.

Keith, an old friend who had lost his very dear wife to ALS a few years ago sent us an invitation to join Betty’s Walk and Run on a Sunday morning to support ALS Society of Alberta. Evelyn, my wife, participates in several volunteer activities but I have avoided them as an unnecessary demand on my time and meager resources. However, on this occasion, perhaps due to my own fear of the onset of senility, I agreed to walk five kilometers in Glenmore Park which happens to be within a walking distance from our humble abode. But one can’t just go and walk in the park. You have to register for it on the internet. The website mentioned on the invitation led me to a Walk on the same day and I duly registered for it. No sooner had I clicked submit, I realized that the location did not seem right. Moreover, it was free while Betty’s Walk had a registration fee. A little investigation led to the correct website. I duly registered for both of us, paid $33 each for registration and printed out the receipts.

We woke up in good time for a leisurely breakfast of poached eggs, walked over to the park and collected our T-shirts before the start of the walk at 10AM. After a week of steady rain the sky had cleared. The sun was bright, temperature comfortable and breeze kept the mosquitoes at bay. We chatted with Keith and met his family. Then about one thousand people, young and old, men and women, some in prams, a few in wheel chairs, started walking alone, as couples or in groups of four to twenty along the bank of the reservoir on Elbow River. The reservoir was almost dry, its bed picturesque with curling rivulets and a tapestry of green vegetation and brown sand with the background of snow capped mountains in the distance and blue sky with clouds like silver discs of assorted sizes and shapes. There was a duck swimming with eight ducklings in tow and a miscellany of birds floating or flying over the reservoir. The scene was as beautiful as any pastoral view. After about forty minutes of an amble rather than a hike we reached the point of return, the west end of the reservoir. A table had been set up to offer water in paper cups to those who wanted it and almost every one did.

The return ramble was more relaxed. After a few minutes we sat down on a bench to watch the walkers go by, some in a rush to get to the church on time others strolling as if they had no care and all the time in the world. After our legs were ready to support us we started again only to stop a while later to watch a heron standing in water waiting for its lunch to come swimming. It had more patience than we did; after a few minutes we resumed our walk. We met Keith and his group at the Finish line an hour and a quarter after we had started. The first batch of runners were returning after eight kilometers run having set off half an hour later than we did for our five kilometre walk. We consoled ourselves with the thought that the runners were much younger than us although I do not remember ever running one kilometer leave alone eight.

We were home two hours after we had left. We had our customary cup of tea in the patio and slumped in easy chairs. I felt quite pleased with myself and decided that it was something I should do more often. One is never too old to learn and walking for good causes should be a nice addition to new activities in my eighth decade.

2011-06-10T07:54:00.000-07:00

The Way Out of the Debt Crisis in Europe

The news that European Central Bank (ECB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the government of Greece are negotiating a new loan package of 110,000,000,000 Euros prompted me to find out what the population of the country is. It happens to be 11,000,000 give or take a few thousands. That puts the package value at 10,000 Euros per citizen, rich and poor, young and old. There are other government debts too which will come due sooner or later. Most families, in Greece just as every where else owe money on their homes, cars, other possessions and credit cards. Most businesses operate on borrowed money too. With every individual and business in debt you would wonder who do they owe to.

It so happens that they owe it to themselves. Some far sighted people have saved for their retirement, emergencies, cars or homes they intend to buy when they have enough money for the deposit and entrusted it to the insurance companies and banks. These institutions then loan this money to other individuals, businesses and governments and earn interest to cover their costs including the losses due to the defaulting few and of course bonuses for the executives. In theory, the system should work fine and it does when the economy is expanding and the value of assets is increasing. Most borrowers make timely payments of the interest and some of the principal and money circulates from those who have more to those who need more. However, when the times are tough, borrowers have lost their jobs or the wages fall behind inflation, a large number of borrowers; individuals, businesses or governments, fail to make the payments. This puts banks and insurance companies in a bind. Leave alone lending to the needy, these financial institutions can’t meet their own commitments to the depositors and lenders. Bank failures loom large, as they did in 2008 and a major crisis is on the horizon. The governments of prosperous countries raise the money from their citizens and save the system, as the United States and Western Europe did. Other less fortunate countries in Europe had to go to the IMF and ECB for aid and they have been struggling since then to come to terms with a dire situation. Their problems have been exacerbated by the net indebtedness to foreigners. The government of Japan carries a huge debt load without serious repercussions because most of it is in Yen and is owed to the citizens of Japan. It is interesting to note that the countries like China and India with strong culture for saving and reluctance to debt did not face this crisis because borrowers and defaulters were relatively few. The debt being local and in the country’s currency also helped.

It is in the interest of prosperous countries to save the economies of their less well off cousins – they need the markets for their products and services. The problems in Greece, Portugal, Ireland and elsewhere will eventually be resolved and the burden of debt on the governments and the individuals will be transferred from one lender in one form to the other in another form. But it will not be reduced to a sustainable level without unacceptable political risk. Therefore, the next crisis will be with us soon unless we, at all levels, develop a culture of conservatively evaluating our means before handing out the credit cards or going to the bank for a line of credit or a mortgage. This means restraining the consumer society and to engender a desire to make do with what we can afford rather than acquire bigger and flashier gizmos to keep up with our group. This has to be done by the businesses as well as the governments who have to limit their services and constrain the borrowings to the lending capacity of their national institutions. The countries currently in trouble joined the European Common Market (ECM) and accepted Euro as the common currency in the false hope that the adoption of the currency of Germany and France would overcome the handicaps of easy going culture and weaker industrial and resource base. It will help if southern European countries now take the drastic step and regain the flexibility in their economic policies by reverting to the independent national currencies which they surrendered either within or outside ECM. There is great reluctance among the governments to do so at this juncture. However, the protests on the streets of Athens, Madrid and Lisbon are gathering momentum and it is only a matter of time before these governments change their stance.

In Memoriam

Ravi Sharma was born with a silver pen in his fingers in 2001 when a letter appeared under his name in Canada’s national newspaper. For next six years more than one hundred of his submissions graced the pages of leading publications of the country. He met his premature, though anticipated, death in 2007 when editors started to question the authenticity of his work and cast doubt on his existence. Ravi’s ashes were recycled along with the manuscripts of his unpublished works.

Much to the chagrin of the editors, his name lives through the works they published.

2011-06-05T21:01:00.000-07:00

Pot calling the kettle black

Steve Coll (The Syrian problem, New Yorker, May 30) may be right about the cruelty of the leaders of Syria and Libya but one should look in the mirror before commenting on how others look. The U.S. has installed and supported in the past, and continues to do so today, worse dictators than Assad and Gaddafi. Mobutu and Pinochet were the creations of CIA and the Chinese rulers have not hesitated in shooting peaceful protestors and uprooting millions of their citizens with little compensation. Not only that, by Coll's own admission CIA continues to "covertly fund" and foment trouble in peaceful countries. With due respect, till the Americans have stopped supporting all dictators and sheikdoms and their government can make sensible laws like medicare stick and can pass a budget that can save the country from eventual bankruptcy, comments like Coll's amount to nothing more than a pot calling the kettle black.

Is stock market a casino?

I spend a lot of my time ‘playing the market’ as some would call it or ‘investing’ as I like to think of it. Several of my close friends have entrusted their retirement funds to me and I feel responsible for their well-being now and in the future. There is no way any responsible person will bet the life’s savings in a casino or on a horse no matter the odds given by a bookmaker. But I have placed whatever was put at my disposal in the common shares of publicly trading companies. I give a lot of thought to the construction of each portfolio and watch the performance almost daily, even when I am on a vacation. My friends expect no less.

The methodology and philosophy behind my ‘investments’ has been described elsewhere. The purpose here is to differentiate stock market with a casino and to point out what can make it like one. The all important difference with betting on a horse or on a roulette table is that buying common shares are NOT an all or nothing gamble. The shares often go down, to be honest almost as often as they go up, but it is rare that they disappear. You live another day even after a major shake down and the possibility of recovery is strong if the initial purchase was based on careful research. My experience over last forty years is that the biggest losers of this year are likely to be the big winners of next year. That is the main argument for buy and hold philosophy advocated by Warren Buffet.

Not to say that stock market can not become a casino. There is the obvious case of trusting your money to a version of now notorious but once admired Madoff who promises the earth and then disappears with your money or loses it altogether on extremely risky ventures and you are left with nothing. Similarly, you could buy an option to buy a stock at a certain price on a certain date and if the price is below your exercise price you have lost all your money. Only slightly better, and most common reason for ‘investors’ losing everything, is to leverage your money, in other words ‘margin’ your account, i.e. borrow from the broker to buy more stock than you have money for. When the market is on an upward tick you are laughing but on the day of a major downward shift you lose it all – all your gains and most of what you had to begin with and are lucky if you don’t end up owing broker some money. Margin accounts are promoted by brokers because they greater generate income: in interest charged on borrowed money as well as bigger commissions on higher trading volumes. Another way to lose most or all of your money: buy shares of a speculative venture recommended by your buddy in the bar and find that the venture never got off the ground and money disappeared as did the promoters.

If you have money but no intention to learn the ‘trade’ of investing on the stock market or in many of the other avenues, your have two options. First, put money in the saving account in a major bank. The interest after tax will not cover the inflation and the money will shrink in value but it will not disappear altogether unless the whole economy collapses. In that case it wouldn’t matter what you did. If you chose this option, please learn from the tragedy of Iceland banks and avoid foreign banks promising unrealistic interest rates. Other and better choice is to find a financial manager you can trust. This person must have been operating for at least a decade to have seen and learnt from the usual ups and downs of the market and should be either someone you know first hand and trust or an associate with a major institution which will cover your losses against dishonest practices. Check on the performance every few months and discuss the results with your advisor. If you are not satisfied, look around for recommendations and move the account to someone else. Doing nothing in such situation could be a recipe for disaster.

Seen on a church post:

When God saw you it was love on first sight.
A cynic's response: There is no accounting for some tastes.

You are getting old

When others enjoy the cool and you shiver.

2011-05-27T07:39:00.000-07:00

Three Easy Pieces

A Street Crossing

17th Avenue South runs from prairie farms in the east to rolling foothills in the west across the city of Calgary. Except for a small detour round the Stampede Park it is as straight as any arrow shot by Robin Hood. It goes through industrial parks, residential colonies of immigrants from developing countries, some more now upscale industrial park and office buildings to enter the fringe of downtown where it has fashionable boutiques, restaurants and services for the rich and famous living in Mount Royal to the south. West of this elite span of a few blocks there are fast food restaurants and one of the busiest crossings in the city with 14th street West. It is at this crossing that I noticed the strangest combination of stores. On the northwest corner there is a massive used books store which is doing a brisk business even when buying books seems to have gone out of fashion. Across 14th street in the north there is a drug store. A large music store in the southeast corner has all kinds of paraphernalia for youth bands attractively displayed in the window. But it is the building in the southwest corner with a unique combination of three stores that drew my attention the other day on my way to an opera rehearsal.

The building is old and dilapidated, waiting to be bought by a developer, torn down and replaced by an office or a condo tower. It currently houses an elegant and popular Indian restaurant at the back. On the front, you enter a chocolaterie through a revolving corner door. It is bright and very well furnished with elegantly attired servers and has sparkling windows and an attractive signage. Next to it is a rather unpretentious and dimly lit store with a fading sign “Smoke Shop”. It is where you go to buy rolling tobacco, pipe filters and hookah supplies. It is the third shop which makes the combination amusing and the crossing unique. The sign, again faded and hard to read, says “Health Food Store and Vitamins”. The entrance and windows could do with a cleaning job and the door is uninviting. All the same, it has what you need to recoup your strength after chocolates and smoke have depleted your body so you can return the next day to repeat the cycle of a quick visit to one of the nearby hamburger joints, enjoying a variety of mouth watering chocolates, satisfying draws of the pipe and health and chewing spirit reviving nuts and vitamins. If after all this pampering you still feel a little down hearted, cross the street to the used book store and pick up a work of your favourite author for a couple of dollars. Still down in the mouth! Cross the street once more and enter the drug store; the pharmacist there may have just the pill for you. Not happy yet? My dear friend you are in the wrong area of the city unless you want to start a band to compose and sing mournful songs with a group of teenagers.

Wretchedness Shared

“If we didn’t have our history you would be the ideal person for me to marry,” David said to Susan in one of his rare tender moments. However, tenderness does not always beget tenderness and Susan merely smiled in response, not the beautiful sparkling smile she was famous for, but a forced smile that wouldn’t fool even a doting husband. What went through her mind was just the opposite, “If I weren’t married to you already, whatever the history, I wouldn’t get within a hundred miles of you.”

This is typical of the frequent exchanges between long married couples. They married decades ago with their own dreams and expectations, rarely in harmony. They do not have the same level of tolerance for each other’s foibles and certainly not for the other’s temper tantrums and snappy answers while under physical and mental stress. They look at their past in different light and would like to spend any remaining good years of their life doing different things. This is a modern day problem; in the days gone by it was rare for both to survive till their old age. It is a strange quirk of human nature that we remember only the good things about the departed souls and only the bad deeds of those living with us. Our parents and grandparents could spend their old age lamenting the passing of their partners of whom they had nothing but the fondest memories. The long lasting couples of today only remember the grievances caused by the other; pleasant events are the things of the past and long forgotten. They have to live with each other and their bitter memories; reminding the other of their misdeeds relieves the pain but only momentarily.

The sages have said in many different ways that only purpose in life is to make the people around you feel better than they would without you. You can not do this if you store in your memory bank the past sins committed against you which crowd out the pleasant events. You must feel good enough in yourself to make others feel better in your presence and this will only happen if you forgive others the harm they did to you regardless of their intentions and remember only the kindnesses bestowed on you. It is contrary to normal human tendency and therefore very hard to do. If happiness came by without much effort there would not be so much misery in the world. But it is not impossible. There are fortunate couples who achieve this state of nirvana. Unfortunately, the survivor of these couples finds the solitary life empty and does not live long alone.

Why Women Need Men

As a man who fathered three very accomplished women, I see no real reason why, in this age of free sex and birth control, a woman would wish to have an albatross round her neck as most men, including myself, tend to be. There have to be some deep-seated needs. Two – one physical and one emotional – come to mind.

First the physical need: the old saw - you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them - is how most women see men. They are demanding, they think they bring the bacon and they can tell their woman how to cook it even when they can’t cook and worse still when the wife earns more. They watch every cent spent by women and throw away dollars themselves. Yet, women need them to lift and move heavy items, paint the ceiling, dig out the roots, you get the idea. Even for a woman with the smarts to earn and manage family money and look after most essentials, there are jobs that need muscle and it is more convenient to have it around than to hire one who arrives at inconvenient times and costs a bundle. Help in disciplining the kids is a bonus.

Second the emotional need: Many women are masochists; they need an in-house agent to make them feel inadequate, even outright incompetent by his constant niggling and who makes them downright miserable. The other side of the coin is the sadist women, rather rare among my acquaintances, who need some one around to make him feel absolutely in the pits by reminding him of his real and imagined shortcomings and past misdeeds, by correcting his errors pointedly and giving snappy answers to innocent queries. This applies equally to men and relationship works wonderfully when the partners compliment, no pun intended, each other.

If you study the Creation you will note that Adam lived by himself for a long time before Eve arrived on the scene. She realized straight away that she had to make herself indispensable to Adam who was perhaps used to his solitude and may even have loved it. It is a great compliment to Eve that she worked hard and succeeded against heavy odds. Since then women of every generation have struggled to be appreciated by men to a varying degree. On the other hand, Adam never had to make efforts to be wanted by Eve. Indeed, it was her work and skills that kept them together. Times have not really changed. It is the mothers whose efforts keep the men from straying and hold the families together today as they have from the day Eve was created from Adam’s rib.

2011-05-20T07:39:00.000-07:00

A Date to Forget

It was the eleventh anniversary of Shalini’s death and I was feeling forlorn. We had wonderful fifteen years together before Cancer took her away. Our daughter was now a postgraduate student and living with her boyfriend thousands of kilometers from home. Mine was a sad lonely life and it was depressing to be in a room full of men and women chattering away gaily. I was starting to be sorry for having accepted the invitation to this party to celebrate the birthday of my old friend Howard’s young wife.

I was straining the solitary neuron circling my brain for a good excuse to leave when a head with shiny blonde hair popped in the view. The face was bleached white with a small nose, almond shaped pale blue eyes with thick mascara, thin lips with a thick layer of dark lipstick and a protruding chin. It made an altogether pleasant impression to the eye. I was pleased to see the tall owner of the head moving towards me with a glass of champagne in her right hand. The name tag on the lapel of her smart dark grey business suit said Debbie – just that and no surname- in big bold capital letters. We exchanged pleasantries and after some small talk got in a heated discussion about modern classical music. Debbie admired John Cage and Phillip Glass while I stated that they stopped composing music after Webern was shot dead by an American soldier in Vienna. Just as the discussion was turning nasty the dinner was announced and the battle of words did not become a full-scale war.

We separated for the dinner but accidentally met again over coffee. I told Debbie of my status as a widower who lived alone in a modest bungalow in an area that was once fashionable and Debbie told me that she was in the middle of a divorce which was turning ugly. “Imagine having me followed by the private detectives, would you have ever done that?” She protested.
“Of course not, not even if there was foul play. You have to trust each other in an intimate relationship. When you stop doing that, it is over.”
“You hit the nail on the head.”
“Thank you, usually I hit on the thumb.”
“You do have a great sense of humour for a fan of Webern. We should get together and come to know each other a bit better.”
“I can’t wait. How is next Friday for you?”
“Great, I will switch my current appointment and we will meet at Lion’s Den at seven.”
I gulped. Lion’s Den was a notoriously expensive restaurant where the mighty met to decide the fate of global corporations. But one can’t back out after making so much progress with someone who could be an answer to his prayers. “I will make the reservation. Will you like me to pick you up?”
“I don’t know where I will be that afternoon. We will meet at the Den. Don’t be late. I hate waiting, even for a desirable guy like you.”
We parted company. “Debbie is delighted, perhaps at the prospect of an expensive dinner with matching wines” I thought cynically. Frankly, I was not quite sure about what I was getting in to.

I had the blue suit and the red tie cleaned, pale blue shirt washed and hair trimmed. I sneaked out of the office early, had the car washed on the outside and vacuumed on the inside. After resting for an hour, I shaved, showered and dressed. It was just past six thirty when I passed between two life-sized lions, one male and one female, guarding the entrance to the Den. The maitre d’, a middle-aged man in tuxedo, his receding shiny black hair in a pony tail, greeted me with an ingratiating smile and led me to a corner table with two red roses in a vase. I ordered a dry sherry to help me meditate on nothing in particular while waiting for my first date in twenty five years.

Time went slowly, sherry faster. Eventually it was seven, then seven thirty. I was wondering what I should do. We had exchanged a lot of words but not the phone numbers. I had two options; wait longer or have a bowl of soup, tip big and leave. I pulled a loonie out of the side pocket to flip but quickly put it back. I heard the voice I had been waiting for. I looked up. It was indeed Debbie, engrossed in a serious conversation on the cell phone, walking towards me two steps behind the maitre d’. She wore a green silk dress, obviously custom made, and a necklace with a huge sapphire to draw attention to the prominent cleavage. She nodded without the slightest interruption in her speech and sat down. She pointed to my sherry for the benefit of the host and soon was sipping elegantly while listening to the other party. She scribbled a note telling me to order consommé and fish for her with an old vintage red wine. I followed instructions, as is my habit, picking salmon for her and a rare venison steak for myself. A look at the wine list made it clear that the lions don’t go for moderately priced wines. I did what I could to pick a bottle which won’t exceed my credit limit and still please my guest.

Debbie spooned the consommé into her pretty mouth when her ear was occupied instead of her mouth without letting it cool too much. I marveled at her expertise in handling the conversation. She was obviously negotiating with her soon-to-be-ex on the separation deal. One minute she was gentle, next minute firm, sometimes pleading other times ordering. The conversation did not seem to be getting anywhere and neither party was willing to give up. However, there seemed to have been some progress when Peach Melba and cappuccino arrived. With the last sip of her drink her face lit up in a broad smile, “So we are agreed: allowance of a hundred thousand on the first of every month till I am sixty, I keep the car and the house and you pick up all legal fees. I will leave it with you to get the lawyers to draw up the papers,” she clicked of. “Thanks for being so patient. He agreed to a reasonable settlement only after I threatened to send his intimate pictures with Ottawa prostitutes to the media. Thank God it is over. We can settle down to a fun evening now that the dirty business is done.”

I gave her my address and simple instructions on how to get there. She left saying, “I have to make a quick call.” I tipped ten percent instead of my usual twenty and slipped out without tipping the maitre d’. His glare did not bother me much; I did not intend to return any time soon. Just to make sure I could provide Debbie the fun she wanted, I unwrapped a pill and popped it in my mouth.

When I got home Debbie was waiting next to her car, a recent model import. She was on – you guessed it- her cell talking animatedly. I opened the door and turned on the lights. I led her to the living room and poured two snifters of brandy. She sniffed expertly while holding phone next to her year in her left hand. When I picked up the bottle to refill her glass she raised her free hand and mumbled, “Take me where we can rest in comfort.” I understood this to mean the bedroom. Fortunately, it was the day of maid service and the bed was not messed up as it usually is. I held her free hand and we went up the stairs. She expertly managed to get most of her clothes off without any break in conversation. Then she slid under the covers to my left.

I picked up “Isolde’s Dream”, a collection of my favourite stories, but she did not take the hint. It must have been half an hour and I was starting to doze off when I heard, “Thanks for putting up with me dear, we will keep in touch.” Suddenly wide awake I dropped the book and turned towards her with a smile. “It was Monica, my bosom friend. I had to share the good news with her,” she told me. Then the wretched phone burst into some awful tune, John Cage playing food blender perhaps. She looked at it, “Oh! It is the lawyer. I must talk to him. I will be quick, I promise.”

From her explosive reaction to lawyer’s initial words it became clear that all was not well in Debbie’s world. I covered my ears to protect them from swear words in several languages and to keep my mind as pure as my intentions were. From what filtered through my fingers I guessed that the soon-to-be-ex had reneged and was going to court to stop the publication of pictures. I turned to face the wall and closed my eyes as well. It did not take long before I was in another world oblivious of the torrent of words from Debbie and a few bits of advice from the lawyer whenever he got a chance.

I woke up with a start when I heard what sounded like the front door of the house being shut. The side lamp was on but the space next to me was empty and Debbie’s clothes were gone. I rushed to the window and raised the blind. I saw the import back out of the driveway and shoot off. If I were wider awake I would have understood Debbie’s frustration at my falling asleep and depriving her of the ‘fun’ she was so looking forward to. Instead, I must admit to my preoccupation at that moment with my own disappointment for missing it, though I was relieved to see an end to the infernal cell phone. I went back to bed and the sleep of the just.

I got up at my usual hour, glanced at the headlines, made scrambled egg for breakfast and enjoyed a cup of Kona coffee. Saturday is the grocery day and it was time to head to the farmers’ market. I found my keys but wallet was gone from the suit pocket. Where could it be? There was only one possibility and it explained why Debbie left in such a rush. Although no one likes being made a fool of, I did feel rather sorry for her. A few dollars in cash and a near the limit credit card were poor compensation for the most agreeable settlement slipping through those long fingers with perfectly polished nails.

2011-05-15T09:24:00.000-07:00

Lesson of Federal Election: One Party on the Centre Left.

The election results may be a disappointment to a majority of Canadians who tend to be a little left of centre on the political spectrum. Once again, the Conservative party with strong capitalist views and a manipulative self-indulgent leader was returned with 40% of the votes, not much more than in the past few elections but with many more seats, because New Democrats with their charismatic leader and Liberals with an academic with no sense of political leadership split the votes of socially inclined voters allowing Tories to win several seats in close triangular contests. Apart from the emergence of a government with a clear majority after three minority governments, there are two other results which have long term consequences. Annihilation of Bloc Quebecois by NDP in Quebec means that the parties in the House of Commons can now truly work for all Canadians rather than be diverted by regional interests of a party focused on the perceived interest of the French speaking Canadians. However, this hope will only be realized if the residents of Quebec have truly moved away from separation mania and hand over a crushing defeat to Party Quebecois in the next provincial elections. If the provincial Liberals are weakened by the defeat of their federal brethren and PQ wins the provincial election, any federalist advantage gained from this election will be neutralized.

Now that he has a comfortable majority and a pliant caucus, Mr. Harper can rule with dignity without resorting to undemocratic practices of his minority days and can be honest with the Parliament and the Canadians. He can concentrate on what he wants to achieve without constantly focusing on keeping the opposition divided. This can only bring glad tidings to Canadians whatever the tinge of their political beliefs.

Even for diehard opponents of Conservatives there may be a silver lining in the dark clouds of Harper government which will last at least four years. This will give them time to reorganize and consider their options. Perhaps they can learn from the experience of their opponents. It was not all that long ago when a right wing split into newly minted Reform with its slogan of “West wants in” from the then ruling party resulted in the decimation of Conservatives, down from a majority government to two seats. Two elections later Reform party absorbed the Conservatives, adopted the established name of the vanquished and, with an agenda somewhere in the middle of the two parties, won the election and formed a minority government. While this election has not decimated the Liberals, it has reduced them to an ineffective third party with only 33 seats and given left of centre NDP a big boost, returning more than a hundred members in the new parliament.. As a result the erstwhile minor NDP is the party of opposition and the traditional governing party of Canada has been reduced to a minor role. It is a very similar situation that Mr. Harper faced as the leader of Canadian Alliance.

Many Canadians with socialist leanings now hope that the two opposition parties who shared the votes of 55% Canadians will have the sense to learn from Mr. Harper and Mr. Mackay and start a process for getting together. The idea is not so outlandish; two of the leaders of the Liberals were NDP premiers of their provinces before switching to Federal Liberals and there is more common ground between the parties than there was in Reform aka Canadian Alliance of Stockwell Day and Conservatives of Joe Clark. The party that emerges from such combination will be slightly to the left, somewhere in between socialist rhetoric of NDP and centrist Liberals. This is also an opportune time because the leader of the NDP is ailing and not far from retirement and Liberals can elect a young and ambitious leader who can mature under an experience mentor. The merger of the two parties, if it does take place, will give Canadians a clear choice between a party with business leanings and one that leans towards the interests of the consumers and the workers. In the meantime, Mr. Harper has a free hand and an opportunity to provide Canadians what they deserve, a good government for all Canadians, not just the one led by the fringe ideologies and the interests of the corporations who donate big bucks to help the reelection campaign and employ the retiring Tory ministers in senior positions.

Decline and Fall of American Empire!

Whether the United States is still a functioning democracy or merely a declining superpower or both is not for me to judge. But one observation can be made without much contest: The middle class that made that country great is shrinking very rapidly, mostly downwards.

Dramatic increase in poverty south of the border is not only financial; it is also intellectual; in level of competence, willingness to work hard, investment in social services and in future benefits like education. It is this all round poverty that should worry us. Financial hardship is merely a symptom of the basic problem; steep decline in a culture of hard work and social conscience that made that country great. Some may even doubt that when the roles are reversed with China, American workers would be able to make for export the likes of cheap and shoddy goods which they have been buying from China for last two decades and which have shifted irrevocably the balance in economy of the two countries.

2011-04-29T08:49:00.000-07:00

Economic Problems in Europe: A Canadian Perspective

The problems in economies of smaller European countries are serious and need more than band aid solutions currently being offered. Injection of cash from Germany and France, themselves carrying large debts, can tide these countries over but will they stay afloat? Many economists doubt it.

PIG countries Portugal, Ireland and Greece, are in trouble because the ‘investment’ from abroad that had been the source of astronomical growth in their economies till the meltdown has evaporated. The recession has caused massive unemployment and hardship among the population that had become used to easy life of well paid jobs in construction of hotels and apartments for tourists and towers for foreign corporations coming in to participate in the high growth rates. Not only is there an exodus of foreign businesses there are fewer tourists as well. The government revenues have plummeted just when the unemployment and demand for social services is at its peak. To ask for belt tightening by the already suffering populace in order to pay the bondholders may make the economic sense, it is suicide for a politician proposing it.

Before the adoption of Euro by the growing economies of relatively poorer countries, their currencies floated up and down depending on their economies. I may be wrong but I do think that if Greece still had its own currency today, the drachma would have sunk lower and interest payments would not be as onerous as they are in Euros. Lower currency would have attracted more tourists as well as encouraged exports and employment situation would not have been so bad. Lower currency would have also reduced the impact of debt and interest payments without ‘restructuring’ and the foreign banks would have taken a haircut without having to book the losses. While lower drachma may not have been a complete solution, it would have reduced the impact of recession, perhaps to a tolerable level.

Howsoever the current problem is handled; the solution will be temporary because the base of the economy in each country of Europe is different. The countries have their good and bad years at different times and need to use economic tools differently than those in a good phase. Two major tools are interest rates and the relative value of currency. By harmonizing both, Europe has taken away the flexibility the smaller economies need. With key policies set to suit large manufacturing economies of colder countries, smaller tourism based economies will continue to have unacceptable – to the citizens – periods of recession when they will need to receive the support from countries benefitting from a high Euro and the common economic policies or else they will drop out of Economic Union and muddle through on their own with their floating currencies and other economic policies to suit their situation.

Although not as serious, the situation in Canada is similar to that in Europe. The commodity based economies of Newfound Land, Alberta and Saskatchewan are prospering while manufacturing provinces like Ontario languish. Higher Loonie is a distinct disadvantage to Ontario businesses who also suffer the double whammy of higher energy prices. As an aside, if Quebec did not benefit from higher revenues from exports of electricity there would be more support for Bloc Quebecois in the forthcoming elections. The major difference between Canada and Europe is that the population is concentrated in the suffering regions in Canada and, unlike Europe, the Bank of Canada takes their interest in consideration when setting the economic policies.

Heard on the Weather Channel:

The snow will end in late June this winter and resume in early July in the next.

Poor Me!

I spent some of the Easter Sunday listening to Bach and Mahler on CBC. I enjoyed both but the question that is bothering me is this: Bach was a deeply religious man and one can understand him composing great Masses. But Mahler, by all accounts, was not religious and yet he wrote the wonderful Resurrection Symphony. Surely, there has to be more than technique in creating a great work of art; something rising from the depth of the soul. How can some doubter create work of such strong religious emotion?

One can look at the problem from a listener’s point of view too. Do you have to be deeply religious to really feel, yes feel as well as enjoy, the Mass and Requiem pieces of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi and Brahms, Easter music from Parsifal or the final two movements of Resurrection? I enjoy these works but I do have a feeling that I am missing something by not being able to fully participate in the emotions represented by these works. Poor me!

Retirement Age and Life Expectancy

It is reported that the government of Alberta is trying to get retired people back to work. In this context, it may be interesting to note that till late nineteen nineties retirement age was less than the average life expectancy of the citizens of the country. The rising life expectancy caught up with the retirement age of 65 in 1995. Since then life expectancy has increased by one year every year and is now 74 while the retirement age is stuck at 65. The increasing discrepancy has serious implications not only for labour shortages but also in terms of tax revenues as well as the costs of pension plan benefits and medical care. The obvious remedy is to relate retirement to the life expectancy. If people worked to the age of 74 there would be no need to import short term workers, financial crisis in health care would disappear and most company pension plans would be solvent.

2011-04-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

Alberta Needs a Strong Opposition Party

I attended a political meeting the other day where both main speakers blamed the government of the day for making a mess of healthcare. It is indeed a mess and several changes in the management have only made the situation worse. Speakers insisted that there was a need for a public enquiry into the muzzling of doctors. No concrete suggestions were made from the podium or from the floor on what could be done to improve the overall situation other than letting medical practitioners speak freely.

The economy of Alberta is dependant on oil and gas. Government of the province derives a substantial portion of its revenue from royalties on the production of hydrocarbons. The province has no sales tax and a low rate flat rate income tax. However, the industry is cyclical and the royalty revenues fluctuate over a wide range. When commodity prices are low the royalty income drops precipitately and a sense of desperation prevails in Albertans and in the government departments. The funding of programs is cut across the board as if there is no tomorrow. Then the pendulum swings, the prices and royalty revenues recover, the cuts are restored and then some. Albertans feel prosperous again, immigrants flood in, an election is called and the Conservatives are returned to power. In absence of a strong opposition party, the efficiency of the programs is never examined and no one cares to see if the services could be delivered better in some other way.

For a government to be effective it needs a strong opposition that forces it to closely examine its policies. The right wing government of Alberta has been at the helm for last forty years. Only challenge to the ruling Conservatives is from Wild Rose party whose supporters are even further to the right. Centrist Liberals have been unpopular in Alberta ever since the Federal government tried to impose some controls on oil industry. That was thirty years but people have long memories, particularly when reminded by the ministers and the industry at regular intervals. As for the left wing parties, every one looks at them as if they have just landed from a different universe. In an atmosphere like this, the government makes major decisions without considering them from all angles. That is why almost every year a new health minister is appointed who changes the system to suit his whim. One year we have one authority to administer the Healthcare system for the whole province, the next year we have fourteen regional authorities. Then we revert to one. Every time there is a change, hundreds of executives depart with enormous separation packages and new ones, some of them old ones being rehired, come in with fatter packages in their contracts. Unfortunately, Healthcare is not the only department operated in this way. Education and infrastructure budgets have their ups and downs although they are not noticed as much by the public. I suggest that if there were an alternative government in waiting to take over after a closely fought election there would be a lot more thinking before changes on this scale were made and there would be some continuity in policies and their execution.

As indicated earlier, the problem in Alberta is that the oil prices fluctuate wildly and so do the government revenues. Governments realize this but make no effort to even out the expenditures based on the average price of oil and gas over a cycle. It is just too tempting to bribe the citizens when times are good and too easy to blame foreign manipulators when the times are bad.

Two simple devices would fix the problem. First, if elections were held on a set time table the governing party would not be able to hold them in good time and guarantee its hold on power. This would provide an incentive for saving in good times and minimize drastic cuts in the expenditures in bad times. Second, Alberta should have a law that sends the royalty income above the average of a fixed duration, say previous ten years, into a fund which can be drawn only in lean times. It needs a selfless leader and an enlightened electorate to implement these policies. Unfortunately, one party regimes like Alberta do not have enlightened electorate and you need two or more parties of similar strength to bring forward great leaders.

2011-04-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

Why Vote in the Next Election?

I had lunch with an old friend who has supported Conservative/Reform/Alliance party all his life. No more. He told me that he is so fed up with the dishonest practices of the present government that he is going to put a straight line across all squares facing candidates’ names. We had a discussion on the issue of wasting the vote. I suggested to him that being neutral is not equivalent to showing dissatisfaction; it is equivalent to being on the sidelines. If he is as unhappy as he says he is, he should vote for an opposition party preferably for the candidate who is most likely to defeat the incumbent Conservative. If he wishes to spoil the ballot he may just as well stay at home to watch his favourite program on TV and save the time and trouble of going to the polling station.

There are certain critical issues in this election on which the electorate must make their voice clear. The most important issue is the respect for democracy among the elected representatives. Rather than respect the parliament, Mr. Harper has shown his contempt for the legislative body again and again. He prorogued the parliament to avoid the no-confidence motion, defended ministers who lied to the parliament, gave deliberately false answers to questions in the parliament and the latest; according to the Auditor General, the government under his watch incurred fifty million dollars in expenses which might be illegal. All this when he was in a minority position! I dread to think what he would do if he had a clear majority and could follow whatever policies would forward his far right-wing agenda which a majority of Canadians abhors. By his shenanigans, including lying to the parliament, Mr. Harper lost the confidence of the House and in any reasonable society would have lost the confidence of the country too. There is no doubt that if the last week of our parliament had happened at the Westminster, the mother of our parliamentary system, the disgraced Prime Minister would have resigned the leadership of his party.

Canadians can argue about the justification for sending soldiers to Afghanistan and bombers to Libya but there can be no doubt that Canada has lost the respect it had among the developing countries for its fairness. Our foreign aid policy has been distorted by the short term view of our economic interests, policies in the Middle East and blinkered views on family planning. For decades Canada sent peace keepers to countries suffering from civil wars, now we send bombers. Canada used to send financial and technical aid to fight disease, draught and famine wherever the need arose. Now we look the other way if the area is out of the zone of our economic interest.

To make up for the loss of prestige in developing countries, we glory on our membership of G8 even if we have to spend a billion dollars in hosting their meeting while cutting the budget for education and social welfare. Our cities are choking, yet there are no funds for public transit but we have thirty billions for military jets to be used against the enemies we don’t have. Our government cuts GST and taxes on hugely profitable corporations, many of them foreign while professing poverty when it comes to supporting education and helping the citizens in need.

Yet another black mark on our name in the last decade is our environmental record. Mr. Harper claims to be the Energy Powerhouse of the world boasting about the reserves of oil in Oil Sands in Western Canada. To counter the environmental damage by the emissions in the extraction process, we have put all our eggs in the basket of Carbon Capture and Storage without any proof that the technology would work. We oppose the carbon tax and play all kinds of word games to show that oil extraction from sands is environmentally safe while disregarding studies proving it to be otherwise. In the process we risk the health of future generations over a vast area so that foreign investors can reap windfall profits and the Americans can quench their oil thirst. Canadians do not oppose the extraction of oil from sands per se; the general complaint is that we are doing it with reckless abandon without careful consideration of long term implications.

Last but not the least, the government that hires a convicted fraudster in a sensitive senior advisory position proposes harsh legislation to prolong longer sentences when the crime rate is declining and there is no proof of their efficacy. The prevention measures like encouraging kids to stay in school and increasing the number of police officers on the beat are disregarded and the budgets of provincial governments are strained further by additional costs of more prisons and guards. If there were a case of ideology gone berserk, this is it.

Major factors in this election are the future of democracy in Canada, our standing in the world, alignment of social and economic priorities of the next government with those of most Canadians and the future of our children and their children. There is much at stake. Vote for whoever you consider most likely to set the policies that will help you achieve your goals and under no circumstance spoil your ballot.

Three Questions:

Why is a driven personality always in the driver’s seat?

When the driver refuses to listen, is the passenger being driven to distraction?

Are the Canadian voters as stupid as our leaders think they are? We will find out on May 2.

2011-04-08T07:16:00.000-07:00

The Noble Professions

Teachers and physicians choose these public service careers essentially because they have an urge to serve the fellow human beings. Service gives them satisfaction; earning a living is almost by the way. Teachers serve by teaching, i.e. preparing the next generation for their adult life. Physicians heal the sick. Both offer crucial service to the society. By and large they love what they do. When things are going well their hearts are suffused with contentment.

The joy in service and hunger for power – or its substitute, the wealth - are two ends of the spectrum of human endeavour. At one end of the spectrum, there are rare saints who have no wish for power and are totally dedicated to serve, much like Mother Teresa. They derive great deal of satisfaction from their work and wish for no monetary reward. At the other end of the spectrum, there are examples of physicians and teachers who only work for the money and have little interest in genuine welfare of their wards. They neither wish nor receive any spiritual satisfaction from their work. Most people are somewhere in between these extremes and for them job satisfaction and financial goals are complimentary. When there is a high degree of job satisfaction financial reward is less important. However, better compensation becomes an issue for them when the job environment is not to their expectation.

Till a few years ago physicians and teachers were regarded as members of the two noble professions. They were widely respected and their service was accepted by public at large with gratitude. They felt appreciated and were happy to serve. They put in long hours and volunteered more time in service of the profession. Yet, the cases of burnout were few and far between. They worked for as long as their health permitted. However, the equation has changed with the advent of internet. Perhaps high expectations and the temperament of the ‘me generation’ – nothing can be good enough for me - also contribute to the growing unease of many professionals. Teachers often have to go to inordinate lengths to justify assignments to the kids and the parents, the grading of students’ work is frequently challenged and their voluntary work to help the children carries risks including that of the law suits if events take an unpredictable turn. Medical advice is challenged by the patients based on faulty and inappropriate information from biased websites written by ignorant bloggers and physicians are blamed even when their prescriptions were not followed. It is not surprising in this environment that a large number of teachers and physicians are unhappy in their jobs. They work fewer hours and are reluctant to volunteer their time for peripheral services. They demand and receive better compensation, sometimes for less work. It is no wonder that the budgets of government departments dealing with education and healthcare are increasingly under pressure and there is a dire shortage of competent teachers and physicians.

Practitioners of ‘noble professions’ have limited options when there is a danger of burnout or when they reach retirement age. If there is a financial need, they soldier on even if the work is stressful rather than a joy. Conversely, if the health is failing the choice to stay in their jobs may not be practical. The fortunate ones with adequate pensions or other resources and in good health compare the satisfaction from their occupation with the emotional rewards from what they plan to do with their time after retirememt. Playing golf in the day and bridge at night, traveling to tropical resorts, theatre, concerts and opera in great cities like Vienna are no doubt tempting and many retire to a well-deserved life of rest and recreation. For some, though, the recreational activity is not enough. They want the genuine good feeling they get by contributing to the welfare of others. If one is accustomed to serving, switching gears to full time recreation can be difficult. These are the individuals who have a difficult decision to make, all the more so because they are rightly afraid that the alternate activities which can provide comparable sense of worth that they obtained from the practice of their profession may turn out to be a mirage. The thought of giving up a bird in the hand when the one in the bush may not turn out to be good enough, is not palatable. In most cases they carry on, albeit with a lighter load, till the work becomes onerous or the age catches up with them.

Comment:

Margaret Wente wrote a column in the Globe and Mail (March 31, 2011) saying that University education was wasted on a many entrants who would be better off as tradesmen. There were a number of letters countering it with the argument that the University graduates earn, on average, substantially more than tradesmen annually and over the lifetime.

This is another case where the averages are deceptive. Many graduates in law, medicine, computer sciences, engineering, business and many other professions earn several times more than the tradesmen. But there are graduates in Arts faculties, some sciences and social services who have difficulty finding and holding relatively low paid jobs even with post-graduate degrees. Graduates in these subjects have significantly lower income than tradesmen when they have any income at all. Moreover, they have spent money on fees and upkeep over several years taking on large loans in the process while their school classmates who went into trades were earning money. It is these graduates who have wasted (from earning viewpoint alone) there years at the University which they could have fruitfully employed working for trade diplomas. On the other hand, there are many businessmen who started as tradesmen and graduated into service company owners with six and seven figure incomes. It boils down to the old saw – you can’t keep a good person down. Conversely, it is hard to raise a not so good person however much you plaster him with paper degrees.

One can not make conclusions of life time importance based on broad statistics; data have to be examined in detail. If this were done, the merit of Ms. Wente’s argument will become clear and if the conclusions were put into practice, Canada, Alberta in particular, would not have to import highly paid workers in crucial industries.

2011-04-01T22:03:00.000-07:00

The Art of Conversation

Dave was one of my major clients when I was starting out as a consultant in the oil industry. Our business relationship ended when he was promoted to a senior management position in a different department. After that we met by accident, may be once every few years. Therefore, it was a surprise to run into him the other day and of all places in the lobby of a concert hall. Some friend had offered me a free ticket for a performance of Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. In the first half a young pianist played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 1 to such effect that she received a standing ovation and sustained applause brought her back on stage no fewer than seven times. During the intermission, I stood near a pillar in the lobby and watched with amusement groups of finely dressed young and old men and women chatting excitedly. One had to talk a little louder to be heard and I was glad I had no company to shout at. But my good fortune was short lived. It was with some consternation that I saw Dave, a glass of red wine in his right hand, deftly working his way through the crowd towards me.

We exchanged pleasantries and checked on each other’s families. Then he discussed his health at a great length. Just when he was telling me about his last visit to the doctor a young woman, perhaps his daughter, joined us. During the conversation that followed he made a remark which stayed with me for several days. So far as I could tell it was made innocently and without malice. It was in context of my comment to the young lady, “Dave and I did a lot of work together at one time.” “Yes, I worked hard to make him a millionaire,” he had replied with a straight face,

I let the remark go by. It occurred to me later that it revealed some dissatisfaction with his situation, not envy with my good fortune. I was aware that Dave lived even more modestly than I did. It is hard to tell whether it was because he had a much larger family to support or there was a significant income disparity between us. Still, I was unhappy that I had not appropriately responded and gave it some thought. Three different replies came to mind:

1.“Dave, you were just one of many people I was working for”. This may have hurt him while boosting my ego in some strange way. This is the kind of answer that would have shot out of my big mouth in my young days. Obviously I have learnt something. It did not even occur to me till the next morning.
2.“Dave, I hope my work was worth what you paid for it”. This would have been a commonplace answer, may be slightly better than nothing but not much. This is usually what I am told when I thank my former clients for their business.
3.“Dave, you supported me when I was starting out and that was most appreciated then as it is now”. This would have been the graceful reply that would have made him feel better with himself and perhaps with me too. Not only that, it would have been correct and a true expression of my feelings. But I am too slow-witted to ever come up with the right response unlike the aunt of Dylan Thomas who said the right thing always.

Good conversation is an art which comes naturally to some, others become proficient in it with training and a few like me never learn it. The lack of this skill makes one introspective and solitary. Or is it because one is introspective that he does not develop the ability that every extrovert seems to have mastered? I do not really have the answer except to suggest that, contrary to the first impression, only a few of the extroverts have a good two-way conversation, quite often it is all about the person herself. This is also true that I have yet to come across an introvert who could converse fluently and interestingly. I do know many who do so admirably on paper. Unfortunately, much to my regret and that of my family and a few remaining friends I can not do either.

Comment

The fall of Harper government on March 25 after two and a half years of minority rule does not come as a surprise. The divided opposition and leadership upheavals in the main opposition party allowed Mr. Harper to carry on as if he had a substantial majority. He periodically blamed the opposition for not working together with the government while relying on their divisions and unpreparedness for the election to rub their noses and implement right wing policies unpopular with all but the most partisan Canadians. He played his hand close to his chest concentrating power into Prime Minister’s office, brooked no opposition within the party losing some very able lieutenants in the process, prorogued the parliament to survive a no-confidence motion, shielded critical information from the parliament and the public and emboldened by the successes of his undemocratic practices did what led to his government’s fall – he deliberately gave parliament the wrong information. It is not that the Conservatives didn’t do some good things. They managed the economy reasonably well during the meltdown but negated the impact by expensive policies on fighting crime and defense procurement.

The possibility of an interesting election campaign is remote because there is no vital issue at stake for most Canadians. A low turnout on the Election Day is almost assured for another reason. Most Canadians, young and old, are sick of election talk ever since Harper prorogued the parliament the first time. The streams of hot air from five mouths over next five weeks are only going to make it worse. The newspaper and TV will repeat the same comments day in and day out and the leaders will give the same speech whether they are in Moncton or in Burnaby. Promises will be made on tax cuts, no mention will be made of reduction in services. Long before May 2 arrives, most Canadians will be thinking of leaving the country for good. How can one vote in that frame of mind?

There are not many Canadians who harbour any doubts about the return of the Harper government. The Conservatives have built up a huge slush fund and they have no hesitation to spend it on false propaganda. Moreover, they have used, and will continue to do so, the government machinery for partisan advantage. Liberal leader has no charisma and the NDP leader is hell bent on dividing the centrist vote even if it helps the Conservatives. The die is heavily loaded in Harper’s favour. One can only hope that Quebec will once again save Canada from a calamity; a majority Harper government.

2011-03-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

Gaddafi the Guinea Pig

United Nations Security Council unanimously passed the resolution to enforce a "no-fly zone" over Libya. In spite of the impression of support by all members given by the media, five of the eleven abstained from the vote. These members included two permanent members Russia and China and three others - Germany, India and Brazil. Would Russia and China have abstained and not voted against if they knew the ferocity of Western attacks will never be known. Comments from Russian Prime Minister Putin do indicate that there is some regret there in not having done that.

I am not a supporter of Gaddafi or any other despot anywhere else. However, the fact remains that compared to the situation before him, the country prospered under him because he took the lead in early seventies in the battle to raise the price of oil. High prices produced wealth and hospitals, schools and post secondary institutions were built everywhere, infrastructure and public housing were improved as were social services. The foreign companies were forced to hire and train Libyans and Gaddafi supported emancipation of women at all levels. Unfortunately, and much to his discredit, he also supported till recently the terrorists acts against the civilians in Europe and monopolized political power in the country. But no one would say that he was more repulsive than many current and former leaders in the developing world - Mobutu Sese and White regime of Verwoerd in South Africa and current leadership in Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe for example. Why was he picked for removal then - first by fomenting protest movement against him and then by exercise of Western military power to bolster the protesters?

You don't have to look far for an answer. High oil prices continue to shift the wealth of Europe and the United States to oil exporters in the Middle East. To save debt ridden economies of these countries it is essential that oil prices be brought to a $50 range to reduce the drain to a manageable level. To achieve the reduction in price of this essential commodity, strong leaders of oil producing countries and their supporters have to be replaced by more malleable individuals. Mubarak had to go and be replaced by weak 'democratically elected' leadership and Gaddafi has to go and be replaced by another softy. If support of democracy without any self-interest is guiding the West, why does the West not support the protesters in Bahrain and Yemen and encourage protesters in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait? The answer is two fold. In Bahrain, the current leadership is pro West and in Yemen the protesters are worse for Western interests than the current leadership. The case of Libya has another angle too. It serves as a lesson to Iran, and to any new leaders in other 'democracies' not to start having ideas of their own and counter Western interests. They need to see the destructive impact of Western missiles and modify their independent policies lest they are punished. No terrorist attacks, no more threats to Israel, no protests in
Palestine, no hikes in oil prices or cut in production. Or else!

The Western leaders decided that it is not practical to topple the regime in Iran but it can be softened. To do this they needed a guinea pig and they found one in Gaddafi. All Arab countries, perhaps other oil producers as well, who are supporting the West against Libya have been sucked into supporting the attack without due consideration of their long term interests. I am afraid that the time to regret it, like the Russians are doing now, is not far into the future. Before long the overproduction from Iraq, new Libya, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates will drive oil prices to the bottom with no recovery in sight. When this happens, Western oil producers, Russia, Norway and Canada will suffer as much as the producers in the Middle East. Canada will suffer the most because at $50 a barrel you can kiss oil sands goodbye.

Comment:

I disagree with the support of new nuclear power stations by Doug Saunders (Globe and Mail, March 19, 2011) for two reasons. First, many nuclear plants have been and are planned in communities which are much less prepared technically and financially to cope with an accident of even a lesser magnitude and the disaster will reach far beyond the area where it takes place. Second, the emphasis, even in the developing countries, must be on more efficient use of energy, less waste and better engines, not on increasing production of potentially calamitous energy. The recent discoveries of huge reservoirs which have made natural gas abundant, new methods of coal usage which reduce emissions drastically and more efficient vehicle engines have the potential of providing needed energy without another repeat of Chernobyl or worse.

Also, the reason fewer deaths occurred in the tragic events in Japan was the smaller populated area affected by the quake and Tsunami. Can you imagine the toll if it occurred a couple of hundred miles south, whatever the preparedness level?

2011-03-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

Crushing Blow to or the Agent of Recovery

‘A deadly quake, a crushing blow to recovery’ screamed the front page of last Saturday’s Report on Business Section in the Globe and Mail. No doubt other finance and commerce media all over the world had similar headlines. But is this really true? Of course ten thousand dead can not be brought back to life. The human suffering caused by the disaster is immense and can never be compensated. But is it a blow to economic recovery – and crushing one at that? I disagree. I suggest that it may turn out to be just the opposite.

The loss of life and property at this scale is indeed a great tragedy and we are all shocked by it. It is the medium term economic impact that is open to debate. No doubt the production from damaged factories and power plants has ceased and will cause disruption. However, this will probably be temporary. The production will be ramped up elsewhere in underutilized facilities in Japan where the long recession has created spare capacity. Much bigger factor than the loss of production will be the economic activity due to reconstruction which will follow.

It is unfortunate but true that the destruction is good for the system in our economic model. It creates more jobs, puts more money in the system and adds more to general well-being if a building were destroyed and rebuilt rather than merely repaired. This is particularly true if the cost were shared by many either as investment or through insurance payment. The tragic event in Japan is a similar case only it is replicated millions of times. Its impact will be huge requiring the pooling of resources from most of the developed world. It will be done by contributions to the charities from average citizens, particularly those with Japanese connection; local and overseas governments and institutions contributing directly as assistance and by buying Japanese government bonds. Fortunately, unlike Haiti and better than other recent casualties Chile and New Zealand, the country has the political, social and economic structure to benefit, in spite of the vast damage, from the combined efforts of thousands of organizations all over the world.

Thus, the disaster may actually carry the seeds of recovery of Japan and its trading partners. Thousands of homes, office buildings, factories, cars, trucks, power plants and the infrastructure damaged and destroyed by the tsunami must be repaired or rebuilt from the scratch. And this will be done as soon as possible, not debated in political circles for ever more. Hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent in this massive reconstruction, much of it financed by insurance companies, some foreign. Billions of dollars in humanitarian aids will flow in, as indeed they should. There will be jobs, not only in construction but everything, be it planning, administration or execution. For a few years employment will soar. It is not inconceivable that thanks to this rebuilding effort Japan may even regain its number two status among the world’s leading economic powers.

One huge negative from the quake could be the damage to the nuclear power plants. We are fortunate that there are resources and know how in Japan to deal with the problems in the plants and a repeat of Chernobyl is not likely, if it is at all humanly possible. The absence of any significant leak will help the supporters of nuclear power. On the other hand, if there were to be a major leak from even one of them, and it is early days and the after shocks are not over yet, it would provide fuel to the opponents and would delay the construction of new plants for long periods. Even this scenario has a silver lining. It may help in development of alternate power sources and in ways of more efficient use of energy and save us from irreversible calamity. In any event, location of future nuclear facilities must avoid earthquake belts and low lying sea shores and they are not suited to the countries unable to cope with such accidents.

Comment:
Wish I had learnt at school what I discovered so late in life: when I am furious with some one for doing something wrong, most likely the fault really was my own.

2011-03-11T07:46:00.000-08:00

Multiculturism in Canada

British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a speech to European leaders earlier this year that the multiculturism has failed in Britain. This prompted me to review my thoughts and consider to what extent it has succeeded in Canada.

I immigrated to Canada from India via UK, Libya and the US. I married a white woman of British parentage in England forty five years ago and we have lived in a prosperous neighbourhood in Calgary for thirty six years. We have brought up three daughters here who are totally integrated Canadians. It is my observation that multiculturism in Canada among first generation immigrants amounts to different cultures existing together with very little mingling or cross fertilization. Surely, it was not the intention of politicians who encouraged immigration from the third world that different communities will work together whenever unavoidable but live in their own enclaves. But this is the situation that exists at present.

My social circle is that of educated and bright professionals in their fifties and sixties. I know several people of Indian origin but will count only one of them in my social circle. And he makes it only because his Irish wife is a close friend of my wife. My preference for the society of invisible majority is entirely due to the cultural indoctrination by my wife. My major interests are opera, classical music and English literature; tastes shared by very few of my ex-countrymen. My wife being English is a minor factor.

It may seem strange but it is true that I am the only visible minority resident in the “village” part of our community. It is not due to any racial prejudice among sellers or real estate agents; there is none. It is entirely because the prosperous members of former Indian, Chinese, African and other communities have congregated in specific areas. What worries me more is the lack of cultural cross-fertilization. A proof of this, if one were needed, is that I am usually the only visible minority representative in the parties we go to. As far as I can tell all my friends are completely unbiased racially but even when working together with people of different cultures, they do not make the jump to social togetherness. There are rare cases when this takes place. The problem in Western countries where Asian and African immigration has been significant is that the cases of social interaction are not common enough.

A big positive in Canada is that by and large people of different cultures work together with very few problems. In spite of the tendency to congregate in the same areas, there is no exclusivity and people with different cultures live happily in the same neighbourhoods and apartment blocks. Asian restaurants are patronised by invisible majorities as are McDonalds and Dairy Queens by visible minorities. While there are aggrieved individuals who feel that the race has held them back, there are very few who would feel that they have been pushed to the back of the line. The cases are rare where a minority candidate was refused a job when she was better qualified although they are equally rare when she was offered the job when merely equal. This is a tremendous step forward compared to thirty five years ago when two friends advised me against setting up the consulting practice because they feared that the prospective clients would be prejudiced against me. Fortunately, the prejudice for and against neutralized each other over the long term and I made a reasonable living. Today, this question would not arise at all.

While first generation immigrants are relatively aloof, second generation is coming closer. There is considerable interracial socializing and frequent cohabitation and marriages among younger generation. This is a very encouraging sign on the landscape. In the sixties of last century we had to overcome many impediments. These seem to have almost disappeared among white collar and professional families although still present to a variable degree among blue collar and less educated groups. The young integrated families generally adopt the Canadian way with some adaptation in food habits but they maintain congenial relations with family and friends on each side. In my observation, such relationships are stronger than homogeneous relationships if only because there is a stronger will to overcome problems when they crop up.

There is a flip side to this integration, however. If the overtures of a young visible are rebuffed at school or playground, the sense of rejection is acute and sometimes leads to antisocial behaviour. The ex-Jamaican gangs in Toronto and the ex-Indian gangs in Vancouver have their origin in this rejection. In most of these cases the parents are working long hours at making a living and are not able to help their kids settle in a strange environment and often are too busy or untrained to spot the problems when they arise and act on them. This is why school and social welfare agencies have to be watchful and attempt to deal with such situations before they become serious. The problem in UK was that the extremist religious groups took over disenchanted young people when schools and social agencies turned a blind eye. Fortunately, the extremist organizations are not as active in North America as in Europe. We need to stay vigilant that they do not get a foothold among disenchanted immigrants by encouraging the twains to meet rather than develop separately.

Comment:

The New Yorker is reputed among the literary circles as an outstanding magazine. Almost every piece in the weekly publication is a testimony to its excellence, not only is it a joy to read, invariably it is thought provoking even if one may disagree with the conclusions.

David Brooks contributed a superb essay “Social Animal” in the issue of January 17, 2011. It is a delight to read and an example to learn from to all budding writers in all genre’. Brooks cites numerous studies to show that the happiness springs from listening to the deep subconscious and from the empathy for fellow humans. While no one will dispute that these are the keys to happiness, unfortunately they are the source of misery as well. We share in the happiness and the misery of the loved ones through our “Emotional Intelligence”. Since most humans share their misery more often than their joy (perhaps there is more misery than joy in an average life) a high coefficient of emotional intelligence is likely to make us more miserable than happy.

As for people in seventies who had unhappy childhood being three times more likely to be solitary, perhaps they would rather spend the remaining few good years in their lives doing what they love and not what their ‘friends’ wish upon them.

Monica’s Comment:

“eGuru Swami Dharyanand taught me that the only purpose in human life was to make other life forms feel better every time there was a contact. I do not know how much I succeeded in my efforts in promoting general well-being; I do know that the stresses induced by sharing the strains in the lives of the loved ones take their toll. It takes a special kind of selflessness and humility to tolerate tantrums, snappy retorts, derogatory comments and unfair accusations with a smile and not be tormented by simmering resentment. I am taking a virtual course from the Swami to learn how these qualities can be inculcated.”

2011-03-04T07:45:00.000-08:00

I Love Your Teeth

Daoud was a Somalian Arab doctor who had married a Canadian nurse on the staff at the hospital in Tripoli, Libya where he was the chief medical officer. The sensible nurse had insisted that Daoud first get a divorce. I have always had a suspicion that my friend just packed his former wife and four children back to his tribe rather than follow the tortuous path of divorce in a foreign country. I met him when Monica and I were living in Tripoli thirty years ago and we became close friends. He had been there for a few years before us and helped us settle in the land where customs were, to say the least, different. There were several factors which had brought our families closer. Both couples were interracial and the white wives had a lot in common. For one thing both were expecting their first babies within a week of each other. Also, there were no close or even distant families within a thousand miles and expatriates in similar circumstances became proxies for siblings. I came to know him quite well during our frequent lunches of shish kabob followed by baklava with espresso coffee in a restaurant with a view of sparkling azure Mediterranean and a bright blue sky. I don’t know why I am saying all this because it has nothing to do with the story I am about to tell. What is relevant though is that both families ended up in Calgary and the relationship was maintained. As often happens some distance grew between Daoud and me because of our diverse interests. But we continued to meet for lunch once every few weeks. Just as in old days at Tripoli harbour, our menu was fixed but due to changed circumstances it had become wiener schnitzel and cheese cake with cappuccino and our view was the paintings of lakes and peaks of Rocky Mountains on walls covered with lustrous gold wallpaper. We exchanged notes about our wives, our children and grandchildren although his wife in Somalia was never mentioned. He bragged about his progeny and I nodded to show my appreciation.

I don’t know why but I was a little nervous this morning about the prospect of spending an hour or more on lunch with Daoud. Perhaps the stories about his family and the demanding patients were becoming tiresome. But the gods smiled at me for a change and the lunch turned out to be a lot of fun. It began just like our previous lunches did. We ordered our drinks, French red wine for his cultured taste buds and Okanagan white for my uncultivated palate. He then asked me how my family was. However, instead of the usual ‘OK, nothing changes with me, you know. How about yours?’ I said something quite different.
“You have met Suresh at one of our gatherings. That short, fat, bald brownie with a really elegant wife.”
“Yes, I have. I remember him very well. He pulled a fast one on me the first time we met.”
“Did he? What happened?”
“When I asked him what he did for a living, whether he was a doctor like Monica or a professor like you he replied with a straight face that he was a cab driver. In spite of his smart suite his face reminded me of one who took me to the airport last month and I believed him. To tell you the truth I was acutely embarrassed when Monica set me right, having been confused in that way myself.”
“That is so like him. He does have a weird sense of humour. He plays tricks of that kind with every one. Still, he is a likeable sort. He has some fine qualities and some very annoying habits. His life is an odd mixture of good things and bad. One doesn’t know whether to pity him or to envy him.”
“This is turning out to be interesting. May be there is a story in it,” Daoud encouraged me to carry on. He adopted the manner of a celebrated author although, as far as I knew, none of his stories had ever been published and not even his family looked at his ‘literary’ blog.
“Suresh is a strange bird. He has a doctorate from an Ivy League college in Philosophy. But apart from some post-doctoral work here in Calgary when Diane, his wife, was studying law, he never did any work to earn a living. He never felt any need. Diane is a renowned criminal defence lawyer and money is one thing that family is not short on. However, Suresh has no idea how rich they are. Diane manages her savings through a chain of financial advisers and does not discuss financial matters with her husband. It is not that she does not trust him just that it is not his business. She does make him a reasonable allowance and he is always dressed in the latest style, lunches in high end restaurants where he insists on picking the tab and showers her and his friends with expensive gifts.”
“That is odd. All the successful women I know have equally successful partners.”
“When Diane married Suresh he was a rising star on the horizon. Somehow the star crashed somewhere on the way up. There was no blinding flash of light, but crash it was. Soon after Diane won her first case by getting a big name client off the hook for murder he had probably committed, he gave up his position and focused on making his dear wife’s life pleasant in any way he could. He woke up half an hour before the time she specified for the wake up call and served her a cup of tea in bed with the first kiss of the day, had dinner ready when she called to let him know she was on her way, massaged her legs if she had been on her feet all day pleading for some gangster or the other. He relieved his beloved wife of any worries about bringing up their son and made sure she heard several times during the day how wonderful, how loveable, how cherished, how competent, you get the idea, she was. She was all of these things and she knew that. And she was sure that her husband believed them as indeed he did. That is why she liked these compliments and in return, you can call it a tip if you are that churlish, she made sure he lacked for nothing.”
“I envy the guy. I wish I had a wife like Diane, not just a nurse who only worked part time and that too under protest. I would also shower her with all the praise if it provided such healthy return.”
“Daoud, keep investment terminology out of my friend’s affairs,” I mildly rebuked Daoud and added, “I do envy him when Monica complains about us not being able to afford a new set of living room furniture she would like to have. But I pity him more. Just imagine having to swallow your pride and flatter your wife when you would rather be mad because it is your bad week. Men have menopause too, you know.”
“Well, I grant you there is time to be mad and time to be sweet. It is the combination that makes life worthwhile. You got to have wiener schnitzel if you want to enjoy the cheese cake as it should be enjoyed,” Daoud pontificated before putting a large piece of the former in his mouth.
I continued, “As I was saying, Suresh brought up their son Mitch almost on his own. He helped with home work, encouraged him when he had trouble with biology, drove him to swimming and piano lessons, kept him off the bad company when he was a teenager and guided him towards a lucrative profession; dentistry. Mitch has worked as a locum since his graduation and now he is setting up his own practice.”
Daoud had some experience in this direction. Being a healthcare professional himself he had some support for Mitch although his own children, with the nurse of course - he never mentioned his children in Africa, chose business management. He now told me what I should have known but did not, “When I came to this blessed country I did locums for a few years. It was tough although things have changed since the walk-ins opened in every shopping centre. Dentists do not have walk-ins, not yet anyway, and it must have been hard for Mitch.”
“Suresh says that Mitch was happy in both practices he worked at. He thinks that he is now ready to be his own man and he is working hard at setting up the clinic the way he wants it. Suresh is helping him with advice whenever he gets the chance. As an expression of his gratitude Mitch asked his parents to be the first patients in his clinic. Diane expects to be in court but Suresh agreed with alacrity. He showed me the letter from Mitch setting the appointment date and time. An official card printed on the computer stated in bold letters, “A week’s notice is required for cancellation and $200 fee is charged for no show.” On it there was a hand-written note in green ink, ‘I love you and love your teeth, xxx Mitch.’”
Daoud smiled, “Patients put food on our table and we all love them. Dentists much more so than us poor doctors because each patient hands them a thick bundle while we get a pittance from Healthcare.”
I disregarded the appeal for sympathy and carried on. “Suresh told me that Mitch had pulled out two of his teeth a couple of years ago and has saved them in a box which he keeps in the drawer next to his check book. Suresh was more touched than most men would have been by the love behind the simple act of Mitch.”
I looked at Daoud to sense his reaction. His eyes narrowed and he said in a worried tone. “Suresh needs to watch that Mitch’s love for his teeth stays within reasonable bounds. When I love something I want to make sure it is at its best at all times and I keep it in a safe place. Mitch might love his father’s teeth so much he may want them in his locked drawer before they wear out any more and before Suresh is ready to part with them.”
“Good point. We need to warn Suresh. Will you call him? Here is his number.”
He took the card and placed it carefully in his wallet. Then he burst out laughing and ploughed into the cheesecake.

Comment:

The idea that every one should drink filtered, fluoridated, chlorinated and otherwise treated water supplied through expensive pipes is a gross violation of our democratic rights. Every one should be able to get the water they wish – from the rain barrel, stream, a well on their property or in the community. The way our governments are going, I dread the day when all our food will be delivered in the form of gruel through another system of pipes in the name of nutrition and hygiene, its taste determined by a committee in Edmonton or Ottawa consisting of ‘experts’ bursting with the knowledge of what makes us healthy and with no taste buds and with no idea of fun.

2011-02-26T17:25:00.000-08:00

Dire Implications of Rising Food Prices

Every housewife knows that the food prices have been increasing much more than general inflation rates over last few years. The reason is not hard to fathom. Not only is the number of mouths in the world increasing by about eighty millions annually, growth in the economies of developing country is improving consumption among the erstwhile poor people there. The increase in demand for basic food items is outstripping the growth in production both locally and worldwide and forcing the prices up.

It has been argued that higher prices enable the farmers to produce more because they can afford better seeds and fertilizers. Whether higher production is sufficient to offset the increased demand is open to debate. In any event, this is beside the point since for the vast numbers who barely ate enough to get by before inflation there is no tomorrow; they face the unpleasant consequences of high prices today. This is why the issue needs urgent consideration.

In North America and Europe, food is a small part of overall budget for an average family. Inflation in food price has to be really large before the family members need to reduce their food intake. In most cases, before that point is reached, they have the option of cheaper, and often healthier, substitutes. In dire emergencies, the governments have the resources to help the poor get along supplemented by the generosity of prosperous members of the population via organizations like food banks. In a developing country the situation is the exact opposite, food comprises up to ninety percent of a family’s budget. There is no option of cheaper food – they already eat the cheapest available. Millions of people go hungry today who had enough a year ago. The governments and the prosperous elements of the society feel overwhelmed by the size of the problem of poverty and do precious little to solve it.

Despite a decade of almost double digit economic growth in some developing countries the number of poor and the scale of poverty did not drop in most places. This is because even though some of the poor have risen to a higher income level, it has not happened on large enough scale to offset the growth in the number of poor people. While the family planning programs have been a big success among the educated and middle and upper class families, particularly in India, they have not had a significant impact among the poor and the illiterate. Religious considerations have also held many people back. To make the situation worse, the employment rate among the uneducated masses has not improved much and the wages of the poor have fallen behind the inflation rate. This has led to a desperate situation and the consequences are frightening.

The unaffordable high prices of necessities of life are said to be at the root of mass uprisings in Tunisia, Jordan and Egypt. The disorders of this magnitude and the consequent social upheaval are likely to spread. Consequences of these occurring in countries with large population like India and even China in spite of its firm autocratic regime are scary. High average economic growth that does not filter down to the vast majority of deprived populace is a recipe for disaster. Ostentatious life style of the rich and desperate circumstances in the slums surrounding the million dollar condo towers is an explosive mix. Unfortunately, we don’t have time for patchwork solutions and baby steps. Only way to avoid the conflagration is to drastically lower the prices of basic food items in the short term by subsidizing them and, in the long term, help the poor by instituting social welfare programs accessible to needy citizens in the developing countries. Most countries don’t have the financial and administrative ability to provide any meaningful assistance to their poor. Does the West have the resources to help them adequately? Even if the answer is positive, it means sacrifices and there is no evidence that the rich of the developed and developing world have the will to make them.

Comment:

A police officer in Toronto told a seminar on public security that how girls dress could trigger a sexual assault. He was condemned for his comments and made to submit a written apology. In my humble opinion, this is another instance of political correctness taken too far. No one will deny that humans wear clothes to send signals. There are times the ‘come hither’ looks and/or clothes are very strong and even an average man may have to call on inner reserve to fight the natural urge. It so happens that some men don’t have much reserve and in some circumstances give in to the temptation. I am not saying that these men are justified and should not be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Neither am I saying that the clothes or the looks have anything to do in many, even most, cases of assault. What I am saying, and the officer was saying, is simply this: When a woman dresses provocatively to challenge men’s restraint system, there will be occasions when the challenge is accepted and events take an ugly turn. It is not “she got what she was asking for.” It is just that dressing sensibly reduces the probability of trouble. The comparison might look silly but I will make it anyway. If you carry a twenty dollar bill in a crowded street held loosely between two fingers of your hand, you are very likely to have it pulled away.

2011-02-18T10:16:00.000-08:00

A Pessimist View of Tahrir Square

It may appear to some that the popular revolts which toppled the seemingly impregnable dictators in Tunisia and Egypt are novel and owe their success to facebook and twitter. But such protests are nothing new. Gandhi started them against the British Rule in India in 1929. In Egypt itself, Shah Farauk was overthrown by the people as were Shah Reza Pahlavi of Persia and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia two generations ago. Mass movements simmer for a while before they explode as they did in Tahrir Square over last three weeks. Such protests may yet topple the leaders of Algeria, Yemen and Syria soon and other despots sometimes in not too distant future. While we rejoice in the resurgence of democracy it would help us to prepare for the future events if we understand the root cause of the protests and what follows their successful outcome.

The tens of thousands of men and women in Cairo, in Tehran and in the marches of Gandhi were not the people who had jobs they enjoyed and young families they loved and worked hard to feed. With some exceptions the protesters were young people, some of them highly educated, who had no jobs, nothing they could call their own except perhaps the cell phones they owed money on and in many cases doting parents who would look after them if they were hurt or arrested. The regimes collapsed because a large proportion of citizens had no stake in the economy and their desperation boiled over.

Concentration of wealth of a nation in a few hands is a recipe for disaster. To stay in power, the governments in poor countries, even a democratic one like India, must ensure that the benefits of the growth filter down to the lowest rung of the social ladder. For this to happen, the financial gains made by the rulers and their cohorts, fairly or unfairly, should be invested in the country not deposited in overseas banks on invested in fancy palaces in Europe and America. In the same way the output from a growing national economy must be reinvested in the country itself. While acquiring the steel plants, car companies and professional clubs in the developed world may help the newly minted billionaires ‘spread the risk’ it would be disastrous in the long run because it does not help the increasing number of poor in their backyard. This is the lesson present and future leaders must learn from spreading revolts whether these succeed or fail.

The history tells us that it is the generals who usually take over the government, not the leaders of the revolt if it indeed had any. Soon after assuming control, they throw away the inconvenient uniforms in favour of elegant business suits or on rare occasions the national dress. Sometimes it is the religious fundamentalists who either take over the government as they did in Iran or control it from their mosques as they do in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Islamic world. The hopes are soon dashed however and the situation of most people doesn’t change much with a new cycle of suppression of legitimate opposition in the guise of fighting ‘terrorism’ or whatever is the fashion of the times, regular fake elections in the name of democracy and support for the West in return for massive economic and military aid comparable to the gross national product of the recipient. There is no check on graft at the top and corruption at all levels continues unhindered. With some exceptions, Libya and Viet Nam for examples, the wealth continues to concentrate in fewer hands and to migrate overseas, there are more of the poor and they are hungrier day by day, the soothing words of the dictator and his cronies become increasingly hollow till the situation becomes unbearable once again. It happened repeatedly in pre-industrial Europe as it has in recent times in Asia and Africa. The cycle will stop, as it did in Europe, only when the economy achieves a level where the minimal needs of most of the citizens can be met even if they have to do long hours of back breaking labour.

Comment

In 2008 Alberta Government instituted a system of deposit on milk cartons, 10c each for a litre or less and 25c on larger containers. At the bottle depot you get 7c or 18c back when you empty your bags on the counter. No doubt the bottle depot needs to make money and I leave it to the market place to decide whether 30% is reasonable or excessive. My complaint is that with the new recycling system in Calgary which costs us plenty on our utility bill, why do we need this deposit. We could just throw them in the huge recycling bin we all have and save the cost and the trouble of a separate bin and drive to the depot. All that the deposit does is it increases the cost at the grocery store or the drink machines and discourages the poor from a drink they need more than anything else. More so after the fluoride from our water is taken away, thanks to the misguided zealots.

2011-02-11T09:44:00.000-08:00

Schubert’s Ninth Symphony

I do not sing or play any musical instrument. I am practically tone deaf and can’t read music. I do operate the CD player but only with the help of the user manual. But in my own silly way I love music and over the years have assembled a large collection of recordings of chamber, orchestral and operatic music of composers ranging from Schutz to Schaffer, from Albeniz to Zemlinski. Listening to music is my major interest. Evelyn and I go to concerts everywhere on our travels, often we travel just for concerts and operas. I read a lot about music and have written and spoken about it. Musician friends are indulgent although they think of me as a pompous ignoramus who doesn’t know how foolish he is. However, I carry on regardless, thinking that my views enhance the enjoyment of lay listeners. I realize that I may be fooling myself in this too. Still, I continue to talk and write about music and musicians. My writing is not about the interplay of melodies and major and minor keys, all that is beyond me, it is about what the particular piece means to me. That, of course, is influenced by my personal circumstances when I first listened to it and my knowledge of composer’s other works in the context of the music of that period. This bit of harangue is more of the same in the continuing saga.

A few weeks ago Calgary Philharmonic performed Franz Schubert’s symphony no. 9 in C major, appropriately labeled ‘Great’. Schubert lived in Vienna throughout his short life at the same time as Beethoven. He started composing in early teens and wrote his first masterpiece at the age of seventeen. He was a prolific composer in every genre. ‘Great’ was one of his later works completed two years before his death in 1828 at the age of thirty and premiered in 1839 at Leipzig by Mendelssohn. It has been hailed as the pinnacle of romantic symphonies even though it has no program like several of Beethoven’s great works. It is long by standards of the day, fifty minutes, of ‘heavenly length’ as Schumann said. Yet a listener never notices the passage of time even in a mediocre performance. The excitement among the audience when the conductor lowers his baton is palpable. Standing ovations are a normal occurrence.

The symphony has the usual four movements. All movements of the symphony, one may even say every note, is full of joy. The key word about the symphony is ‘moto’ the Italian word for movement. The listener has a sense of motion right from the moment conductor’s baron is raised and there is no pause till the end. The titles of the movements say it all. The first movement is titled Andante – Allegro ma non troppo. It begins with steady flowing tempo then gathers speed to become ‘lively but not too much’. Schubert wants he players to conserve their energy for what is to come. Second movement is titled Andante con moto – flowing steadily with strong sense of movement. Third and final movements are both titled Allegro vivace – lively flowing tempo, except that the finale’s title could be elaborated a little more with vivace con troppo – as lively as possible.

Although I said earlier that the symphony has no program, I could invent one with ease. Imagine a beautiful spring afternoon in a large playground. A glorious horn call invites children in the community to come and play. After the usual hubbub, several eight to ten year boys begin an unstructured game under the watchful eyes of their parents. There is energy, fun, and complete lack of competitive spirit in the play. The air is vibrant with delight that parents feel when their offspring are happy. Children are full of excitement, running round and round with not a care in the world. Then, as if on a cue from some invisible baton, they pick up speed and run in circles as fast as they can totally oblivious of adults who are now feeling dizzy. They stop for a breather, but just for a few seconds and then start running again picking speed. One would think they will never stop but eventually they do and fall flat on the ground in blissful exhaustion.

For me, the difference between a good and great performance is how the orchestra and the conductor control the momentum through out the performance but most critically in the finale, how they pause for the breather and finally how they bring it to the end. There was a great performance of this symphony by the same orchestra in the same hall in the nineties conducted by Mario Bernardi comparable to any I have heard live or on a recording. The recent performance was excellent but it failed to reach greatness as I heard it. Music being what it is, it is quite possible that Maestro Graf’s rendition of the symphony could have touched me even more deeply than Bernardi’s on a different occasion.

2011-02-04T07:37:00.000-08:00

Reducing the Clutter

When Ravi protested at all the work involved in ‘reducing the clutter’ as he called it Monica had an unanswerable point; they were at an age when ‘getting rid of the junk’ as she called it assumes the top priority. They did not know when they would be forced by the circumstances of poor health, or worse, to move in a hurry to a smaller home. “In the worst case scenario, it will not be fair for the girls to be cleaning up the mess when we are not leaving much of an inheritance,” she said to clinch the argument. She added, “It behooves us to get rid of the stuff we have stored through the ages thinking that we or the children might need it some day. Children had taken what they could use; grandchildren are too young to need any thing for several years.” Ravi thought about it and eventually agreed. They decided that the appliances, nice clothes, tools, jewellery, ornaments, electronic equipment, paintings and photographs, excess furniture, whatever it is, if it is of no use to them it has to go. In good weather, they put smaller of these things on the lawn with a sign “TAKE IT IF YOU CAN USE IT” and they often disappeared in a day or two. However, the good weather is rare in their part of the world and disposing large items is a problem any time of the year.

They had a twenty year old full-size refrigerator which worked well and did not show its age. There was a large desk, a credenza and a couple of book shelves all in excellent shape. Numerous phone calls to charities were either not returned or received negative responses. Ads on trading websites were also negative. In the end Ravi piled up in the garage these and several other articles Monica thought no one will need and some that were beyond repair. He called a big burly guy with a dump truck to haul them all to the city refuse station for a modest fee of a few hundred dollars. This did make a dent in their possessions albeit only a small one, much smaller than the dent in the wall refrigerator made while being moved. The cupboards were not even remotely bare, cars could still not be parked in the garage and it was as difficult to locate an item in the two storage rooms as it had always been. They realized that one big job was out of the way, but one out of hundreds! It was time for stage 2.

Monica stacked on the living room floor numerous items they were fond of and thought it would be nice if some one could use them – grandchildren’s bikes, some nice furniture for example. Ravi put detailed ads with good photographs on two trading websites with mixed results. In the process, he learnt a lot about selling on these sites. Lesson 1, you must have a good picture, no pic no reply. Even when there is a good picture and a detailed description in the ad, the deal typically progresses as follows: You receive an email response, “It is great. I want it. Call me at xxxxxxxxxxx and I will collect it.” You call, no response, leave a message. Later in the day the phone rings. Long conversation about the item, detailed questions with appropriate replies and with, “Oh my table is six feet, will it work?” You reply, “No sir, it will not. Table has to be five feet long as it says in the ad” and go back to what you were doing before the interruption.

Lesson 2, agreement on price followed by the detailed instructions on how to get to your place does not mean that the item is sold. You wait for nothing most of the time. Even when you have priced the items as giveaways, do not expect normal courtesies like punctuality or a message to inform you of change in plans. Lesson 3, do not expect to sell at a reasonable price on these sites. Buyers are looking for a steal and there are many owners who are happy to give away the items simply to get rid of them. However, do not advertise them for free, it raises suspicion and no one will take them. There is some probability of disposing the item at a low price, none at all at a reasonable price and even less for free. Finally, only justification for the trouble of placing the ad, watching for replies, negotiating the final price and helping with the loading is in consolation that your beloved objects will get used. You also save the trouble and cost of sending them to the dump.

The process of lightening up on possessions is not all frustration. There are occasional compensations. For instance, Monica identified a few pieces of equipment that needed minor repairs and got them fixed. Among these items were four baby violins they had acquired thirty or so years ago when the girls were little and the doting parents had the visions of the girls being present day versions of Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn. It was not to be and the girls found other fields to distinguish in. The violins sat in the cupboard along with other musical paraphernalia like old scores and music stands till discovered last spring. Monica looked at them fondly, vacuumed off the layers of dust and suggested donating them to some worthy institution. A phone call to the Conservatory was enough to get Ravi moving. He found out that repairs and tuning had to be done before they would be accepted as donation but the donation in kind receipt would probably save enough in taxes to cover this cost. It took six months for Mr. Hill, the luthier, to get round to finishing his job but he did it last week and they will be able to claim the tax deduction this year.

There does not seem to be a satisfactory way to dispose off the usable goods no longer needed in our prosperous society. Recycling at Electronic Recycling Depot is probably better than the dump but does not appear right for a fully operational microwave oven or a tuner. Is the Used Items Bank an idea whose time has come?

Comment:

I understand why the high intensity users of internet are complaining about extra charges for excessive use; no one wants to pay any more for a service than they have to. Yet, I do not see why I should be paying for the costs service providers incur to provide extra capacity on their systems which they would not need for most users who are like me. The ability to shout louder than others should not persuade the government to be unfair to ‘silent majority’ if only because fewer young people vote than the older ones.

We pay for phone, gas and electricity depending on how much we use, why not for internet? Internet is a utility, and every one should pay for what they use.

2011-01-28T09:52:00.000-08:00

Proper Response to Kirpan and other Minority Rights

With Quebec Assembly’s recent decision to ban Kirpan in the assembly, the issue of allowing Sikhs to carry a sheathed knife into public places has come alive again. Being a visible minority immigrant myself, the issues of minority rights concern me. I was born and grew up in Dehradun, then a sleepy town in foothills of Himalayas in Northern India. After the separation of Pakistan all Hindus including Sikhs were driven out of Pakistan and the population of Dehradun doubled within a month. A large number of the ‘refugees’ were Sikhs whom we considered another sect of the broad Hindu faith. They were welcomed in the community. They became integrated and contributed to the community with their energy and varied talents. We had a few Sikh families living near us and we children played together without any consciousness of differences of culture because except for the turban there was none. They went to Gurudwara, the Sikh temple, and celebrated Guru Nanak but then other Hindu sects also went to their different temples and had different deities. We spoke different languages at home and Hindi in public and at schools but shared the same values. There never was a problem between Sikhs and others during my life in India for the next fourteen years.

I have written this to make it clear that I have no communal prejudices against Sikhs or any other minority. I have compassion for their inconveniences having suffered them myself and pride in their achievements which are many. I appreciate a colourful turban and the handsome bearded face as much as a hijab, a fez, a Gandhi cap or a bald head. I often talk in Hindi to strangers wearing turban and invariably have an interesting conversation. A large majority of Sikh immigrants have adjusted to life abroad. Most second generation Sikhs have given up the turban, don’t speak Punjabi, refuse arranged marriages and rarely go to a Gurudwara, just the way my children don’t follow my parents’ traditions. As is to be expected, this large scale disavowal of cherished values is hurtful to a few immigrants who wish to continue the traditions in their original form. It increases their resolve to preserve their ‘culture’ whatever the cost and whether it is necessary or even rational. It is a small vocal minority that screams about their rights and suppression of their freedoms. The vast majority goes about their daily lives earning their living and enjoying the fruits of their labours the best they can. The impact of the few disgruntled immigrants is picked up by the media and blown out of proportion. Then it sways some politicians afraid to lose crucial support. Blatant political words and actions follow which create more brouhaha and a mole hill becomes a mountain.

Carrying a kirpan hidden on one’s person is one of the five requirements Guru Gobindji instituted in 1699 which the ‘devout’ Sikhs are dedicated to preserve. It is no different than the command of Bhagwan Mahavira who instructed Jains, my sect, to give up on worldly pretensions, including all apparel. The Jain edict is harmless and is never raised because thankfully only a few monks follow it. The issue with kirpan, on the other hand, is often in the news. The real objection to kirpan is not the size of the blade nor that it has only been rarely used but that it is concealed and is available for use and gives the owner power over others. Carrying a weapon at all times was perhaps necessary in the violent period of eighteenth century India when every one carried one. In Canada in twenty first century it could arguably provide a defence against bullying but surely not the kind we would wish to encourage in a law abiding community. Unfortunately, it is just one of the issues which continually crop up; wearing niqab and establishing sharia legal system are two of the other examples of the same type. There is a possibility, albeit remote, that the rights of former U.S. nationals to carry weapons may be raised sometime in the future. All human rights issues of minority rights have to be handled the same way. Before any action is taken on them we need to answer two questions. First, do we need to consider every demand made by elements of every minority group as if it were a national crisis? Second, how will our response impact on us and on our children? Our personal and collective reply should be determined by our view of whether the issue will go away if we look the other way and, in the particular case of concealed weapons regardless of their size, are we comfortable sitting next to an individual or when our children play with a kid who has one on his person?

Alberta's Next Premier

I am alarmed at the thought of Ted Morton as our next Premier. Prof. Morton is as close to Sarah Palin's gang known as TEA party as any one can be. I am afraid that Alberta under him will become a foothold from where TEA party can spread its wings into rest of Canada. Do Albertans really want this? I for one don't and I will do my best to stop him. This post is just the beginning.

2011-01-21T10:29:00.000-08:00

Obesity Industry and the Economy

I have struggled with near obesity all my adult life. Two lessons I gleaned from fifty years of weight watching are that genes and metabolism are key factors in how heavy one is and the daily exercise is important for good health and longevity but a more important factor is what and how much one eats. Unfortunately, limiting what you eat is hard. Humans have a weakness called taste and unlimited capacity to consume. Some like me are basically insecure and eat whatever is around even if they don't like it. A whole industry has developed over last hundred years to capitalize on these frailties and has contributed to obesity. ‘Obesity Industry’ not only includes the purveyors of addictive and unhealthy food and drink producers like Coca Cola, MacDonald’s, and Nestle’s, they also include corporations who sell cure for obesity like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig. The following table of latest available figures from leaders of three segments of this industry gives an idea of their size and importance to the economy. The numbers are for Coca Cola, MCDonald's, and Weight Watchers separated by a comma:

Total Revenue, billions 31,23,1.4
Gross Profit, billions 19, 7,0.7
Net Income, billions 6.8,4.5,.18
Market value, billions 130,80,2.8
Annual dividend payout, billions 3.0,2.5,.05
Advertising budget, billions 2.4, 1.0,0.2*
Number of employees, thousands 43,400,28

* Estimated

Some of these figures are only partially true. For instance Coca Cola figures do not include the bottlers and franchisees who have additional employees and advertising budgets. To get an idea of their relative scale, sales of Coca Cola represent $100 per American and total revenues of the Federal government of Canada for 2010 is 231 billion and it employs approximately three million people. Total revenues of Coca Cola are greater than total retail sales in Canada in a month.

One can generalize from these figures that several million people earn their living in obesity industries, their direct contribution to the economy is in hundreds of billions and their market value could be as much as a trillion dollars. In addition, they spend tens of billions of dollars in advertising which support your favourite TV channels and magazines even though, unfortunately, a good portion of advertising is focused on children and young adults to get them hooked in a life long addiction. The industry can argue that it pays in taxes much more than what the obesity adds in healthcare costs.

Obviously an industry of this size can not be shut down in a day without catastrophic consequences to the employment situation and the general economy. The transformation of Obesity Industry into 'Healthy Citizens Industry' will have to be gradual also because you can not change the habits of a generation in a few years. To achieve an orderly transition lessons from tobacco industry might be useful although it should be noted that the impact on the economy of controls on that industry was reduced substantially by increased penetration of Western tobacco companies in Eastern Europe and Asia. It is almost useless to reduce bad eating habits by advertising since these companies have the resources to outdo any official campaigns. To achieve the positive results ‘freedom of speech’ granted to the companies whose products have been proven harmful needs to be curtailed. Less advertising by Coca Cola for example will help the sale of milk and unsweetened orange juice and improve the health of young adults. The efforts to improve the health of ordinary Canadians are likely to have a better outcome with reduction, hopefully elimination, of promotion of fatty foods and drinks and no chance at all in the current free for all. Further controls on the contents of these products can be gradually introduced as the new ones gain acceptance among the industry and the consumers. This is the recipe for success.

2011-01-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

Anatomy of two Shootings

The New Year had an inauspicious start with two political shootings in the first week. Although half a world apart these cases have similarities; polarized populace and discontent with the politicians. The Governor of the Province of Punjab in Pakistan was killed on January 4 by his own security guard. Then on January 8 a gunman killed six people and shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords, thankfully not fatally, in Tucson, Arizona. The Governor was killed because he supported the weakening of harsh fundamentalist Islamic laws of the country. Ms. Giffords was shot presumably because the gunman did not consider her tough enough against illegal migrants from Mexico

The two countries where the incidents occurred are the opposite poles any way you look at them. Pakistan, for all practical purposes, is not a functioning state. For most of the fifty three years of its existence, it has been ruled by military dictators with iron fists. Its current civilian government is divided and weak. Civil disobedience is common, corruption is rampant, army acts independently of the government, federal and provincial governments are continually in conflict and riots and suicide bombings are common occurrences in major cities. The general populace is desperately poor and illiterate. It is polarized into two camps: religious fundamentalists and the moderates who want to modernize Islamic practices. The war between these groups has raged for some time with varying intensity and many leaders have become its victims.

Conversely, the United States is a democracy with a cherished system of government established two hundred and fifty years ago. But it does have a history of violence in civilian and political spheres. The country has a unique distinction among developed countries of losing four Presidents to assassins while in office and attempts made on the lives of several others. Such unsavoury record in a small country would not cause much stir but it is a serious concern when it blights the only major power. The situation is even more worrisome because the so-called ‘economic engine’ of the world currently has severe financial problems; the recession of 2008 caused general population a lot of grief and no relief is in sight. The hands of the government are tied with a war in Afghanistan, the huge budget deficit and the debt mountain growing rapidly. It doesn’t help that a significant portion of the U.S. government bonds are held by China, not a friendly state by any definition. Then there is the politics of government, federally and in most states. There is a continuous warfare between the White House, Senate and the House of Representatives and the judiciary in the form of Supreme Court has its own political agenda. The party discipline does not exist in the two major parties and each member of the Senate or the House votes as s/he chooses. The government appears to be unable to act whether to direct the economy or provide the essential services like education or effective medical care. Even modest federal legislation and regulations are challenged in the law courts by belligerent southern states some of whom are in dire straits themselves. The wealth is concentrating in fewer hands and the divide between rich and working Americans is becoming wider as the middle class shrinks due to wage stagnation, increasing unemployment and catastrophic drop in the value of homes.. No wonder the general population is feeling more and more frustrated. Some of the rich are exploiting the situation by using the media they largely control to convince a large number of people that they also could become rich if the controls and taxes on industry and capital were abolished. The economic uncertainty and these media campaigns are polarizing the nation into two camps: capitalist wannabes and the moderates. The first camp wants unregulated free enterprise, less government and low taxes. The second camp consists mostly of professionals and academics and wants the government to provide social services and tax fairly to pay for them. If the two groups do not agree on appropriate steps to resolve the financial crisis, there is a possibility that discontent in the society would rise to a point where serious upheaval becomes a reality.

The shooting in Arizona is an expression of the frustration felt by people whose high hopes have been dashed by the recent economic collapse and the absence of signs of its revival. It could be a harbinger of worse yet to come. It is a warning to the leaders that urgent action is needed to revive the economy and increase the employment. This is not likely to happen overnight. In the meantime it is vital that the polarization is reduced and the expectations are brought down to a realistic level.

An Opinion:

Both issues, fluoride in our water and lanyards for kids in schools are examples of democracy gone berserk. The water supply is a health issue and it is the business of city's water supply authority to determine how it is filtered and add whatever the health experts recommend, whether it is chlorine, fluoride or any other substance. Most people, including myself with eight years of postsecondary education in science, know nothing about water and should leave it to experts. Similarly, if school board is responsible for kids' safety and education standards they have a right to decide how they go about doing it. If wearing a lanyard is all that much of a bother, how do these kids do what a teacher asks for home assignment which is much bigger intrusion on their time and energy?

I often wonder why any one goes in public service occupations any more when every one claims to know more than the professionals, does what he or she wishes and then blames them when the problem does not go away.

2011-01-08T09:57:00.000-08:00

Nuclear Iran: Issue of the New Year

The most important issue of the New Year is likely to be the development of nuclear weapon capacity by Iran and how the West copes with it. Iran has been much in the news during the past decade for several reasons. They have supported insurgents in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and elsewhere in the Middle East instead of using their oil wealth for the benefit of their own people. There has been cruel suppression of political opposition and enforcement of outdated Islamic laws. But much more alarming, there has been a strong belief in the West and fear in Israel that the country is building nuclear weapons while claiming to be developing nuclear power. A variety of sanctions have been imposed on Iran by the West with no material results.

The issue is complex and many faceted. The foremost consideration ought to be that several other nations in the area have nuclear weapons and nothing of any consequence has been done about it. Pakistan, an almost failed state which has been supporting Taliban not so secretly while taking billions in aid from the West, has had these weapons for decades. Their scientists are known to have sold nuclear secrets to other belligerent countries. Yet the U.S. and its allies have supported the regime throughout and no pressure has been put on successive military and civilian governments of that country to destroy nuclear weapons. Israel is known to have them too, but no one has mentioned any cuts in billions of dollars in aid annually, leave alone applying sanctions. North Korea has the weapons and freely brandishes them. There has never been any suggestion of ‘surgical strike’ on Pakistan or North Korea as there is in case of Iran.

While the fear of Iran in Israel is understandable, we in the West must appreciate the fear of Israel and its weapons in Iran? The U.N. Security Council has done nothing to understand these fears and to assuage them. If Iran’s march towards nuclear power status is to be contained it may be better to bring some balance in policies towards Iran, Israel and Arab countries. While guarantees for the safety of Israel are understandable, we do not have to help that country in oppression of Palestinians by looking the other way or finding lame excuses. While Israel has to be strong to defend itself it does not need to threaten its neighbours periodically. If the Middle East issues were resolved with fairness it would be possible to persuade Chinese or Russian to the Western viewpoint on Iran and achieve some progress.

This conflict has the potential of igniting a major confrontation between East and West which no one wants. Ten years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq has damaged the economy of the U.S. and Europe and the priority must be getting it back on growth track. The situation will be helped if the U.S. could persuade Israel to be less belligerent in its negotiations with Palestinians and give up its own nuclear arsenal. To expect Iran to submit to Western demands in current political environment is dreaming in Technicolor. Mullahs are religious fanatics and giving in under pressure from infidels is not their way. Another long war in the region or the nuclear annihilation of Iran are not the options which can be contemplated by any President or the Prime Minister. Negotiations between all parties are the only way out of the impasse. A conference of all countries in the Middle East and the members of the Security Council to discuss the denuclearisation of the whole region, not just Iran, is more likely to bring long lasting peace than sanctions and military threats to one belligerent state which itself has felt threatened by external forces since the current regime took power there three decades ago.

2011-01-02T12:32:00.000-08:00

A Happy and Prosperous Nwe Year to you and your loved ones.

A Deal in Morocco

After travelling for eighteen hours on four planes Ravi and Monica arrived in Fes, Morocco on a pleasant afternoon in utter state of excitement. They had a five star hotel booked in the oldest walled community in the world, built in the ninth century on the northern fringe of Sahara desert by Sultan Idris as the foundation of his empire set to last for centuries to glorify Allah and his prophet Muhammed. A half hour ride in a Mercedes diesel almost as old as the Medina itself and emitting as much fumes as the total population of a couple of hundred thousand humans burning wood and coal for cooking and heating delivered them to the gate of the Medina nearest to the hotel. A young man promptly appeared out of nowhere, loaded their suitcases in his push cart and conveyed them to the hotel five minutes walk away. He wanted to be paid as much as the cab fare from the airport and after much haggling agreed to release the case for about half as much, approximately ten dollars. It should have given them a clue of what was to come but blame it on the jet lag or the thrill of new culture around them it did not register.

An hour in the majestic courtyard of the hotel sipping mint tea and munching cookies was a pleasant introduction to luxury that was Riad Fes, their hotel. A young Arab lady presented herself. She was wearing tight blue jeans and a revealing pink sweater, no hijab (head scarf) leave alone Niqab (veil with a slit for the eyes). She explained in reasonable English the amenities offered in the hotel and other services including recommendations on the guide and local travel. They promptly booked an English speaking guide for the next morning, specifically opting for sightseeing over shopping. The hostess led them to their room on the roof. It was elegantly furnished with traditional local decor and had a bed big enough for a Sheikh and four wives. Instead of customary chocolate on the bed, there was a plate of cookies with two bottles of water on a brass side table. The evening was spent absorbing the atmosphere of Arab culture with a lute player briefly interrupted by the dinner of Tajine.

The morning arrived soon enough, hastened by the call of Muezzine from several mosques in the area, or were these recorded vioces on the loud speakers to be broadcast five times a day set slightly out of unison to create the atmosphere unique to a Medina. Ravi got out of the room, walked over to the edge of the roof and watched the sun rise behind the domed roofs of ancient houses built on the rolling hills within inches of each other. He woke Monica up and they enjoyed one of the best sunrise views of their lives with arms around each other.

It could be the jet lag or the beautiful sight they had just witnessed, or both they could not go back to sleep. They talked of all the wonderful things they would do, visit the mosques in Medina, look at all the traditional shops, leather factory, carpet warehouses, visit the mosques where millions of devotees of Allah have prayed every day reciting the words specified by the scholars of Quran. On other days they would visit the Atlas mountains, see the caves where families still lived like they did thousands of years ago, visit Mecnes, another historic town nearby and roam around the new Fes by themselves. A memorable week was on the horizon and they were eager to grasp it.

A leisurely breakfast, not included in the two hundred dollars a day charge for the room but what kind of miser would worry about such details in this lap of luxury, brought the hands of the clock to nine. A quick brushing of the teeth and they were ready to meet Abdallah, the English speaking guide and the master of their day, to show them the sights of Medina and to protect them from aggressive merchants of carpets, leather jackets and local spices they did not need at their age.

A visit to the king's palace, to one of its many entrance gates to be precise, beautiful carved and firmly bolted, was followed by a short drive to the farthest entrance of Medina. Abdallah took his visitors past entrances of several mosques dating back several centuries but Monica and Ravi could not see them because only the Muslims are allowed entery. How any one knew that Ravi was not a Muslim is a mystery yet to be resolved. After walking along several narrow streets with only a few local shoppers and even fewer tourists, they entered a porch through the huge gate with the view of an enormous courtyard. Our guide asked in an unusually humble tone, "Will you like to visit the cooperative where the world famous Fes wool carpets made by the widows and orphans are sold at ridiculously cheap."
Monica interrupted, "No, we are not interested in buying anything. We are at the stage in our lives when we are reducing our possessions, not adding to them."
Ravi contradicted his wife, "Let's go in. There is no harm in seeing the beautiful articles. No one is forcing us to buy anything."
"He is right Missus. There is no pressure. It will be nice to rest for a few minutes and sip some mint tea too."
A very respectful elderly gentleman in baggy white cotton pants, calf length beige tunic and red Fez cap with black tassels came into the porch, bowed deeply and said looking in the direction of Ravi, "Please bless this establishment with your presence. It is the only government certified coop in Fes. Every carpet, big and small, is made by widows and orphans in their homes and most of what an item is sold for goes to them. But you do not have to buy anything. Just look at a few rugs and tell us what you think of them. Your opinion is as valuable to us as your Euros or dollars or pounds."
Monica turned to Ravi and said in a wavering tone, "Let us not fall in this trap. Once we go in we won't come out without parting with more than we can afford."
Ravi was not convinced. He came around Abdallah, put his left arm around Monica's waist and said in the sugary voice he used when he wanted her to do something against her better judgment, "Let's go in for a few minutes. No harm can come out of it. It will be interesting to compare them with Indian and Iranian carpets. You know I am upto any tricks they can play on us."
Monica had her doubts but gentle push from Ravi's arm soon had her in the courtyard. Before long they were sitting on a divan sipping sweet mint tea. A young man in a grey jacket, blue shirt and brown pants came through the back door, introduced himself as Mohamad and after some small talk solicitously asked them the details of their careers and family. When Ravi told them that they had two sons and a daughter he perked up, "How old is your daughter?"
She is twenty five," Monica replied.
"She lives in Canada, I suppose. Is she married?"
"No. She is a career woman. No time to meet men."
"No need to look any further. I am an eligible bachelor. Just the right age, thirty five. I will love to live in Canada where I could ski all year round; not just once a year."
"Give me a picture, I will show it to her. She will contact you if she likes it," Ravi replied.
"Just consider me your son-in-law. You won't find any one better anywhere - fluent in three languages, graduate in Islamic Architecture from the University of Fes. Who could be more qualified?"

In the meantime, a crew of four short and thin but muscular men had brought out several rolls of carpets and were spreading them on the floor. The carpets were huge, thirty feet long, twenty feet wide, one inch thick. Great variety of designs in every colour one could imagine. With each carpet Mohamad named the weaver, how long it took to make it - anything between six months to two years. Wool imported from New Zealand at special rates for widows and orphans of Fes Medina. Carpets kept coming, as did the mint tea and cookies. Clock kept ticking. Abdallah was oohing and aahing at every carpet, "Work of art", "Best I have ever seen", "Will suit any decor" were just some of his comments. Occasionally he would ask Ahmed the price and comment, "Why so cheap? Don't widows and orphans eat?" Mohamed would answer, "It is Ramadan. All carpets are reduced to sell, before new supplies come in."

Monica nudged Ravi every few minutes whispering that it was time to move on, there was a lot to see before lunch. But Ravi did not pay any attention and examined every carpet in detail asking questions about the weave, quality of dyes and expected life of the carpet. The answers were always the same extolling the virtue of the carpet. It was now noon and Mohamed was becoming more excited about the quality and price of the carpet adding new inducements with each passing minute, “Because they are made by the orphans and widows and sold by the cooperative, and Canadians are so generous, there is no customs duty.” “Shipping by air by DHL is included in the price.” “You can sell each of these in Arts auction anywhere in America or Europe for ten thousand dollars.” “Buy three of them, sell two and you will recover the cost of your holiday.” “Buy six and sell four, you will have a long queue of men wanting to marry your daughter.” Spiel went on, Monica continued to fidget and Ravi, entranced, did not budge from the floor with carpets all around him. He had a gleam in his eyes that alarmed Monica. Mohamed was getting impatient as if he had another appointment, “Tell me which six carpets you like, I give you such a good price that you will thank Mohamed for ever even if your daughter does not like him.” Monica went to Ravi, pulled him aside and said quite clearly so every one could hear, “They are pulling wool over our eyes. Don’t be a fool. If you are so struck by these carpets, select a small one that will fit in our bedroom.” The man in Fez interjected now after having been a quiet observer for two hours, “His price for three is a very good deal. It will not be so good for only one.” Mohamed had his final word, “I can’t offer free shipping for one and there may also be customs. If you buy three full size carpets made by widows and orphans for their cooperative, I will throw in these small silk rugs for free. But you must decide soon. These poor workers have to break for lunch.”

Ravi’s resistance, generally solid as a rock, had completely broken down by now. The man who had walked away unscathed from seasoned sellers in Indian, Persian, Turkish and Egyptian markets and haggled in Nieman Marcus in Dallas and Tiffany’s in New York selected six of the most expensive carpets bigger than any room in their house. Mohamed ushered them into a windowless office upstairs lighted by one forty watt bulb and furnished with two dilapidated steel desks, four shaky wooden chairs and an outdated computer where Ravi lamely handed his credit card for the price quoted by wily Mohamed. Fifteen minutes later they came down to the courtyard, Ravi clutching a receipt for twenty five thousand dollars for six large and three small carpets. There was a group of six European tourists, four elderly rather plump women and two shriveled men canes at their sides, sitting on the Divans. Mohamed clapped his hands and announced to them, “MY friends from Canada just bought ten big carpets for their home, please cheer for them.” Europeans looked strangely at Ravi and Monica as they walked towards the gate. Four assistants followed them with heads down. “These poor assistants have no salary or commission and deserve a tip,” Abdallah said to the floor. Ravi pulled out a five hundred Dirham (Fifty dollars) note and handed it to the assistant leading the line up. No doubt the guide claimed a hefty share of that too.

An hour later when they were waiting for lamb couscous for lunch the folly dawned on Ravi and regrets over being mesmerized by a carpet seller in Fes Medina took hold of him. Monica did not add fuel to the fire and left him to stew when she attended to the email. The issue was not mentioned again till they were working on customs declaration at the Calgary Airport.

The carpets were delivered six weeks later after Ravi had paid the customs duty in high four figures. Small rugs were used in bedroom and their home office. They are having a hard time in deciding what to do with the large ones. Enquiries about “Art Auctions” have been inconclusive and carpet dealers have not returned their phone calls. Ravi was quite depressed last time I saw him and Monica’s efforts to cheer him up a little have fallen flat so far. However, I have known Ravi for a long time and he has rebounded from real calamities before. He will get over it too and one day would be bragging about how he turned a bad deal in the oldest Medina in the historic city of Fes into a hugely profitable one.

2010-12-22T07:27:00.000-08:00

Season’s Greetings and have a happy and prosperous New Year.

This is the last posting for the year 2010. I do hope you enjoyed the variety and will continue to visit the site.

Reducing the Clutter

When Ravi protested at all the work involved in ‘reducing the clutter’ as he called it Monica had an unanswerable point; they were at an age when ‘getting rid of the junk’ as she called it assumes the top priority. They did not know when they would be forced by the circumstances of poor health, or worse, to move in a hurry to a smaller home. “In the worst case scenario, it will not be fair for the girls to be cleaning up the mess when we are not leaving much of an inheritance,” she said to clinch the argument. She added, “It behooves us to get rid of the stuff we have stored through the ages thinking that we or the children might need it some day. Children had taken what they could use; grandchildren are too young to need any thing for several years.” Ravi thought about it but eventually agreed. They decided that the appliances, nice clothes, tools, jewellery, ornaments, electronic equipment, paintings and photographs, excess furniture, whatever it is, if it is of no use to them it has to go. How to do it though? They did not even think of the garage sale, it was too much work in one go for a couple of their age. To get the ball rolling, they put smaller of these things on the lawn when the weather was good with a sign “TAKE IT IF YOU CAN USE IT” and they often disappeared in a day or two. However, the good weather is rare in their part of the world and disposing large items is a problem any time of the year.

They had a twenty year old full-size refrigerator which worked well and did not show its age. There was a large desk, a credenza and a couple of book shelves all in excellent shape. Numerous phone calls to charities were either not returned or received a negative response. Ads on trading websites were also negative. In the end Ravi piled up in the garage these and several other articles Monica thought no one will need and some that were beyond repair. He called a big burly guy with a dump truck to haul them all to the city refuse station for a modest fee of a few hundred dollars. This did make a dent in their possessions albeit only a small one, much smaller than the dent in the wall refrigerator made while being moved. The cupboards were not even remotely bare, cars could still not be parked in the garage and it was as difficult to locate an item in the two storage rooms as it had always been. They realized that one big job was out of the way, but one out of hundreds! It was time for stage 2.

Monica stacked on the living room floor numerous items they were fond of and thought it would be nice if some one could use them – grandchildren’s bikes, some nice furniture for example. Ravi put detailed ads with good photographs on two trading websites with mixed results. In the process, he learnt a lot about selling on these sites. Lesson 1, you must have a good picture, no pic no reply. Even when there is a good picture and a detailed description in the ad, the deal typically progresses as follows: You receive an email response, “It is great. I want it. Call me at xxxxxxxxxxx and I will collect it.” You call, no response, leave a message. Later in the day the phone rings. Long conversation about the item, detailed questions with appropriate replies and with, “Oh my table is six feet, will it work?” You reply, “No sir, it will not. Table has to be five feet long as it says in the ad” and go back to what you were doing before the interruption.

Lesson 2, agreement on price followed by the detailed instructions on how to get to your place does not mean that the item is sold. You wait for nothing most of the time. Even when you have priced the items as giveaways, do not expect normal courtesies like punctuality or a message to inform you of change in plans. Lesson 3, do not expect to sell at a reasonable price on these sites. Buyers are looking for a steal and there are many owners who are happy to give away the items simply to get rid of them. However, do not advertise them for free, it raises suspicion and no one will take them. There is some probability of disposing the item at a low price, none at all at a reasonable price or for free. Finally, only justification for the trouble of placing the ad, watching for replies, negotiating the final price and helping with loading is in consolation that your beloved objects will get used. You also save the trouble and cost of sending them to the dump.

The process of lightening up on possessions is not all frustration. There are occasional compensations. For instance, Monica identified the pieces of equipment that needed minor repairs and got them fixed. Among these items were four baby violins they had acquired thirty or so years ago when the girls were little and the doting parents had the visions of the girls being present day versions of Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn. It was not to be and the girls found other fields to distinguish in. The violins sat in the cupboard along with other musical paraphernalia like old scores and music stands till discovered last spring. Monica looked at them fondly, vacuumed off the layers of dust and suggested donating them to some worthy institution. A phone call to the Conservatory was enough to get Ravi moving. He found out that repairs and tuning had to be done before they would be accepted as donation but the donation in kind receipt would probably save enough in taxes to cover this cost. It took six months for Mr. Hill, the luthier, to get round to finishing his job but he did it last week and they will be able to claim the tax deduction this year.

There does not seem to be a satisfactory way to dispose off the usable goods no longer needed in our prosperous society. Recycling at Electronic Recycling Depot is probably better than the dump but does not appear right for a fully operational microwave oven or a tuner. Is the Used Items Bank an idea whose time has come?

2010-12-17T07:05:00.000-08:00

Use and Misuse of Internet

The transmission of data with the speed of light in digital form on cables and through the air has changed the way we live. We do not send long letters describing our emotions in flowery language, we titter. We do not send our family pictures to friends we put them on the Facebook for every one to admire our cute children and grandchildren. We do not read books or newspapers to expand our knowledge base we google for what we should know but do not. Every thing we wanted to know even the things no one cares about, is on the internet. The event is available to our screens the instant it occurred and anyone in the world can know about it with a few clicks on the mouse. Whatever the information distribution is, it is not a cat and mouse game that it once was when print media barons competed to attract attention and pennies of prospective readers.

I am glad that I can see the latest scientific research, life-saving advances in medicine, deeds and misdeeds of our leaders, great works of art and literature and learn why the knowledgeable experts think these works are worth our study. Internet provides a great service in this respect. But this is not all it provides.

Internet also provides forum for the opinions of any one who cares to express them on any number of ‘sites’ provided by various agencies whose interests are not always above board. There is no need to have any knowledge, leave alone careful research and analysis, before raw thoughts are sent out for others to regurgitate. These unbaked opinions of often ignorant individuals carry the same weight in an internet search as those of scholars who have devoted their lives studying the subject. The ‘reader’ has no way to judge which opinion has merit and which is worthless. He is free to choose what suits his prejudices and then pontificate on it. Moreover, gullible viewers are sometimes persuaded by silly opinions expressed with authority and they either suffer serious harm or waste time and resources of the professional helping them.

If I write an essay on Mahler’s Second Symphony and put it on my blog not much harm can come out of it even if the contents are a baseless rant. If I put my opinion on a politician on the blog, it is acceptable so long as it criticizes his political deeds and does not intrude in his private affairs. But when I express my opinion on a professional engineer, financial consultant, medical practitioner or a lawyer, particularly when my comments include evaluation of the person’s knowledge and competence, my qualifications are crucial in judging the merits of this evaluation. A layman can say that a physician’s office is crowded or his staff rude, but pronouncements on the lack of knowledge or diagnostic skills must be out of bounds. Each profession has a governing body that regulates its members and if there is any reason to doubt someone’s competence, it should be contacted. Calling a professional incompetent or ignorant on a ‘rateprofessional’ website may be good for the ego but it is a disservice not only to the professional but also to the individuals who are dissuaded to benefit from his/her expertise. What makes such websites even more repugnant is how easy it is to misuse them. A disgruntled employee with a vendetta can orchestrate a series of bogus entries on the website to send his victim’s rating to the bottom and cause serious dent in the reputation of an innocent professional who has no recourse and no way to undo the damage. The attitude of the website operators is even more infuriating. They believe that humiliating hardworking people in public service careers is a noble mission and derive vicarious pleasure in inflicting it.

For internet to be a blessing some restrictions are necessary. First, just as the print media has editors and fact-checkers who reject trivial material and maintain reasonable level of quality in what is published, internet must install filters to stop false statements from reaching our screens. Second, media is constrained by legal considerations and the operators of websites need to be subjected to libel laws. Third, the name and qualifications of the blogger, or lack thereof, must be prominently displayed with the material they have produced. A simple action like a general ban on anonymous contributions will improve the utility of internet material considerably.

Let us hope the WikiLeaks fiasco will introduce some restraints on internet sites either voluntary or imposed by the authorities. Current ‘democratic’ system has gone berserk. The situation is not a desirable from any perspective and should not be allowed to continue.

2010-12-10T06:45:00.000-08:00

Neither Fat nor Slim Brownie

That short, fat, bald, brownie. Yes, my best client was referring to me when he thought I was out of the range of his booming voice. I never found out whether it was said to show contempt for my origins or with some fondness. Not that it really mattered. It was accurate even if a sensitive person may have found it offensive. I later used it to describe myself in a letter to the local newspaper and the editor used it with glee.

Strange though it may sound to you I was not always short, nor fat nor bald though I have been a brownie since I opened my left eye as a newborn. I was never tall but of a little more than average height when growing up in India. I became short the day I landed in the West. I started fattening when meat became a vital part of my diet soon after acquiring the short stature. My curly black hair started falling off the day I fell in love. When I immigrated to Canada a few years later, short, fat, bald brownie is what I was. If I wanted to be something else, I should have gone back to India with my tall, slender, blonde, white wife who would have stood out there like a sore thumb.

I did not mind the moniker but had to get rid of it on my doctor’s rather firm advice. During my last check up she pointed out, a little harshly I thought and it did hurt my feelings, that I had become shorter by four centimeters and heavier by five kilograms. Dr. Shepherd, who is always greatly concerned with the well-being of her flock, instructed me with all the gravity at her command to lose several kilograms in weight unless I could find a way of recouping the lost centimeters and some. Since the later was not possible, and I would be at the shepherd’s door again before long, losing weight assumed a high priority. There was another reason for urgent action. Shorter, fatter, totally bald and very dark brownie doesn’t roll off the tongue all that well and something had to be done to restore order in my life.

No lunches at our favourite Indian restaurant – only way to avoid the temptations of ten kinds of delicious curries soaking in fat. No desserts after dinner – may be a mango or an apple but not as a pie and certainly not a la mode. Snacks must be low sugar, no salt. Tea down to two measly cups a day. No more creamy homogenized milk in my breakfast of granola, it had to be skimmed. No butter on toast. A tall glass of water at regular intervals followed by frequent visits to the washroom became a routine. The life was dull, hardly worth living for a food junkie like me but it had to be lived. Thankfully, the sacrifices bore fruit. Soon the waist line began to shrink. After a year, I was still short, hair hadn’t grown on the head although it did grow where it shouldn’t and shade of my skin had stayed the same, may have become a little darker even. But I was not fat although no one would call me slim.

My client was not happy. I was no longer ‘that short, fat, bald brownie’. He couldn’t call me ‘short and bald brownie’, it doesn’t feel good; ‘short, no longer fat, bald, brownie’ sounds contrived. One afternoon it occurred to me that his unhappiness may have nothing to do with my appearance. It may have been because I no longer had enough weight to throw around in the meetings and therefore failed to win support for my proposals. My words no longer carried weight.

I do not know if my tall, elegant client spent much time in thinking of some other name to use behind my back He did come up with one. Only the other day I heard him say, “that short, bald, good for nothing brownie.” English being my second language I have trouble with hints. But this one is clear as a bell and even I can’t miss it. I realize that my days in this outfit are numbered and I need a new client. Do you know of any company looking for a consultant who happens to be a short, neither fat nor slim, bald, brownie?

Collapsing Economies and Commodity Cycles

Commodity prices have a huge role in causing economic collapse and recovery, much more than outside help and government actions. When commodity prices are low, weaker of the developing countries are in trouble but they recover when prices of what they grow and produce pick up. This happened in Brazil and Indonesia. On the other hand, at this stage of cycle industrial activity is profitable and the economies in developed countries prosper, consumer spending is high and bubbles form in some of these places. When the commodity prices improve, pendulum swings the other way and some of these bubbles burst. The best solution is to wait for prices pendulum to swing back, as it always does, and in the meantime take just enough action to tide over. Ireland, Spain and Portugal will be OK if they can manage to survive current price cycle for oil, steel, copper etc. What saved UK in late seventies was oil discovery not anything Maggie did. Britain's current problems are at least partly due to declining North Sea production. Ireland's problems arose from property market collapse because bubbles collapse if they are not continuously pumped. The pumping stopped because sustained high commodity prices drained overseas investment funds out of the real estate in Ireland into mining and oil sectors in Canada, Australia and Africa. The commodity prices will turn down sooner rather than later, then smart money will move out of resources into real estate and manufacturing in the desperate European countries of today and they will be laughing till the pendulum swings again.

If we want to eliminate the boom and burst cycles we have to remove commodity price cycles. I have no idea on how to achieve this except that they would be dampened if hedge funds were somehow controlled.

We Need WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks is getting a lot of press for publishing secret documents that confirm what most people suspected, if not believed, all along. Afghan government is corrupt: which government is not; it is a matter of degree. NATO soldiers have killed civilians: when was the last war in which civilians were not killed; before the Stone Age. Politicians and diplomats have been saying one thing while doing something else: since when have they told correctly what they had done; not since the forbidden apple episode.

So what is all this fuss about? I suggest that it is because the people caught lying are still in positions of power and the exposed lies are not something in the past long gone but relate to the current events. To put it starkly, the voters have short memories and bring themselves to think that their leaders are not out and out liars. Not only the leaked papers are raising issues which our leaders would rather not face, they are also reawakening the voters’ suspicions and the reelection of esteemed leaders is being put in danger.

Politicians are self-centred and focused solely on gaining and retaining power. They have reacted to published confidential archives as one would have expected. What saddens me is the position taken by some in the responsible media that lying on this scale is justified either to protect the sources of information which are vital for our welfare or for strategic reasons. Indeed, there are cases where ignoring the truth may be tolerated, but who does it help when the shaky leadership of an obviously non-functioning state – Pakistan in this case – is defended, indeed bribed by billions of borrowed dollars, to achieve ends which conflict with the professed goals of the leaders of the army and the doddering political apparatus of that country, none of which speaks for the population? Who is helped by misrepresentation of how the war is going in Afghanistan? Who is helped by confusing representations of Iran situation when much more belligerent and unruly states like North Korea and afore-mentioned Pakistan, not to mention Israel, already have the dreaded nuclear weapons? Who is helped by one-sided discussions of Palestine problem? Not an average citizen, neither in developed West nor in the developing Rest. Only people who are helped by these deceptions are the lying and cheating leaders who get elected by promising what they know they can’t deliver.

It should not surprise any one that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are being hounded by the agencies of the U.S. government and the pressure will be put on businesses to dissociate from them. But why would the media join in this persecution? Exposing the lies, wherever they originate, is what the free press is about. I would have thought that the journalists would be generally supportive of all efforts to bring out the truth rather than condemning it with unprecedented unison. Are we so afraid of the truth, or is the truth so unpleasant, that the populace has to be protected from being exposed to it lest they all have heart attacks and die? Since no one has suffered such fate from what we have seen so far, I tend to think that the storm is of little consequence. Before long it will all be forgotten and the lies and cover up will continue unabated unless some brave souls are willing to take great risk and protect us from the misdeeds of leaders by bringing their behind the scenes machinations in the open. If the media will not do it we need the likes of Julian Assange and his cohorts at WikiLeaks. All power to them.

2010-12-03T07:08:00.000-08:00

A Moroccan Holiday

Evelyn and I spent eighteen day in November on a short vacation, a mix of visiting old and dear friends, business for Evelyn and cultural pilgrimage to Bilbao in Spain and, to cap it all, Fes in Morocco. Our first stop was London. We spent two days in North London with our friend from Libyan days. Sharron and Chris are wonderful people we like sharing life experiences with. The memorable event of our time with them was attending a performance of Tennessee Williams’ Glass menagerie, an excellent play superbly presented. We visited Hempstead Heath, the famous park which has been a favourite of British writers for centuries. The Kenwood House Art Gallery is located in the park and houses a superb collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century art. Then we moved to Gravesend just south of London to stay for two more days with Evelyn’s childhood friend Anne and her husband Phillip, both academics of great distinction. They are the type of people with whom you leave the personal problems behind and argue about the serious issues facing the world. In between the heated debates we visited Darwin’s home and the garden which gives a good idea of the life of this great scientist who used the luxury of leisure permitted by inherited wealth to work on theories which changed the way we think. We also looked around the home of Charles Dickens which is now a private school and watched the Memorial Day parade from the upper floor window of their home.

Next step was Bilbao in Northern Spain where Evelyn was giving a seminar on Human Lactation. Bilbao was relatively uneventful partly because it rained most of the time on all five days we were there. Old town of Bilbao is much like the medieval towns elsewhere in Europe, narrow streets with four to six storey buildings on both sides – shops at the street level and apartments on upper floors. There were not many customers in the day time and only establishments doing brisk business were lottery ticket stalls. It was a different story in the evening though. Streets were crowded with people although shops did not seem to be overly busy. The church of Saint Santiago was impressive from outside as well as inside with beautiful stained glass windows and intricate woodwork. The structure of Guggenheim museum, designed by Frank Gehry, is shaped like ships in a harbour to celebrate the naval traditions of the town. There were several outdoor sculptures including one by Anish Kapoor, renowned Indo-British sculptor. The modern art is not something I have learnt to appreciate and the exhibits in the museum left me confused. The imported exhibit of Dutch masters from Stadler museum in Frankfurt was more interesting to both of us.

Journey from Bilbao to Fes was unnecessarily long and stressful. First we travelled two hundred miles south west on a high speed train to connect with a sleeper, then north east to Paris retracing a quarter of our journey. We made our way from train station to Orly South Airport, to board a plain to Fes four hours after our arrival. For almost half of it flight the plain flew over the region we had covered on train. We landed in Fes exactly twenty four hours after the train left Bilbao Station. Perhaps our travel agent will have an easy explanation for this inconvenience and wasted time.

Half an hour of taxi ride in a Mercedes Diesel much older and smellier than the one I used to own, took us to a point from which we could walk to the hotel located well inside the Medina – old town. We followed a young man who pushed our luggage in a small cart through narrow lanes to the hotel which is built around two splendid courtyards. It is an architectural gem with comfortable rooms and excellent service. Our room was on the roof. It had attractive Moroccan décor and a large comfortable bed with a temperamental shower and shaky blinds. I woke up on our first morning to see a beautiful sunrise and have a bird’s eye view of Medina – the old town. This is the oldest preserved medina in the world – a UNESCO World Heritage site, going back to ninth century. 93,000 people live and work here in cramped buildings on each side of approximately 12,000 narrow lanes. Donkey and humans transport all goods and vehicles, even bicycles and scooters are rare. Most activity is a variety of crafts and of course manning the shops, female shopkeepers are rare. We spent four hours in the medina and I was reminded of a friend’s comment about CanLit. There were more shopkeepers even though only half of the shops were open than the customers just as there are more writers than readers on Canadian literary scene. It was here in a “Widow carpet makers’ Cooperative” that we were the victims of a vicious sales performance by a Moroccan carpet seller who would have put much admired carpetbaggers of New York to shame. Two lessons from this experience I would share with you. First, do not accept tea from a shopkeeper unless you have time and patience for a long sales spiel and the skill to counter it. Second, your guide, all appearances to the contrary, is working for the stores, not for you although you are paying him good money. During this walk we enjoyed a visit to tannery where they were preparing skins and separating the wool from leather. There were scores of huge vats for colouring the wool but were not in use. Again, there was pressure to buy handbags, jackets, belts etc in all colours and sizes. This time we were successful in resisting the temptation. We visited a spice shop with an enormous variety on display and a herbologist doing an excellent sales job. Evelyn had an interesting discussion with him on what he prescribed for various diseases and acquired a large sampling of his wares which will provide many excellent dinners for us and our guests.

One of Evelyn`s patients had suggested a call to her aunt in Mecnes, 40 minutes by train from Fes. She invited us to visit them and we spent a pleasant few hours there. Abdul, the man of the house, picked us up from the station and after a ceremonial drink of mint tea we headed for medina. It was smaller, but lanes were less narrow and busier than in Fes. The entry to medina is through a huge square with stores on one side, hammam – the public bath – on the other. Most evenings musicians and dancers perform in the plaza. The city of Mecnes is surrounded by a wall built by the founder Moulay Idriss in twelfth century. After a sumptuous lunch of lamb tagine and beef on skewers we headed for the train. On the station we met our first of may be four niqabs (scarf covering the face except a narrow slit for the eyes) we saw during our stay in Morocco. The women in Morocco seem to be far more advanced than in other Arab countries. They are out and about everywhere in jeans and hijab (Scarf covering the hair) is worn by less than half of the women. Two daughters of our hosts have high professional ambitions – one wants to be a physician and the other a teacher.

On the way back the petit taxi not only charged three times the going rate but also dropped us at the wrong point for our hotel. After some panic we found an English speaking young man who guided us to the hotel by a long half an hour track and persuaded us to go later to his uncle’s restaurant for dinner. He picked us up a couple of hours later. The meal was indeed pleasant although we could not do justice to it after the big lunch in Mecnes. After dinner we walked up sixty three ninth century steps to the roof for an unparalleled view of the medina. The young man earned his fifty dirhan, six dollars, tip by his guidance to the hotel and explaining various sites from the roof. We did find the next morning that he could have led us back to the hotel in less than five minutes but for a much smaller tip and not enough time to do the sales job for his uncle.

We had a pleasant day trip by car to nearby towns with a very talkative driver who turned out to be a reasonable guide. We went to Sefrou which is the oldest town in Morocco but has been mostly rebuilt. Drive to one of the two water falls in Morocco was more interesting than the fall itself which can’t be called majestic by any stretch of imagination. A visit to a cave home 143 steps up in Bihlal was interesting more due to the cave owner guide who spoke fair English and told jokes mostly in praise of himself. There are sixty cave homes in the area but his is the only one tourists are allowed to visit. The tips have made him a wealthy man and he is not shy to admit it. We also visited Ifrane, a small town built by French in 1929, often called the Switzerland of Morocco, Azrou cedar forest with monkeys and some other villages of minor interest.

On our way out of the old part of Fes we passed through ‘New Fes” with its broad avenues and the beautiful office buildings and luxury apartment blocks. There is enormous amount of commercial construction with money from oil rich states and new schools and colleges, highways and public housing projects are being financed by the government. Although people we came in contact with are not a reliable source, we felt there was growing optimism among the population. New Fes has broad tree lined avenues with multilane one way streets with heavy car and truck traffic to make up for narrow lanes and loaded donkeys of Medina. Another impressive sight was of confident, often proud, women with or without hijab usually in tight jeans, walking everywhere although rarely driving a vehicle. A few women policemen were on duty, something you do not expect in an Islamic country.

The next day we visited the Jewish area of old town called Mella. There were 65,000 Jews in Fes in 1967. Most of them left for greener pastures after the June war that year and current Jewish population is down to 534, only 200 of them women. The guide was lamenting that the Jewish young men go abroad to find wives and it is no easier for his two daughters to find husbands. The quarter is run down. It may have been burnt down during the protests in Arab – Israel wars. Most of the current residents are Muslims and reconstruction of Jewish sites depends upon help from American, and possibly European, Jews. He showed us the cemetery, Rabbi’s old collapsed house with just one exterior wall still standing, Jewish hammam but not the synagogue. Rest of the morning was a disappointment – Only Muslims are allowed to enter a Moroccan mosque; much to our surprise because we have visited much grander mosques all over Africa and Asia. Much of Fes seems to be open for view only from outside, Royal Palace, its grounds, major parks and historic mausoleums are all closed to visitors. In view of great emphasis on promoting tourism these restrictions are strange.

On our last day we visited the museum which was within a stone’s throw of our hotel yet quite hard to find. The items on display included many interesting antique doors, textiles, armours, pottery and old Qurans with splendid calligraphy. The courtyard of the museum building, a nineteenth century palace converted into museum, is a splendid garden with a variety of birds which were heard but not seen and a myrtle tree which I do not remember ever seeing before. There were several orange trees loaded with juicy fruit which nobody seemed to want. After the museum we had lunch in a genuine Fes restaurant in the Medina which served better food than our hotel at one quarter of the price. We had a long walk in the Medina to find famous mosques. We found two; they did not look any different from outside either from each other or from other mosques in Fes. The walk back to the hotel was a steep uphill and we were quite proud of ourselves to have done it with only a little huffing.

Of all the great Islamic cities we have visited, I found Fes to be the least attractive from a tourist’s perspective. The situation is made worse by poor maps, hardly any directions, hard to find and often dishonest cabs and almost total ignorance of English among general population. Then there is the smell – that of putrid waste in the Medina and diesel fumes from antique cars everywhere. Environmentalists should be complaining about pollution in this holy city rather than wasting their breath in the West.

We flew to Paris in the evening. Our flight got there around ten. We had a long wait for the shuttle and it took an hour and a half to get to the Holiday Inn. Evelyn ordered hot milk in the café and she was served a small cup of sour cold milk. She complained and was served a small hot glass of sour milk. I do not remember ever having been served milk in a restaurant that had gone off. But then French do have their own way of doing things. We had a lot of hassle the next morning to get to Charles De Gaulle airport from Orly airport because the bus got caught in a traffic jam. Fortunately we had anticipated problems and had allowed plenty of time and made the flight to London easily. However, we had to make a mad dash in London through miles of corridor and inevitable security check to reach the gate for the final lag of the journey in the nick of time. Our luck turned at last. The plane had several empty seats and Evelyn slept through the flight stretched over three seats wrapped in two blankets while I slept a little, read a little and did nothing mostly, the only thing I am good at.

We were happy to be home, even happier when we learnt that we had missed the cold spell of -30 degrees by a day.

2010-11-26T09:17:00.000-08:00

A Doctor meets a lawyer.

We are getting on in life and the urge to wrap up the worldly affairs gets stronger by the day. Of all such affairs the will is probably the most important. By will I mean the legal document that is pulled out of the safe and opened with great ceremony after the body has been appropriately disposed. The family lawyer and trustee read the document with due solemnity to all family members who may be entitled to share what is left of your estate after paying hospital, nursing home, funeral home, trustee and the lawyer. It took some convincing for me to believe that financial managers will leave more in the estate than all the hawks will demand for their real and imaginary services. The clinching argument was that the likelihood of such a happy happenstance was greater if things were clearly spelt out and the work of the trustee and the lawyer was reduced to a minimum.

I wrote a clear set of instructions on what was to be done with any estate left after paying for care in my old age. The instructions were emailed to the lawyer of my husband’s company. After exchange of several phone calls and emails, the gentleman drew up a legal document and advised me to meet him at his office at 5 PM on Friday. I drove to his downtown office at the height of rush hour and found a parking place which was not in a tow-away zone. I had to run to his office and curse the elevator in three languages for keeping me waiting to get to his office at 4:59. The front door to the office was open. It seemed that the secretary had already left. I surreptitiously looked in the hardworking man’s office but there was no sign of his august presence. I sat down in the waiting area and opened a two year old Time Magazine to remind me of the world shattering events in one of the final weeks of the last millennium. I was engrossed in the story of President Clinton’s cigar when an elderly man hobbled in. “Oh Dr. Jolly, so sorry to keep you waiting. I was hit by a car when hurrying from a meeting to get back. Will you mind looking at my knees and my back where the pain is most excruciating.” He started stripping his clothes off and I had no choice but to examine him and recommend that he take some pain killer and see his doctor as soon as possible. “You won’t happen to have some with you by any chance, the pain is killing me,” he whimpered. I searched my handbag and found a few tablets to tide him over. He told me where the washroom was so I could get him some water to wash down the tablets. After the tablets were duly swallowed, he put his clothes back on and asked me to stop in his office to sign the papers.

He produced two copies of a standard form with a poorly typed document for me to glance over and sign. Then he signed it as a witness and gave me a copy. After that he produced an envelope with great ceremony and remarked, “This is my invoice for the fee for services. I hope you will find every thing satisfactory.” I stuffed the envelope in the handbag, thanked him and walked to the car. After all the events of last hour, a parking ticket would have been the last straw. Thankfully, some one up above was looking after the camel.

When I got home I looked at his bill. Looking at the sloppy typing and the number staring me in the face, I felt the decimal had moved a couple of spaces to the right. When my husband got home, I showed it to him. He was only mildly surprised with the amount, having been fleeced by lawyers at regular interval in his business dealings. However, when I told him the story of lawyer’s accident, he was quite disturbed. He went straight to the phone and left the lawyer a message to call my office and leave his health insurance details so I could bill Alberta Health Care for my services. Unfortunately, my service rates are fixed by the government and my fee did not amount to a tiniest fraction of what I had to pay him. To rub salt in the wounds (mine, not his), my fee was pre-tax and he had to be paid out of post-tax income.

Why oh why did I not take my father’s advice and go to the Law school for a couple years instead of ten years of hard slog called medical training?

2010-11-05T08:52:00.000-07:00

Late Night Thoughts on Khadr Trial

“You will forever be a murderer in my eyes.” Tabitha Speer tells Omar Khadr.

The statement was made by the widow of an American soldier to an enemy prisoner who supported the Taliban troops and allegedly threw a grenade that killed her husband. I am not so insensitive as not to be sorry for the widow. However, I do ask myself how many Americans are feeling sorry for widows, mothers and children in Iraq and Afghanistan who were killed by their soldiers in combat or in the indiscriminate bombing of the ‘enemy’ communities over last ten years. In spite of my admiration for many qualities which are almost exclusively American and my distaste for religious fundamentalism, I personally feel in a bind on who I should side with more – the people who were going about living their primitive lives in their primitive villages and towns or the people who invaded with their sophisticated weaponry the countries half way round the world to impose their own culture on them for reasons incomprehensible even to many American citizens. Surely the Iraqis and Afghans, poor and illiterate they may be, have the same emotions and deserve the same sympathy for their loss as the people who use elegant phrases to express their hatred for the enemy who only did what their husbands were trying to do to them.

Americans are entitled to defend themselves as much as anybody. However, this entitlement is only valid when they are being attacked and only against the enemies they have identified. Destroying a whole village by rockets fired by unmanned drones directed from Virginia because some Taliban leader may be hiding there is not defending America, it is attacking that village. If you are honest you have to accept that such attacks entitle residents of the village and their supporters, be they Taliban or foreign friends, to repel and if necessary kill the invaders by throwing grenades or whatever means are at their disposal.

Most Westerners believe that the 9/11 attacks have given America a cart blanche to destroy whatever they wish and wherever they wish to prevent the reoccurrence of the horrible event. That may be so but is it wise, not to mention ethical, to set no clear aims and limits? The original goal of the invasion of Afghanistan was the destruction of El Qaeda. Within a few months of the start of the fighting the followers of that group had scattered all over the world and the leaders left Afghanistan and are known to have been working from Pakistan. Rather than moving the soldiers to Pakistan, successive U.S. administrations have been sending arms and other aid to the tune of tens of billions of dollars every year to Pakistan government and the killings in Afghanistan continue unabated. The aim now is the destruction of Taliban who are accused of wishing to keep Afghans in dark ages. It is probably true but there are other tribal leaders there who pay lip service to the West in exchange for truck loads of dollars and are no better, in many ways worse, than Taliban and no one is destroying their villages. In many respects the mullahs of Iran follow the same creed and no one has invaded Iran. Only apparent reason for the West to fight Taliban is that they will not accept continued presence of invaders in their midst and they will fight rather than compromise their value system. As people who cherish our own value systems and are fighting to defend them we should be treating these fellow travelers (in this respect at least) with respect, not contempt.

In this context I should mention the Mau Mau movement in Kenya fifty years ago and its charismatic leader Jomo Kenyatta. For more than a decade British soldiers labeled the movement as terrorists, put a high price on the head of Kenyatta and fought them tooth and nail. When the loss of life became unacceptable and Kenya’s importance to the “Empire” diminished, British negotiated with Kenyatta and anointed him the President. There are several other cases of former terrorists leading their countries, often with distinction. It should not surprise any one if that happens before long in Afghanistan too.

El Qaeda has not succeeded in mounting another major terrorist attack in the U.S. since 9/11. But they have been a major factor in the near collapse of the economy. To combat El Qaeda the former President started unwinnable wars in two far off countries and built an immense security structure which not only costs more than the whole budget of many developed countries, it also inconveniences citizens at every step and adds significantly to the cost of doing business. These actions have been a huge drain on the economy and the debt administrations have accumulated over last eleven years is now counted in trillions. Moral authority goes with economic power and the debt of this magnitude has eroded the power of suasion the U.S. Presidents once had. It is a shame that the only super power at the beginning of the new millennium lost that distinction just as its nemesis did in the eighties, and the millennium is barely a decade old.

Incredible though it may seem, the decline and the probable fall of American economic empire is largely due to actions of one sick man – Osama Bin Laden – who was also behind the events that were the catalyst for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

2010-10-29T08:14:00.000-07:00

Feeling Young

Helen and I went to school together sixty years ago. Our paths separated only to join again fifty five years later when we were in our seventies. Our children protested but we calmed them down by handing over all our assets to them except a little we needed to supplement our meager pensions. We did not marry for money nor for the looks because at our age one has learnt that appearances never fail to deceive. I can assure you dear reader, that we did not marry for sex either because none of us had forgotten the miserable experience on the back seat of my Dad’s car and had no desire to recompense for it at our age.

So what was it that prompted two introverted bookish individuals with six children, twenty five grandchildren and eight great grandchildren between them, to tie the knot when well past the prescribed three scores and ten? I can’t speak for Helen except to say that it was not my culinary skills that persuaded her; I have never dared to eat what little I have ever cooked. I can only tell you what there was in it for me. It was the rush of Dopamine to the right centres of my feeble brain when I saw her, even thought of her. But what caused this rush. It is the story that I want to tell you. Please bear with me, it is not long. Younger readers please don’t laugh. Older readers will understand; some of them may even envy me.

After the fate snatched away from me the beloved wife of fifty years, I liquidated my home in the suburbs and moved to a small apartment downtown. I could walk to a hole in the wall that called itself Jim’s Pizza House but served excellent Moussaka cooked by his charming wife in the kitchen you could see through the window. Along with a side dish of Greek salad and Baklava with Espresso to round it up, I had enough to eat for the day. I usually dosed through the dinner hour in front of the TV with an open book in my lap and when I woke up I never could remember whether I had had the dinner or not. If I felt peckish I ate a few chocolate chip cookies with some chamomile tea. Otherwise I brushed my teeth with the fancy electric toothbrush my dentist grand daughter had given me a few birthdays ago and rolled into a cold bed. When I woke up, I read the National Post (or was it Mail?) with occasional sips from a cup of Darjeeling tea and then had resin bran for breakfast, in the same bowl I had used the previous day because I had forgotten to wash it. I hardly did anything all day because I could not remember what it was that I should have done.

Then I met Helen in the Pizza House. When I entered the restaurant on a beautiful day, one of the three faces on the table on my right seemed familiar somehow although, no surprise there, I couldn’t quite place it. I went to my usual table and sat down. After a few minutes Jim walked over. I was expecting him to say, “The usual sir” but I heard instead, “The lady over there has asked me to offer to you an appetizer of your choice. What will be your pleasure sir?”

I did not usually order gin and tonic, although, if I remember it right, I never had a meal without it in my young days. So I ordered it and trudged over to the lady in a blue dress, a gold necklace and diamond earrings sitting with her back to the wall, sunlight streaming from the window on her happy face.
“Thank you very much for the drink. I know I should remember you, the face is familiar but the memory has gone the way of so many other things in my old age. Please save me from sleepless nights for the rest of my life.”
“Hello David. I am Helen. We went to Jim Lloyd High together.”
A billion watt bulb flashed.
“Of course! How stupid of me. Now I remember it as if it was yesterday. How have you been?
“I have been fine except that I lost my husband of forty five years. I moved here a couple of months ago to be near two of my children.”
She introduced me to her son and the daughter who were with her. We arranged to meet for lunch the following week to share what life had thrown at us.

I made notes with red ink on white stickies and placed them at key points in the apartment to make sure I remembered the appointment. When the day arrived at long last I polished my shoes, dressed carefully in a white shirt, blue suit and the matching red tie and combed my remaining hair carefully covering the bald patches as well as it could be done. The jacket hanged loose, pants dragged along the ground and the collar of the shirt was a little big but it was better than any thing else in my antiquated wardrobe. I walked over to the Pizza House half an hour before the appointed time. While waiting my thoughts went back to the teen years. Helen was the bright kid in the class; I was the macho sports kid. To no one’s surprise we got together. I was lost in the reverie when I heard the voice that hadn’t changed much, “Sorry, I am late. I missed the stop and had to walk back.”
“I hadn’t noticed the time. Glad to see you and note that you still look the same.”
“Stop flattering me. It won’t get you anywhere now.”

The lunch lasted almost till the dinner time. I was amazed at how much she remembered of our years together. We arranged to meet again, and again. It didn’t take long for us to fall in love, properly this time.

What made me fall for her? I can assure you it was more than the loneliness of a widower. I was blown away by how sharp the brain of Helen still was in spite of us being of the same age. She remembered where we had met, what we had eaten at all our previous meetings and how it tasted, every word I had spoken while I couldn’t recall any detail about the previous rendezvous, even what she had just asked. She pointed out that the glasses were in my pocket when I was going berserk looking for them but she always knew where the pen in her handbag was; leave alone the whereabouts of the bag. She knew the exact time for the bus when I had forgotten where the stop was.

I felt in my bones that Helen would resolve all my problems if she became part of my life. There was nothing I could contribute towards her welfare but I asked for her hand anyway. I am bewildered whenever I think of it that she accepted. Of course all the hell broke loose when we told our plans to our respective children. However, the things worked out after some give and take, give from us and take from our families. We had a small wedding celebration with our local families followed by a short honeymoon – stroll on the Sandy Beach in Calgary – and settled down in an apartment not far from Helen’s son to make it easy for him to drop the kids when other care was not available. My hopes were realized as well. Thanks to all kinds of neurotransmitters now circulating in my brain my memory circuits revived and Helen’s patience is not tested as often as it used to be when we were courting. I am feeling young in so many other ways too that who knows; we may even be able to consummate our marriage one day.

2010-10-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

Fall From the High Point
1

Extroverts have all the fun. So they say. But introverts know that it is not true. Only our idea of fun is different. Getting drunk and boisterous without knowing why and cheering in a concert hall or a sports stadium till we are hoarse is not our game. We enjoy intense discussions on serious topics plaguing the mankind with or without reaching an agreement. The idea of fun is one where the twains – introverts and extroverts – will never meet.
The discussions are usually held over lunch. We set the topic of discussion in advance, read all we can get hold of on the subject, mull over the material, come to some conclusions and prepare arguments to support them. The discussions are often heated, certainly hotter than the tepid bisque served in the “always open” modest diner we meet in. In younger days I had a large number of friends and such meetings were frequent. In recent years, retirement has claimed many of them and I am lucky if I can find a guest once a month. In some ways it is good. It helps me lose weight as I lose height with growing years.
Ravi is the person I lock horns with most often. I first met him thirty five years ago when he moved a few doors away from where I lived in a community of middle class young professionals and hopeful business managers. He had a lovely wife who got along well with mine, perhaps because they were both from Peru and could talk to each other in Spanish. Each of the families had two girls of similar ages who played well together. I worked then, as I do now, with two other architects specializing in renovations and small buildings. Not much has changed, not in my professional career any way. Ravi, on the other hand, had a remarkable career. He was brought to Canada by a small service company with big plans. His expertise was in designing innovative software to help in exploration of oil and gas. Ravi had big plans for himself too. For a change from my other stories this one is not about me. This is about Ravi, his rise and fall.
We had our last meeting a couple of weeks ago. We resolved the housing crisis south of the border and disagreed about the impact it will have on the price of our homes. We were heading for the cars when Ravi looked at my truck and asked whether I could help in moving his desk and chair from his office to the basement of his home. I agreed without the slightest hesitation and the date and time convenient to both of us was readily agreed upon. On my drive back to work his amazing career occupied my thoughts.
Much happened to Ravi during the years and I have watched it with some amazement. A year or two after we had met he came over for coffee one weekend morning. When we had made ourselves comfortable in the den with mugs of steaming Kona coffee in our hands he threw the opening gambit in the conversation, “You won’t believe what I have done.”
“I don’t know whether I will or not. You have to tell me first.”
“I have resigned from my job. I am starting a consulting business in oil industry.”
“No I don’t believe it. You can’t do something so foolish. You couldn’t have considered it fully. Monica is a full-time homemaker, you have two little girls in elementary school, you have just moved into an expensive home. I guess you have a big mortgage.”
“You are right on the details. To add to these we have very little in the bank.”
“Not only that, you have been in the country only two years and I don’t imagine you have all that many business contacts. You don’t seem to be the type to have a mentor. You being brown does not help in this country either.”
“You are bang on with the negatives. Mind you, there are a few positives too.”
“Tell me. I am all ears.”
“I have worked in five countries and my broad international experience is an asset. Unlike most consultants in business I have studied and worked in all aspects of geophysical exploration. Published research has given me some exposure.”
“That is all fine. Have you got anything lined up to put food on the table next month? You are always welcome here of course.”
“I hope it won’t come to that. My former employers in Denver have offered a lucrative, though short, assignment. I will use this time to drum up some local work.”
“What does Monica think about it?”
“I explained all this to her. She listened very patiently and agreed. She thought it was worth a try if I wanted to do it so bad.”
“You have a gem of a wife. I know many women who will kill their husbands for less.”
“I know Monica is a treasure.”

2

Monica made a suggestion that Ravi worked out of home office to begin with but he brushed it aside. He subleased a small office space on the ninth floor of the building downtown. It had two rooms, one for him and another for a helper if and when he could afford one. “Farsighted guy, he will go far,” I thought when he told me this. As it turned out, he needed a technical assistant a few months later and I recommended him a good candidate who had applied to our firm. The business expanded rapidly. Four years later I renovated two thousand square feet for his eight employees, five professionals and three support staff. One evening I saw a marvelous view of sunset over the Rockies from his seventeenth floor corner office. I felt sorry for my friend because I did not believe that he had either time or inclination to appreciate such niceties. He occupied that space for five years.
A gas station in our community went out of business. It was an attractive building on a large lot. One evening over beer on his patio Ravi asked whether it would be feasible to convert the existing facility into an office space of four thousand square feet with the mortgage payment about the same as the rent he was paying then. A month later I presented the plans and the cost estimates. I could use the existing facilities almost as they were and add two floors of office space where the gas tank had been. Ravi was delighted and the construction started soon after. He moved into the converted gas station the following year. A year later I built for him another building on the lot where Monica opened her medical practice with two doctor colleagues. Two other doctors and a small lab occupied the upstairs floor. Ravi and Monica had the only ‘His’ and ‘Hers’ pair of buildings in town. At this point, his consulting operation had seven professionals, three technicians and an office manager. His reputation in the industry was such that the size, revenue and profitability of his business stayed at this level for several years with only minor fluctuations in spite of notorious ups and downs in the oil industry. Unbeknown to either of us this was the crest in the trajectory of his business career. Then the gods turned against him and made him proud.

3

I arrived at my cubicle and forgot all about Ravi’s story till the time I helped in his move. After we had set up the desk and chairs and hooked up his computer system, Monica asked whether I had time for a slice of pecan pie she had baked that morning. “Only if it comes with plenty of whipped cream and a cup of Tetley’s tea,” I cheekily replied. Ravi and I sat across the desk waiting for refreshments when he told me some things about his career I had not known before. These filled the holes in the story I had in my mind. It is a long tale. I will spare you the details and only touch the salient points.
Ravi had set up a registered retirement savings plan (RRSP) soon after his arrival in Canada to take advantage of deferred tax on contributions to the plan. At first, his investment activities were restricted to this, “if only because that was the only money I had” he told me. Call it beginner’s luck, his investments did well. A few years later he was buying shares with the money left over from business operations. A few grand failures excepted, these investments were productive too. Then came a point at which investment income was comparable to that from consulting operations. I now quote him because I can not bring myself to believe it. “This is when business sense left me and vanity took over. I began to believe that I could do no wrong and it was time to diversify the operations into fields I only had superficial knowledge of” He acquired exploration rights over two large areas, one for oil and gas and the other for iron ore. I remember his excitement at that time and him telling any body who would listen all the technical reasons in excruciating detail for expecting huge deposits there. On my wife’s advice I kept the cheque book in the drawer but a few of his other friends with gambling in their blood put some of their retirement funds in the so-called high risk/high reward, in my opinion all risk/no reward, projects. Years later Ravi had this to tell me: “While the ventures were sheer folly they were nothing compared to my decision to give up the lucrative consulting business. With no flow of spare funds from this business the cash eventually ran out. After several years of hard work and an expenditure of considerable amount of money, both ventures had to be folded. Not only did I lose money, I lost face as well, although the generous partners stayed on congenial terms.”
When the consulting business was put to bed, the building was too large for the remaining operations. An accounting firm made a reasonable offer for the property which, after much heartache, Ravi accepted. He first leased a two thousand square feet space with five offices for five years, then moved to twelve hundred square feet with three offices for two years and relocated again to eight hundred square feet with two offices for four years shedding employees at each stage. Let me use his words for the final stroke of fortune, “2008 stock market meltdown heaped the ultimate ignominy on me. The account with the money leftover in my corporation and Monica’s medical practice was entirely wiped out. I laid off my last employee, the long term office manager, and now I have had to move my desk and computer to the basement of our home.”
I should have been more understanding of the weight of melancholy my dear friend was under. Instead I was inwardly gloating about the wisdom of staying in the same cubicle doing the same job till my days were done. “How does it feel to fall from the high point in the trajectory to the prospect of working on retirement funds in the basement?” I asked.
“Even though I will not miss the grind of daily commute, I can not get rid of the sense of failure. If any of my operations had succeeded and I had retired to the basement after handing the business over to a successor, I would have an upbeat sense of having created something which outlasted me. Now when I look in the mirror I see a man who thought he was great only to discover that greatness is not assumed but bestowed by proven success.”
“This is all so sad. I am really sorry for you.”
A smile lit up Ravi’s face, “No need to be sorry dear friend. The sense of failure is ephemeral. In spite of everything I have love and respect of a wife and two daughters, high achievers all.That makes up for my business failures and I am content.”