Part of a Guinness Record!

Last month, i was fortunate to be part of a an extra ordinary event organized by Silicon Andhra, an event that pulled in a hundred sixty thousand people to sing the popular songs of a sixteenth century poet-saint Annamayya, on his 601st birthday. Annamayya occupies a unique place in Telugu history and literature - he had composed 32,000 songs devoted to Lord Venkateswara (Balaji). Each of these songs is a gem, and i had the good fortune of growing up listening to the LP records of MS Subbu Lakshmi singing them in her mesmerising voice. One of the most unforgettable experiences of my life was her live concert in 1994 (just the night before i had a big exam).

Now the artist/singing fraternity is fairly politicized (which fraternity is not?) and fragmented. However it was impressive to see many of them come together onto one platform and pull off this event. There was a grassroots movement too, by people in many villages, towns, schools and corporates to learn the songs. Since some Good Samaritans at my work place (Rambabu Kaipa - a CSR champion, Srinivas Prabhala - an accomplished artist) took the lead, it was easy for me to venture slightly beyond bathroom singing. On the big day, my eighty year old grand mother and I made it to the venue, amongst the milling crowds and savoured the occasion. There was a spring in my grandma's step despite a nagging knee injury, and she handled the crowds like a charm! The only thing amiss was the real sound of 160k voices which was drowned out by the blaring loudspeakers relaying the artists on stage (G Balakrishna Prasad and his son).

The event clearly brought out, the deep hunger people have to learn and enjoy Telugu classical music. Hope music in the state get a big boost with this Guinness record making event!

The Last Eleven Years

Yesterday I completed eleven years of my work life. I have evolved a lot as an individual, yet in many ways I still remain the same 'old guy'. Incidentally over the last weekend, two of my companions on a long bike ride were trying to guess my age!

What caught my eye on the first day of the twelfth year, was this article by Ramachandra Guha on his reflections about the India of the last eleven years! He talks about how India is experimenting on various dimensions all at once - nationalistic, democratic, industrial, urban and social. I somehow remain utterly optimistic about how this evolution will culminate!

"Lashkar" by Mukul Deva

It has been a while since i read fiction, and Mukul Deva's Lashkar proved to be a wonderful resumption point. Lashkar is a fast paced and gripping thriller, with a plot based on terrorism and Pakistan. Mukul goes to the heart of the matter touching both how terrorism impacts people at a personal level, and how it needs to be tackled. Took me most of a Saturday to run through it, and be amazed at the fact pace of it.

I grew up reading a lot of war fiction by Alistair McLean, Desmond Bagley, Robert Ludlum, Frederick Forsyth etc. Mukul's military thrillers are clearly in this genre and he easily ranks well in this peer group. Strongly recommend!

"Indians Deserve Their Politicians"

Atanu Dey quotes this Financial Times article, and sums up that the Indian people deserve the Congress. An auto walla told me something similar yesterday evening. I was taking an auto rickshaw from Secretariat to Domalguda, hardly 1.5 km distance. Most auto wallas either do not come, or demand Rs 20-30 (way above the usual minimum fare of Rs 12).

This man was an exception, he smiled, and even politely enquired me about the elections. I told him about Loksatta the new party, and how it could win a few seats in Hyderabad. He nodded saying, "Well there are few educated people who will vote for them, especially in the Jubilee Hills constituency". When I suggested most other politicians are crooks, this young man (all of twenty years) concurred but added, "It is the Indian public that is to blame, we vote for them after taking money, we accept their biryani feasts and liquor packets and vote for them. We deserve their rule as we break the rules of civic engagement. We are the bigger thieves!". "Why, the other auto wallas demand Rs 20 for the same ride, isn't that too thievery?", he asked.

I came home feeling good about meeting one man with clarity of thought. He aptly summarised, what took an IIM professor a full book.

"Terrorism in India" & 'Secular' Bogeys

Rediff published an article titled 'Terrorism started because of BJP' and links it to 26/11 Mumbai attacks. I am not a die-hard political supporter of BJP, but still find this article absolutely inane, because it confuses the real reasons behind the rise of terrorism.

Global terrorism traces back to the Cold War political tussle between USA and USSR, when the latter invaded Afghanistan. The US cynically exploited religion to defeat the Soviets, by funding terrorists and the Pakistan Army (which got radicalised thanks to General Zia and created the Taliban). Pakistan has been using both the funding (very cleverly procured and blackmailed, it is now clearly an art) and the terrorists as a weapon against India (since it has no other Raison d'être), leading to attacks such as 26/11. Now this Frankenstein monster is turning against Pakistan and threatens to destabilise the South Asia region. Destabilising effects will likely be more terrorist attacks in India and deeper trouble in Kashmir, as these terrorists and some Pakistani Army elements sort out their immediate issues and refocus on India.

It is ridiculous to see this desperate search for Indian 'equivalents' for the AfPak terrorism patterns, and blame them as the causes, all just to sound more 'secular'.

Dream: An Oil Addiction Free World

I ran into this awesome video of Shai Agassi on the TED blog and was blown away. Blown away at the sheer guts of this man who plans to cure the world of its crude oil addiction. He is dreaming and building a parallel infrastructure of electric cars, battery exchange stations (kill the gas station / petrol bunk), clean power generating hubs that create the portable charges and new battery technology underpinning all this. I can't wait to see the Big Oil corporatedom kicked in its butt. Can't wait to see the filthy rich Sheikhs slowly lose their oil power, power that is being misused to foment terror wars and prop up despotic regimes in the Middle East.

Voting in the Indian Elections 2009

Much has been written about the Indian Elections 2009 and turns out that the voting turnout in 2009 has been higher than the previous ones in 2004. More significantly the urban, educated class which has hitherto been apathetic has turned out in significant numbers to vote. I had written about this before the elections started and the hunch turned out to be true. What caused this change?

• New generation parties like Loksatta have emerged on the political scene - these seek to mirror the aspirations of the first time voters seeking change, and have enhanced the voter turnout.
  
• Movements such as Letsvote.in have added to this momentum, the turnout at the Hyderabad walk was large and showed the enthu among the IT crowd.
  
• Not to mention Jaagore which caused quite a stir in mobilising voter registrations. I was impressed with their CRM like approach to voter databases; however THE missing part was ensuring voters confirmed their names in the electoral rolls - this alone could have saved a few lakh votes, given the scale of their campaign targeting One Billion Votes.

After the election day, I checked with my friends on their voting experience - many confirmed that they indeed voted and proudly showed their index fingers embossed with the indelible voter ink (apparently in Maharashtra they smeared the middle finger, leading to a comic sight with voters showing it up). However a fairly large number also reported that their names were missing from the electoral rolls. All these cases could have been avoided if only the prospective voters had leveraged one of the many web resources available:

• http://www.pollingbooth.in/ - check your name in the rolls 3-4 weeks before the election data, if it is missing, immediately raise a request to the election office in your jurisdiction. In my case, I found my name but failed to notice the change in the polling booth; so on the election day, had to rush to the new booth i was assigned, some 4 kms away from my home.
• http://www.ceo.ap.gov.in/ - same as above, or the local equivalent
  
• http://www.ceoandhra.nic.in/Final_erolls_2009_II.html - same as above
• http://myneta.info/ - a wonderful tool comparing the profiles of the candidates in your constituency. This link showed me the picture for Secunderabad before i voted.

Hopefully the next election (which one fears, may not be too far away with the expected hung mandates) will see these trends intensify and the lessons learnt implemented. Technology would then have really helped influence change in the polity!

Biking now

After months of poking with the idea of buying a bike, i finally took the plunge last month and bought a Firefox Target, my first ever geared bicycle. The motives were many - get some exercise, make an eco friendly gesture, do something other than the plain old running that i fall back to, explore nature (atleast the green university campuses and cantonments in the twin cities), go on some long rides, splurge on myself (which I am not that good at) etc. The beautiful beast (no oxymoron) looks something like this:

I am well over the post purchase dissonance phase which thankfully was short. There are pricier and fancier bikes, but this is just what i need now. I did one brief lap in wilderness hidden within the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) campus (under the watchful eyes of HBC ace Sunil Menon), and several short road trips closer home.

I love the smooth ride of a bike, the almost noiseless way in which it rides the road. Cruising on the bike is next to the feel of a bird gliding! I plan to tweet about my bike escapades in the coming days. A distant but highly ambitious wish would be to complete the TFN this December.