The Y-AXIS LIVE!

In India we are not unused to being reminded by a section of the Western commentators about how poor, dirty, over populated and kind of burden-of-the-world  we are- the BBC is a living example, its TV reporters seemingly have to file reports only when there’s a cow or a drain behind, at least a child with a running nose( and Nizamuddin Nalla seems a favourite)! The Beeb is not alone.

A leading research analyst at Forrester, Navi Radjou while proposing ‘India’s Interdependence’ this year, has this to say

"To put it more bluntly, India just can’t keep inventing locally when it comes to massive socio-economic problems such as illiteracy, the energy crunch, wobbly infrastructure, and its dismal healthcare system"

(Read Mr. Radjou’s recipe for India at Harvard Business Publishing article).

Thanks Mr. Radjou. Looking at your frustration about Indians ‘inventing locally’ somehow I feel it is good you went away from the land of your birth. Must be quite a relief- Mutual.

Lekhni evaluates the profound stupidity of naming someone as “Tallulah does the hula from Hawaii" and moves on to the implications of imperfect nomenclatures.

It isn’t too long ago that the Canadians famously decreed that their computers cannot distinguish one Amrit Kaur from another, and hence they would not entertain visa requests from ladies having Kaur and Singh as their surname. Thankfully they reprogrammed their computers and retreated.

Fortunately God was not a database admin, else he would have shouted "imperfect unique key" at the sight of such simple and oft occurring names such as mine. Why, most possibly we human beings would be all be reduced to numbers. The simpletons would say "Hi, I 897364926, call me 89". They more style concerned ones would introduce as "Hi, I am 89. 897364926". Idea Cellular guys even perceived this as a great opportunity to get rid of caste and religion differences and ran a very humorous TVC.

Then the Indian politician would almost certainly invent the VIP quota in that too. All numbers ending with two zeroes would either be allotted to ‘VIPs’. For four zeroes you would need some real clout, and not just be another ‘VIP’. For one paltry zero at the end you would need to pay some extra premium at the name registry. Of, course the recommendation from the local ‘leader’, would make sure you get it for sure. In Gulf countries, their would be confusion galore as they read-write left-to-right. When you greet someone as "Hello 43 Sheikh", he’d quickly retort that he’s Thirty-Four Sheikh, not Forty Three Sheikh.

Of course, those numerologically discerning would fight for numbers that add upto 9. Consider Amitabh Bachchan not as as Amitabh Bachchan but 9⁹. (Namaskar 24-36-24ji, Kaun Banega Crorepati se main 9⁹ bol raha hoon. Aapke pati 548266 hamare saamne hot seat par baithe hain") I am quite certain names such as 900009, 636300 would be reserved by parents even before the series is opened. Why, name squatters would do roaring business on Ebay.

The usual icebreakers in Chennai - and I love them - would have to morph and mutate. Today when I meet someone whose name I should know but I don’t, I just greet him as "Hi Bala, Paddy was mentioning about your new house". It turns out to be right, or the person responds, "I am Paddy, you must be meaning that Bala told you about my house?". I quickly grin that I took the names mixed up and get away. Either way you are not sure what his name is, since Bala could be Balamurugan, or Balasubramanyam. And if he’s Paddy, whether he’s Padmanabhan Chelapathi, or Padmanaban Ramamurthy. Either way, I remain completely confused. And wait. In eight out of ten cases Bala or Paddy turn out to be Venkat, actually!

But then I am not complaining. When I was growing up in Delhi, a friendly sardar once introduced himself to me as, "Hi I’m Balwant, you can call me Lovely".

I have been a net freak for quite a while now and don’t let go a single chance to lecture my colleagues and friends on the latest tools and sites that help us do this and do that. I use it like a machine to communicate and buy sell, blog, and occasionally leave scraps and respond to them, and poke people on Facebook. I also admire when Mark Zuckerburg rides the wave of social networking to become a billionaire, but never given a thought beyond that, my skepticism always getting better of my sense to appreciate innovative new business. The social networking thing never touched me, I mean like the way it has , in the last few weeks.

The MBA boys are fairly well connected, and most of them are a phone call away. One did not have to make much effort to create the phonebook, it somehow seems to have happened, via meetings at airports, or when visiting another city. And anyway, Gazab, Padri and Mota all love that old thing called Linkedin, where you invite and accept and then basically do nothing. And precisely how joke forwards in the old boys network can be called as connecting actually beats me.It is somehow integral to the creed to MBAs to ‘hate’ each other and still be in touch! My wife (mercifully, not an MBA, but a more real variety called PhD researcher) has been a die-hard Orkuter who keeps telling me of people she reconnected via Orkut.

Cut to late 2007. The long lost engineering gang starts to emerge. It becomes interesting to see the difference of one person could make to building this connect. Okay, make it two of them. And Tripathi is in Australia, and Binay in Bengal, working as an Indian Railways officer. After digital identities, phone numbers are ascertained, one to another, and I get to be back in touch with several of them. Call it engineering precision.Wow!

Cut to last evening.Via an Orkut scrap, Apurva Mathur, my class mate from Kendriya Vidyalaya , Andrewsganj, New Delhi (we like calling it KVAG) points me to a picture posted on Facebook which is our school farewell picture(Three months back I discovered Apurva Mathur when surfing KVAG community on Orkut at my wife’s insistence). I have long lost the my copy of this photo so this one gets all my attention. I try to recall the names, but Vivek Varma, my newly discovered classmate has taken the pains to list all the names. Not just that, he has tagged couple of them via their Facebook profiles. I was completely overwhelmed to see the picture yesterday. I asked Vivek for his phone number and spoke to him near midnight. We used to travel together to school in the same van, and studied in the same class for 4 years.It was quite unbelievable to hear his voice after so about 19 years. I have been day dreaming this morning and listening mentally to my classroom ruckus, which happened decades back.

Facebook and Orkut - wish your owners another billion dollars. What you have given me is treasure.

PS: What next? My kindergarten friends from Doon Cultural Centre? My early school friends from Prabhat Tara School Muzaffarpur? How will they come to be reconnected to me- via Twitter?

I do not normally comment on blogs per se. But then it is not too commonplace to find two bloggers in the same family, more so belonging to two different generations. The Barmas are an exception.  Asit , who has started blogging recently, while his son Aniket has been blogging since September last year. Blogging seems to bring the excitement of sharing and reliving the happenings irrespective to age , generation and profession.

But then there are differences too. While Aniket has chosen Blogger as his platform to talk about his academics, cricket and so on, for Asit it is hosted Wordpress with custom look and feel as the platform of choice. Writing seem to come very naturally to both dad and son though.

Aniket feels the movie Jaane Tu has a great music (Melodious Rock - is it a new genre?!) and recommends the movie to everyone, dad Asit feels impressed enough by Genalia to compare  her to test cricket (vis-a-vis Deepika Padukone who is like T20 as Asit would have us believe). Who says men age!

Asit and Aniket, keep blogging, we are following your blog. I found Asit’s today’s post on his meeting with Syed Kirmani at MMA yesterday quite interesting.

Note: Another family where two generations are bloggers - Rajeev Karwal and Samarth Karwal.