The notice is a microcosm of Indianness. If you get past the English (hey, its a foreign tongue, so stop being so fussy) it really is a reflection of our relationship with predictability.

There are three kinds of Indians:

- Those that are unpredictable and don’t care.
- Those that are unpredictable, but would like you to expect, and perhaps accept, their unpredictability. The store owner who put this notice up belongs to this set.
- The predictable kind. Within India, this is a very small set.

Indians are not brought up to be predictable in their behavior. The environment (Bangalore traffic for instance) doesn’t allow us to be. But this is certainly a phenotype issue not a genotype one. Because somehow, when Indians leave India they leave their unpredictability behind.

The great achievement of the IT Services industry has been to extract predictable outcomes for clients out of this morass of unpredictability. They erect these boundary walls around the company. Within these figurative walls there are no power cuts and meetings start on time. Defects are measured and deadlines are met. Because that’s what clients in the developed world expect. It’s gotten easier and easier over time, but in the early days the pioneers did the equivalent of moulding square pegs to fit into round holes.

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The conservative members maintain that they are trying to correct what they see as a liberal bias among the teachers who proposed the curriculum. To that end, they made dozens of minor changes aimed at calling into question, among other things, concepts like the separation of church and state and the secular nature of the American Revolution.

Texas textbooks are important not just because Texas is a big state, but also because many small states just go with the Texas version of the textbooks because it costs less than commissioning their own versions.

Around this time last year the Texas Board voted to change science text books. Evolution, which is always in the spotlight when such matters are discussed, was saved by the skin of its teeth from being relegated to “one of many alternate theories”. However,

Failing to overhaul the curriculum broadly, conservatives instead attached a series of measures specific to subjects like biology, where teachers would be newly required to “analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of natural selection to explain the complexity of the cell.”

Christian Conservatives in American politics have recently been tripping over each other in their eagerness to denounce evolution. Bradley Byrne, candidate for Governor of Alabama was recently attacked in a TV ad which claimed that he believed in evolution. Byrne denied the “despicable lies”

“As a Christian and as a public servant, I have never wavered in my belief that this world and everything in it is a masterpiece created by the hands of God,” he said. “As a member of the Alabama Board of Education, the record clearly shows that I fought to ensure the teaching of creationism in our school text books. Those who attack me have distorted, twisted and misrepresented my comments and are spewing utter lies to the people of this state.”

Evolution and to some extent the Big Bang are the flash points in the battle between organized religion and science. They both inject serious doubt into the belief that god created the world and all its creatures, or Creationism. Sure, Intelligent Design can sort of fit the facts into a new theory that preserves the role of god, but that’s not good enough because the Bible doesn’t talk about ID. It vividly describes how god created the world.

This allergy to evolution is to be seen in Islam as well. Turkey, which is the most liberal Muslim country, has very little support for evolution. From the Washington Post

A recent survey, quoted in a 2008 article in the American journal Science, found that fewer than 25 percent of Turks accepted evolution as an explanation of how modern life came to be — by far the lowest percentage of any developed nation.

In the same article

The Discovery Institute of Seattle, which researches and promotes intelligent design as an alternative to creationism and evolution, also sent speakers to Turkey after being invited by the Istanbul municipal government in 2007. President Bruce Chapman said the institute helped bring Turkish evolution critic Mustafa Akyol to a 2005 Kansas school board hearing on teaching critiques of evolution.

A battle against as formidable a foe as science can bring together the two faiths. Somewhat like how Delhi High Court’s verdict allowing consensual gay sex brought together the BJP and All India Muslim Personal Board for the first time on any issue.

Are all religions opposed to evolution? Buddhism and Hinduism are the two other great religions of the world. Do devout Hindus view evolution as a threat to their beliefs? I haven’t heard of any attempts to mess around with science text books in India based upon ideology. Although the BJP did try to change history text books when Murli Manhor Joshi had charge of the HRD ministry.

In my view, other things being equal, Hinduism will be friendlier to evolution. The “other things being equal” being mostly about education. A high school education that teaches science and evolution well, will matter more to people’s acceptance of evolution than their religion or religiosity.

Why is Hinduism friendlier to evolution? It is not because religiosity amongst Hindus is less. Razib Khan analyzes religiosity amongst South Asians in developed countries. It turns out that South Asians are very religious. Being a large majority Hindus must also be very religious.

So there must be other reasons.

Many scriptures, not one Book – Islam and Christianity both have The Book which is the word of god, the ultimate truth. If that book says that god created the earth, then there can be no negotiation on that. Hinduism on the other hand has many scriptures – Bhagvad Gita, Vedas, Puranas, Upanishads, Ramayana. None of them to my knowledge are considered to be the word of god.

Many gods – For millennia, Hindus have had many gods. Personally you might worship just one god, but the people around you worship different gods. In a Hindu’s world view there is no one god and no one truth. Acceptance of alternate gods was in fact a design criteria in the Hindu faith. It was how the Aryans assimilated the tribes in India. This flexibility continued. As far back as the 15th century Hinduism tolerated an atheist school of philosophy.

No organized religion – Organizations perpetuate themselves. The conditions for organized religion to thrive are just not there in Hinduism. As a consequence there is very little, if any, religious education. Faith is a family or personal matter (Here I’m talking about faith rather than ritual).

Bizarre mythology – In Hinduism, scripture, literature and mythology weave a seamless fabric that every Hindu grows up with. From Ram Leela to Grandma’s stories to Amar Chitra Katha we are immersed in this sea of lore and mythology where individual stories can be evocative and powerful, but together they don’t make a cohesive whole. There are miracles in all religious texts, but Indian mythology can get so bizarre that really nobody will ever think it to be possible. The gods are depicted to be flawed, with unpredictable behavior (Why doesn’t Indra just use his thunderbolt and get it over with?). They are more like the DC comics of ancient Hindus than the Bible.

This tolerance for internal inconsistency makes it easier for Hinduism to accept a new idea like evolution. In fact if you look hard enough you will be able to find support in the scriptures or elsewhere in ancient texts for almost any idea. One might, for instance, see the Dashavatara as a metaphor for evolution.

I am not a devout Hindu. I am more Hindu by culture than religion, if there is in fact, a line separating them. I am sure many readers are though. It would be very interesting to get your views on how do you think Hinduism will respond to challenges from science in the years to come and specifically, evolution.

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1. More English and More Non-English

Now one could write a book on this subject (not me, I’ve already got a gig going but someone, I’m sure) but here’s a short blog post.

Whether you have an Indian passport or not is a terrible way to look at it. From the Husain media circus, it appears that surrendering the passport was really the event that made him unIndian. In spite of his protestations to the contrary, Barkha Dutt (link to NDTV above) seemed to think that was the case. It so happens that India does not permit dual citizenship. The OCI is not the same as citizenship. If like many other countries like the US, India did permit dual citizenship then Husain could have added the Qatari passport and no one would have cared.

I have many friends who live in India but hold a US passport. I think they would consider themselves Indian.

What about residency? Is that a good criterion? But then there are all kinds of Non Resident Indians. Short stays, long stays, those that are waiting for the kids to go to college to return. And then there are those who don’t intend to go back but still feel very connected to India.

I think that its just silly to try to draw these boundaries, and affix labels. Let’s just celebrate a shared culture with great diversity within it and fuzzy boundaries at the edges.

And it is downright hypocritical to celebrate Sunita Williams as one of our own, but decry M F Husain surrendering his passport as abandoning his country.

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A French fast food chain’s decision to serve only halal meat in eight restaurants with a strong Muslim clientele has sparked a wave of criticism from politicians decrying the step as unacceptable.

Quick, the restaurant chain, is also not serving any pork products in these restaurants.

Right wing politicians are making hay out of the incident. But to anybody not blinkered by religious prejudice, there is absolutely no logical argument that you can make against Quick’s decision. Quick is free to tailor their product to suit individual or group preferences. Customers who don’t like halal meat, even though it tastes identical, are free to go elsewhere for their meals. Customers who would like pork in their meals could also follow suit.

I would spend a little more time on searching for a grain of logic in the arguments of the critics, but that would be a waste of time. What is clearly happening is that Europe is seeing growing pressure against its secular principles. Switzerland’s minaret ban vote is another case in point. France itself is pretty close to banning the burqa, which I have to admit is not as illogical as the tirade against halal only restaurants, but is fueled largely by political calculations and an anti-minority sentiment.

When jobs are scarce, people turn against immigrants. Most of the Muslims in Europe are immigrants from North Africa or South Asia. Add that to the fact that some people can’t separate terrorists from the religion itself and you have a situation ripe for exploitation by politicians like Jean-Marie Le Pen.

This movie still has a few reels left.

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An Indian mother expresses her love by feeding her child till he groans “bus mummy”. In the sport of offspring feeding, she is unparelleled. It is not just the quantity of food, it is also the kind of food. She gives herself high points for feeding her “ladla” snacks fried in saturated fat, mithai and lots and lots of carbs. Resistance is futile. If there is ever any research done in this area, my money says that men living in joint families are more likely to be overweight.

The “tricks of the trade” have been passed down from generation to generation. Here is a short list of “tricks” employed by loving mothers all over India:

1. Not putting all the dishes in the menu on the table to begin with. Withholding key information relating to dessert.
2. Putting more rice or rotis onto your plate while you are distracted.
3. “Roti sookhi sookhi kyon kha rahe ho”. (Why are you eating your rotis dry?).
4. If you refuse a third helping of something – “Kyon acchah nahin laga?” – didn’t you like it?
5. “Sab khana tumhari pasand ka hai. Tumhe bachpan mein yeh bahut achcha lagta tha.” These dishes were your favourites when you were growing up.
6. And lest we forget “Beta, bahut duble ho gaye ho.” Son, you’ve lost too much weight.

My advice to you is to have a gameplan for when you go visit your mother. As for me, I gave up long ago. Meal after meal, I loosen my belt and clean my plate. I workout twice as much the week after..but for the few days I am with her I can’t break her heart.

To mothers everywhere…you’re the best.

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First of all, let me compliment you on your pricing strategy so far. You have aced the test on how to price information products. Information products like music are tricky – the content is all in digital form, the fixed costs are high and marginal costs approach zero. How do you price such a thing?

Your current strategy seems to be working well. You have segmented the market according to the listeners’ ability to pay. To each segment you offer a different product (or sometimes the same product) at vastly different prices. I checked prices at different places for the same album – Don. Here’s what I found:

1. Cassettes for the “Aam Aadmi” – Rs. 58 at Indiaplaza.in
2. CDs for the yuppie Indian – Rs. 160 at Indiaplaza.in
3. CDs for NRIs – $ 14.99 at amazon.com which I thought was crazy since the local Indian grocery store in Fremont sells them for $6.
4. Songs for NRIs – $0.99 on iTunes per song. Price of the album is just a sum of all the songs on it, in this case $7.92.

Even if you exclude the Amazon pricing, the highest to lowest ratios are 5 to 7 times. That is an amazing range of prices for what is essentially the same product. You are getting volumes at the low end and milking the high end. Best of both worlds.

But I hope you’ll understand if I as an NRI have a problem being royally ripped off. Luckily, I travel back to India quite often and pick up all my music here at Rs. 160 an album. I wonder what other Indians who don’t get back too often do. Pass USB disks around, I suppose. Lost revenue for you, but hey, who cares, you’re making a buck a song on iTunes.

I understand why you have to sell your songs for $0.99 on iTunes. You don’t have a choice – that’s the only pricing that Apple will allow. It just happens to be totally out of whack with CD music prices in India. And that rankles.

Most people want to buy music legally, if it is made simple and inexpensive for them to get it. Say this to yourself three times every morning after your morning prayers. And then think about your pricing strategy. There is a vast, relatively untapped appetite for Bollywood music amongst NRIs. If you just got rid of your pre-conceived notions.

Your current strategy has another flaw. It offers no legal way for Indians in India to download music.

Digital music in India is going to happen. I can easily visualize millions of portable music players in the hands of a young population with disposable income. With millions of music players in the market, how can there be no place where one can legally download music? iTunes + iPod together don’t work for India – too expensive – so that’s not an option. The way to make it work in India is to do what mobile handset manufacturers did – make it cheap and go for volumes. Matter of fact, it is quite possible that Nokia and Motorola might dominate the mp3 player market as well, as they include them in their cell phones.

As broadband in India truly becomes “broad”, the convenience of downloading music becomes very real. Especially for those people who listen to their music largely on their portable players. They don’t have to go to a store to buy the whole album when they actually want just a couple of songs. They don’t have to then “rip” the music off of the CD and convert it into mp3. And they don’t have to deal with your brittle, cheap CD cases, which break within two days leaving unprotected CDs around getting scratched.

So here are my recommendations for your digital music strategy:

1. Go DRM-less. I wrote about the DRM lock-in issues in an earlier post. I would strongly advise you to go DRM less. You have nothing to lose – DRM-less files are already out there – on every CD that you sell. What are you afraid of?
2. Price it low and fairly. Stop your “sock-it-to-the-NRI” pricing schemes. Eros Music is trying out a new pricing strategy – $0.25 per song outside India and Rs. 19 in India. There are very few songs (only the albums that they own) and the website sucks, but I think they are onto something. I’m not sure what their thinking is behind the discounted dollar price, but the Indian price per song is bang on. At eight songs for an album that would be the fair value of the song. Their album price is the price of a cassette, which is also surprising. But if the dollar price was even $0.50 that would be fair and very attractive. I’d build up my entire collection of Mukesh songs at these prices. Except that Eros won’t have those songs, Saregama would.
3. Think about flexible pricing. Amie Street has an interesting model where the price of a song, DRM-free by the way, goes up as demand goes up. You could experiment with your own pricing schemes. For instance, release a new album only digitally for a week. Charge a higher price for it.
4. Don’t do this on your own. I am not going to go to different sites for Eros, Saregama and Sony music. And don’t form a consortium to build the site either. They never work. Just let the industry know that you (all of you) are open to considering DRM free music downloads. I’ll bet that in three months there will be a dozen existing and new companies who will respond to it and offer to build online music stores.
5. Form an association like the RIAA and prosecute anybody who illegally hosts your music. Ask the Indian government to help in prosecuting people who operate from countries where the IP laws aren’t as strictly enforced.

But the first thing you need to do is get over your fear of piracy. There are a few things you can do to slow it down. Do them. But don’t expect it to go away. Selling DRM free, digital downloads is not going to increase piracy. Once you get over this mental hump, the rest is easy. You’re smart, (you have to be to have come up with your current pricing strategy), you’ll figure it out.

Sincerely,

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1. Piracy Pulling Down Music Sales
2. What to do About Falling Music Sales
3. Open Toolbox

On March 1, my wife, Vidya Pradhan and her friend Rohini Mohan started an “online magazine” for Bay Area Indians. It’s called Water, No Ice. It is full of original content – well written articles on – Entertainment, People, Business, Travel, Non-profits and more. The focus is on the Bay Area Indian and so there are many interviews with Indians here. But the themes will be interesting to all NRIs as well as the global Indian.

Vidya has been writing for a while including a children’s book. She brings her love of good writing (inherited no doubt from her writer mother Geeta Padmanabhan) to WNI. Beyond their passion for writing, Rohini and Vidya are excited about the concept of a classy, local, community web-site.

Take a look. You’ll enjoy it.

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The movie was quite remarkable. It was an out and out ‘commercial’ movie with a star cast, grand locales and great music. But the plot of the movie is where Karan Johar has explored the boundaries of a commercial movie. Besides being the director of the movie, the story is credited to him as well. At the center of the movie is an extra-marital affair between Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukherjee, who are married to Preity Zinta and Abhishek Bachchan. Khan and Mukherjee are trapped in loveless marriages. The find each other and become friends. The friendship grows into love and passion which takes them down a dangerous path on which there are some twists and turns that are straightened out at the end of the movie.

As I said, the movie is quite remarkable. If you just look at the plot, I don’t remember seeing a commercial Bollywood movie which revolves around an extra-marital affair – one that involves sex. The leading characters are neither heroes nor villains – they all have their flaws. Amitabh Bachchan (Abhishek’s father in the movie) is a raunchy old man. Abhishek is fun-loving but immature person. Mukherjee doesn’t love her husband. Zinta is so involved in her career that she doesn’t have time for her son. Khan was the most flawed, though the central character in the film. He is a bitter man, cruel to his wife and a bad father. Everyone acted their roles very well. Zinta and Khan, who generally tend to ham a little, did very well. Which all points to good direction.

The screenplay was unusually good. Written by Shibani Bathija the lines were fresh, and in parts very funny. I have long felt that screenplays in Bollywood needed to catch up with the quality of direction, acting and music. This movie had all of four of them right. If there is one thing I thought was sub-par it was the editing. Too many jarring transitions.

Johar tries to dull the edge of the extra-marital subject by putting the entire setting in New York (different place, different rules). One of the couples doesn’t have any kids. Khan and Zinta do have a son but she is the bread-winner. The divorces don’t leave anybody without support. The usual Bollywood taboos apply. No kissing on the lips, which makes it really hard to show the passion in the relationship.

I do hope the movie does well at the box-office. Johar has been bold in moving outside some the established boundaries of commercial Bollywood movies. The movie is well made and I hope box-office success will encourage others to stray from the beaten path.

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Bombay is a city very dear to me and my wife. We started our working life in Bombay and worked there for 5 years. Took the train from Andheri to Churchgate and back everyday. I traveled in the same first class coaches that seem to have been targeted by the terrorists. Life wasn’t all roses – the 3.5 hours total commute didn’t leave us much time to enjoy Bombay. But when we did we fell in love with it. We loved the theatre (Prithvi), restaurants (Samraat, Mahesh lunch home), movie halls (Eros, Regal). The heady mix of high finance and Bollywood. The professionalism at work. They all endeared us to Bombay. But most of all it was the people of Bombay.

Mumbaikars are an amazing lot. Everyone is very focused on their own lives – not a moment to spare. You have to just look at the uniformly high speed at which people walk from Churchgate to work to get that. Or the working women cutting veggies in the train. Yet, if there is someone in trouble, there will be a dozen people offering to help. Witness the scenes on TV during last year’s floods. The income and class distinctions in Bombay are stark, yet in the trains and on the road things are very egalitarian. They worship their Bollywood stars, but not glamour. Certainly not as much as say Delhi does. Bombay is very inclusive – it is an immigrant magnet within India. It is the capital of Maharashtra, yet its unofficial official language is Bambaiya Hindi. Like open source software, nobody can lay claim to it, yet it is spoken all over.

When I heard about the bomb blasts the shock quickly gave way to concern – for people in the great city but also for employees and friends. Our offices in India are in Mumbai and many of our employees take the very same trains. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. By late that night we had a full account of all employees. We kept a close watch on developments to decide what to do the next day. My gut told me that the next day would be back to normal. And so it was.

But even though I half expected it, it was no less surprising. Think about it. This is not one, but seven explosions – which should have crippled the train system. More than 200 dead and many hundreds more injured. The hospitals were overflowing. The police was quickly moving into high gear to get on the trail of the terrorists before it turns cold. There was always the possibility of communal rioting. All this was happening, but the next day Mumbaikars just go about their business as usual. Most of our employees turned up. Enough for us to cover the day’s work. (We do time sensitive coverage of company events). Out here in the US we saw TV interviews of school children nonchalantly saying that there didn’t seem to be any reason to not go to school!

If Bombay were a boxer, he may or may not be the champion. But you could never knock him out. He would go down to the mat once in a while, but would pick himself up every time, not by the count of 10, but immediately.

I was in Bombay during the 1993 bombing. And I was in the US during 9/11. Granted 9/11 was a much bigger act of terrorism – both in death toll as well as how telling the blow was, which is how a terrorist would look at it. 9/11 caused the American psyche a trauma from which it will not recover for a generation. Bombay moved on in a matter of months. And the same will happen this time.

The question is why? Why does Bombay (or maybe this is an India thing) have such a short memory for great tragedies? Is it because people don’t have choices so they have to settle with it? As in, they have to take the train if they have to go to work so what’s the point of fearing it. Or is it because accidents and acts of terror are so commonplace that you get inured to the idea? I am told, Israel is a bit like that. It may be so. But I think there is also a little bit of another thing – Mumbaikars don’t look back. Jo ho gaya so ho gaya. The past holds nothing for them. The future is where its at. The future is when the stock market will break all records. The future is when Sachin Tendulkar will help India win the World Cup. The future is when Amitabh Bachchan will make his greatest movie. They approach the future with the bright,shiny eyes of optimism. And that makes enduring the past that much easier.

Mumbai, a self-healing city, I salute you. Salaam Bombay!

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I was of course very tickled about it. I have long held the view that Namaste is a superior greeting to the handshake in the age of the Avian Influenza. Handshakes transfer germs and are a surefire way of spreading the virus when there is an outbreak. The WHO realizes this and has come up with the ‘elbow bump‘ which is just too hokey to work. Asian greetings like Namaste and the Japanese bow are, in this respect, superior. Although in Japan the formal greeting in business is still a bow, while Indian business (though not politicians) has completely adopted the handshake. Pity.

The other thing going for Namaste in the US is that it is closely associated with India and India is hot right now. India is of course in the news because of the nuclear deal still winding its way through Congress. As an investment destination for business it has to be number one or pretty close. Bollywood dancing is all the rage. You can find Kurti inspired women’s fashions all over the place. And Indian food in the grocery stores.

The big news is that from next summer, Indian mangos will be available in the US. Being that they are much superior to the Mexican variety I think that will win us a few more fans state side. Some say that the mangos are a fair trade for nuclear technology. Some say that we’re giving away the mangos too cheap! The mango deal was done during President Bush’s visit to India along with the nuclear technology deal.

The affinity between the two countries is good for both countries and for democracy everywhere.

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