A latitudinal challenge to religion

Science and religion don’t often tread he same path, and when ever they do, there is some astronomy involved in a rather teasing manner.

Practising muslims observe fast in the islamic month of ramadan, in simple words they don’t eat anything while the sun is out on the horizon.  Islamic calender is a lunar one. This means the Islamic months are quite not pegged to the Gregorian calender which owes its allegiance to sun. This results in Islamic months rotating in relation to the gregorian months. For example: The month of ramadan in year X might be in Gregorian october, in X+1 it moves forward by a few days to probably september and after a cycle of N years will be back in October.

While most of practising muslims live in the tropics to lower latitudes, where the length of days and nights is equal through out the year. But for the few, living at higher latitudes, fasting poses a challenge. So a practicing muslim in Northern Europe may only need to fast for 7 hours when Ramadan falls in January (Northern hemisphere winter) , one may have to fast for almost 15 hours if ramadan falls in June/July. When one goes to even higher latitudes north of Arctic circle (or south of antarctic circle), say to cities in northern Norway /Sweden, the sun is on the horizon 24 hours a day in june and never on the horizon in january, bringing the might of religion against more humble geometrical 23.5 degree tilt of earth.

(A curious search on google says there are different views in Islam  to  this problem. The solutions it seem range from following Mecca standard time to following the time of nearest city where sun actually sets / rises to following a swiss made clock instead of solar clock.)

An identity recognition away from home

The present escalation of protests in the Indian controlled Kashmir definitely has a lot to do with a seperate identity for Kashmiris. That seems to have been achieved for now, far away here in the English Midlands.

I went to register at a local library run by Birmingham Council a couple of months back ( one of the many free goodies that European welfare states offer) and the registration form had a few questions on ethnic identity of mine:

1.Please state your ethnic identity : I checked the option ‘South Asian’

2. If you checked ‘South Asian’ as your ethnic identity, please state your detailed ethnic identity:

a. Indian b. Pakistani c. Bangladeshi d. Kashmiri

I was not surprised at all with that last option on the registration form, because Birmingham has the largest Kashmiri population outside of Kashmir. A seperate identity that for long has been in demand seems to have been recognised thousands of miles away. Passing through Small Heath, a district of Birmingham with a huge Kashmiri population, I once noticed a massive bill board asserting all Kashmiris to be identified as / identify one self as  Kashmiri and not as Indian or Pakistani.

Food though unfortunately seems to have been left from this identity recognition exercise. Kashmiri delicacies like Roganjosh and sub Kashmiri cuisines like Balti ( a cuisine brought from kashmiri region of Baltistan, under Pakistani control)  simply disappear into the fog of  a more ambiguous term “Curry” or “Indian takeaway”.

Rich man’s olympics

Is it only me who gets a feeling everytime I watch winter olympics, that they could easily be called rich man’s olympics. A sort of a feeling that attaches them to something elite, private schoolish, like rugby, while summer olympics is sort of working classish.

Thats probably, because majority of participation in these games is from rich industrialized nations, or probably, because, third world can’t even afford to fund their athletes for these games, and has to rely on donations from non residents/expats.

Gulam Nabi Azad’s inspiration

Indian central health and family welfare minister recently came up with a wonderful solution for the country’s population crisis. He was of the opinion that India’s population crisis can be addressed with one magic pill – no not the i-pill or unwanted-72, which I am told by the media are two of the best performing products this year, but good old television. He feels TV in every Indian household combined with quality late night programmes would ensure people will watch telly and fall asleep.

I was wondering, who could have inspired Mr Azad. Was it Steve Towers, with his ‘revolutionary’ “Outside In” philosophy ? Eureka !, I found the answer. Its  The Flight of the conchords who inspired him. Well take a look at the lyrics of their song “Its business time“.

Aww yeah
That`s right baby.
Girl, tonight we`re gonna make love. You know how I know, baby? `Cause it`s Wednesday. And Wednesday night is the night that we make love. Tuesday night`s the night that we go and visit your mother, but Wednesday night is the night that we make love. `Cause everything is just right conditions are perfect. There`s nothing good on TV. Conditions are perfect.

Leave no stones unturned !

‘Leave no stones unturned’. Thats the golden rule when it comes to territorial claims and the related propaganda war.

DD News, the state owned 24 hours news channel, includes Gilgit and Chitral in its city/town weather report in its telecasts.

The blue marble

Bumped into this at a souvenir shop on Swanston street in Melbourne. A map where southern hemisphere is on top, with the prime meridian criss crossing through Australia, Papua new guinea, Japan, Russia etc.  Looks completely different, contrary to our view of the world.  Mercator would be proud of this.

Following reality show from down under

Away from the action down under in Victoria, getting a broadband internet connection to follow the indian general election results, was numero uno on my things to do this morning. Thanks to my hotel, that was easier than making Maggi.

Interesting one, it might be this time, as we may see Dr Singh getting one more shot at premiership, which if he manages would be the first since Jawahar Nehru. Advani, the Karachi born octogenarian probably will have one last shot at premiership. I don’t even want to waste time mentioning the big list of so called prime ministerial candidates who are next to being worthless, the worst of them, a self proclaimed virgin leader of dalits.

Ofcourse, interesting things expected in my two home states – AP and TN. Finally, waiting eagerly for the next trading session in Bombay as am sure there will be quick bucks to be made. Can’t forget May 2004′s trading sessions in bombay.

Godly cash flows

People think that the credit crunch is a creation of the 21st century. However, like the religious fundementalists say, all things are there in the scriptures. The Gods of India have a practical example of how individuals with low credit ratings are forced to accept loan terms which are frankly usurious. In contrast, we shall also see how a well managed fiscal plan makes living comfortably. Our tale begins with Mr. Venkateshwara, a young god with a great deal on his hands, but not much hard cash to his name. One fine day, he finds this young lady and decides to marry her. But the young lady is not content with a simple court wedding. After all, this is a god’s wedding, and must be celebrated with the pomp and ceremony it delivers. So, Mr. Venkatashwara goes to Kuber Bank, a closely held firm controlled by its namesake, and requests a personal loan for marriage expenses. Now, Kuber takes one look at the impecunious Venkateshwara (also called Balaji), and decides that this young man is what would be called sub-prime. And not only is he sub-prime, he also wishes to use this loan on a mere consumption expenditure rather than investment purposes. Automatically, the interest amount is now increased appropriately by rating the borrowers risk accordingly. Venkateshwara’s repayment philosophy also seems a bit dubious. Based upon this wedding, he intended to set up a temple where people could worship him, and thereby pay off his debt. Well, to cut a long story short, due to low regulation, Kuber bank did make the loan to this sub-prime borrower, albeit at an interest rate that he considered was appropriate for such a high risk loan. As it turned out, Mr. Venkata’s temple was a spectacular commercial success, raking in over Rs. 500 crores a year (approximately INR 5 Billion). But that is not quite enough. From the records that mythology provides us, this only counts as payment towards the interest portion, so that Mr. Venkateshwara stays out of the term “Stressed Asset”! So Mr. Venkateshwara, inspite of having fantastic cash flows is still indebted. If records are to be believed, he will only be able to pay it off at the end of the universe itself! On the other hand, about a 1000 kilometres away, we have the example of Mr. Siddivinayak. An astute god, based out of India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, he has access to the finest financial consultants (the ones who believe that cash is king) in the world. Having been exposed to the business world’s ups and downs, he maintains a low level of financial leverage, ensuring that his debts to the Kuber Bank are always promptly paid off. As a result, although his revenues from his temple are at a comparitively paltry Rs. 50 Crores, he is comfortably in cash. So there ends this lesson from mythology.

- syndicated from Blahla.

Looks like recession is really here !

Took some time to realise and more importantly digest the same, but some reasons to believe recession is here definitely.

1. The pantry on my office workfloor used to stock badam powder, instant coffee powder, tea bags, Filter kaapi dicaution and of course fresh milk to mix with any of the above ingredients. A fortnight ago, badam powder dissapeared, and from today, instant coffee powder met the same fate. The housekeeping guy in the pantry gently tells the coffee patrons that they now have only one choce – Filter Kaapi. His prediction is that ‘Taj Mahal’ tea bags might soon be replaced with ‘Three Roses’ dust tea powder and 100 percent milk replaced with milk + water combination. My good friend and colleague, Udbhav Gupta instantly gave his consultant brain some work and infered that these measures will save my company atleast INR 5 crores (50 million) annually.

2. I get a dose of economics at every place I go, whether it is the neighbourhood pizza outlet, Krishna sagar in bangalore or Vasantha bhavan in Madras, and got to say most of it is Keynesian. Patrons around me discuss economics while poor gossipping is  feeling the pinch of recession.

3. The flamboyant Bernie Ecclestone is asking his franchisees to cut costs, though Redbull seems to have ‘got wings’ (no prizes for guessing who gave them), owning not one, but two teams.

4.Forget paper money, poor banks have no plastic money. Calls from telemarketers selling credit cards are almost zero.

5. Bollywood characters too are feeling the recession pinch, as King Khan is relegated to playing a common  middle class man in his latest flick “Rab ne Bana di Jodi“

And most importantly, I ’ve shed my trademark laziness and started working hard to cling on to my job.

THE Reality Show

People tend to forget that long before Endemols and Alvas were wearing short pants, Nirvachan Sadan brought reality shows into India in 1952 itself. Common, what can be more real than a billion (discount the billion to what ever amount it was in 1952) people voting  across the country. And a point worth noting is that, the humble civil servants at the Election Commission of India were the ones who introduced the biggest attribute that a reality show is identified with – “delay the announcement of  result thought you have the votes with you to pump up the pulse of audience”.

Elections in india have always been in phases, the ballot boxes (EVMs these days) then stored in strong rooms (which are supposedly more secure than the offshore banking lockers in switzerland and Liechtenstein), then congregated at a central location on counting day, and results declared after a gripping phase of counting. Adding spice to the whole process are Prannoy Roy and Yogendra Yadav (there are countless of them these days, my apologies for not listing them all).

While the results of elections in other countries (including some from sub saharan africa) seem to coming out in in real time – almost on the election night itself, this turn around of results has only seen a marked increase in India over  years. For example, the voting for state legislative assembly of Chattisgarh, starts today and one has to wait almost a month for the result,  so that some more phases of polling in the same state, and many more phases of polling in 4 or 5 more states is also done with. In the northern most state of Jammu and Kashmir, the polling is divided into 7 phases spread across a month. And this is only the start of a long and tiring election season which ends with a grand finale- Pan Indian General Election in April/May 2009. Way to EC of India !!