SHUBHAM BASU

That one screw behind the clock

            That you are unable to locate

            Not letting you pull the clockwork apart

            Having already spent the last 72 hours

That one mosquito that you can hear

            But can’t see it even with your frog’s stare

            Both your hands ready to clap

            But only after a few hundred futile slaps

That one stock you wish you hadn’t sold

            When the market opened with a deadly roar

            You were moments away from being a billionaire

            But for now you have to do with still being a millionaire

The old woman as she desperately tried

            To thread the needle at its teeny tiny eye

            It slipped everytime she thought she was close

            While she held it closest to her nose

That one warning you wish you hadn’t ignored

            When your boss yanked to pay more attention

            The warning is now crawling up your back

            While you collect all your stuff from your office desk

Science gives the world to be safe and prosperous

Why then did we miss installing the tsunami warning stations…that one time?

Could we have averted some disaster then?

Would the survivors have better opinion about life then?

Like I was talking to Jenny earlier today

I couldn’t understand one specific sentence she said

She raised her voice for the third time

And I realized I couldn’t pick the word ‘try’

I thought for a while why I couldn’t hear it?

I didn’t have any problems understanding Americans and Brits

Then I realized sometimes it’s a blind spot

The harder you try the more you see nots

Our reference, our last thoughts blind us

In seeing what was before, and is after the thoughts.

Later notes: 24/10/09 While talking about another friend of mine, my Girl Friend heard ‘She talks dirty’ when I said ‘She talks girly’ and then she spun the entire conversation intending how she talked dirty and I was left surprised…till the next day when the word came out. The downside: we were talking on phone. 

Clear roads, hide for you life, is that Mr. Amway or the poet with the disrepute having tortured Ghalib with his poems?

Last time I went to Allahabad I was cornered by my rich and not so rich acquaintances on the magic of Amway. They have seen me grow, fed me through bottles, and now when they see me all grown up they don’t want me to miss out on Kiyosaki’s wisdom. One of them (a hotel tycoon around the town) asked me if I had read Rich Dad Poor Dad after a twenty minute long discourse. I said I had (I actually had while I was in school, about fifteen years back), but that didn’t help when he resumed talking about time compounding. I ran out of gestures of approval. How do I tell him that I understand that it works, but I have no intentions of growing a tree that showers kokeps. He glamorized the irony, ‘A professor or even a dean earns because of what he knows, but still he has to work hard every day. Can, what he knows, warrant his children’s comfortable future?’ I nod my head, again in approval. I recalled earlier moments when I was chased by people once in a while with an Amway bill in one hand. ‘Here comes Mr. Amway’, the superhero, the salesman who blasphemes; he torches my attention with his winks that seem to last the seven days of creation. I start noticing the number of etches on his forehead and count moles around his chin that I never noticed earlier. I also notice a couple of white hair in his locks and suddenly it seems that he is growing old as well, until he strokes his pen into graphs that needed better preparation and hackneyed lessons from Kiyosaki that I admire, but not enough to rest my thoughts on.

The number of Mr. Amways is growing on my list as the formula is out into the market and the secret to being rich is no longer a secret. The formula is successful, but can we help it if a certain Mr. Amway makes lousy attempts being Superman. It’s a little more than the Superman costume. And the poor truth is that there is no check on Mr. Amways (I call all multi-level-marketing, MLM professionals, Mr. Amways).  

Here are a few products that are dealt with MLM, help me figure if there are any that aren’t being dealt with. The limitation is size. Only things that are portable can fall in this category, so a car might never see these channels, neither perhaps a television. But anything smaller than that, is susceptible. Products range from:

•          Soaps (all kinds)
•          Tea/Coffee (all kinds)
•          Health Supplements
•         Plastic products
•          Tablets for enhancing fuel efficiency (I was updated on this one two days back)
•          Health insurance
•          There are brands that I would want to mention but that might offend some readers who revere Mr. Amways

Forgive me the champion Mr. Amways, for the bad ones have polluted the pool, and it’s stinking so bad that even the mention of MLM brings me sour hiccups.

Aah! What a relief. I have been having cramps in my stomach with the need to share my agony with sales supermen, and finally it’s a relief.  I told my mom before I started writing a few minutes back that I need to have my retribution for all the bad hiccups I have had.  

“People will not negotiate with you unless they believe you can help them or hurt them” – Roger J Volkema.

Prof. Volkema is an associate professor at Management school, however what we are about to relate is not about what he is, but something he has written that triggered my interest. Some critical do’s and don’ts for early grabbers itching at one end. The professor warns that it’s best to learn the most about the other party, which sounds very obvious, and if you read reviews on him amazon.com, it seems that he has written very obvious stuff as well, where is the curtain and where is new information; you might end up asking yourself. But here is a small interpretation with an example.

Winning Negotiations by Harvard Business Review creates the cross-section (approach at the fleeting moment, if time were halted) of the participants negotiating, as position or interest. The old man bears position at a lot of moments when the daughter communicates. She has to probe to learn about the interest. What is the difference? Position is ‘I am not having this freaking meal tonight’ and thus he shuts himself to television again. She probes hard to find out later that he was having a mild diarrhea.

Interest is ‘I don’t feel too good, I think I want to have something else.’

‘What happened?’…and the dialogue continues.

With a position you don’t leave the other party with alternatives, and the negotiation comes to an end too soon, both lose. This is a family relationship where people have an interest beyond positions, but the corporate battle ground comes with a disadvantage. Most of the times positions begets position and interest begets interest. The defend and attack mode can be counterproductive as it is another example of position. You start out in the battle mode and end up killing your metaphorical opponent, the victory of words and sleight, who are you negotiating with now? Master negotiators say that every negotiation is a small battle of furnishing interests and making the best out of it, after all there is a long way to go. The Gauls and Romans never negotiated. Caesar never felt terminally threatened nor did Asterix and Obelix, and neither did they ever feel that they could help each other. Each had an invincible position. They needed a mediator. That’s a comic strip, but it tells us a lot about what happens when we don’t understand the motive behind the scenes. I wonder what would have happened if they did? I love the strips too much.

I have picked up the following from Steven Pinker’s book ‘The Stuff of Thought’

Here is how I have switched:

1.     Pears to Lux (bathing soaps)

2.     Branded boxers to Bumchums

3.     One meeting to three in a day in Noida (Shubham lives in Gurgaon)

4.     Annual twenty day July adventure escape to plays at IHC

5.     Old favorite pair of Express Jeans repaired (visiting the tailor) against a new pair of Rs. 3000 Levis

6.     Reducing flab against a belly (to outshine in almost anything)

7.     Haldiram to Babaji (newer namkeen brands)

8.     Rs. 5000 Itialian restaurant expense to street side kathi rolls

9.     More phone meetings

Shubham contributed towards raising the sale of the following:

1.     Lux-

A brand that has survived for over fifty years and perhaps the brand India subscribes to. It isn’t as bad as the faces Rubin (my industrialist friend) makes.

2.     Bumchums

It’s so middle class….got to try it out. India is middle class. A product for the middle class is the product for India and I must try it, if not by choice, then by force.

3.     Cleaner air (reduction in fuel emission)

Hah, now when it comes to this, cut expenses on fuel and cab costs. Drive on your own. At the end of the day however, it’s a cleaner air, even if it’s only 0.000001% cleaner. It’s at least cleaner.

4.     Sale at IHC (promoting plays)

Frequenting IHC, promoting stage artists; when it comes to crawling…bullock carts come out again. It’s however in bullock carts that I can be slower than I usually am. I notice more around.

5.     Tailor

Haven’t seen a tailor after high school (our family tailor during Durga Puja is a memory that stays). This specific tailor is paraplegic. Glad to have given him business.

6.     Healthier (weight reduction)

Hritik and Shahrukh will look good in almost anything. It’s almost like Celina will look good irrespective of what she is wearing, however a man having a middle age crisis and burying his distress in his belly will have to look at his image ten times before he convinces himself that he actually looks good. However the stint doesn’t last. It’s only for the Shahrukhs and Hritiks. There however is nothing magnificent about the discovery. Everytime you weigh yourself at VLCC, you will find yourself weighing atleast two kgs more than what your machine says back home. I haven’t tried VLCC for the mere fact that I am not a woman, but the look factor permeates down the gargoyles. Looks do matter, really.

7.     Newer brands (emerging brands)

Ahh!!! Babaji is pretty decent. I thought Haldiram is the king, but others are good as well. No harm trying and inducing some competition. All I am doing is forcing Haldiram to be even better.

8.     Promoting small kiosks

A street side kiosk doesn’t get promoted unless a celebrity makes a pit stop. Else it has been there for generations, and if that’s true a celebrity must have stopped. In either case, I pick up options that second in my list, or perhaps don’t even figure in the first page. I step a little short of Qutubs and check out what Dominos has to offer for Rs. 35. It ain’t bad, though Dominos is no kiosk, it sure has challenged Pizza Hut. Improve your efficiency with costs.

9.     Raising talk time

I use a carrier, like all Indians do now. I talk more on phone. I bought a blue tooth sometime back and remember my aunt mentioning about six years back that radiation is bad for your brain. The blue tooth is now almost a permanent fixture around my ears when I am out OFFICING. My phone bill has gone up, but atleast the fuel costs are under control.

Efficiency again; necessity is the mother of all improvements (only scientists at heart invent, common man improves). 

People are gala about having discovered the Secret from Rhonda Bryne. Here is what Nietzsche said more than century ago: 

From Chapter 41 - The Soothsayer

 …

Thus did Zarathustra relate his dream, and then was silent; for as yet he knew not the interpretation thereof. But the disciple whom he loved most arose quickly, seized Zarathustra’s hand, and said:

Thy life itself interpreteth unto us this dream, O Zarathustra!

Art thou not thyself the wind with shrill whistling, which bursteth open the gates of the fortress of Death?

Art thou not thyself the coffin full of many-hued malices and angel caricatures of life?

Verily, like a thousand peals of children’s laughter cometh Zrathustra into all zepulchres, laughing at those night-watchmen and grave-guardians, and whoever else rattleth with sinister keys.

With thy laughter wilt thou frighten and prostrate them; fainting and recovering will demonstrate thy power over them.

…

Verily, they themselves didst thou dream, thine enemies: that was thy sorest dream.

But as thou awokest from them and camest to thyself, so shall they awaken from themselves -and come unto thee!

…

Well, this hath just its time! But see to it, my disciples, that we have a good repast, and without delay! Thus do I mean to make amends for bad dreams!

… 

‘Semantics is a word made of antics’ says the writer in The Lost City who prefers having no name, no definitions.

Fico escapes Cuba ‘Because it’s dangerous from my soul’.  He says this to his late brother’s widow after she comes to see him in Jersey City but refuses to stay back because she got involved in Fiedel Castro’s wagon with Che Guevara, a part of the revolution that made her feel important. The book written by Henry Shukman is so very Kundera in style that has all the agitations in background while the common survivors are in search of the lost meaning, trying to gather what love and life stands for without freedom, redefining existing in an alien culture. Unlike Kundera however, the plot starts even before the agitation began as life hits the cabaret club owner Fico and throws his life and family into disarray. Family is split in loyalty between Batista and the new Communist regime.  An interesting character to watch is the portrayal of Che Guevara, his military leadership amidst the changing nomenclatures and of course his clarity of thought as a vehicle for the change. As a sharp contrast stands the Motorcycle Diaries where he travels 8000kms across South America watching distress in people’s lives; an agent of change where he ends up as a helping hand at the quarantined leprosy facility overwhelmed with sympathy for human lives.   

The two episodes in his life give a window on the making of a man who brought change around himself, for good or bad. During his youthful journey he went out of the way to undertake a difficult journey, on his second most important mission, he used those lessons. The former created in him a fertile mind, receptive and sensitive to the environment, the latter showed him as a man resolved to work for a cause he identified as right. We can’t debate here what’s right from wrong, but examples on men who grew to change the definitions around themselves.

In Cinema – ‘Watch Motorcycle Diaries’ – notice Guevara’s youthfulness as a young mind. Follow it up with ‘The Lost City’ – notice Guevara’s rush towards a cause as the change agent for which Fico says ‘Because that’s not my cause, it’s my curse.’

A thousand promises behind the small eyes

On the butterfly wings as it flies

It flaps like the winks on the sudden moist nights

As the darkness realms around the sunny skies.

What eclipse as the sun rolls in?

What Kalahari as the rain trickles in?

Which science as Confucius sets in?

Whose barrier as supersonic breaks in?

Which record when Phelps dips in?

Which forests where buildings ground in?

Which tablets when papyrus came in?

What felt when the ball point sinks in?

One man defies and all the rest do as well,

One man sees, and the rest do as well.

One man’s eyes as the butterfly wings

Winking and flapping and the promise it sings,

Each flap is a promise for so many

Each wink is a promise for so many.

On this page I will put forth meanings thinkers have ascribed to the concept of meaning. I will keep adding.  You can as well contribute.

 1. From the ‘Attachment across Life Cycle’ - Colin Murray Parkes

A meaning is an organization of experience which enables us to identify those events which matter to us, relate them to previous experiences, and determine how we should respond to them. It involves classifying events, ordering purposes, and recognizing feelings associated with events and purposes. Like all living organizations, it evolves constantly and reiteratively, as events provoke emotions which influence purposes which in turn influence the events which follow and how we feel about them.We would not be able to survive for any length of time without these meanings. Unless experience can be perceived as patterns which recognizably repeat, we cannot learn or predict anything. The process of growing up is, then, as much as anything, the maturing of organizations of meaning.But meanings are organized as social institutions as well as personal understandings – as science, religion, ideology, law, art, and most fundamentally in the structure of a language. And these institutionalized meanings, too, have a life of their own, evolving as they are reiterated. As much as our personal understandings, which incorporate them, they create the predictability of human interaction. (more…)

Can a burger please a woman?

Slurp she goes…and so does the audience.

Basics for eating a burger:

1.       Cut it up

2.       Hold it correctly

3.       Do not squeeze it too hard

4.       Chew it with your mouth closed

5.       Don’t talk with your mouth full

Reverse them:

1.       Don’t cut it up

2.       Don’t hold it correctly, let the juices flow

3.       Squeeze it hard, let the juices flow

4.       Chew it with your mouth open, let the juices drip

5.       Respond to the taste

Did the burger please Padma Lakshmi? Perhaps, it certainly did please the men behind the Hardee commercial however. They picked their woman right. This woman knows what juicy is, she had a long wait.

Juices don’t rhyme with white skin. Color brown, ‘exotica’; you bake the bread brown and the skin golden. Both sound appetizing to our palate. Now just watch the golden skin fondling the brown bread, how teasing can that be? It inflicts the juices in your brain, it’s juicy all over. Any thing juicy, and I want it as well.

The question is, what makes brown/golden so attractive? The bread on burger is baked golden. The meat inside is grilled dark brown. The juices are mostly brownish. If you draw an analogy, chocolate, such a a popular eatable, is again brown, except a few white ones. Cocoa, coffee, brown; and somehow we like brown furniture as well (in body contact). It will be surprising to see white furnite at home, except if it belongs to an abstract artist. For some reason we like being surrounded by the golden/browinsh color. We like to touch and feel these colors very often and without inhibitions. Women love getting tan on their skin and men like Bear Grylls and Ian Wright get it through their wanderings, the darker shades through experience.

Think of the winters, snow and cold, and then spring, plush golden and brown ahh! what romance. Golden deserts, and brown mountains; barren earth as it was, rough in looks as does a cut on our skin. What does the golden fire symbolize? It’s the core of our passion, our energy our signature. How? The lips on a human face, the most sensual of all visible parts, and mens eyes scanning and imagining the color of the darker nipples on a woman? And the greatest of all, white or black, brown or golden, all flesh is brown below the skin, brain, liver, heart and pancreas all are brown. No wonder why we feel so affiliated with the color that is so natural to us. Even if my skin is white, brown blends well with who I am. My culture might put superficial restrictions in my picking of colors in humans and perhaps years of seasoning might have led me into rasicm or color bias, but ask me when I am in one of my sensual moments, staring at the blazing fire, brown is what I covet in secrecy. Everybody loves Jasmine, Sindbad’s girlfriend. Brown is fantasy.

A brown burger certainly pleases man woman and child much more than any other color (we are not disputing healthy diet here, even Subway is primarily brown). 

 Hardee Burger commercial featuring Padma Lakshmi; watch it.