Bombay Dreams - Au Revoir

Maybe you haven’t noticed, maybe you did but don’t care or maybe you are also in the same lethargy that I am in… whatever, its adieu to this wonderful city Bombay. 

I could never slip into calling it Mumbai all my life. Like i have never relished Chennai, for it is always Madras for me. It can never be Bengalooru - it has to be Bangalore. I am hardly swayed by political bigotry and jingoism.

Atleast for some years from now i will  miss Bombay. For someone so much used to inner and outer silence, the initial days in Mumbai were  indeed traumatic.  But the city had its own beauties. I started loving its confusion, its crowd, the cut-throat business mindedness, its commotion and everything one can imagine to disrupt calm.  But overbearing all these are that unmistakable undercurrent of humanity  and a rare spirit of the locals. If one is lucky to get a good friends’ circle, life is on an autobahn (like the 1974 German Band would say). I was fortunate to have that.

Looking forward, out of Bombay,  I remember these great words of my favorite author..

This was what I carried with me into [my] new country, an instinctive simplicity, a thoughtless idealism. It was the first time, moving from one place to another, that I hadn't expected something better of the new country than I had found in the old, that I was prepared for disappointment. It was the first time, too, that I was not disappointed.

Sun Set - Chowpaty

On a Rainy day: Worli Home

When wil this torture stop

.

Sycophancy comes to us quite naturally. 

Or else what could explain hundreds of discomfiture personified masses of humanity squatting beside a charkha to spin out a foot of thread. Some of them were writhing in pain trying to use both limbs simultaneously. 

What makes them forget spindle and remember charkha, what prompts them to forget their regular life of falsehood and deceit and remember that great soul once a year or at best twice and finally what makes them get under a never fitting all-white garb? Is it the need to demonstrate a loosely existing nationalism or is it just that jig before a camera. Or is it a stupid math that the voter is gullible enough to buy this presentation.

The best way to remember that ultimate soldier of non-violence is to walk bare=footed and bare-bodied a few miles on a day like this and swear before his statue that each of us will spend atleast one day per year in honesty. Am i asking for an all-impossible event?

ps:Someone called me all the way to ask what was this about and why this petulance. Today is 30th Jan. We mourn the death of a Father. The rebellion is against what i saw on DD sometime back in its news edition!!!

Incredible What

  

I am no doubt possibly world’s worst conversationalist. The most mortifying moments for me are when I have to attend a group dinner or a gathering where I have for company people besides me and my shadow. And I am happy in this cocoon life where I preserve my ignorance within me and never get exposed.. (if you are silent people may think you are ignorant. The moment you open up, you confirm their fears)

Now, I never ever imagined that I will have to sit through a session like this in my life. Not that I have strong likings or opinions about anything, but to expect an introvert like me to survive a conversation like the following must be a travesty of my faith in public life.

He: How is life in the new place? You play Golf? Or Soccer? Which is your favorite team?

Me: Life is fine – could have been better though. No I don’t play golf although I have played a few times in the recent past. I tend to hold the Club like a hockey stick and swing it like a Cricket Bat with footwork that one uses for pulling a long hop over the mid-wicket. So my Caddy told me I can never make it to the top grade and I may require atleast a thousand Pars to reach the eighteenth-hole.

He: That’s pretty interesting and funny.

Me: Indeed. I like to play soccer but don’t know where the best grounds are. I used to like ManU but since I don’t know who are its current players and its coach, I have no opinion.

He: That’s great – I can introduce you to some country side clubs.

[I, for a moment thought, if I was going to play for one of those counties. In my school days I always wanted to be playing for Hampshire (alongside Barry Richards) or Somerset (Viv and Ian) but then it required cricketing skills]

Me: Let’s see. I have other priorities for the present. Will surely let you know if I would want to.

He: Then how is this (what’s his name…) Tandulkaar doing. Is he still playing. Must be great fun watching him playing.

Me: [On a normal day I would have strangulated him but he had, among other things, the responsibility of being my pay-master]. I corrected, ‘its Sachin Tendulkar’, the greatest batsman of our times, often compared to The Don by critics. He still plays and every team in the world is praying that he retires soon. And its sheer delight (and not fun) watching him. I am lucky to have been born and be living in the same era like him (and equally unlucky to be living in the same era like this person who doesn’t keep track of Sachin)

He: That’s great. Is Shaarook Kaan acting these days. I met him some time back in HighStreet. Nice Guy. How is Aishwarya Rai doing. [And many questions]

Me: [again the same frustration..]. Yes Sharukh Khan acts. No idea about Ash, I haven’t met her in my life.

[I ended it abruptly. I detested his penchant for pronouncing male names incorrectly. I thought it was inappropriate to be asking me about such high profile individuals. And I felt quite low to realize that he considered me good only for such trivia. I would have been an equally good candidate for discussions on Solar System, Global Warming, Green Revolution, Molecular Biology, Honda’s trading losses, Jupiter’s transit into Aries, Mclaren’s dreams, Apple’s guidance for first quarter, the fate of global economy etc but why just these few issues. Was it because he thought after Independence, India has progressed only in sports and cinema.]

Well things have to change. I have to start talking.'

I walked out like a cat caught in a rain. And thought to myself...'

Thyaga Brahmotsavam gets its Gloss

. 
There was a time when i used to look forward to every December with great expectations - for it  was when the music festival in Madras started every year. This was soon to be followed by the greatest event of all - the Thiruvaiyyaru festival. Musicians and Rasikas would set aside pride and pelf and sit together in sheer devotion and sing the pancharatna keerthanas in true earnest. It was experience most sublime. I have personally sat through those exhillarating moments during my school and college days. The number of westerners that thronged the place was to be seen to be believed.

Today, as i sit in some distant place and watch this on DD, i get the impression if it were a plenary session of a large political outfit. Politicians, their personal attendants, party workers, walkie-talkie  holding security people, safari clad bureaucrats - the list is long. Where is the rasika?

As TMK orchestrates yet another melakartha (the presence of TV cameras and foreign media has made our musicians dress conscious and they emote more than what is necessary), i see party workers planning their evening dinner, i see a senior political leader whispering in the ears of another senior bigwig about how this electorate should be taken care of when the moment comes, i see a senior musician of yester-years running around desperately (possibly he is in some committee and is heckled by the demands of the political leaders that are in the committee)... well, its like those Dubai and Malaysia glitz. There is everything for a memorable picnic but the humility that marked Thyagaiyyar's immortality is conspicuous by its absence.

Will this morph eventually into a day when this festival starts with a Srikant Deva and Imaam's fusion of some rare gana-raaga, followed by a Gaana in Sri or Madhyamavati no one will ever know,  then a jugabandhi that ensembles those great track-singing lippers... And then the festival for a few hours. 

God save the King.

Markets - Another Bet on Another Bubble

   

Back to markets again.

I should admit with straight honesty that i must have lost more money than anyone else betting on the Chinese bubble over the last few years. Therefore,  when i read the story in the following link, i couldn't help pulling out my trading log and rub my eyes again.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8261740/Hedge-funds-bet-China-is-a-bubble-close-to-bursting.html

The more interesting part of this cliched story about the bubble is that i sent in a note on Friday morning  about how i saw a possible  top-formation in CRB Commodity index (340 looks like a top to me) and how commodity currencies could come off.  I also circulated some trading themes on this set-up. And later in the day when China hiked (yet again), i thought i had pulled a rabbit afterall!! Coming as it does close to my call to sell India (both the index and the currency) and seeing them happen to a T, this report in the Telegraph gives me a kick.(for those back home, Sensex and Nifty looked ominously lower a week ago to me)

Well, a long way to go. Two things however interest me and hence all this indulgence in vanity. How will this 'sell china' funds work and how will a multi-trillion dollar reserve country respond to a crisis if ever it happens. In 2010 the shanghai index lost possibly the highest among notable economies and yet nothing happened. 

Will continue on this theme again after i cover my Oz shorts!!!

ps: squared oz at a decent gain. should not have done so given my larger perspective but then a bird in hand is worth two in bush.

The future is surely in their Hands

..

The Torchbearers of Progress