whats riskier? having a home or not having one?

While I was on my reading spree during the recession, I had read an interesting bit of research. Richard Florida was talking about home ownership in cities. His hypothesis was that home ownership for a city is good but to a point. He says “This is so ironic, places with the highest levels of home ownership have low rates of growth; they tend to be older, lagging cities with older economic structures; they tend to be less innovative; they tend to have lower levels of human capital, of creative, economic activity; lower wages, lower incomes; and the people there have lower levels of well-being… by having a lower level of homeownership, and that’s around 50 or 55 percent,… actually makes them quite fast and flexible… If you lose your job in Detroit or Cleveland, you own your house: you’re stuck. You can’t even move to another part of Detroit or Cleveland for a job,… If you work in New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco and you lose your job, first thing you can do is downshift to a cheaper apartment, and if you need to move to a new region, when your lease ends, you can up and go”

I have put the larger extract below and the link to the complete interview. I found it interesting at the point. It did make sense. Flexibility is the key to business and hence growth. Housing is just one big strong element of getting stuck. My own firm, when I see it I realize this. As we get bigger we start getting inflexible. I have seen my management justify the bureaucracy, the willingness to accept it, unwillingness to tear down old practices, unwilling to take risk, having multiple levels of approvals and the sort. I guess a lot of it is possibly good. We are of course less tolerant of failure. The cost of failure is possibly too high. So it makes sense to take a few sturdier steps than big bold initiatives. But I also wonder isn’t a bigger firm more resilient to risk. More able to absorb the costs of failure and hence best placed to learn from it.

Smaller growing firms would have people with higher risk taking ability. People who just say ‘chuck it, let’s do it and go ahead’. I used to always say, it’s better to ask for forgiveness then to ask for permission. But suddenly larger firms clamp down on all of this. There are too many satraps to break through. Everyone seems to have his own domain which one is encroaching upon. These domains are nebulous and fluid when the organization is geared towards growth and rigid and unaccommodating when the organization is big. Simple things like the laptop brand is also a big issue. I came from one of the smaller divisions (250 employees) of my firm where I wanted a Dell laptop with a very good display. I got it. Here within the same group another division which has 4,000 plus employees, the Dell laptop which I got transferred with, gets undue attention. Here the official brand is Acer and you can’t get anything else. How was I roaming around with a Dell? Oh god man. All in the name of process.

I think process is good. Some things are important but too much process can screw up any initiative. Within my limited understanding and experience, my belief is that even creative can have a process. You must follow process but have the sense to know that the process is path but you are allowed to forge new paths. Logical behavior and thinking is not a barrier for creative. Just because you use the left side of your brain is no excuse for you to not use the right side as well, and vice versa. I think most of us inherently can use both sides well. It’s when we are suddenly rooted for some reason or the other we start exercising one side. The boring regimented predictable side and are impervious to outside thought and action.

I think the rooting of the brain happens when you start having too much at the table at stake. Typically this means a house. See the house by itself seems like an innocuous thing but over here buying a house would mean pledging the next 20 years of your life in equated monthly installments or EMI for short. Once you have EMI’s running, there is no chance that you are going to take risks. You start growing roots around the place. You start making friends, be familiar with the grocer, the milk man, the watchman… you build your life around your commute and then you are finished as a risk taker. Then having the monthly pay check coming in is very very serious business. Why – because the predictable monthly paycheck ties in very well with the infallible predictability of the EMI.

When I bought my first home it was a very fortuitous time. The EMI was at a fixed interest rate and housing prices very low. They were to just start their sky rocketing orbit. My home price has gone up 5 times since I bought it in 2004. At the time I was still ok with the EMI amount. In the slowdown of 2008, I wasn’t worried, I wasn’t scared. I saw my fixed income balance and I saw my liabilities and I slept in peace. Then I went ahead and bought my second larger house. I haven’t ever slept well if I thought about it. Earlier I would be nonchalant in my attitude. I would be able to call a spade a spade, but now I see myself thinking twice. I still try and push the bar but I am careful not to push it carrying my resignation in my pocket. I have become too big in my own life to fail. I have two EMI’s to feed. Hopefully the second house is ready for possession soon enough which would means that I can rent it and it becomes an income stream from an expense stream.

But there are other issues that stop me from taking risk and hence give me limited mobility. Jispa’s school and Matunga gymkhana around which we have revolved our life. Schooling is a huge issue in Mumbai. With a dearth of good schools and at reasonable price points we can’t afford to take risk with schooling. Jispa’s school is impossible to get into. We don’t know how we got through and it was a stroke of good luck. Once when I was offered a job in Europe in the same company I refused, how would I come back and get my daughter reinstated in the same school. It would have been a four to five year stint but how would I come back and fight again for admissions. As a city if we are unable to provide for or encourage good schooling we wouldn’t be able to attract and retain talent. Cities must also fight for talent in similar fashion. Now I understand the value of the Kendriya Vidyalayas that the government set up all over the country giving a uniform education for its entire government staff that would get transferred. Having schooling that is uniform and predictable for the child and the parent is so critical. And of course the gymkhana. Gymkhanas in Mumbai are elitist and restrictive. They open their doors only to members and memberships are limited and are opened only at intervals. Currently the Matunga Gymkhana is open for membership at a steep one million rupees. What the hell. Where does the average person train his daughter or give his kids a decent healthy lifestyle. So thanks to that not only am I rooted as a risk taker, my risk taking has come down to not moving to anywhere further than two kilometers to where I am currently staying. Else the commute and hence the schedule that Jasmine follows everyday will get awry. Wow. Risk aversion has a new meaning altogether.

No wonder I have noticed that even with the same firm, when we Indian go abroad we get highly politicized. We start playing games and we stop taking all kinds of risk. We only start doing stuff that protects our back side. We lick our boss’s derrières and we eschew all bold action. What if things go wrong? We would have to uproot our families from there and come back, in the middle of the school term that too. I saw this in our offices abroad and I saw this in my dad’s stories of when we were in Dubai. The politics is unbearable.

So I kind of agree with Richard Florida. Home ownership kills risk and mobility. We have a deep rooted desire to own our homes and the EMI’s coming with high cost of homes will kill us and our city. Luckily for Mumbai, the saving grace is that we have made renting slightly easier and relatively less risky. The Enforcement of leave and license agreements which are clear and solid has allowed for investors to give their homes on rent. Earlier the laws were completely in favor of the tenant and renting was akin to selling giving rise to a pagdi system in Mumbai. While we were in Dubai, our home was kept closed and locked rather than let out, as we were afraid we would not get repossession of our home when we needed it. No one really benefits from an asset that is underutilized.

I suddenly started thinking about this because of the conversation I had with Jasmine’s cousin. We are all from part of the baniya sect in the Hindu world order. This means we are essentially traders, businessmen by birth. It is our job to trade and to make profit. To be fast and flexible. He said, “us baniya, we should always be ready for mobility. In fact we baniya’s traditionally never bought houses.” I understood what he meant. If a trader is to thrive he must always be mobile, always ready to move to opportunity. Why else would Jasmine’s maternal grand-dad go all the way to Cochin, in an alien culture, to set up business. Her paternal Granddad came from Gujarat to Mumbai to set shop. My grand dad (maternal) went to Burma (Rangoon) to set shop and then came to Mumbai and set up his business. My Paternal Granddad moved from his home in Savarkundla in Gujarat to Mumbai to study and become a Doctor, after which he moved to Gondal in Gujarat to start his dispensary (it’s a business).

And now Jasmine and I are at loathe to even move three kms from our current home. Sheesh. Obviously we are no more baniyas. We have lost risk taking ability. That doesn’t bode well for our family. Or on the contrary it does. Simple predictable lifestyle. The shift from the hunter to the farmer. Possibly parenting is all that in our city. Growing roots. Staying in and withering away. Possibly we are the 55% giving the chance for the rest of the 45% to go out and push the envelope, take risks and be free.

While I was reading on Richard I came across his concept of ‘creative class’. An extract “Florida says that the Creative Class is a class of workers whose job is to create meaningful new forms (2002). It is composed of scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and architects, and also includes "people in design, education, arts, music and entertainment, whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and/or creative content” (Florida, 2002, p. 8). The designs of this group are seen as broadly transferable and useful. Another sector of the Creative Class includes positions that are knowledge intensive; these usually require a high degree of formal education (Florida, 2002). Examples of workers in this sector are health professionals and business managers, who are considered part of the sub-group called Creative Professionals. Their primary job is to think and create new approaches to problems. Creativity is becoming more valued in today’s global society. Employers see creativity as a channel for self-expression and job satisfaction in their employees.”

This creative class I see in the suburbs in Mumbai not in town. Town is old money, high rents, old houses and no buzz. Suburbs have buzz, have restaurants opening and closing at will, new ideas and of course the new age of creative people in design, arts and other stuff, pushing the bar.

I end on a story – once I met a friend of mine after a long time. She is in the creative field and her husband was setting up something in IT. they had bought a flat in the suburbs somewhere. While I was talking to her, she told me that the flat was bought on a home loan and then the price of the house had gone up crazy. Then in the middle of it all they thought of selling their home and pocketing cool ten to fifteen lakhs. (ten lakhs = one million). This they would spend a part of it touring Europe (Spain) and then shift to another house on rent. They would save on the EMI every month and pay a lesser rent, as well as have a sustainable life. At first I was appalled. What shit, sell an asset! Then I realised – you are young only once – have fun. And now I realize, selling their home and moving on rent to a smaller, cheaper place, gave them the flexibility to enjoy and follow their dreams. Being unencumbered by the EMI they could start a business and she could work free-lance. They could do something New and Not Conform to boring conformity. They wanted to be the ‘them 45%’ not the ‘us 55%’. I respect that. As a baniya, I genuinely respect that.

Interview on www.bigthink.com with Richard Florida. Full text here: http://www.bigthink.com/ideas/20243

This is so ironic, places with the highest levels of home ownership have low rates of growth; they tend to be older, lagging cities with older economic structures; they tend to be less innovative; they tend to have lower levels of human capital, of creative, economic activity; lower wages, lower incomes; and the people there have lower levels of well-being.

The ones that have lower home ownership, they’re stronger economies, they’re more innovative, they’re higher wages, higher incomes. And I thought about this and it’s not only that those cities are more expensive, right? Los Angeles and New York and San Francisco and Seattle and Boston, they’re not only more expensive, so obviously fewer people can afford houses. Actually by having a lower level of homeownership, and that’s around 50 or 55 percent, where the big, the cities that have a lot have 80. It actually makes them quite fast and flexible. And I find this really interesting. If you lose your job in Detroit or Cleveland, you own your house: you’re stuck. You can’t even move to another part of Detroit or Cleveland for a job, never mind to a place that might have more economic opportunity on the east or west coast. You’re stuck and you’re stuck with that house and you can’t get rid of it and you have to pay for it.

If you work in New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco and you lose your job, first thing you can do is downshift to a cheaper apartment, and if you need to move to a new region, when your lease ends, you can up and go. So I actually believe, the Urban Land Institute says we’re falling in home ownership. We’re going to come down to about, I think, they think, anywhere to about 62 percent, I think we’re going to go a little lower. I think a nice balance is about 55 percent, with the rest of the people renting. I do think we need to reinvent rental housing, though. I think the kind of rental housing we have now, where you go find a landlord on Craig’s List and you get a place and they don’t fix the windows and the dishwasher breaks and you’re doing it; that’s crazy. I think with all the condos that are vacant, in fact, we’re even seeing this in Miami. And I see this when I go to Miami, it’s actually my cycling route. I cycle down through the city and through the City of Miami, into Key Biscayne. You see all the condo towers that went bankrupt, that were distress sales, now being turned to rental. And what’s interesting is you’re renting from a real rental agency, the housing is nice and high quality, but it’s very affordable, lots of people are streaming back into downtown, empty nesters, young people, people with families, more street-level activity.

I even imagine something more than that, where you could sign up with Acme Rental Company, or XYZ Rental Company, and if your job changes in New York, or San Francisco, Toronto where I live, and you want to be closer to where you work, you can switch apartments. Or if you transfer to the West Coast or the Midwest or wherever it is, San Francisco, Chicago, you can basically be part of that rental company’s units there. Some way, and I think with the excess inventory—according to one analysis, we now in the United States have 8 years, 103 months, of excess housing inventory; well, somebody’s got to do something with that. If companies over the course of the reset in an entrepreneurial fashion begin to roll that up, begin to provide mass rental housing, if you will, and what gives me—I talk to a lot of developers and I speak to developers' forums, I was just at the Urban Land Institute: multi-family housing is one place people are actually profitable in.  

And just to spice up things a bit, here is a video I showed to one kid in office today. She went to Vashi station for the first time in her life and was impressed by it. When it was first constructed and Vashi was still a growing far flung suburb of Mumbai, the station won a lot of rave reviews. So much so that this movie song was also shot on location in the station. The actress is actually in the middle of eh song gyrating on the tracks. Development is always Sexy.

you never know what you can get

It’s always great fun to meet a veteran, from any business and at the same time it’s pretty irritating to meet a cousin (especially wife’s) who you have never ever met, but you have to and exchange pleasantries. So last week I was pretty unexcited at the prospect of meeting one such relative. But since my mom in law doesn’t normally ask me to come and meet, I thought of going nevertheless.

He was Jasmine’s cousin and a veteran in the old coconut oil trade from Cochin. It was quite nice and mentally I ate some humble pie. I judged before I met and if I don’t meet then how would I learn from others. There were a few things that he said that hit me. One of it was when he explained why the middle men in Cochin in the coconut oil business completely died. It seems Jasmine’s grand dad from her mother’s side was a kingpin of sorts in the business. The business died when Marico professionalized and bought directly from the manufacturers. The middle man was bound to die a natural death. He said that three things contributed to the death of the middle man. They were road, mobile telephony and banking. Bang on. These three improvements surely have contributed a large amount to the productivity gains and of course productivity can’t be enhanced without squeezing the middle man.

 14 years ago I worked as a sales guy in rural Guajarati. The mobile telecom boom hadn’t happened and I had to call up the Area sales manager in the evening at his home to get through to him. There was no contact possible when I was on the road and my ASM’s would have no clue what I was up to. I also used it to my advantage in those days by disappearing and fudging reports. I learnt later the power of diligently working and not bunking office. But at the time, I was shuttling between Gujarat and Mumbai, trying to squeeze every second I got by coming home. I wouldn’t recommend slacking off to anyone. But the point is that mobiles would have greatly enhanced our productivity. We would be in touch a lot more with each other in the sales system. I for one would not have gone missing. Though I did not see this one coming, it surely

Roads for sure would help. Rural Gujarat meant a lot of travelling. It was evident that road network needed improvement. I travelled all across the place to encounter bad roads. I travelled in buss, three wheelers, trucks, matadors, scooters and what not. It definitely screwed up my back completely. The lack of a road network would mean that we would not be able to transport goods cheap and fast across the country. Markets would remain inaccessible and the transfer of goods based on price movements would be severely curtailed. Roads are great and having roads is a greater leveler than what I had imagined.

Banking. I had got this one right. I remember my first cheque quite clearly. It was a non MICR cheque. In other words, Ahmedabad did not participate in MICR clearning – that is the cheques did not have the magnetic ink at the bottom. This is the number that helps the RBI in clearing the cheques. I found it highly amusing. Gujarat had a plethora of co-operative banks in every nook and corner. When we collected cheques from the distributor we had a list of approved banks. The thing was that for cash management services we had tied up with a third party provider. We used to have blank cheque leaves signed by the distributor at our end. We would send the stock and write the amount on the cheque and give it to the third party whose job it was to get the money. When I first heard the concept, I was quite confused. Why would you need someone to help you clear the cheque. Our deal was that I would get the money within two or three days of presenting the cheque and the third party would somehow get the clear funds from the banks in question. This is pretty stupid archaic concept. You present a cheque you should get the money, right? It seems there was a huge delay in banks clearing payments. Especially if it was a cooperative bank. Some of my distributors were the heads of the banks themselves and cheques would be held back for two weeks before being released. The third party would give us a list of banks they thought were acceptable and would accept cheques only from them. This was a system that was plagued with obvious difficulties and inefficiencies. During the 2000 dotcom boom, I knew that the banking industry would be able to add percentage points to a nation’s GDP by digitizing all their transactions and records all over India. Access to credit, access to creditworthiness and the ability to effect instant payments would be a huge booster to business and productivity. It had to work.

So banking, telecom and infrastructure were the three buzz words that removed the middle men in India. Well said ‘cousin of Jasmine’. Well said. I agree whole heartedly. Sorry Jasmine. Next time I will come without whining.

finders keepers

Last weekend Jispa had her trials to represent the city for the state meet. Jispa has been training pretty hard over the last one year. This is when she and her coach started to seriously set their eyes on qualifying. She has had some amazing improvements in timings over the year. But she has been unable to br4eak into the top three. Her coach is also realistic about it. He told us that it was pretty difficult as Jispa seriously started only a year back. The other kids had been at it much longer. But his immediate priority was a top six finish at this meet. Jispa managed that in the 50mtrs butterfly (fifth place) and the 50 mtrs free (fourth place). The top 6 go to Pune next month for the state meet. Her coach feels that the exposure and the confidence gained will be good.

The tournaments are held with an age bracket of two years being bunched together. At their age two years is a lot of difference. So in the under 11 category someone aged 10 has little chance of winning. Everyone talks about the disadvantage year and the advantage year. The year gone by was an advantage year for Jispa, and the one coming up is a disadvantage year. Next year she would participate with little chance of winning anything. Her coach was telling Jasmine that Jispa has a lot of potential. He said if she can be so fast with such horrible strokes, just imagine how fast she would be if her strokes is corrected. After June is the off season and this year is her disadvantage year. So the coach will now have time to correct the strokes and movement. I want to go and tell him. He is talking about preparing for the state meet two years hence.  Pretty deep stuff. Stuff that we had no insight into until you go through with it yourself. I am looking forward for the state meet. I want to see what it’s like. How are the facilities and the arrangements? How do swimmers across the state stack up against the Mumbai lads. How they come, what they do and how they behave.

I noticed an interesting things at the meet on Sunday. As Jispa and her contemporaries lined up at the starters block, I saw something that struck me. All the kids at the whistle took the block with a small ritual. They touched their hearts or they touched their heads or made a cross or something. They all looked for divine inspiration. Some supernatural force to come and assist them or mere blessings before the BIG race. Jispa merely took the starters block with no such ritual. We haven’t taught her God Rituals. Now I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Definitely I was not going to teach her empty prayer or stupid rituals which have no meaning but at the same time, what I have robbed her of, is an external focus. Something that can help you when you are all alone. I don’t go to temples at all and I don’t recite any prayer, but in times of extreme situations, I do have my conversations. Something that I tell him, come dude, get me through this shit. Or thanks dude, nice one. Or its testing but I will be back, just give me strength to weather this one. I assume this is there because as a child I did believe in God. Today I grow up to question common belief and faith. Shit cannot happen to me just because I don’t pray or good cannot come because I do so. But sometimes, when the going is tough an external voice to talk to in private may be a good thing.  As of now Jispa doesn’t have this God figure in her mind. At least that’s what I think. But instead she has herself to talk to. I have spoken to her about what she thinks. Like the time when the results for the Hindi elocution was to be announced. She talks to herself. I think that internal belief is possibly better than a God belief.

Jispa willy-nilly has become a test case. Not out of my wanting it to become. But it is an interesting study on what a human do would if he were not brought up on a religious diet. What would you do if your dad actively questioned religious belief and God, your mom didn’t teach you to pray but at the same time your grannies took you to the temple? How would you have your conversations? I guess she will rely on her instinct as a human more than her instinct as a religious person. So she will take the starting block stand as a human being free from man constructed beliefs. She will I assume talk to herself. Look at an internally locus of control, an internal voice to guide her. A voice that is not borne by faith taught or not borne out of a faith in opposition to faith taught (like me), but a natural voice that human will have. That I think will be her God. And I hope and Pray that she finds it useful for her and holds her good stead. I Pray I have not robbed her of something important and eternal, but that I have given her something natural, inborn and lasting. I hope she finds her own GOD. Finders keepers.

Jump Jump

This week end Jispa has her top city swimming event. If she does well, she represents Mumbai at the state meet. She seems to be doing well and she has a decent chance of making the cut. At least in a couple of events. The last one year has been a bit tiring for us as regards her swimming. How much do we push? What does she require in nutrition and how do we balance swimming and studies. Her studies are cranking up a notch and Jasmine is feeling the pressure of studies which is getting transferred to Jispa. I don’t really blame anyone. Jispa is a nine year old, aspiring champion and a smart kid. Jasmine is a mother who knows that while swimming is good, studies is probably more important. How do we balance the two? It’s a delicate balance and here I must interfere and calm all the nerves around the house. Sometimes things are on the edge and the atmosphere gets very tense.

Even while swimming, it can get very tense with Jasmine getting dam irritated with Jispa when she suddenly starts swimming awkwardly. Jasmine goes twice a day to the pool, manages the food, the studies, everything and then if Jispa suddenly decides to do silly things, anyone can blow a fuse. My role is very clear in these times. I am lucky to be detached from the system. I am one step away. I can stay out and keep telling jasmine – its ok its ok. At that time, the biggest risk is that I can get the brunt of it.

Parenting is really frustrating at times. It’s impossible to keep your sensibility in check at all times. You never know what’s the next fight that’s around the corner. While swimming Jispa behaves like the champ. She changes into her costumes, adjusts her cap and goggles, takes her start and swims like crazy. As parents, one tends to forget that the tough competitor hides a child. A nine year old child with enough ants in her pants. This came to the fore during the otter’s club meet. The otters club swimming pool has a section which has a diving board. The kids completely freak out on it. Jispa has never been off one. Between events Jasmine told me that Jispa is having fun at the diving boards. I thought should go around and teach her a trick or two. I used to dive off the board as a kid and it was good fun. We used to have fun diving just like that as well. Who needed a board. We tried to perfect dives and I remember we even tried to do a somersault while diving. That was real fun. Especially if you land on your back and get a whack from the water. So I thought it would make sense to knock some non sense into her diving.

I reached there to find Jispa doing this…

So here I was the one trying to teach a kid to be a kid. It’s humbling to know that your kid doesn’t need you to teach her. Later I asked her who taught her and of course, I should have guessed. Her friends. Get a board and a water body, that’s all the kids need to have fun. I can only take credit for the fact that I did not stop their fun.

making money - out of nothing at all

Seigniorage – Simply explained, this is the profit that the government makes from printing money. Your ten rupee note doesn’t cost the government ten bucks. It costs much less. Hence for a fraction of the cost the government can pump money in the economy. Of course things are not so simple. Here is one nice podcast by planet money on the topic. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/04/19/150976150/should-we-kill-the-dollar-bill . Transcript at the bottom of this post. You should be able to broadly understand seigniorage while listening to the benefits of the coins versus notes in circulation. One of the most interesting stuff is the argument that the government makes a lot of money by having coins as opposed to notes is because people don’t put coins back into circulation because they don’t like them in their wallet. And to add the fact that coins tend to get lost between the cushion on the sofa! That’s all profit for the government. But obviously there is a cost to such seigniorage, which they correctly identified. Moneys made through inefficiencies are what you count as profits. It is stupid. It is not your primary job. The primary job for money is to pass around, not sit in the vault like McScrooge. Do you guys remember this cartoon of Donald Duck’s uncle jumping and swimming in his vault with tons of cash stashed around?

Cash in your wallet and in your jars and under your sofas are profit from the government but are absolutely useless for the economy. The money has to be in circulation and put to productive use. If you save it, put it in the bank, so that a portion of it can be lent out. Accounting for accruing money from lost coins is the same as black money you can store in your vaults. It’s the same problem. It’s not simply the tax that is saved. Legitimizing the flow of money has a much larger positive effect of the economy than simply the tax being collected.

Similarly, even corporations try and earn money through inefficiencies. The finance industry’s famous one is called ‘float’. Simply – if I owe you money and I write a cheque to you and give it to you one day late, I will earn interest income for one day. Not that you mind it too much. You don’t care about the one day interest on your small amount, but added up in a large amount of payments and you have a very large float for the organization. So if you ever wondered why they love you to pay online, instantly but they always like to pay you by cheque, you have an answer.

Even in mutual funds and other such organizations, you will have tons of money that is lying with the organization which is pretty much forgotten. Some body once told me that UTI would have hundreds of crores of money that would always be invested with them because of people who simply forgot or have dies and their heirs are unaware of the investment. I am not sure, but it’s likely that even insurance firms would accrue such seigniorage. The fun of policies sold and lapsed due to non-payment created a happy boom for them till the new rules set by IRDA disallowing the firms to benefit thus.

I think we get too clever for our own good. We forget our core job, which may be to provide a service in the best possible way for the customer. It should be a firm’s fiduciary responsibility to ensure efficiency in the system. One normally blames the regulators but the Indian regulators brought in some semblance of order to the insurance industry causing abnormal inefficient profits to be wiped off, also the regulators forced the banks to pay daily interest. Otherwise they were paying only on the lowest balance of the month with some other complex calculation. Ditto for getting rid of prepayment of home loan charges.

Even in the other firms I have worked for, not just financial firms, I see this problem. The finance guys get over smart and start controlling the system. They make an excel sheet to prove how paying payment a little late and getting payments a little earlier can cause great amount of ‘savings’ and profits to the firm. Money is an interesting topic. The structuring of money and the economic, monetary, banking systems are lopsided towards making tons of money through inefficiencies. The ones in the know can hugely benefit from those not in the know. In India this is popularly known as the Gujju mindset and this particular breed seems to understand this better than others. Gujjus and Marwaris are typecast thus. Or if you prefer the Brahaminical order, you would call it the ‘banya’ mindset. Use your trader mindset to make money. You definitely need a trader mindset while doing business and understanding cash flow is critical but using it to overrule simple customer centric thinking is pure stupidity.

But forget all that. When we went to Matheran a few weeks ago I did something that made the government a teeny bit richer. I remember as a kid once we had a trek organized to Matheran. We went up the hill station from the back road and came down the main road which at a few points crosses the Famous Matheran Light railway. At the time, my friend had pulled out a few coins and put it on the rails to see how they become when the trains run over it. This time around I had the chance to do it and show Jispa. We saw a train coming and I quickly put in a one rupee coin and a five rupee coin on the tracks. Jispa was wondering what I was doing. Sure enough the engine passed over it and flattened the coins. Jispa was pretty excited and we could send it with her the next week to school for a show and tell. That was a pretty unique show and tell and it benefited the government by around five bucks (I am assuming it cost one buck to make the two coins). Here are the two profitable pieces of metal for the government.

The Transcript of the podcast as follows.

April 19, 2012 -:

Subway riders here in Washington were recently the target audience for an unusual ad campaign. The ads show giant one dollar bills and asked, do you heart the dollar? They're part of a small lobbying war over the fate of the dollar bill. There's legislation in the House and Senate that would eliminate all $1 bills and replace them with dollar coins.

NPR's investigative unit and our Planet Money team checked into the debate over coins versus bills. And David Kestenbaum and Robert Benincasa think they have a winner.

DAVID KESTENBAUM, BYLINE: Here's the question. Given that we need to have some form of money out there worth a dollar, which is more cost effective, a bill or a coin?

ROBERT BENINCASA, BYLINE: Before we tell you who the winner is, let's hear each side's case.

KESTENBAUM: In one corner, arguing on behalf of the dollar coin, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat from Iowa. He told us coins are a clear win. They last much longer than bills.

SENATOR TOM HARKIN: The most important thing is it's just more efficient. It's way more efficient than a paper dollar.

BENINCASA: Dollar coins last something like 30 years and he says switching to coins would save hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

KESTENBAUM: Coins are also, he says, easier to stick into vending machines. Harkin's office put out a video of him struggling to buy a snack with a worn out $1 bill.

(SOUNDBITE OF AD)

HARKIN: Has this ever happened to you? You try o put a dollar bill in the tray, but it won't take it. Well, that's why I've introduced bipartisan legislation to replace the dollar bill with a dollar coin.

KESTENBAUM: Harkin can rattle off a long list of countries that have replaced bills with coins.

HARKIN: Canada has a coin that's worth $2. England has a coin worth about $3 U.S. Switzerland has one worth about $5 U.S. And yet, what have we got? We got a 25-cent piece.

KESTENBAUM: Republican Senator John McCain has also signed onto the bill. And it's worth noting that businesses in both senators' states would benefit if this bill passes.

BENINCASA: Harkins' state, Iowa, is home to a company called PMX, which makes the metal sheets that get turned into coins.

KESTENBAUM: Senator John McCain's state of Arizona is home to some big companies that mine copper, the main ingredient in dollar coins.

BENINCASA: So, that's the coin side of the fight. In the other corner, fighting for paper, you'll find an organization called Americans for George.

KESTENBAUM: Because George Washington is on the $1 bill. Americans for George put those ads in the D.C. subway and again, here you find a lot of money behind the arguments over money. Americans for George was started by the company that makes the paper the $1 bill is printed on. Crane & Company.

BENINCASA: Doug Crane is a vice president there. As you might imagine, he says paper dollars are better than coins.

DOUGLAS CRANE: A dollar bill is made from a blend of cotton and linen fiber.

KESTENBAUM: Paper bills are cheaper to manufacture than coins, he says, and they last surprisingly long. According to the U.S. Federal Reserve, a $1 bill lasts about four and a half years.

CRANE: U.S. currency, you know, it's some of the most durable banknotes on the planet. And, you know, the $1 bill is probably the hardest-working note there is.

KESTENBAUM: So, what to make of this. The coin people say coins are better. The paper people say paper is better. Both cannot be true.

BENINCASA: And to make things more confusing, both sides point to the same official report to make their case.

KESTENBAUM: The report was written by the Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan arm of Congress that's often called on to settle questions like this.

BENINCASA: We talked with the GAO's Lorelei St. James who oversaw the report. The GAO has recommended switching to coins.

LORELEI ST. JAMES: That still stands.

KESTENBAUM: She says switching to coins would make the government money. Over 30 years, a lot of money.

JAMES: We show that there would be a $4.4 billion net benefit to the federal government.

KESTENBAUM: But it turns out that $4.4 billion does not come from the fact that coins are more cost effective to make. Coins do last longer, but they also cost more to manufacture. No, according to the GAO, the extra money for the government comes from this other weird thing. It's going to take us a minute to explain.

BENINCASA: It turns out if you switch from dollar bills to dollar coins, you can't just do a one for one replacement. You actually need more coins than you would bills. Why? Because people don't like carrying coins around.

JAMES: A lot of people when they take their coins out of their pockets at the end of the day or their purses, they'll put in what we call a coin jar.

KESTENBAUM: The coin jar effect. In Canada and the U.K., the governments had to put out all these extra coins, over 50 percent more, just to keep enough money circulating. The GAO says these extra coins mean extra money for the government.

BENINCASA: Because the government makes a profit from every bill or coin out there, so more coins, more profit. It's called seigniorage.

KESTENBAUM: So case closed, right? Not so fast. We're here to tell you there is something big missing from that GAO report, which is where all that money the government is getting comes from. It turns out it comes from us.

BENINCASA: To help explain how this works, and to render the final judgment, let's meet one more person, Robert Whaples. He's an economist at Wake Forest University.

KESTENBAUM: Whaples weirdly came to us via the dollar coin lobby, a group called the Dollar Coin Alliance. The Dollar Coin Alliance said make sure you talk to him; he's a pro-coin guy.

BENINCASA: So, we called Whaples up. He read the GAO report, thought about it, and he said the choice is very clear: The paper dollar wins, the coin loses.

ROBERT WHAPLES: It's clearly an inferior substitute. People are going to be putting them on top of their bureaus instead of spending them for transactions. And that seems like a big waste of resources to me.

BENINCASA: Whaples says all that money the government makes on the dollar coin, all that extra money, it doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from us.

KESTENBAUM: Think about it this way, if I have a paper dollar, I'll probably use it or put in the bank. But if stick a coin in a jar, I'm not getting anything from it. I'm not earning any interest on it. It's like we're paying a tax.

WHAPLES: That is exactly how I would see it.

KESTENBAUM: Well, but the Dollar Coin Alliance said I should talk to you because you favor the...

WHAPLES: Yeah, I guess they made a mistake.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

KESTENBAUM: There you have it.

I'm David Kestenbaum.

BENINCASA: And I'm Robert Benincasa, NPR News.

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whats worth more?

When we grew up we hardly had any swimming costumes to choose from. You just went to some sports store and picked yourself a costume. I used to swim regularly in Dubai, that is till the third standard. When we shifted to India we stopped swimming. No club, no pool. One big posh building (Avanti) in the locality had a swimming pool which was empty. They repaired it a few years later and started it, but it was out of bounds for outsiders. The only accessible pool was the municipal pool at Shivaji park, which was some distance away.

As a kid I went into the pool but I hadn’t really properly learnt swimming. So after a long time when I finally went swimming with my friend at the Avanti swimming pool, I realised I had completely forgotten to swim. I used to do some variation of the underwater stroke or something, which just about kept me afloat. So there was no swimming for me for many years. Till one day V-inu and I in the first year of college (F.Y.B.COM) decided to swim properly at the Shivaji Park pool. We figured out when the forms come out (once a year), got the forms, filled it in and started swimming. We saw what the coaches taught and learnt that one has to hold the sides of the pool and splash ones legs to learn to float. So we sat and splashed. Slowly we figured what we thought was free style and swam.

We also had started doing odd jobs as sales promoters. One assignment was at the defense canteen. So there we used our contact we had built up and I remember buying for myself a swimming costume. A defense canteen would have heavily discounted stuff, thanks to the non-applicability of taxes. I don’t remember the brand but it was some home grown, possibly Jalandar made brand. I don’t remember too well, but I think I couldn’t afford and hence did not even dream of buying swimming goggles or a swim cap. I did try and buy ear plugs but quickly released that they didn’t help a bit. Speedo was a brand that was not available in India and was something I could only drool over. OOO… Speedo swimming wear.

So when Jispa started swimming seriously we went and picked Speedo swimming costumes. They were an upgrade from her home grown ‘mad max’ or some brand like that swimming costume.Speedo. Wow. She had not one but three speedo swimming costumes. When you go for competitive swimming, you change your costumes after every race so that you can remain nice and dry while you await your race. Speedo costumes, cap, goggles. Not bad eh! Till recently we realised that even Speedo is not it. Now Jispa is a walking talking Arena billboard. She prefers that material over Speedo. Slowly we are seeing Arena  taking over. Speedo seems to only stock during the summers. Most sport shops are out of stock of Speedo or any decent swimwear the rest of the year. Whereas Arena is slowly building credence with the serious swimmers. This is a serious marketing lesson. In the last three four years, I have noticed suddenly Arena swim wear on the bodies of the athletes. This has an effect greater that what we can imagine. If the champions in the pool start wearing Arena, then the others will slowly see and realize that Arena is ‘real’ swim wear what champions wear. Even the casual swimmer will see this and slowly gravitate towards Arena. Speedo is in real danger in Mumbai at least of being the lower performing swimwear brand.

This emulation effect is larger than we realize. Big brands have understood this and that’s why you see the bad rush to pay obscene amounts of money to make champions wear your brand on the stage. But what Speedo is failing to see, is the fact that there are champions in every small nook and corner. The classic marketing case of Arena having really high end swimwear in stock, which probably doesn’t sell at all but defiantly has a strong rub off for the more boring models. They sponsor the Otter club meet where they have a stall. I glanced through the selection and quickly ran out of there when I saw my costumes for two thousand bucks. Hah! One other parent told me, forget that. There was a kid’s model for 12 thousand bucks. A high end costume which has to be worn in a particular manner. It probably took around 15 minutes just to wear it. Oh come on.

Then we got talking and I realized some kid champions were wearing real high end costumes, costing upwards of twenty thirty thousand rupees! Oh dam you. Some real special fast costumes. These costumes I had read reduce your drag and help you swim faster. The net effect would be something like one tenth of a second at best. One tenth! In these club meets and state meets, timings are taken by hand held stop watches. There are two time keepers for every race and then timings are taken at the end. One tenth of a second is the easily human error in the stop watch, it surely is not what the kid needs for now.

The most of the timing improvement at this age is not the equipment but strokes. The right strokes help you slash off seconds. Your improvement is measured in seconds. The coach works on this every day. For Jispa the coaching fees are around 900 bucks a month for 5 one hour evening turns and 3 one and a half hour morning turns. From which the gymkhana keeps a cut and shares the rest with the coach. For a coach that produces state and national champions, it’s hardly any fees. Jasmine and I find it really cheap.

The coach has a strict policy of not accepting any extra gifts or money. They refuse any attempt by the parents to give them anything.  They are extremely sweet. This year the club decided to honor them at a party (tomorrow) and the mothers are using this as an opportunity to collect and give a cash envelope with the felicitation. It interesting to see the reactions of the mothers and others while the hat gets passed around. For me the coach is paramount. I hold him in the highest esteem. It because of him that we are around. They make or break us. We did not know Jispa would swim so well. We had no dream about her swimming prowess. The coach has dreamt of her victory. We can only be grateful. I never had any sport coach. I value them immensely.

While we were have the discussion on expensive costumes I wryly remarked – ‘we can pay 30 thousand for a swimming costume that saves us one tenth of a second but we don’t pay much for the coach who helped our kid cut 20 seconds to start with’. It’s embarrassing for me to have Jispa’s swim bag contain equipment that is worth almost twice as much as what the coach makes from teaching Jispa in a year. Whats worth more?

Tough shit

In around Jan I twisted my knee to end my best ever cricket season. I was averaging 30 plus runs in every match. This was all due to a simple lesson that I overhead one coach at Shivaji Park give out to his wards. The most important one was to keep your hands close to your body while playing the shots. These 30/40 runs also could have gone to become higher scores if not for the fact that I used to run myself out so that others get batting. In all my cricketing outings, playing twenty twenty for the corporate team, I haven’t ever hit a fifty. I came close, tantalizing close to 50 once, around four five years ago. This season was the season to hit 50. Normally my job as a youngster was to hit and clear the ropes or as an elder to eschew all risk and ensure the team doesn’t lose all the wickets. Over the last two years I built the B team into a decent formidable team that had decent batsman and decent bowlers. So my role changed to keep one end up for around 7 to 10 overs while keeping the runs flowing and then attack the bowling from 10 to 15 overs. With the technical flaw getting ironed out, I started to score runs and keep my wicket guarded. The team was also doing very well and we were building a strong nucleus in the side. So I was pretty frustrated when this Jan I twisted my knee and was out of the action. The team then went on to lose two semifinals and generally morale was down. Yesterday I decided I was fit enough to play. I had been keeping my workout going in the intervening days. Swimming was on. I even started cycling in the gym and I was doing 10 kms in 30 min with a 5 resistance. So I knew my stamina and speed wouldn’t be an issue but I was very worried about being in touch. Also the issue of captainship. Men. We love to play politics and we hate giving up power. We play our game and we take every chance to play a little game. Even the game of cricket where there is probably nothing at stake, we will play our political game. In my absence, coteries had formed. The captain had formed his own favorite gang. I realized why the B team had lost its knockout matches. We lost our core and we lost it so bloody fast. I had drilled it into the team that we play, not to win but to enjoy the game. We play to have fun, and to give everyone a chance. Slowly in my absence the team forgot about this. The captain would over bowl himself and his coterie, possibly in his desire to win. The B team doesn’t have talent. They have potential. Untapped and waiting to be let lose. You will never know on which day, which player will perform. The key was to ensure enough guys get enough chances. That simple principle was thrown out of the window. People just don’t get it. “When you treat a disease you win, you lose, but when you treat a patient you always win” – Patch Adams. When you play to win, you may win or lose, but you play to give people a chance you will always win. Winning is not the objective of the sport I play. It is the happy outcome. Having such an attitude helped me unearth good talent that helped us win and build our side. But all this is complete bullshit. I left the team for a few months and we forget all that. We mess it up completely. Now I know why some guys just kept bumping into office kept asking me to come back and lead. They indicated that they would come in only if I came in to lead. In yesterday’s match I did not lead. I stayed around the fringes. The guy in charge made some stupid, silly noises and asked for my opinion as if to pay due deference. I also did not seize it as I wasn’t sure of my own fitness. I struggled on the field missing a few catches and letting a bowl go from under my feet. So I was a bit apprehensive going into bat. Opening the batting, my job was to hang around till a few overs. I hung around a bit. Hitting a few drives and a missing a few. I stayed there till the fourth/fifth over to realize that possibly we were a bit slower than required chasing 160 in 20 overs. I gestured to captain if I could start hitting. Affirmative came the gesture. I started playing aggressive, trusting my footwork and my drives. I started stepping out to the spinner. A few boundaries and a few shots played out. I was on a roll! My shots were connecting and my technique was supporting me. The heat was also oppressive, but my cycling and swimming kept me through. I was a bit tired but not dead. Ten overs and I was still going strong. I realised that we still had bench strength, which meant I could go for more shots. Up the run rate even more, if possible. In Mumbai cricket is played on maidans with the pitches never in the centre. So you will have one boundary closer than the other. Typically the spinner will always use bowl from eth end where he gets a long leg side boundary and a short offside. It’s a trap I have used many times. Get the spinner to toss up to a really long leg side field and tempt some BIG shots. You might giveaway a six but you will get his wicket next. It always works. I was not going to be suckered into this trap. I wouldn’t be able to clear that. Especially against the left arm spinner bowling away. But that meant I could get the ball to clear the offside with the spin. Easier said than done. From a Leg side player when I started playing maidan cricket twelve years ago I had slowly evolved an offside attack. I hit a few boundaries there and then… there… one of my big dreams of my life. I danced down the spinner on a pitch that was holding up and smashed the spinner with the spin for a lofted cover drive and cleared the boundary for a SIX. I have never been able to cover drive a six. I have once smashed one over point. But that was a fast swing bowler. This was the shot to unsettle the spinner. He had no option but to bowl short and that meant easy pickings. Anything on the offside was being hit hard. Your game is over. While batting I felt a twitch in my knee. The same knee. I felt my back a bit. Oops. While running and turning sharp I realized I might have hurt my toes (two blue toes when I saw them later). So now I knew I was close to my first ever fifty and I knew I might not play another match this season. What should I do. Slow down. No. never. The team comes first. So I continued hitting till one mishit and I was in the pavilion. I had batted for thirteen overs, ran like crazy for a lot of runs, hit 6 boundaries and a six and when I saw my score I wanted to kill someone. 48 of 41 balls. My god! Another chance missed. The form of my life and I had not converted it. Was I going to retire without a 50 ever? We won the match eventually and I was declared man of the match. A huge achievement for someone who never had formal coaching and learnt by reading, listening and playing. Playing cricket in my mind. Promising never to repeat my mistakes. That’s the way I learnt. The real hard way. Here is me getting my award….

And here is my scorecard, for my record. Sorry to inflict this on the reader...

But I still walked away completely tired and frustrated. Frustrated that I did not hit 50 and even more so that my team was getting destroyed. I could see the resentment on the few players. I could see that people would not come in to play in the next few matches. I could see my team disintegrate and I knew that my knee, my back and my toes would not allow me to play again this season. And hence I have no option. Shut up and walk away. I will have to rebuild the team next season. I can’t interfere from outside and I can’t change a dam thing. Oh dam, I tried explaining this to the fellows in charge but people just don’t get it do they? Simple principals are forgotten in our desire to win. We forget why we are there, to start with. All we want to do is win and we start doing stupid things. The current guy in charge is a good cricketer but he will bowl himself more than required and he will not experiment as much as he should, he will rely on old hands and do old tricks. They don’t always work for you. And you can’t build long term on short term tricks. So I walked away with a win, man of the match and a great shot with disappointment and anger. Quiet seething rage. No fifty and a team being killed and I can’t do jack. Tough shit. Really angry tough shit. I will wait for time. Possibly rebuild the team and possibly hit at least one 50. At least one.

a nice mix

It’s a bloody mela. Summer follows winter. And if you are the person swimming in winter then you tend to look at all the others who come in summer with a little disdain. They are not real swimmers. I dont see them when the water is cold. Real swimmers come and swim even in winter. They swim even when its 10 degrees. They don’t crib about the cold. I swam thru the coldest winter we ever had in Mumbai. But it’s also true that the only reason I swam was -circumstances. First reason - I had to come to the club in any case. My daughter had her swimming at 545 am. Second reason - I twisted my knee - that meant no squash no treadmill. Only option - swimming. But I can take credit - I decided to brave the water instead of lying around on my butt, waiting for Jispa to finish swimming. So I have some moral ground to stand on :-) even if it is a bit wobbly. Of all the things in the world, I never imagined I would be swimming alongside my daughter. I dreamt of other stuff. Like trekking, camping, cycling. Yes cycling.
V-nu gifted us a cycle of his. A nice expensive light cycle. Jispa had hers and we bought one more Jasmine. This was a few years ago. In our enthusiasm we dreamt of a family cycling together. We put a hook in the garage to chain the cycles to and we cycled a few days. Then the cycles just lay there securely chained. They stayed unused gathering lots of dust. Neighborhood construction ensured enough cement layers formed on the cycle. We got Jispa’s cycle up and kept it outside our door which meant it was relatively dust free. She cycled a bit. But for two years or more our adult cycles just sat and withered away.
A year back we sold one cycle to one of the maids working in the building. Her kid goes to school on a cycle and his cycle just got robbed. I had great intentions of fixing and servicing the V-nu’s cycle. Those intentions finally materialized last month. V-nu was in town and we hauled the cycle on a truck and took it to the repair guy for a complete overhaul. This was at Dadar. The day I had to collect it back from work, I decided to cycle back the 6 odd kms. I would assume that would not be too difficult. But I had never cycled on congested Mumbai roads in peak rush hour. Collecting the cycle I set off. At first out of sheer habit I hit the traffic and was waiting behind the car in front of me. It then suddenly struck me that I was on a cycle and waiting like this in a traffic jam is what you do in a car. A cycle would weave its way through the traffic between the cars. Whoops. I set off between the cars. The last time I saw a cyclist waiting patiently behind a car at a signal was at Geneva. He was taking the same amount of space as a car would, maintaining distance. This is crazy thing to do in Mumbai. I guess I would have been run over. I enjoyed weaving between the cars, going uphill then downhill. The cars I thought were pretty ok; the problem I faced was from the motorcycles. We were fighting for the same aisles between the traffic. I, with pedal power and them on their powerful motors. I had to cut lanes and out of sheer habit again, I found myself looking towards the imaginary rear view mirrors on the right. I really don’t understand how cyclists twist backwards in their attempt to see what’s behind. But on the whole I thought the experience was pretty much nice. I avoided the roads where one normally saw truck traffic and weaved through the bylanes. The greatest fun was crossing signals as a pedestrian and taking shortcuts through the wrong way. A cycle has many advantages in Mumbai.
Now with the cycle home and happily serviced, I could take Jispa to the garden cycling. With the long summer days I could cycle till late and enjoy. The first day Jispa went cycling, in some time she soon complained about her calves. Calves hurting? That too for Jispa. Thanks to swimming, Jispa has a very well toned body. She has a six pack stomach, muscular legs and a gazelle like structure. He calves paining sounded very funny. We realised that she does a lot of swimming. A WHOLE LOT OF SWIMMING. She has swimming muscles in her calves and they are different from cycling muscles or even walking or climbing muscles. The coach has given strict instructions not to swim on weekends and give the muscles some rest. So cycling muscles are different. So Jasmine and I decided to get her to cycle on weekends. Nothing as strenuous as her swimming but a bit of light cycling in the garden on weekends might do her good. Over the next three weekends, her cycling calves seemed to loosen up and she could cycle with ease without complaint. It’s probably a good thing. We really don’t know for sure, but we guess that a little bit of all round muscle development is good. I read once about Armstong (the champion long distance cyclist) complain that cyclists hate taking stairs. Its hurts them. I saw a variation happening at home. So light cycling is a nice thing, we assume.
This weekend, Jasmine packed some fries with mayo and ketchup along with some water and we took the hamper for a picnic. We cycled a bit. Now Jispa cycle a bit more on her own, take sa few rounds and then we sat down to enjoy our picnic. Just daddy and kid. Here…



I loved the time we spent. Just cycling away and then lazing around. A couple came in with their dogs with which Jispa played a bit. A nice way to spend your Sunday evening. Time well spent.

treasure your silver

“Uncle”, one kid called out to me yesterday at Jispa’s school swim meet. The school swim meet is the eagerly awaited meet at our home. Jispa always does better at her school meet and her best times are at the relay there. It is easily the most important swim meet as she gets to show case her swimming in front of her friends. All her friends know that she swims regularly. They participate but know they can’t match her. Of the four strokes you are allowed to participate in only three. You pick your ones. For Jispa the breast is the weakest stroke and hence she opted out of that one. So you had the kids sighing a relief that she was not in that stroke, which means the others have a chance. She won the golds in the three stockes and that too by a wide margin. The second place was ten seconds behind in some races. It was complete domination.
“Uncle” she called out to me, “you must be very proud of Jispa nah?”. “why?” I asked. “you must be proud of her because Jispa is so talented”. She was alluding to the fact that Jispa has had a rocking year. She did well in English elocutions, Hindi elocutions, sports day and then the swimming event (technically it’s the next academic year) etc. “er, no kid. That’s not why I am proud of her. I would be a proud parent irrespective of her talents. It doesn’t matter”
Talent. Versus hard work and perseverance? Talent is good but you still have to work a lot on it. when parents tell me congrats for my kid, I just point them in Jispa’s direction. That’s the one doing all the work. I got a chance to explain this to Jispa over dinner. I told her you have had a great year but its all becausue of the hard work you have put in. “do you remember” I asked her. “do you remember in peak winter crying before going to swim because the water would be very cold”. She nodded. I asked another one “do you remember when you practice your elocutions, I would sometimes get angry and scold you and you would cry”. She nodded again. It’s a lot of hard work. Very hard work. I keep telling any parent who cares to listen. Please put your child in any one sport / discipline outside of school. Pursue it properly with the help of a coach. Don’t aim for any medal category but preserve with it. Something that the child enjoys. Do it properly. It teaches the kid a thing or two. It teaches hard work, discipline, the fun of improving every year. A mental makeup that will hold in good stead.
Jispa knows a thing or two about swimming, about getting up in winter morning to brave the cold waters. She saw her timings improve after the weather warmed up. These experiences are more precious than the golds she wins. I don’t hold any of her medals close to my heart. They are a means, not the end. Some of her races are more fun than others some more exciting but really, its about training every day, focusing on technique, concentration and above all perseverance that counts.
After her three strokes, came the time for the relays. One was the girls relay which she anchored and the team won effortlessly. Fourth gold. The last was the mixed relay in which they take the top four swimmers per house. She was anchoring that as well. At the start her friend went in first. A competent swimmer, I saw she missed her tumble turn to touch the wall and come back. That is clearly one to two second loss. Why did she do that? I later realized that it was because while swimming her goggles twisted and she was almost swimming blind. She bravely yet barely gave a lead which was lost due to a weak second and third swimmer, which meant that Jispa would start being around 15 meters (half length) behind. Now that is the best situation for Jispa to be in. Anchoring a relay and starting well behind. Go jispa go. Last year she came from behind similarly to clinch gold. This time her adversary was the fastest boy in primary. She took off and swam like hell. She gained and gained and gained. Till the very end. People were screaming and going wild. Could she do it? The last 15 meters and the boy was still ahead. Jispa wasn’t tiring; she was going fast, still gaining. An improbable coming from behind victory looked probable. Can lightning strike twice. GO JISPA GO, I was screaming, I couldn’t stop myself. Last 5 mtr, the boy is ahead and only just, and the finish. Boy wins by one second. WHOA. What a race. Jispa misses her fifth gold to get silver.
In the evening I asked Jispa “do you remember the athlete’s prayer”. “Which one, dad?” “When a great….” I started to have it completed by Jispa “player comes to write against your name, he writes NOT if you have won or lost but how you played the game”. “Yes Jispa. You came in second in the second relay, but then what happened? Everyone forgot the first place and came personally to congratulate you. They all told you that you swam a lovely race. You did very well, you were surrounded and everyone was talking about you and congratulating you. Who remembered the winner?” “Yes, you are right”. “Understood Jispa? It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you have played your game. They saw your game, not your victory (or lack of)”. The penny dropped. She understood. She smiled. All these I wasn’t talking bum. These are things you can’t understand when you win. That’s a pretense of humility or talk. But you experience it when you have played your heart and yet you have lost.
That silver Jispa, that silver… is more valuable than your Golds. Treasure it.

light ears

We are wondering on how smart should smart be? The other day Jispa took news cut out to school. It said that some scientists found a new galaxy (an odd shaped one) 79 million light years away. I have been talking to Jispa about physics and the speed of light. So I explained to her that that statement meant that the galaxy is so far away that light will take 79 million years to reach it. “And” she added “nothing can go faster than light”. Yup. So here is your cut out and there you go to school.
In the evening I asked her, how her day was. She said, “the teacher corrected me. I said the galaxy is 79 million light years away. That means that light takes 79 million years to reach there. Then teacher told me – no that’s wrong Jispa. A light year is not that. On earth we measure time in years and in space we say light years”. ARRRRGGHHHHH. Oh God. That was a real painful one for me. It isn’t wrong. Her teacher is wrong. I was livid. If you don’t know, you should keep quiet but you shouldn’t correct the child. I went online and showed Jispa what the correct definition is. I was thinking of sending a print out. In the evening Jasmine suggested that sending a book instead of a google print out. Anyone can have a printout but a book is somehow … different. Ok fine. I am sure I have a book on galaxies that explained the light year. So I hit the shelf and found one. Sure enough.
The light year is a unit of distance not time. And it is the amount of distance the light covers in one year (technically – in a vacuum). So I was all ready to send it today morning with her. On Sunday though, I got cold feet. What if the teacher thinks we are too smart? Over smart? Should we, shouldn’t we? Or just let it be. What difference does it make? Like the teacher in second grade who does not know the difference between a parrot and a parakeet, or an egret or a stork. So I told Jispa “wait a bit, take it to school a few days later. Tell your teacher that you read this in a book and then you thought you could show it”.
Well, we really don’t know. The power equation in a school, any school, any classroom is completely in favor of the teacher. When I teach I try and shift the balance a bit back to the class. Allow them to talk, allow them to discuss. Let them know that they could be right and also better than the professor. It’s not that tough to say I don’t know to a class. That’s what I try and do. Only when things get a little edgy I explain who the boss is. Status maintained, now we can get messy again.
So we are wondering. I will probably ask Jispa what she feels like doing and get her to do it. I would like her to go and have a chat without being too haughty about it. The book is also the perfect book. It’s a guide to the gob smacking galaxy. A simple nice, easy to read book in a really simple language. It’s probably the right thing to do, but I am going to let Jispa take that call. Let’s see.

Lord almighty!

Man. God is in fashion. Real fashion. Many years ago I had been to Trambakeshwar and I remember it being a sleepy town and a sleepy temple. But last week I went there to be confronted with a three hour queue. Dam it, the architecture wasn’t even cool enough for me to wait in that line. And I am not too keen on worshipping stone. The queue outside the complex looked innocuous enough and we stood for an hour to get in to be faced with a long winding queue inside. Jasmine and I wanted out, but our friend and his wife wanted to stay. We would waited outside if not for Jispa who wanted to stay. Dam you Jispa. So we stayed on a snaking queue which was 22 lanes long. Another two hours. Very painful.
Only one way in and one way out. High metal bars so that people don’t jump the queue. Railings in the middle so that people don’t squeeze in thru the bars. Luckily there was a roof overhead and a few fans, but overall it was bloody tiring and hot. Here is a picture of Jispa waiting in the queue. I feel like cattle being herded in. Why do we mistreat our people thus? The people have no bloody option. There are only twelve special Shiva temples – the 12 jyotirlingas and if you want divine intervention you have to go in and pray there. After waiting for 12 hours, you get only 2 seconds in front of the deity with the ushers constantly pushing you out of there. The whole point of the 3 hour wait is to get an audience with God. To tell him I was there, that I waited. And my friends were very happy. They managed to get the Prasad that they had bought through to the God. The priest took their packet and touched it to the deity and gave it back to them. Awesome for them!
I got out of there and sat behind. Jispa came along and I explained to her; if enough people believe it, even a piece of stone can become a God. But I guess it works both ways. To me the lines show me that there is no God inside. This is pure delirium. To the others, the presence of this line might only ratify that there is not only a God in there, but a huge powerful God with boon granting facilities.
Its amazing how many people come in and follow rituals, how many try and beat the line, how many push and pull, how their tempers flare. How badly is the pilgrim treated? All this must an integral part of pilgrimage. Here is the photo of the line in which we stood. Its stupid and chaotic.



And if you think India is shining and that India is improving, one just has to look at the loo facilities provided. The common loo outside was a really bad place. It was dirty, dark, dingy and never cleaned. Luckily Jasmine had a scarf which she first gave me. I wrapped it around my face to get in. There was no way I could have held my breath for that long. In many loos in India we have suddenly understood that we can start charging money, but hell, we just understood that. We did not understand that after charging we must ensure hygiene and cleanliness.
Sacerdotal intercession. The belief that we need a conduit to get to God. The all-powerful Pandit in this case. He has a vested interest in keeping you insecure, in making you explain that all you need is a mantra or a ritual to set you free from the encumbrances in your way. I am lucky. I consider myself very lucky, I soon realized the fallacy in believing in this. I refused many years ago to believe in it. My mom and dad were practical about this yet we did go all over India to different places of religious interest, stood in lines, prayed and performed poojas. I think, like most others, we too were confused Jains. Fundamentally you can’t have the Jain and the Hindu faith intermingling in your mind. The Jain faith is about a way of life, a kind of athesism that says that the answer lies in living your life in a certain way. To give up desire and greed. The Hindu faith has pandits, who can help you. In Jainism there are monks who can only explain the path to you. But to my parents and to so many others I saw, it was all confusing. I like the way we called ourselves Hindu. Forget that – I love the way Shiva is a Hindu God when it seems there is no mention of him in the vedas. It seems he was a probably a tribal God of fertility or something that got well integrated into Hinduism. So many don’t even realize that the lingam in which form the God is worshipped is actually considered by many as a phallus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingam) and it stands on the female organ. Of course there are numerous interpretations but people do worship blindly without knowing or understanding these concept as well.
But there is a line – a queue outside that is three hours long. And I dam it stood in it. Ok. In hindsight it was probably a smart decision. I don’t know what Jasmine and I would have done outside the temple complex for two hours in the heat. It isn’t like there is a café there to hang out in. no proper restaurants and like all Hindu towns, there are lots of cow, which produce copious amounts of cow dung. So the line was good. As the devout would say – you were there because God called you in there to witness his star presence. It was only willed by him. Cool. Thanks God. Was worth every penny. Just forgive me if I don’t do it again.