Bottomline doesn’t claim to get there first (or anywhere near it before the whole world knows about it). Our fame to claim is to bring another perspective, a bit ‘hatke’ from the usual stories. What I usually do is to go through the top stories of the day, breaking in from online sources and choose two or three interesting ones and put a different spin on them.
It has been more than ten days since the death anniversary of the late professor L Balagopal, who was the leading light in the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Council early in his career and broke away from them to form the Andhra Pradesh Human Rights Commission – decrying the violence let loose by the naxalites, sometimes targeted at the common people.
I did see the story but kind of sat on it: thousand apologies. Not that the big blunder I committed can be attenuated by a million apologies even. It would have been a fit occasion to remind people of the blog I wrote earlier, on Professor L Balagopal, and to compare Balagopal’s polemics with those of Arundhati Roy.
I also missed an opportunity to join the few people who organized a meeting on the occasion. When I learn to use the cell-phone organizer to remind me, more than birthdays and things, I am going to set up a reminder of L Balagopal’s death anniversary.
Talking of reminders of death anniversaries, there is a ‘dharma satram’ in Varanasi, where you pay a certain amount; the trust which overseas the ‘satram’ puts that in a fund, and year after year, they give free food to people who come by. Those who sponsor the meal get a post card every year that on such and such day (the death anniversary of the person in whose name you made the donation), meals were provided (or will be provided). And because it comes from the cultural and religious capital of India – as my friend Sanjeev Pandey refers to his home town – the date on it authentic: sometimes there is confusion about the ‘thithi’ (date) and this post card often comes in to clarify on the dispute.
The real assets of IT companies
I had always suspected it, that the IT companies’ shares soar so high because of their land holdings, not so much for the profits they make. Of course N R Narayana Murthy wants us to believe that shareholders’ value is in the people they have (a school drop out like Bill Gates could founded the biggest software empire) and their customer base.
But here is the Infosys annual report said: “Creating land banks was a key challenge. We persuaded state governments to allot us land.” At throw-away prices, he did not say. Following these statements, Sugata Srinivasaraju did a story in the Outlook (7 November, 2005). The devil must be given its due (and so must be Vinod Mehta and his crew).
Kudos, Outlook.
Sidharth Shankar Ray’s demise
Bottomline caught up with this rather quick, considering the usual response time. An interesting thing about this gentleman is that he won an election as an independent support by the left! Johar
Engish Devi: Temples of the new age
Nehru said that big dams and industrial installations are the temples of the new age: Arundhati Roy damns them unconditionally but that is beside the point. Now the dalit bahujans in U.P. are building a temple for the English language. Lord Mecaulay would have loved to unveil the reification and deification of his scheme for India and the Indian middle class.
Hyderabadi tongue
I promised once that I will introduce peculiar Hyderabadi expression which would pose a challenge to a Hindi speaker from the north. Consider: kapda marna; kapda means cloth and marna means beat. Put together, what sense could an outsider make? It means, “Clean the table by beating the cloth on it”.
Now how about this one? ‘anjan marna…’ Stranger hit? It means ‘to behave like a stranger, show no recognition of the other person’. This is said in a light-hearted banter, when the other person hasn’t seen you or heard you in the first place.
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