When Mukesh and Anil Ambani mooted the idea of a wireless network company (which eventually took shape as Reliance Mobile), the old man who was in bed then asked them how much a post card cost. Perhaps he did not use a post card in some decades by then; anyway, the brother told him that it was 15 paise. It has been 15 paise since I was a child (my father was a prolific post card writer, who at best wrote an occasional in-land letter card.) The story goes that the legendary Dhirubhai told his sons that they should go ahead with the project (of the wireless network) if they could make it cheaper for the ‘aam janta’ to communicate over their network than to send a post card.
Forget about instant communication, the old man wanted them to make it cheaper than a post card which could take more than a week to get to the remote villages. And did the brothers do it! Not only Reliance, but other networks now offer SMS for 1 paisa per message. If you need to convey some information – critical in some cases – without taking recourse to text messaging (making sure that the other guy is ‘online’), you could do it in 10 seconds and pay 10 paise – over the network I subscribe to. There are cheaper options too, but I am happy with what I got. I am not too good at math now (not as sharp as I was in my school days).
Does Bill Gates make software ‘accessible’ to the ‘aam admi’? No, he makes us pay through our noses. And then donates a wee bit of his ‘fortune’ for charity. He gets on world trips exhorting other people to donate. Can there be a bigger joke than that?
Gandhi, Nehru, and the Tatas
J R D was a staunch nationalist. He built companies to build India. He actually flew the first ever plane by an Indian. When time came, he happily conceded ‘his’ company to the government. In case some of you don’t know, Indian air lines and Air India are Tata businesses that were nationalized. Not that J R D had an option, but what is important is that he ceded his business willingly.
Ratan Tata, now, started the biggest revolution in transportation – the Nano car. Read all about it in Small Wonder…
My date with the dentist
This was two months ago. I had excruciating tooth ache. I went to the dentist and he suggested some antibiotics, and told me to come back if the pain doesn’t go away. Well, the pain was gone for a few days but returned with rejuvenated vigor in three days. Back I went up the steps of the dentists surgery, well before he commenced his practice in the evening, and waited. He took a look, and said we need to do a root canal. Having heard terrible tales of woe of people who underwent a root canal and had it haunting them for years to come, I meekly asked him: Can’t you just pull it out?
Dr Kiran Kumar, the dentist, laughed and said: Pulling the tooth out is going to cause you the same pain as doing a root canal. (A root-canal treatment is more expensive, but I recommend that we open it up, and see if we can save it through root-canal treatment.) Initially, I told him to start the good work. But then, in a while I said, let me start the procedure later in the week. I was not mentally prepared. (Dentist dentist let me go; I’ll come again another day…)
He prescribed another course of antibiotics for the three days to come and set me free. Three days later the pain was back, and this time I mustered enough courage to mount the dentist’s chair. He is an excellent dentist: the procedure got over in two weeks (four sittings) and I am able to use that tooth as well as I use the others. It has been two months, as I said, and I am extremely happy with the results.
Bottomline recommends: Dr K Kiran Kumar (MDS) of Kirans Multispeciality Dental Hospital in Vidya Nagar, on the road from RTC X Roads to Hindi Maha Vidyalaya.
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