I was reading an article from Peter Singer on Gross National Happiness concept this morning and I found one part quite interesting – how to measure happiness? He came up with two reasonable alternatives – (1) Is Happiness a surplus of pleasure over pain experienced over the lifetime or (2) Is Happiness the degree to which we are satisfied with our lives?

It’s a very interesting question because whatever we pursue in life we tend to do with an overarching misconception that we are pursuing happiness and so our pursuit of greed, lust, success, power, more or less everything in life is somehow supposed to make us happy when the truth is that there is a general ignorance about how happiness could be achieved.

If we pursue the two definitions suggested by Mr. Singer, in the first approach he suggests add up positive moments and subtract negative ones and wow we know if one was happy or unhappy. That could be done quite objectively in this age of facebook when most moments of pleasure find their way to the status updates at alarming regularity. So if you had a great day at work, wonderful meal, superb trip, fantastic party, great get-together with friends or saw a nice movie or play it usually ends up on one’s facebook page The only moments of pleasure I haven’t seen on status updates are the likes of “Had great sex, look forward to do it again tonight!!!” but Mr. Zuckerberg will tell you that he is working on that and day is not far when that last wall will also crumble on Facebook. As for moments of sadness, a more ‘social’ creed is already letting us all know when they are sad or down but even without that, it’s not tough to document moments of sadness in a day and so at the end of day just do your maths and you could figure the great secret of life!!! But that’s where I start to differ on this first approach with Mr. Singer because it’s not the frequency but intensity of pain and pleasure that drives happiness and unhappiness. I could have an absolute wretched day at office but one great moment back home could wipe it all off or there may be just one bad incident in the morning which is so overpowering that all the moments of pleasure for rest of the day could never get better of it. So, could this ‘sum-up the pleasure and subtract the pain’ approach ever work for measuring one’s happiness. I don’t think so because while it’s an objective approach but it totally forgets the ‘ness’ bit of happiness.

That brings me to second approach, which involves as per Mr. Singer to ask people at different times in their life whether they are satisfied or not and then use that data to determine the happiness. I agree this is the closest man can come to figure other men’s happiness index but there is an elementary issue with this approach. Do we know are we satisfied with our life? There is an old saying in Sanskrit – “Santosh param Sukham” which means Satisfaction is greatest Happiness but remember the classic Pepsi ad of 90s “Yeh Dil Maange More!!!” (Heart Craves for More). And the two together explains the classic conundrum of human existence – The eternal truth and harsh reality. If we see Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs pyramid as a reference point then we could say that as a race we are so engrossed in fulfilling the bottom four layers of our ‘deficiency needs’ of material comfort, career, love, power etc. that self-actualization doesn’t even figure in our to-do list in one lifetime. Is that a step too high & too slippery for humanity in general to tread? In Hindu philosophy, human life is divided into four stages of life, last being ‘Sanyas’ or renunciation which includes a concept of ‘Vairagya’ or detachment – detachment not only from earthly pleasures of money and comfort but also family bonds and relationships. It’s a different discussion but key point is that do we in life need a slight detachment from its pleasure to achieve true happiness. Do we need that to take a step back from all that life offers to be able appreciate all that life offers in true sense. It’s just like being an art gallery where to get the true perspective of a piece of art you need to find the right spot at some distance. But getting back, I think measuring satisfaction is like finding Holy Grail of human existence. I think most of us would have know those days of absolute tranquility when life seems at peace, a state of mind that’s true bliss but transient –that’s what happiness is. I wish it could be measured, a formula could be found to attain it but I know equally well that it’s a futile exercise. It’s something within us which we could only feel when we are true and honest to ourselves and in peace with our reality and that’s where Mr. Singer will face his true challenge in this second approach – finding people who could really tell that they are satisfied or not with their life.

And that’s also where most of us will face the real challenge in our pursuit of happiness…

Wish God was a mathematician!!! I always wish this. I mean look at all the optimal decisions that well written algorithms could make these days and then you look back at life and keep wondering that the biggest problem of human existence are sub-optimal decisions we make each day of life. How easy it could all have been if our neurons were programmed to make optimal decisions. I remember reading somewhere that if God created everything then did God create evil too and if he did then He represents both good and evil. And if we say that God & Devil coexisted then God was a bad engineer that he left bugs in human brains which allows him to get influenced by evil. Anyways, not all bad decisions are evil but I am fairly convinced that Scientists can’t answer all the mysteries of life because they just can’t think like the Creator. Because if He was a man of science, life would have been far more predictable and orderly.

God is also not learning with times because otherwise he would have long discontinued ancient practice of fitting each man with grey cells, instead why not just set up a call centre 1800-HELP-GOD which you could call if you need to do thinking about some important issue. Most of our daily actions really don’t need lotta grey matter and looking at all the terrorism, violence, scheming etc. in this world we could anyway be better off without the thinkers.

Sometimes you know that while you may be on the driving seat but it’s not you who is steering where you life would go. Roads chose themselves, turns get made and you sit there helplessly holding on to steering wheel, knowing pretty well that if you lose the way you would be blamed but can you help it? You could stamp your foot on the brake and life may come to a halt for a while but once you start again – life gets back to auto-pilot mode. And it become worse after a while when life hands back the steering to you - By now you are already lost with no map, no GPS so you continue to follow the road, keep making turns that you know nothing about and deep in your heart you know that probably you are lost for good. And in such moments all you could do is to close your eyes and dream of being back on a familiar road, you feel the elation in that split second but then you open your eyes and unfamiliarity surrounds you again, it scares you and make you press your foot harder on the pedal as you want to run away from it but that only speeds you into greater darkness and deep into road which you wanted to run away from.

“Pakistan backed terrorists strike in Mumbai”
“Indian students killed in Australia by racist mob”
“Chinese gunfire injured 2 Indian Soldiers”

What happens when you read/hear such headlines?
You wish your government could hit back say diplomatically, militarily or in whichever way that could teach our enemies a lesson. But the kind of government we have, it would be wishful thinking for us to harbour any realistic chances of that happening.

But I have realized that there is a way you and me could hit back and no we could do it without doing “A Wednesday”. We don’t need a gun to hit them back; we could do it with our wallet.

Way back in 1921, during freedom movement Mahatma Gandhi started Swadesi movement. He asked Indians to wear Khadi and boycott British machine-woven cloth. People burned their machine woven cloth and took to Khadi It was his Gandhi’s way to hit British economically – hit their profits that enable them to get ships and guns to further their colonial prowess.

And that’s what we need to do in 2009 as well. Every company in the world today wants to be in India because One billion Indians represent world’s most attractive market. With growing financial stature of Indians, all of us possess something that when wielded properly could hurt more than a gun in current world and that weapon is our wallet. And if we Indians learn to spend our rupees judiciously we could teach a lesson to Pakistan as well as China.

Every year China sells to India goods worth “Rs. 150,000 crore” i.e. we Indians buy Chinese goods worth Rs. 150,000, crores annually. If we as citizens chose to boycott Chinese goods then could you imagine how we would have hurt the Chinese economy…won’t they think twice about making incursions of upto 1500m in our territory when each meter of incursion could cost them 100 crore worth of lost trade. And it’s simple to do, every 2 out of 3 plastic toys sold in India are made in China we just need to be careful of what we buy. Eid & Diwali are round the corner and a lot of lights and decorative material is made in China, if we could avoid buying that we would have done our little bit to respond to them.

In current world India matters not because we have nuclear power (really do we have?) but because we have power of a billion people who could spend. And if each of us realizes the power of our wallets then maybe together we could find a way to respond to those headlines through something other than just frustration.

It doesn’t matter how often you wipe the slate clean, a clean slate doesn’t guarantee that your next letter or the word on the freshly cleansed slate would be anymore beautiful than the last one you wrote. A clean slate helps as it doles out hope, it sweeps away the past for a fleeting moment, it fills you with a renewed energy. But hope, enthusiasm and excitement by itself cannot make your next word better unless you have also learned the better methods since the time you last drew that butterfly on the slate.

So often, we gravely misunderstand a fresh beginning or a new dawn. We become naive enough to assume that if we just change everything around us, everything about us would change. No it doesn’t happen that way. Key in the term “fresh beginning” is the beginning not the fresh, in a “new dawn” it’s the dawn and not the new. It’s probably about unlearning all that has brought you to the current pass and to restart the learning process from the scratch. It’s to admit that your methods that have failed you all this while needs to be forgotten and you need to start learning again. Even if there are no new methods to learn anymore, one must still learn those old methods in a new way or with a new perspective.

It is this unlearning part that we forget most of the times when we decide to start from a scratch. We change the canvas but we quickly draw up the same old lines that are still lingering in our memory, get back to the same pass where we were stuck earlier and then start wondering why even the new start didn’t work. Probably unlearning is one the most challenging tasks of life, to let go something that you have held as your firm belief, to resist the temptation of borrowing from your past ‘wisdom’, all this is not easy.

And therefore there is no point wiping the slate clean if you can’t wipe your mind clean. One without the other would just bring you back to the place from where you have tried to start afresh.

I finished Shantaram this weekend and I loved it, it had me hooked and it rekindled my love affair with those fresh crisp printed pages bound in a glossy cover with a story to tell. While a lot of people usually get put off by the volume of a book. I look for them. I like thick, voluminous books running into thousand pages resembling more a saga then a story. A Suitable Boy, War & Peace & Atlas Shrugged are the kind of books that attract me at the first glance rather than put me off.

There is something about these multi-character, multi-track storyline spanning years that get me and I think it is usually the alternate reality that they transport you to. The character in the books are like friends in your real life, they don’t endear themselves to you immediately, it’s not before 100-150 pages have passed before I usually start warming up to the characters and start getting into “what happens next” mode. The novellas or short stories don’t give me that kind of luxury. Just after Shantaram, I picked up this collection of short stories by Yiyun Li and I must say that the two of the stories I have read so far are good reads but by the time you getting to sketch that mental image of Mrs. Su or Mr. Fong, you have come to an end. In no ways, am I saying short stories are any lesser. I myself dabble in them sometimes and I know that for lot of ideas and thoughts, that’s the best style of prose but I think am just wondering aloud why I love those thick books.

Back to Shantaram, the beauty of the novel is it’s such an intimate portrayal of Mumbai. I have spent some time in Mumbai and though I have just walked by the Leopold at best or been to World Trade center building once or twice and my only experience of slum is to look at them as my auto used to speed past the S.V.Road but still there is a certain sense of belonging to the settings of this novel which got me hooked as soon as Linbaba got down from the minibus in Colaba.

Though I can’t but admit that the novel did take a few artistic/bollywood-istic liberties but it was still one hell of a tale to tell. It may still not compare to two of my favourite novels set in Indian milieu – A Suitable Boy and A Fine balance, but it indeed completes a quartet of Indian novels (together with Midnight’s Children), I would strongly recommend to anyone who wanna form a reliable picture of India through fiction.

And now I start my similar journey to learn about China through fiction, about years of Cultural Revolution and the reality of modern China beyond tall towers of Beijing & Shanghai. And I am sure Soon I will find something to rave about.


PS: Just noticed this is the 100th post on this blog, just like Tendulkar it got a bit slow near the century but well, it’s time to look up the sky and take a fresh guard :)

And so just for the sake of old time’s, here’s a song recommendation for the day – a piece of nice poetry I heard in the latest movie “New York”
Jo tune na kaha woh main sunta raha
Khaamkhwaah, bewajah khwaab bunta raha…

There was a time when Australia adopted White Australia Policy to ensure that Chinese can't come and stay there. That was a really shocking form of official racism and now it’s turn of even more abhorrent from of violent racism ‘curry bashing’ that is targeting Indians. Not that racism against Indians is a new phenomena in Australia, I always heard of stray incidents like these from friends. And why only Australia, it’s also true for other countries – after my MBA when I had a choice to take up a job in either London or Singapore, one of the key reasons why I preferred Singapore over London was because I knew that Indians do face racism even in London.

Also, isn't racism just another form of protectionism. When Obama says that he wants to bring back jobs from Bangalore to Buffalo, is he in someway not promoting discrimination in an inter-connected global economy of today. It’s shocking at times when you look at double standards of western countries. First whiff of recession and years of talking open market at WTO goes for a toss with liberal-capitalist economies in US & Europe start talking protectionism, , US starts talking tax restrictions to discoursge outsourcing, after blaming developing countries for not doing enough on environment for years Australia decide to push back certain environmental regulations by 2 years citing recession.

I am reading Shantaram these days and there is this one line in that which stayed with me long after I have turned many pages. There is a French character Didier in this book and he tells the protagonist something which goes like “India is about siz times the size of France, But it has almost twenty times the population. If there were a billion Frenchmen living in such a crowded space, there would be rivers of blood. Rivers of blood! And, as everyone knows, we French are the most civilized people in Europe. Indeed, in the whole world.” Why am quoting it here is because I thought that what author meant was that the self-proclaimed superiority of west is to certain extent a result of being at the right place in right time.

The other day I was in a cab got talking to the cabbie, he was a Singaporean-Chinese and he had a theory why this recession won’t impact China and India. He told me that Indians and Chinese work had, work long because they know the value of money and so they will definitely survive these times. And probably the modern day racism is not arising out of any superiority complex but may be out of fear and frustration in west regarding this survival instinct of east. It’s a fear of those Indian kids winning spelling-bee, fear of Indian-Chinese kids outsmarting them in their own Universities, it’s a fear of these brown n yellow guys who were just smart team members once, now becoming the team managers. It’s probably this fear of competition which is manifesting itself in all the racism and protectionism that we are witnessing these days.

But coming back to Australian attacks, I hope that these condemnable incidents in Australia come to a halt and all the Indian students/professionals in Australia could live in peace. But if they don't, I wish that Indian students start giving Oz universities a so that these universities suffer. After all, lot of these universities which hold education fair in India every year make a lot of their fees from Indian rupees converted to Aussie dollars.

PS: One Indian I must blame for these attacks on Indian students in Australia is ARJUN SINGH, with reservation in higher-education, guys and girls have been forced to look abroad to realize their education dreams and thus expose themselves to such dangers as Shravan Kumar and Baljinder Singh have faced.

Great Indian elections ended this weekend with Congress getting a surprisingly decisive victory. And as they say - success has many fathers, so now everyone from TV anchors to reporters are falling over each other to describe it as a nationwide verdict for Congress, thumbs up to Manmohan Singh and charisma of Rahul Gandhi. I beg to differ completely from first two and partially from the third.

But before that I must clarify that I was hoping for a BJP victory in these elections. And my change of mind after supporting Congress 5 years back came because of three main reasons:

• Terrorism in the country. I have been really pained by utter failure of Congress government on internal security. Bomb blasts became rampant in last year and a half and all government did was to appeal for calm and patience.
• Other big disappointment was reservations in IIMs and AIIMS and other institutions of higher learning. I see that as murder of meritocracy and I was hoping that congress would be punished for that by Indian youth.
• Finally, 5 years back I had hoped that Congress would do better than push its communal agenda under secular guise but I was wrong. If BJP is a saffron party then Congress is a green party (given their links with IUML, MIM and potentially AUDF its more than obvious anyways). MMS believes that certain people have first claim to resources of our country only because they belong to a certain religion. Unacceptable !!! Just like I believe reservation should be on economic grounds similarly I believe that Govt.'s plan should help all needy and not just minorities.
  

But let's get back to election results, first question I tried to answer was whether congress victory in the elections really a nationwide mandate for congress ? I looked at election results in some key states and realized that it's far from that. Rather, congress won big in several states not because of any wave but due to lack of unity in opposition. Let’s look at a few examples:

- Maharashtra

Congress+NCP won 25 seats in Maharashtra against 21 for BJP-SS combine. MNS, an offshoot of SS, with a support base derived from those who supported Shiv Sena previously won none. Now consider 10 seats where Raj Thackery’s MNS was contesting. If you add votes polled by MNS in these seats to BJP/SS votes then in 9 out of these 10 constituencies - BJP/SS would have won comfortably. Result would have then read as 30 to BJP+SS and 16 to INC+NCP. So there was no congress wave in Maharashtra it was just a MNS dam that obstructed BJP wave

- Andhra Pradesh

In AP, Congress won 33 seats and “Mahakutumbi” opposition just 5 seats, PRAP of Chiranjeevi none. But PRAP got significant anti-congress voteshare. Of the 33 seats won by Congress in AP, in 28 seats TDP/TRS + PRAP votes are more than congress votes. Had PRAP been part of an united opposition, congress would have just managed 5 seats in AP and opposition would have won 33 seats. Congress wave - hardly !!!

- Tamil Nadu

Go to TN and you will find similar statistics again, had Vijaykanth's DMDK not split anti-DMK votes from opposition. DMK+Congress wouldn’t have touched half the number of seats they finally won.

So in my analysis of vote figures, congress won 85 seats in AP+TN+Maharashtra not because of any wave but mere disunity in opposition. Had there been no division of votes, Congress would have won only 35 seats in these three seats a whopping 50 below its final tally. So if UPA is 260 today and not 210, then credit shouldn’t go to Sonia or Rahul but to Raj Thackrey, Chiranjeevi and Vijaykanth.

Kerala, Uttarakhand, Haryana and Punjab was anti-incumbency vote and Congress benefited by virtue of being sole opposition in these states. In Rajasthan and J&K, Congress government has only been installed a few months back and they are still in the honeymoon period so in-effect they were basically riding on the anti-incumbency vote for the previous government that propelled them to power last year in these states. Call it a lucky timing rather than pro-congress wave.

Delhi did have a pro-incumbency vote but it accounts for 7 seats and to get only 7 seats out of 262 due to good governance is not something to be flattered about.

In West Bengal, the difference in vote share between left parties and opposition has never been too great. With Trinmool and Congress coming together as well as left’s blunder of becoming a B-team of congress thereby tacitly acknowledging status of Congress as key party worked for congress. INC+TMC was a smart alliance and arithmetically all they needed was slight swing to succeed. But I must admit that people must have seen congress positively to provide that swing vote.

And that brings you to UP, and here I will give the credit where it’s deserved. Rahul Gandhi deserves the credit of reviving congress in UP. Rahul had concentrated solely on UP over last few years and so he fully deserves credit for each seat won by Congress in UP. Frankly speaking, UP, Delhi and West Bengal are only states where one can say there was a pro-congress wave.

What proves beyond doubt that there was no nationwide support for congress are results from Bihar, MP, Guajarat, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand and Karnataka.

So, while there is no denying that results of Indian elections have all but sealed a 5 year term for congress but it would be a major mistake to see this as a countrywide undercurrent for the ruling party. Big Indian elections have lately been a sum of 28 small state elections and this one was no different. Only difference this time was that arithmetic worked out well for INC and to mistake sum of parts to be whole is over-simplification of complex Indian polls.

Hopefully, with leader like Arjun Singh & Antulay out of cabinet and congress no dependent on likes of Lalu, Mulayam and Karat, we could just be second time lucky with MMS. It might also help if pretense of MMS as PM could be done away with sooner than later and one of the Gandhi’s take up their dynastic seat as PM (Alas !!!). As for Congress's youth brigade - it's nothing but an extension of the dynastic politics championed by . All youth leaders in congress like Pilots, Deoras, Scindias and Prasads are not there because they have risen from grassroots but because their parents’ position perched at top echelons in congress.

But there is indeed a silver lining in this cloud and that is that country will finally have a stable government and Rahul indeed exudes sincerity. I am just hoping that better sense prevail on government in next 5 years or else we will be left to rue a choice that can't be undone till 2014.

Avian Flu – Mad Cow Disease - (and now) Swine Flu.
Wonder if this is nature’s way of telling us to stay vegetarian to remain healthy...

If I look back and have got my fact rights then all these diseases have their genesis in those pig farm or poultry farm or like. These farms which are men’s effort to play God, to control life and death of lesser animals, to alter the food chain.

And somewhere in form of these flus and fevers, nature is issuing us warnings to mend our ways & to restrict our greed. But, probably we are not going to get the message. In a few months, vaccine for swine flu will be developed and WHO will declare human victory over the virus.

But just as a parent is forced to get tough with a kid when he ignores repeated warnings, I fear that if we keep ignoring these warnings from nature we may just be exposing us to a far more serious lesson. But, I pray that this fear of mine is just that – a fear and nothing more.


PS: Just on a lighter note if we look at the pattern in first line ( chicken – beef – pork), may be next big virus is taking shape in some fishery.

I am beginning to dislike the word sorry. Its just like a mask – hides everything behind it and offer you a straight face. This word is used so often these days that I wonder if it represents “feeling sorry” anymore. Maybe we should no more use the word “sorry” for making show repentence. It’s only good enough to apologize for not switching your cell phone to silent mode during a meeting or to give a $50 dollar note for $5 cab fare. It no more moves you to forgive someone but only make you move yourself to make way for someone.

I have learnt that to apologize is not to say a mere sorry but to throw open your heart and let your genuine guilt show. To apologize is just not a promise to make amends but a sombre plea for repentance. To apologize is just not saying ‘I won’t do it again’ but to share why nothing could ever bring you to do it again. What move people is not how often you apologize but how you apologize.

I am not suggesting that apologies should come with elaborate melodrama. But I think that they need to sufficiently verbalize your regret & repentance. A mere 'sorry' at times does a great disservice not only to others' feeling but to your emotions as well. It leaves you wondering what more you could do to make someone yield and other to wish only if you could have done a little more...

There is a popular saying that “To err is human and to forgive is divine”. I think what it doesn’t say is “If you know how to apologize right then you can turn every human into divine”.