Daddy Drills

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Daddy Drills

A for Apple; B for Batty; C for Catty and D for Daddy making his digital debut, driven by daughter, who said this must be my daily drill.

Sit at your Apple, she said; be Batty meaning senile & Catty to cut through the crap and go straight to the point.

31/05/2022

𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐚-𝐅𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐏𝐨𝐥𝐤𝐚-𝐃𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐘𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐤 𝐒𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐘𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰, 𝐎𝐡 𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨!

Daddy just got a reminder on his phone from CoWIN saying he was eligible for and may go get a precaution dose.

In case you have forgotten, this is the third booster poke for Corona, which seems so far away now even though the mask-wearing mandate was reversed by the Mumbai municipality just two months ago, on April 1.

Shows how quickly we can get over memories of adverse times just as we can forget good times equally fast.

The CoWIN reminder sent Daddy looking into his closet for his mask, hand sanitiser, gloves and a key chain with a plastic backend that had a hook to open doors without touching them and a stub to press elevator buttons. Daddy used it for just a day or two and feeling silly, stopped using the Corona keychain.

If ever Corona should return, the creators of this life-saving device must add a little hand with nails to scratch the nose, ears and whatever part of the anatomy is open to letting the virus in.

It was the mask that caused the most trouble for asthmatic Daddy because it meant another layer between air and lungs which anyway is restricted because of constricted air pipes. There are other fatal flaws too with the mask.

If you wear spectacles, the glasses fog all over in two minutes from warm breath escaping up. So you have to make a choice between being blinded and run over by a bus or being-maskless and taken home Covid-dead in a cask because you wore no mask.

Somedays, just to make the mask bearable, Daddy would imagine he was a cardio-maskular surgeon. The maskquerade didn’t work for long because his mask was not surgical regulation green or blue as these blokes wear in operation theatres. Daddy had a sunshine yellow mask with black polka dots on it.

A pulmonologist advised pre-Covid that wearing a mask would prevent all that dirty suspended particulate matter from getting into the lungs - so he went online and ordered the most expensive one, not knowing it was meant to match with a yellow chiffon saree.

The polka dotted yellow mask stays there in that corner, hopefully, never to come out again as Daddy wonders if the fabric for that mask came from a young lady’s lingerie drawer.

17/04/2022

𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐆𝐨𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐤𝐲 𝐑𝐮𝐧𝐬 𝐋𝐨𝐰 𝐨𝐧 𝐅𝐮𝐞𝐥; 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐲, 𝐌𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐨 𝐃𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐲

On April Fool’s Day, Daddy was stuck at Dabolim Airport in Goa because his flight to Mumbai was delayed by nearly three hours.

The reason given by the Goan girls at GoAir, sorry GoFirst, ground staff counter was the most bizarre he had ever heard.

The incoming flight from Mumbai arrived on schedule but didn’t get permission to land and circled some six times in the lazy afternoon Goan air when the pilot saw he was low on fuel.

He had a choice of continuing circling, hoping he would get to land just before his last drop of Aviation Turbine Fuel was sucked into his engines.

But what if the Goan control tower staff did not come back in time from their afternoon copa and fish curry-rice. So pilot decided to return to Mumbai.

Now there were a whole bunch of howling passengers on that plane because they were given a glimpse of Goa from the air and were being taken right back to Mumbai.

There was another set of irate passengers in Goa, fed up with too much Sussegado, keenly desirous of going to Mumbai.

A 65-plus man led the charge against the hapless GoFirst staff at Dabolim Airport with the sharpness of someone who once held a big job.

His past post is an assumption Daddy is making because the man displayed sterling leadership qualities in gathering some 50-odd passengers and stating powerfully and most eloquently how the airline was hopeless.

Since his retirement he probably didn’t have this kind of attention and once satisfied that his power was still intact, he retreated.

Soon the others melted away too - some to sleep in a sulk on a plastic chair at the airport, some to stuff themselves with laccha parantha and some like Daddy repairing to the bar to get a teeny weeny bit of whisky and a healthy portion of butter chicken with jeera rice.

In a more meditative mood after that, Daddy reckoned there must have been a ‘Red Alert’ of a potential security threat, which Intelligence and Security officials will not reveal to the public or the airline. Dabolim is a Defense airport controlled by the Indian Navy.

Daddy felt sorry for the GoFirst girls. So after hearing their story one more time about the plane circling many times and running low on fuel, Daddy said to them:

“Badal Do, Tumhara plane badal dalo”. “Why Sir?” they asked and Daddy said: “Bahut kam de rahi hai! Mileage kam de rahi hai”.

For the first time since their shift started that morning they had a hearty laugh!

13/02/2022

𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐚 𝐓𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐋𝐨𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐇𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐒𝐞𝐞 𝐁𝐮𝐝𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟐

Free turbans for Jat farmers in Punjab, lifetime paan-chuna supply for all in UP and a little bit of feni for people in Goa is what Daddy expected Nirmala Sitharaman to announce on Feb 1.

This is what pre-election budgets are meant for - to dole out favours to people and turn top favourite again. That the Modi-led government chose not to do so is truly creditable, bold and wise, hopefully!

It was a blast of a big-bang budget with a rocking 35% increase on capital expenditure to build 16 new airports, 200,000 km of world class highways, ultra-modern logistics hubs with multi-modal connectivity to waterways and railways and green energy to fire it all.

The finance minister described it as a budget to prepare India for 25 years ahead when we will celebrate the centenary of our independence. And there lies the rub for it means we, the people, have to look into a high-powered telescope and feel happy about our advanced nation in Year 2047.

The flip side is that we ignore the near term, such as spiralling prices of essentials, lower earnings because of the pandemic and no hope in sight of relief, which would have come in the form of tax breaks to put more money in peoples pockets.

People spending that money would spur private companies to increase production, hire more people and the virtuous cycle would start almost immediately. The same will happen with the government’s massive capital expenditure, except that the trickle down effect could take years and not manifest in equal measure.

This is because state-run projects leak cash the wrong way despite best efforts at the top to ensure zero-corruption governance and a bigger risk is that implementation will get delayed or not take off at all.

Which would take away the advantage of a bold infra-push that would eventually make our economy more efficient and have a multiplier effect. But let us not be pessimistic.

If we cannot eat bread, or khari biscuit now, we can in Year 2032 eat cake at our world-class airports at Meerut and Bareilly and quaff a few beers at an American-diner at Kolhapur as we drive from Kashmir to Kanyakumari on an expressway good enough for planes to take-off.

Until then, keep looking through your telescope.

11/10/2021

𝐃𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐲 𝐃𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐎𝐮𝐭 𝐅𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐏𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐅𝐞𝐥𝐭 𝐁𝐲 𝐊𝐢𝐧 𝐈𝐧 𝐔𝐏

Something terrible happened to Daddy’s cousins, nephews and uncles in Uttar Pradesh a week ago.

So, in deep anguish, Daddy decided to punish his own family in Mumbai, Kankavali and Parbhani so they understood the pain of dearest relatives.

“No going to work, no doing business and no school on Monday!! Only kaam wali bai allowed because she is essential service,” Daddy declared. And why Not!

Uddhav Kaka did the same so his Maharashtra clan could feel the anguish of his kin up there - to awaken and arise at home to do garba faster, more vigorously, so the vibes reached Lakhimpur Kheri and scared the daylights out of Modi in Delhi.

Kaka and his merry three-party band gave a financial hit of approximately 300 crore rupees for this day-long strike to his family and he won’t pay for it from his pocket.

Would have been better if he gave 50 crore rupees to the protesting farmers saying: “Here you go, we support you.” That would not have hurt him either because it would not go out of his wallet and he would appear less of a fool.

Poor Daddy personally took losses of about 1,200 rupees from his young progeny not going to earn their daily wage. But, So What!

Principles are Principles!

🚩

24/09/2021

𝐎𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐡, 𝐅𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐡 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐡, 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐒𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞; 𝐖𝐚𝐢𝐭 & 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡!

It has been a month since Modi’s government announced a Monetisation Plan that would raise six trillion rupees ($80 billion) over four years in a magic move that would pull India out of slush and make it flush - with cash.

These are truly galactic proportions and the numbers are easier counted in space terms rather than our totally out of depth lakhs and crores. One light year is about 6 trillion miles - that is a 6 with 12 zeroes behind it. Like this 6,00,00,00,00,00,00.

Brings to mind a meme of Nirmala Sitharaman leaning close to the ear of Narendra Modi, asking if she could add a few more zeroes and the Prime Minister says: “Add as many zeroes you want. It is just an announcement”.

These hopeless pessimists drawing joy out of their stupid memes going viral will know when four years later the Wall Street Journal will have a headline saying: “India zooms into space; America and China fall back to earth.”

It is a good plan, this asset monetisation, because it is ‘Atmanirbhar”. It is not privatisation or slump sale of state assets. The ownership will stay with the people of India while bringing in cash upfront for the government to build hyper loop that will send people gently hurling down a vacuum tube from Mumbai to Pune in 25 minutes, world class roads, bridges, ports.

It will generate employment for a few lakh crore people and energise private companies into huge capital expenditure to increase capacity to make steel, cement, nuts, bolts, screwdrivers, springs and big bus-sized vacuum tubes to supply to the government’s infrastructure plan.

All this while the monetised assets - roads, gas pipelines, ports, railways and stadiums, languishing now under government mis-management, will be turned super-efficient by private entrepreneurs.

Just two teeny weeny problems, nothing serious!

1) Super-efficient private chaps may find it difficult to come up with a six and 12 zeroes
2) The money may not be spent on new projects but used to cover a fiscal deficit that is now masked off-budget

Don’t be a fool and ask then: “Woh solar-wala bridge aur bullet train kaha’n gaya?” Because “Woh toh sirf jumla tha!” Ha, Ha, Ha!!

14/09/2021

𝐏𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐇𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐢𝐬𝐦 & 𝐚𝐧 𝐀𝐜𝐭 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐭, 𝐈𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲!

Smart people this year got eco-friendly Ganesha but it is not all that new – Some families were doing this centuries ago – the motivations were different but the end results were all for the good, then and now!

Their kuladevata (clan deity) was Ganapati and in 16th century Portuguese-ruled Goa, worshipping Hindu Gods was opposed to by the rulers, though it wasn’t as harsh as against those who had converted to Christianity and continued Hindu rituals.

Such people were deemed to have committed heresy under what were called ‘Inquisition’ rules of the Roman Catholic Church. Not just in Goa but across the world where rule and religion of the Church extended to curb Islam, Judaism and Protestant Christians too.

And so they started worshipping Ganapati sketched, or painted on paper – Easy to roll and take it with you rather than have your devotion and idol destroyed by colonial forces.

Though Inquisition started in 1232 after an ecclesiastical tribunal established by Pope Gregory IX c. 1232, it came to Goa in 1560 and was abolished in 1812.

History forces beliefs to adjust and practices to sustain – So decades later too, the paper Ganapati ritual remained. Among those families were one originally named Shenoy, but later turned Khandeparkar, by another twist of Portuguese pressure.

Bhaskar Khandeparkar, an architect and education administrator in Goa, tells how and why centuries after it all happened some families still continue the paper, or papier mache, Ganapati tradition.

By the 1930s, the Portuguese were more relenting on religion and pursuaded by the Gowd Saraswat Brahmin community, many of whom were senior bureaucrats, they passed what was called the Regulamento das Mazanias Act, 1933.

It recognised the rights of clans to their kuladevatas, their temples and properties. The owners of these temples in Goa are now called ‘Mhajan’ whose rights are passed down lineage which has meant that even Gen Z Goans are aware of their kuladevata.

It is ironic that the Portuguese who initially wished to crush the faith turned instrumental in nurturing it to the current day.

11/09/2021

Café Mysore at Kings Circle, Mumbai, was in the news this week because two ministers of Prime Minister Modi’s cabinet, and , went there to eat like regulars.

No VIP fanfare, nothing! It caused a stir among paparazzi and others passing by. But the owner Mrs. Shanteri, widow of Nagesh Nayak who made Café Mysore iconic, didn’t go running there to seek glory - In keeping with a principle set by Nagesh, who died relatively young in 2009.

“Leave customers alone to enjoy their meals and leave staff alone too to do their job”. “Macro-manage, do not micro manage,” says Naresh Nayak, the owner’s son.

Café Mysore has more than a fair share of celebrity patrons with being one of them.

Nagesh Nayak would take Daddy in the 80s on grains-buying trips to the wholesale market. Sometimes, he would post him at the cash counter, a seat that most owners never left. Nagesh did macro-management at a time when software-tracking applications were non-existent.

In shiny stainless steel boxes for lentils and rice, he had serrated lines that showed every two-kilo mark. By looking at the level of grain in those boxes, he could tell how many idlis, vadas and dosas were made, give or take 5%. If cash collection was lower than his calculation, he would immediately know something was amiss.

Nagesh was a genius, an electrical engineer from the prestigious VJTI college. If he wasn’t forced into running Udipi restaurants for family legacy reasons, he would have been a Silicon Valley billionaire. He was the eldest son of A. Rama Nayak, who brought to Mumbai the concept of Udipi restaurants in the 1930s.

Nagesh’s foresight did not get wasted in Kings Circle though. Over the years, he bought the entire building that houses Café Mysore, giving it a distinct edge.

Most restaurants have 80% space allocated to dining and 20% to the kitchen. Café Mysore has 40% area for guests and 60% area for cooking, which gives space to chefs to be creative, the waiters to be most helpful and support staff to follow Shanteri’s strict orders on cleanliness.

Most Café Mysore staff live in quarters above in a posh area overlooking the flyover spanning well-manicured Kings Circle. The family pays a huge price for this, running into few hundred thousand rupees each month in lost rent they could have otherwise earned.

But money is secondary when it comes to maintaining the legacy of Nagesh Nayak and the quality of food at Café Mysore, says Shanteri Nayak, who is Daddy’s sister.

31/08/2021

Ancient Indian wisdom has a line in Sanskrit that goes “Vinash Kale, Viprit Buddhi,” which is ‘Those destined to doom will hasten their own demise with warped thinking’.

Distorted reasoning is all around: World leader since World War II, the United States of America, spent $2 trillion over 20 years to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.

The world’s richest man is also getting it wrong. Some ten days ago, Jeff Bezos’ Amazon stock fell 14% from a peak reached in early July, erasing about $253 billion in value.

“In a summer when Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos blasted off into space, the company’s stock has fallen back to earth,” Bloomberg News said on August 19.

The same day, Wall Street Journal reported that Bezos plans to open large retail outlets of the J.C. Penney kind that Amazon forced into bankruptcy with predatory pricing.

This is as bizarre as chasing James Bond for a quarter of a century and destroying him, his guns and gals. Then in 2021 wearing a sexy Bond underwear, trying to seduce a 60-year old model (business model) with Martini, shaken, not stirred!

Elon Musk’s much vaunted Tesla doesn’t make money either. Its profits come from selling regulatory credits to conventional auto makers that don’t meet America’s emission norms.

Tesla received $1.6 billion in credits in 2020, without which it would have posted a loss. Yet frenzied investors pushed Tesla’s stock up 743% last year.

The same madness runs in India where too many high IQ nerds from IIT & IIM abound and advise people to go invest in companies that have a high ‘Burn Rate’, which is how good a company is at burning cash with a view to growing market share and profits be damned.

Zomato, which has never made a profit, raised 93.75 billion rupees ($1.25 billion) from selling shares to the public last month.

Tathatsu, Amen!

17/08/2021

𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐛𝐚𝐧 𝐃𝐢𝐝𝐧’𝐭 𝐖𝐢𝐧 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐮𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐥 𝐙𝐞𝐚𝐥; 𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐆𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐓𝐨𝐩 𝐃𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫

David Fox, a veteran war correspondent, is reporting brilliantly from Kabul on the Taliban wiping out the Afghan army, funded and trained by the U.S for 20 years.

Swept clean, just as easy as a duster, wiping out from a classroom blackboard lessons taught to an entire generation of Americans.

U.S Department of Defense shows spending of $824 billion in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2020. Spending on building infrastructure was $131 billion. Unofficial estimates put that figure at double - $2 trillion - if you include the bill for operations in Pakistan and support to maimed veterans.

So how did a rag-tag bunch of scruffy-looking men, living in caves and riding camels from when they started with the cruel one-eyed Mullah Mohammed Omar, beat the awesome American war machine?

They didn’t do this just on suicidal zeal. Taliban, clearly, had big dollars to back them up, which brings back to Daddy memories of time well spent with Bloomberg News after Reuters.

Matt Winkler was ‘Editor-in-Dictator’ and he ran Bloomberg’s global news operation with slogans: “First Word, Fastest Word, Final Word, Future Word”. All so true, though they sounded silly.

“Follow the Money”, was another Matt diktat.

Matt would surely ask: “Where did Taliban’s money come from?”

16/08/2021

𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐚 𝐌𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧, 𝐄𝐫 𝐍𝐨, 𝐚 𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧; 𝐍𝐨, 𝐍𝐨! 𝐇𝐞’𝐬 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐏𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐌𝐮𝐤𝐞𝐬𝐡 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐩𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐢!

If he was not to be a news photographer, he would have been World Poker Champion, this Mukesh Parpiani, who never sought this recognition but it is coming to him all the way from Vijayawada to Mumbai.

Coming Wednesday, August 18, officials of the Andhra Pradesh Photography Akademi, will come all the way to Mukesh’s home in Mumbai to give him an award and release his book of news photos titled ‘Four Corners’. Published by the Akademi, it contains Mukesh’s work over the decades.

As Francis Bacon’s essay in 1625 said: “If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, then Mohammed will go to the mountain.”

In this case small-sized Mukesh is the mountain, not for reasons of pride but practicality. He was unable to travel to Vijayawada because of Covid, so they will come to the mountain.

Fountain, actually, is more appropriate because he has been a gush of restless, relentless, energy right since the eighties when Daddy first met him as a colleague at a tabloid called ‘The Daily’, which had on its masthead the picture of a fierce-looking canine and a caption below that said: ‘A Bulldog of a Newspaper’.

Those knowing Marathi will see the humour in the line: ‘Patra Nhave, Kutra’. The paper’s owner Russy Karanjia ought to be credited for giving news photography it’s true place. He would ask for almost the entire front page with bold pictures taken by Mukesh.

Those images opened the eyes of the far-bigger newspapers, the Times of India and the Indian Express, to the power of photos from the ringside of history in the making.

It led, for the first time in Indian journalism, to the creation of a position called ‘Photo Editor’ and Mukesh was one of the earliest, most successful, ones.

Which brings Daddy back to Mukesh and his poker face. He always has an impassive expression, looking piercingly, never revealing his feelings.

He reserves those within to put into his pictures, which you can see in his book after Wednesday. You can download a copy from www.apphotographyakademi.org

06/08/2021

𝐉𝐨𝐢𝐧 𝐃𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐲’𝐬 𝐆𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐓𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚 𝐑𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐝 ‘𝐆𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐢 𝐀𝐦𝐚𝐯𝐚𝐬𝐲𝐚’

Ritual and realism rarely go together but there are exceptions, such as one featuring in Maharashtra on August 8.

Ritual is mostly religious, but sometimes custom forced by the former. This coming Sunday will herald a custom called ‘Gatari Amavasya’.

‘Gatar’ is gutter and ‘amavasya’ is No Moon Night and here is how real this ritual gets. You get pi**ed drunk on a dark and deadly night, eat meat and do all sorts of sinful things!
Then when you can barely walk home and are staggering, you can go guttering too.

Meaning, it is okay to fall into a gutter, wake up next morning, atone, and purify your soul for the rest of the month called Holy Shravan.

This month is when Daddy is at his sacred best - no alcohol, no meat, no sin - Just pure saintliness!

As is customary with Daddy, he plans these things well in advance and is short listing the booze to buy, meat to chew, mischief to do and mainly the gutter to fall into.

Mumbai residents are singularly fortunate in this matter - the city authority, called Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, provides these for free very generously.

Daddy has a humble request for Gatari Amavasya, 2021. Please provide towels too so we can start Shravan the next morning, wiped clean and most pious!

05/08/2021

𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐆𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐍𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐌𝐢𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐌𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞 - 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐅𝐚𝐭 𝐏𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬.

“France and Germany have been truly noble” in allowing immigrants from Turkey, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, rescuing them from poverty and persecution - ethnic, religious, race, whatever, conflicts in their homelands.

This is a lie they have been feeding the rest of the world - a callous lie. They have been taking in migrants in increasing numbers in the past 20 years for their own selfish reasons.

They all turned model ‘welfare states’ after the end of World War II in 1945. They prospered immensely and their citizens did not mind paying high taxes because the deal was when they retired, the state would generously look after them until death.

German tax rates, except for the homeless and really down and out, start at 14% going up to 42%. The richer pay 45%. France is similar and so is “Great” Britain. All very commendable and as utopian as Karl Marx’ Communist state.

German, French and British people starting eighties, stopped behaving like their parents. They married too late; never married; married but never had children. Sometimes, married but no children in same gender wedlock.

France’s working population is now at about 62%, Germany’s at 55%. There are not enough working white people to pay taxes to support the elderly who happily gave away nearly half of their income for 40 years, believing in the promise of the “Welfare State”.

This is where the ‘White Lie’ originated. “You’re fleeing armed conflict, never mind funded by us, but human rights violations are unpardonable. So come to our countries, work here, pay 45% taxes and save our asses”.

Tragedy is the wider white population resented their increased presence, made the immigrants feel alien and drove them into ghettos and Islamic radicalisation.

White supremacy is not the answer. You need them more than they need you - For your fat pensions.

02/08/2021

𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 ‘𝐆𝐲𝐚𝐧’ 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐁𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐬 & 𝐁𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐚 𝐋𝐨𝐭 𝐨𝐟 ‘𝐁𝐮𝐥𝐥’

Rakesh Jhunjhunwala today is a Bull, and tomorrow he will be a Bear because he is watching his share — Talking up his book! This is stock markets explained for ‘Idiots’, starting with Daddy!

Free Internet advice tells you that if you bet on a stock to keep rising and rising and rising, you’re a ‘Bull”, which is metaphorically correct because your brains are full of B-Sh*t. It gives a good Alpha-Male feel and has its merits.

Great if you make lots of money and no worry if you lose; Shall I say, lose lots of money: It still makes you feel good.

And then there are these ‘intellectuals’, Marxist Communists, who think everything is going to go down in morals, ethics, and financial value in this ‘Capitalist’ world. They’re called ‘Bears’, inspired by Eurasian Brown Bears in very cold Siberian forests.

So why are some equity market pundits advising us to buy stocks in bad times, in short ‘Be a Bull’, an old friend asked? “GDP is falling. There is so much economic despair,” he said. “So why would stocks rise?”

Daddy scratched his chin in the manner of a wise man and said: “Markets don’t wait for indicators to come out and then invest. They foresee it a year, two years ahead, and put their money to where their mouth is!”

“What nonsense,” old friend said! “Neither Bulls, nor Bears, put their mouth to food two years in advance.” Human kind does, Daddy said.

Reality is the biggest players in markets are very smart and backed with research, technicals and for some years now, into something called algorithm trading.

If you are a small man like Daddy, don’t get into equities trading yourself on the advise of TV business news channels.

It is as foolish as watching a complex surgery on ‘National Geographic’ and asking your next door ‘Aunty’ to do it because she slices ham so well.

Go to a proper financial advisor, just as you would to a very reputed doctor at a big hospital. They cut you clean and cure you sometimes! Sometimes!

Even if they don’t, you feel happy! And that is what matters!

22/07/2021

𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐧, 𝐚 𝐋𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐍𝐨𝐰 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫!

For years, on London Underground rail, there was a male voice that said: Mind the Gap, Mind the Gap”, just as the train doors opened at the station.

No one paid attention to it but in quiet moments, that monotone rang in the head, “Mind the Gap, Mind the Gap ….!”

It was Oswald Laurence, a theatre actor, whose voice recorded in 1960, advised commuters not to fall in the crack between the train step and railway tracks below.

Thank God and British Rail for this because if it weren’t for it, there is no telling how many goofy Londoners may have fallen in that gap.

Back home, trains had no such announcements. None of the niceties of ‘Mind the Gap”. The mantra in Mumbai was to ‘Find the Gap’.

When 200 tons of steel came hurtling into the station, the masters - both men and women, positioned themselves, trousers hitched up, saris tied around.

One second they were on the concourse and next they were attached to the edge of the train door, still thundering in at 30 kilometres an hour.

In the next instant, they swung themselves inside and headed for that coveted seat on the Churchgate-Virar fast. They were the winners who got top honours in finding that gap.

Losers, like Daddy, waited for the train to stop, then peered inside to see if there was space to put one foot in.

When he didn’t make it on the train, he would go home to watch videos of Labrador puppies, teaching him how to get into a Mumbai train.

16/07/2021

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐟𝐠𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐒𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐪𝐮𝐢; 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐬, 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 ‘𝐄𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐉𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐦’ 𝐝𝐢𝐝.

Reuters photographer Danish Siddiqui died today, an innocent but important messenger in the Afghan war.

Battlefield reporting started 5,000 years ago with Sanjaya reporting the Mahabharat war to his only newspaper client, a political daily called Dhritarashtra.

Over the decades, many safeguards have been built in. One of them is ‘Hostile Environment Training', which frontline men such as Danish would have undergone.

It is run by former special forces and elite troops that Reuters pays to have reporters and photographers trained. Right from how to carry the weight of a bullet-proof jacket and how to respond to an abduction by a militant group that has blind-folded you.

More life-saving tips too - such as carrying cartons of ci******es in militia-controlled zones, to give as gift to a rebel to save your life and if faced with sudden fire from behind bushes on one side of a mud road, dive for cover on the same side.

Danish was ‘embedded’ with the Afghan special forces, meaning he was assigned to a specific military unit and accompanied them into combat zones. ‘Embedded journalism’ was introduced by the U.S during the 2003-11 Iraq war to give international media a full-blown window into the war from their side of the battlefield.

Numbers show ‘embedded journalists’ are safer than those on their own on a mud path being fired at from both sides. But there is concern too that the U.S.-inspired journalists‘ embedding programme biases the ‘protected’ journalist.

Disturbed Afghanistan is a Soviet Union legacy, Taliban is a U.S. creation and embedded journalism too.

So, who do you think is responsible for the deaths of Danish and a hundred thousand others in this Afghan war?

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𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐛𝐚𝐧 𝐃𝐢𝐝𝐧’𝐭 𝐖𝐢𝐧 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐮𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐥 𝐙𝐞𝐚𝐥; 𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐆𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐓𝐨𝐩 𝐃𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫 David Fox, a veteran war correspondent, is reporting brilliantly from Kabul on the Taliban wiping out the Afghan army, funded and trained by the U.S for 20 years. Swept clean, just as easy as a duster, wiping out from a classroom blackboard lessons taught to an entire generation of Americans. U.S Department of Defense shows spending of $824 billion in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2020. Spending on building infrastructure was $131 billion. Unofficial estimates put that figure at double - $2 trillion - if you include the bill for operations in Pakistan and support to maimed veterans. So how did a rag-tag bunch of scruffy-looking men, living in caves and riding camels from when they started with the cruel one-eyed Mullah Mohammed Omar, beat the awesome American war machine? They didn’t do this just on suicidal zeal. Taliban, clearly, had big dollars to back them up, which brings back to Daddy memories of time well spent with Bloomberg News after Reuters. Matt Winkler was ‘Editor-in-Dictator’ and he ran Bloomberg’s global news operation with slogans: “First Word, Fastest Word, Final Word, Future Word”. All so true, though they sounded silly. “Follow the Money”, was another Matt diktat. Matt would surely ask: “Where did Taliban’s money come from?” #Afghanistan #News #Opinion

𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐚 𝐌𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧, 𝐄𝐫 𝐍𝐨, 𝐚 𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧; 𝐍𝐨, 𝐍𝐨! 𝐇𝐞’𝐬 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐏𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐌𝐮𝐤𝐞𝐬𝐡 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐩𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐢! If he was not to be a news photographer, he would have been World Poker Champion, this Mukesh Parpiani, who never sought this recognition but it is coming to him all the way from Vijayawada to Mumbai. Coming Wednesday, August 18, officials of the Andhra Pradesh Photography Akademi, will come all the way to Mukesh’s home in Mumbai to give him an award and release his book of news photos titled ‘Four Corners’. Published by the Akademi, it contains Mukesh’s work over the decades. As Francis Bacon’s essay in 1625 said: “If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, then Mohammed will go to the mountain.” In this case small-sized Mukesh is the mountain, not for reasons of pride but practicality. He was unable to travel to Vijayawada because of Covid, so they will come to the mountain. Fountain, actually, is more appropriate because he has been a gush of restless, relentless, energy right since the eighties when Daddy first met him as a colleague at a tabloid called ‘The Daily’, which had on its masthead the picture of a fierce-looking canine and a caption below that said: ‘A Bulldog of a Newspaper’. Those knowing Marathi will see the humour in the line: ‘Patra Nhave, Kutra’. The paper’s owner Russy Karanjia ought to be credited for giving news photography it’s true place. He would ask for almost the entire front page with bold pictures taken by Mukesh. Those images opened the eyes of the far-bigger newspapers, the Times of India and the Indian Express, to the power of photos from the ringside of history in the making. It led, for the first time in Indian journalism, to the creation of a position called ‘Photo Editor’ and Mukesh was one of the earliest, most successful, ones

𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐧, 𝐚 𝐋𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐍𝐨𝐰 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫! For years, on London Underground rail, there was a male voice that said: Mind the Gap, Mind the Gap”, just as the train doors opened at the station. No one paid attention to it but in quiet moments, that monotone rang in the head, “Mind the Gap, Mind the Gap ….!” It was Oswald Laurence, a theatre actor, whose voice recorded in 1960, advised commuters not to fall in the crack between the train step and railway tracks below. Thank God and British Rail for this because if it weren’t for it, there is no telling how many goofy Londoners may have fallen in that gap. Back home, trains had no such announcements. None of the niceties of ‘Mind the Gap”. The mantra in Mumbai was to ‘Find the Gap’. When 200 tons of steel came hurtling into the station, the masters - both men and women, positioned themselves, trousers hitched up, saris tied around. One second they were on the concourse and next they were attached to the edge of the train door, still thundering in at 30 kilometres an hour. In the next instant, they swung themselves inside and headed for that coveted seat on the Churchgate-Virar fast. They were the winners who got top honours in finding that gap. Losers, like Daddy, waited for the train to stop, then peered inside to see if there was space to put one foot in. When he didn’t make it on the train, he would go home to watch videos of Labrador puppies, teaching him how to get into a Mumbai train.

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