From & To Sathish #5 - Page 123

Avan, Aval Adhu 403

Being Conscious is your awareness of yourself and the world around you. In the most general terms, it means being awake and aware. Some experts suggest that you are considered conscious of something if you are able to put it into words. Not only can you be conscious as in awake. But you can also be conscious as in aware of your thoughts and feelings.

Your conscience is part of your personality that helps you determine between right and wrong and keeps you from acting upon your most basic urges and desires. Your conscience is what makes you feel guilty when you do something bad and good when you do something kind.

GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) is a concept common to computer science and mathematics: the quality of output is determined by the quality of the input. So, for example, if a mathematical equation is improperly stated, the answer is unlikely to be correct.

Likewise in a human being, it matters and what only matters in the end is each person's conscience and whether they choose to heed its call or not. Then again what is the conscience itself is corrupted and impaired in its judgment.

Love can do that. Wait, extreme hate can do that too.

Heaven and hell. Love or hate.

Meenakshi's eyes surveyed the strange surroundings with confusion and anger. Anger because from the moment she got into the luxurious and comfortable Sedan, she realized she was blind to the outside world. The rear portion of the extra large sedan had everything from a mini fridge, tv, wi-fi, a mini breakfast trolly laden with pastries, and a silver flask that she opened to find filled with steaming coffee.

But, her visibility, her sight was limited to the insides of the vehicle and was cut off from the outside world for she could not see through the large dark windows that were on either side of her.

Just as her mind was taking in the interiors of the vehicle, her mobile phone had rung informing her that was " R " calling, and she had answered in a slightly irritated and flustered voice.

' Hi, Rajendra.'

' The tone of your voice reveals your anger and confusion but trust me when I tell you it is for the best. I am looking forward to seeing you again but I confess that I am curious to know what is on your mind and the nature of your problem.

She looked at the clock on her mobile phone and saw that 33 minutes had passed since that brief chat with Rajendran and then she heard his voice boom from the entrance.

' Welcome, Meenakshi. Welcome to my humble abode.'

She smiled and said, ' I agree that this place of yours is indeed an abode but I disagree when you use the word humble to describe it. I am sorry, R but there is nothing simple or humble about this paradise for I feel like I am in an Amazon rainforest.'

Then looking up, she pointed to the camouflage netting that lay all over the trees and as far as her eye could see and asked, ' I have seen this sight in a few Hollywood movies when soldiers cover their tanks, vehicles, and other pieces of equipment from the eyes of the satellites that look down from the heavens above.'

Rajendran slanted his head acknowledging her observation and said, ' We here value our privacy a lot, Meenakshi ' and pointing to the vehicle, ' and it extends to our vehicles too.'

He extended his hand and greeted her, ' Nice meeting you again. Come. Let us go in.'

' Thank you ' Meenakshi whispered and after shaking his hand politely, she followed him towards the large metallic door that twinkled with lights above a large keypad that was obviously there for security and stopped gasping loudly in shock.

In the dim light, what had appeared to be two large trees now moved towards them, revealing themselves as two giants.

Meenakshi watched in fear as the giants came towards them and just when she was wondering if she was living out the last moments of her life, the giants who were nearly eight feet or more in height, stopped and bent their heads in reverence and said, ' Prince, we salute you.'

Rajendran on his part casually nodded and looked at Meenakshi and said, ' They are friends with whom we share a purpose and who also are our last line of defense.'

Tapping the keypad several times, he pressed the green button and stepped back once the door opened revealing a dark passage ahead, and went ahead welcoming her.

' Come in Meenakshi and don't pay too much attention to some of the odd sights that you might see around this place.'

Turning around, he faced her and said, ' You will get used to it.'

The Economist, New York, June 12, 2023

HAVING JUST surpassed China as the world’s most populous country, India contains more than 1.4bn people. What’s more, its migrants are both more numerous and more successful than their Chinese peers. The Indian diaspora has been the largest in the world since 2010, and is a powerful resource for India’s government.

Of the 281m migrants spread around the globe today—generally defined as people who live outside the country where they were born—almost 18m are Indians, according to the latest UN estimates from 2020 (see chart 1). Mexican migrants, who comprise the second-biggest group, number some 11.2m. Chinese abroad come to 10.5m.

Understanding how and why Indians have triumphed abroad, whereas Chinese have tended to sow suspicion, illuminates geopolitical faultlines. Comparing the two groups also reveals the extent of Indian achievement. The diaspora’s wins both promote India’s image and benefit its prime minister, Narendra Modi.

Migrants have stronger ties to their motherlands than their descendants born abroad, and so build vital links between their adopted homes and their birthplaces. In 2022 India’s inward remittances hit a record of almost $108bn, around 3% of GDP, more than in any other country. And overseas Indians with contacts, language skills and know-how boost cross-border trade and investment.

Huge numbers of second-, third- and fourth-generation Chinese live abroad, notably in South-East Asia, America and Canada. But in many rich countries, including America and Britain, the Indian-born population exceeds the Chinese-born.

Indian-born migrants are found across the world, with 2.7m living in America, more than 835,000 in Britain, 720,000 in Canada, and 579,000 in Australia. Young Indians flock to the Middle East, where low-skilled construction and hospitality jobs are better paid. There are 3.5m Indian migrants in the United Arab Emirates and 2.5m in Saudi Arabia (where the UN counts Indian citizens as a proxy for the Indian-born population). Many more dwell in Africa and other parts of Asia and the Caribbean.

India has the essential ingredients to be a leading exporter of talent: a mass of young people and first-class higher education. Indians’ mastery of English, a legacy of British colonial rule, probably helps, too. Only 22% of Indian immigrants in America above the age of five say they have no more than a limited command of English, compared with 57% of Chinese immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), an American think-tank.

The way things were

Since Indian independence in 1947 there have been several waves of migration to the rich world, enabling the diaspora to grow in number and might. The first, in the years following the second world war, involved low-skilled workers largely from the states of Gujarat and Punjab. A multitude went to Britain, which was facing acute labour shortages. They worked in tough places, such as textile mills and other industrial outfits. Many Indians whose families had moved to eastern Africa in the colonial period as indentured labourers later went west, too. America managed to attract a host of talented individuals by overhauling its immigration laws in 1965. Quotas that barred Indian nationals were out, new rules that favoured highly skilled migrants were in. Australia and Canada then followed suit with batches of similar regulations.

As the Indian diaspora has grown, it has also become more diverse. An increasing number of Indians from poor and marginalised backgrounds are moving abroad. Of Indian-Americans that identify with a caste group, in a 2020 survey published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank in Washington, DC, 17% described themselves as lower-caste. Migrants no longer come mainly from Gujarat and Punjab. South Indians are emigrating in droves. The American consulate in the southern city of Hyderabad is the largest outpost that America has in southern Asia. Meanwhile, the fastest-growing language in America is Telugu, which is spoken almost exclusively in the south of India.

Brains on the move

As India’s population expands over the coming decades, its people will continue to move overseas to find lucrative jobs and to escape its ferocious heat. Immigration rules in the rich world filter for graduates who can work in professions with demand for more employees, such as medicine and information technology. In 2022 73% of America’s H-1B visas, which are given to skilled workers in “speciality occupations” such as computer scientists, were won by people born in India.

Many of India’s best and brightest seem to prepare themselves to migrate. Arvind Subramanian, a former economic adviser to the Indian government, says that they are, in the economic jargon, “highly positively selected migrants”.

Consider the findings of a paper soon to be published in the Journal of Development Economics by Prithwiraj Choudhury of Harvard Business School, Ina Ganguli of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Patrick Gaule of the University of Bristol. It analysed the results of students who took the highly competitive entrance exams for the Indian Institutes of Technology, the country’s elite engineering schools, in 2010. Eight years later, the researchers found that 36% of the 1,000 best performers had migrated abroad, rising to 62% among the 100 best. Most went to America.

Another study looked at the top 20% of researchers in artificial intelligence (defined as those who had papers accepted for a competitive conference in 2019). It found that 8% did their first degree in India. But only a tiny number of researchers now work there.

In America almost 80% of the Indian-born population over school age have at least an undergraduate degree, according to number-crunching by Jeanne Batalova at the MPI. Just 50% of the Chinese-born population and 30% of the total population can say the same. It is a similar story in Australia, where almost two-thirds of the Indian-born population over school age, half the Chinese-born and just one-third of the total population have a bachelor’s or higher degree.

Other rich countries do not collect comparable data. But looking at the figures that are available, the same pattern seems to hold almost everywhere.

Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor who coined the term “soft power“ more than three decades ago, notes that such power is not automatically created by the mere presence of a diaspora. “But if you have people in the diaspora who are successful and create a positive image of the country from which they came, that helps their native country.” And, as he adds, “India has a lot of very poor people, but they are not the people coming to the United States.” According to Henley and Partners, a consultancy, more dollar millionaires (about 7,500) emigrated from India last year than from anywhere but China and Russia.

Indeed Indian migrants are relatively wealthy even in the countries they have moved to. Indians are the highest-earning migrant group in America, with a median household income of almost $150,000 per year. That is double the national average and well ahead of Chinese migrants, with a median household income of over $95,000. In Australia the median household income among Indian migrants is close to $87,000 per year, compared with an average of roughly $62,000 across all households and about $58,000 among the Chinese-born.

The might of the Indian diaspora is increasingly on display at the pinnacle of business and the apex of government. Devesh Kapur and Aditi Mahesh at Johns Hopkins University totted up the number of people with Indian roots in top jobs, including those born in India and those whose forebears were. They identified 25 chief executives at S&P 500 companies of Indian descent, up from 11 a decade ago. Given the large number of Indian-origin executives in other senior positions at these companies, that figure is almost sure to rise further.

Up at the top

It is only recently that Indians abroad have begun to win such prestigious posts. Meghnad Desai was one of a handful of Indians at American universities when he won a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania in 1960. He points out that the diaspora wasn’t rich or powerful back then. “I remember people saying: ‘Americans will never have Indians in top positions’,” he recalls.

In the tech industry, Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, a computer-maker, explains that it was difficult for Indian entrepreneurs to raise money in 1980s America. “You were people with a funny accent and a hard-to-pronounce name and you had to pass a higher bar,” he says. Now Adobe, Alphabet, Google’s corporate parent, IBM and Microsoft are all led by people of Indian descent. The deans at three of the five leading business schools, including Harvard Business School, are as well.

The Indian diaspora is also thriving in the world of politics and policy. The Johns Hopkins researchers counted 19 people of Indian heritage in Britain’s House of Commons, including the prime minister, Rishi Sunak. They identified six in the Australian parliament and five in America’s Congress. America’s vice-president, Kamala Harris, was raised by her Tamil Indian mother. And Ajay Banga, born in Pune in western India, was chosen to lead the World Bank last month after running MasterCard for more than a decade.

The Chinese diaspora is the only other group with comparable influence around the world. An analysis by The Economist conducted as the covid-19 pandemic began estimated that more than three-quarters of the total $369bn of billionaire wealth in South-East Asia is controlled by huaqiao, a Mandarin term for the ethnic Chinese who are citizens of other countries.

In Europe and across North America the picture is somewhat different. There are fewer bosses of Chinese descent running S&P 500 companies than there are bosses of Indian descent. That may be because many of the most successful business types choose to stay in China, working for Chinese funds and investing in fast-growing Chinese businesses, like Xiaomi, a smartphone-maker, Baidu, an internet-search giant, and ByteDance, the Beijing-based parent company of TikTok, a social-media app crammed with videos.

Indian rules

Moreover, as America drifts towards a new cold war with China, Westerners increasingly see the country as an enemy. The covid-19 pandemic, which began in the Chinese city of Wuhan, probably made matters worse. Recent scares—the appearance of a Chinese spy-balloon over America in late January, and reports this month that China had reached an agreement with the Cuban government to set up an electronic-eavesdropping station on the island—have further sharpened the image of China as a hostile adversary.

In a recent survey of Americans’ attitudes by Gallup, a pollster, 84% of respondents said they viewed China mostly or very unfavourably. On India, only 27% of people asked said they held the same negative views.

This mistrust of China percolates through policy. Huawei, a Chinese telecoms-equipment manufacturer suspected in the past of embargo-busting and of being a conduit for Chinese government spying, has been banned in America. Some European countries are following suit. Stringent reviews of foreign investments in American companies on national-security grounds openly target Chinese money in Silicon Valley. Individuals found to be doing China’s bidding, including one ex-Harvard professor, have been punished. Indian firms do not face such scrutiny.

From London with love

The Indian government, by contrast, has been—at least until Mr Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took over—filled with people whose view of the world had been at least partly shaped by an education in the West. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, studied at Cambridge. Mr Modi’s predecessor, Manmohan Singh, went to both Oxford and Cambridge. When Mr Modi took the reins, the central bank was run by Raghuram Rajan, a former IMF official and professor at the University of Chicago.

India’s claims to be a democracy steeped in liberal values help its diaspora integrate more readily in the West. The diaspora in turn then binds India to the West. A stunning example of this came in 2005, when America struck an agreement that, in effect, recognised India as a nuclear power, despite its refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (along with Pakistan and Israel). Lobbying and fundraising by Indian-Americans helped push the deal through Congress.

The Indian diaspora gets involved in politics back in India, too. Ahead of the 2014 general election, when Mr Modi first swept to power, one estimate suggests more than 8,000 overseas Indians from Britain and America flew to India to join his campaign. Hordes of others used text messages and social media to turn out BJP votes from afar. They contributed unknown sums of money to the campaign.

It is Mr Modi himself that interests many. When he visited Australia in May the highlight of his trip was a rally for the Indian diaspora held at a 21,000-seat stadium fit for a rock star. In his speech, Mr Modi celebrated Indian-Australians as a “living bridge” between the two countries. Courting the diaspora is likely once again to be at the top of Mr Modi’s agenda during his forthcoming state visit to America. His previous audiences with Indian-Americans include a rally for 18,000 at Madison Square Garden in New York in 2014 and a “Howdy Modi” rally for 50,000 in Houston back in 2019.

Away from any crowds, Joe Biden will play host to talks with Mr Modi on June 22nd. The pair will discuss their countries’ “commitment to a free, open, prosperous and secure Indo-Pacific”, among several other topics.

The discussions may be difficult. Under Mr Modi, India’s ties to the West have been tested. Reasserting its status as a non-aligned power, India has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and stocked up on cheap Russian oil and fertiliser. India has talked loudly of promoting the interests of developing countries as chair of the G20 forum this year. It is also an important voice in the BRICS grouping, a forum which includes Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa alongside India. The club is considering whether to let Saudi Arabia and Iran join.

Mutually assured attraction

At home, officials spew reams of nationalist rhetoric that pleases right-wing Hindu hotheads. And liberal freedoms have come under attack. In March Rahul Gandhi, who is the leader of the opposition Congress party, was disqualified from parliament on a spurious defamation charge after an Indian court convicted him of criminal defamation. Meanwhile journalists are harassed and their offices raided by the authorities.

Mr Nye of Harvard warns that the chauvinist brand of Hindu nationalism Mr Modi is pushing in India puts the country’s reputation at risk. Next year’s elections are likely to see rising religious tensions and a further erosion of democratic norms. “India likes to boast that it is the largest democracy in the world,” Mr Nye says. “To the extent that it doesn’t live up to that, it hurts Indian soft power.”

But overseas Indians help limit the damage and ensure neither India nor the West gives up on the other. Mr Modi knows he cannot afford to lose their support and that forcing hyphenated Indians to pick sides is out of the question. At a time when China and its friends want to face down a world order set by its rivals, it is vital for the West to keep India on-side. Despite its backsliding,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvZ1YLgs0n4

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Avan, Aval Adhu 404

Under the light of the sun, light stood as two forms lost in the rapture of emotion and vied with the star with their own radiance. Ravi and Madhu stood staring at each other lost in their own world that rivaled the world, Mother Earth had created for them.

He smiled and yet his eyes shed sad tears of unspoken and unspeakable pain and it broke her heart to see him that way. She gently pulled his head down, kissed his eyes and his tears, and asked, ' Why do you cry, my hero, my love?' and, raising his head, she looked at him, ' I know why you cry for I feel that same pain all over my body. Yet, my soul wants to know and wants to hear it from your soul ' and gently placing her fingers on his lips, ' I want to hear it from your mouth through the language of love that only you speak and which only both of us can understand.'

Ravi sighed and looked up at the sun whose light the neem trees were filtering with their limbs and leaf fingers and closing his eyes whispered, ' God, where do I begin for there is so much to say, share and talk about.'

He slowly lowered his head and gaze from the sun above and looked into her eyes and saw the light of two stars twinkling and blazing away in love and exhaling whispered, ' It's getting late, Madhu and we better get going before Amma comes here in search of me.'

She smiled, ' Yes, let's go. No point in burdening her already over-burdened mind. Poor thing, God only knows what pain she must have suffered seeing you in the ICU in that critical state.'

They slowly walked back to the Auto-rickshaw and heard the young Ganesan's moans and laments even before they neared him.

' What else do you want me to do? I got you a new mobile phone just last month. What, you gave it to your friend? Hey, I am still using a four-year-old phone, that too which I purchased second-hand, and here you are asking me for a new phone as a gift for your birthday which falls next month.'

Then suddenly remembering something, ' Wait, hold on, didn't we celebrate your Birthday a few months ago?'

He listened and his eyes grew as big as saucers and he wailed, ' What, that was your birthday and this is going to be your star birthday?'

Ravi and Madhu stood still hearing Ganesan whine, moan, and groan, and heard him yell, ' Podi, pesathe, po. Forget your birthday. I will buy an iPhone for my funeral celebration which I am certain is just around the corner.

Then turning and catching sight of Ravi, he quickly whispered something into the phone and wearing an artificial grin that was not reflected in his eyes, stared at both of them.

Then, just before Ravi got into the auto after Madhu had gotten in, Ganesan looked at him and began to lament in mumbles and whispers.

Ravi cleared his clear throat loudly, but deliberately, to get his ward's attention and then folded his arms across his chest and stared at him.

Brahma Ganesan who knew his master very well, knew what the pose meant and tentatively asked Ravi a question but with a bent head and in a barely audible voice.

Ravi raised his voice slightly and thundered softly, ' Speak up, young man, and speak your mind freely and loudly like I have told you to do when in my presence.'

Ganesan hurriedly spoke his mind, ' I said I am jealous of you both.'

Madhu chuckled loudly, ' Child, jealous of us. Why? What is there to envy about us?'

Brahma Ganesan looked at his phone and then looked at both Ravi and Madhu, ' Everything. I envy everything about you. But, more than everything, I envy the purity of your love and how you have sustained it even after all these years and after having faced so much sorrow and heartbreaks.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGKnSdikqjw

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Better than bhel puri: Girmit or mandakki

By Shoba Narayan, Hindustan Times, June 13, 2023

The ecosystem of Karnataka’s customised snack experience

To understand the hold that girmit or churmuri has on people from Karnataka, you have to understand that it is not just a recipe. It is an ecosystem.

The first time I tasted it was when an autorickshaw driver abandoned me mid-road to go buy this dish. We were driving in Akshayanagar (near Begur Lake), when suddenly the driver spotted a shop and swerved sharply to a stop. He got out of the vehicle, put out one finger and muttered “ondhu nimisha (one minute),” and made the “swalpa adjust maadi” face that people use when they need to rush to the toilet. But that’s not what he was doing. The driver rushed into a tiny shop named Mirchi Mandakki Mane (the taste of Uttara Karnataka). Not wanting to miss out on any taste, I followed him.

It was 4pm and the man behind the counter was mixing what seemed like a bhel puri, except it was customised to every customer’s taste. My auto driver, for instance, was giving instructions to the man behind the counter. “Add more onions, a little more chili powder, little less sev,” and so on.

Now tell me: would such an exchange ever happen in a bhel puri place, where the customer basically dictates the quantity of every ingredient? I doubt it. The cook will probably upturn the bhel puri on the customer’s head. This then is the difference between the bhel puri and the mandakki. The mandakki is a dish but it is also a connection between people. It is an exchange.

Mandakki literally means puffed rice. It is used in various combinations as a snack all over India. Bengal has the jhalmuri, Maharashtra has its bhel puri, and Karnataka has mandakki, also called churumuri or khara pori, and a version of it called girmit.

The difference between mandakki and girmit is that in a girmit, cooked things are added. Just to confuse things a bit more, there are various versions of the mandakki called churmuri. The nargis mandakki is dry roasted and usually mixed by hand. The flavour comes from chopped and fried green chilies, garlic, curry leaves, turmeric, salt and a pinch of sugar. It is essentially like the bhel mix version of mandakki. The oggarane mandakki is similar. Oggarane is what is called ‘vagar’ in Gujarati, ‘tadka’ in Hindi and ‘thalippu’ in Tamil. It is the tempering that gives the mandakki the flavour. These are the dry spicy versions of the mandakki. The more casual way to call it is churmuri.

Churmuri and Girmit are famous in Davanagere and Uttara Karnataka, but you can find them all over Bangalore. The shop I visited for instance, has the following items on its menu: spicy girmit, hirekai bajji (ridge gourd bajji), oggarane mandakki (seasoned mandakki), Davanagere girmit (spicier than usual because it is from Davanagere), mandakki usili (where the puffed rice is cooked like an upma), menasinakai bajji (green chilies or mirchi bajji), nargis mandakki (a specially seasoned puffed rice), belluli mandakki (garlic puffed rice mixture). The mandakki usili has one difference. It is where the mandakki is soaked in water and prepared like poha or an upma.

What is the difference between girmit and mandakki? Both have a base of puffed rice or khara pori. But the girmit includes a cooked spicy-sweet-sour sauce. Consider the ingredients. To a base of oil, you add seasonings such as curry leaves, chopped green chilies, black mustard and cumin seeds, urad dal and channa dal, and hing. After a minute, you add chopped onion and later, chopped tomato. After they cook, you add some tamarind juice, a little jaggery and lots of powders: turmeric, red chili powder, and salt. The result is a thick gojju or sauce that is added to the puffed rice flakes.

The thing that differentiates girmit and indeed all of Karnataka’s churmuris is the addition of powdered roasted gram powder or what is called puttani powder here. This addition combined with the above gojju make the girmit quite hearty and spicy to begin with.

Then comes the reason for the name, which is that you have to stir all these ingredients with a long spoon in a deep pot. Finally, you add raw and finely chopped onions, tomatoes, and coriander leaves. Just before serving you top with sev and maybe a squeeze of lemon. This girmit is served with fried green chilies in case the eaters want it to be more spicy. You eat it and your head goes “Gir” hence the name. Basically, your head will explode with the heat, but people in central and north Karnataka love hot things, the spicier the better.

In Bangalore, if you want to experience the churmuri or the girmit, you need to go on a picnic, either in Nandi Hills or any nearby temple on a hill. There you will find families who sit down for a snack after the darshan. The mother or aunt takes out all the ingredients for a girmit. Then watch her mix the ingredients with intuitive customisation for every palate in her family. With lightning hands, she measures different proportions for each person. Children don’t get as much girmit sauce and a bit more sugar. The adults too get varying portions of the raw ingredients. The father, for instance, may not like the smell of raw onions and therefore gets none. It is this type of customisation that is the hallmark of a good girmit.

Like I said, this snack is not just a dish. It is a connection between mother and child. It is an ecosystem of encompassing love.

(Shoba Narayan is a Bengaluru-based award-winning author. She is also a freelance contributor who writes about art, food, fashion and travel for a number of publications.)

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