Of course, Ramalinga Raju has let me down. Has let us down. But is he the lone perpetrator of this fraud of unimaginable scale? I don’t think so. There must be more people and organizations whose names will now come out in the open as investigations unfold with their results. I am just shattered at the thought of the possible names that might come under the scanner.

Imagine dragging PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PwC) to court. In India, there are atleast 100 publicly listed companies that use them as their auditor and several (possibly more than 100) other unlisted ones. I just hope they come clean through this though I have kind of assumed that they are guilty until proven otherwise. I mean you can’t be an auditor to a firm that’s been fudging numbers for seven years and yet not know what’s going on. And it was not a few bucks here and there, it was a massive Rs. 7,000 crores! I just want to study the composition of the team that was handling the Satyam account from PwC since the time they took it on. If it was the same team, then you don’t need me to tell you what was going on. If it was changing constantly, then we need to really talk to those guys who moved on to see the truth.

Then comes the board of directors. What on earth were they doing there? You had the biggest names on that board. Such a disgrace to them. I understand that they cannot get into the minute details of the financial statements, that too with Mr. Raju whose aura precedes him. I mean even if it was not for the aura, very rarely do you get into such details as you are also thinking about not irking your CEO by micro-managing or asking for too much detail or questioning his authority or any such thing. Now you add the aura of Mr. Raju and you see the position of the board. But still, I guess they have swerved away from their line of duty somewhere and they owe a moral obligation to move on from here and make way for new board members.

Come to think of it, it’s happened in the IT industry. The most watched. The most admired. Satyam had 185 of the Forbes 500 as their customers. PwC as their auditors. In hindsight, it all seems to be such a farce because the one who mattered resorted to unethical ways of managing stakeholder expectation. The good part of it is that this serves as a wake-up call to every company to get their stuff right. Also, I guess more and more companies will come clean at the earliest and revise their guidances to the market in an effort to manage stakeholder expectations better rather winding up operations or getting into such murky conditions.

Also, somewhere deep down I feel this is a representation of our Indian system. We have this fiery need to be recognized as good by the society. And this goodness is related directly to how well we manage our external image. Internally what you think or what you do be damned. But externally if you have put up your best face, then you are good. And I think this is the trap into which Mr. Raju got caught too. Just that the circle of influence of his actions was larger and it has opened our eyes to the real world.

The only thing I think I still appreciate about Mr. Raju is that he confessed to having done it all at a time when nobody actually expected it to happen. People are saying that he had no option and he was pushed into a corner and all that. Give me one instance where this has happened. He has just stood up unable to withstand his conscience and announced to the World whatever he has done. If PwC did not know, the board did not know, the finance department did not know, the shareholders did now know, the stock exchanges did not know and SEBI had no clue. Merril Lynch and Maytas were the only ones I suspect who knew. And in blowing the whistle they would have also been staring down the barrel. It was only sensible they did it this way, and even now, do we really know?

I was not so sure about what to do next if at all anything was necessary to be done. So, I just backed out of the conference called my wife and told her that I was fine and sat down for a few minutes trying to get more information about the blasts. Called up a friend who told me that there was one at Sarjapur Road. I was staying 100m from there at my friend’s place. My friends still stay there – I mean it is their permanent house as they say in this part of the World. Let’s assume these terrorists had planned these blasts a day before, I would be one person gone for sure as I was walking around that place the previous day.

Anyway, once I made my important calls, I called for my taxi and headed for the airport. I had a flight to catch at 1925 hours. And here I was at 1600 hours in my taxi driving towards the airport. It was a strange feeling. Though I had reassured myself that my friends and family were all safe, I was still fleeing. A couple of idiots planned a series of bomb blasts and killed a person and injured around 20 and affected the daily life of cowards like me. I felt really wretched during my drive back to the airport from the hotel. Here I was in a city a few minutes ago and was happy and suddenly I am leaving it and going away as if I had nothing to do with it. That felt strange.

Not only am I doing nothing about the current pathetic security situation in our country, neither do I have any idea of what is to be done to make the whole situation better. And that’s what really frustrates me. Even if I set out to do something, it is immediately brought to my notice that ‘one man can do nothing’. Yeah, that’s right, so why doesn’t anyone connect with me and we could do something about it. Now the logic is that: Terrorism is not something you can stop by a group of people wanting to do something.

The problem is that the enemy is not clearly defined. Some of my friends with whom I discussed this felt that we must address poverty and other issues before dealing with terrorism. I was in disagreement with that thought process. You can’t wait to uproot poverty before tackling terrorism. Terrorists will uproot humanity by then and thinking on those lines it won’t be long before they come to a stage when they kill each other and end the human race once and for all. Going by one estimate the World has another 500 years maximum to see human beings alive. The rate at which we are going, even 200 seems a realistic estimate! And I don’t think we would have uprooted poverty by then atleast as much as I would love to see a poverty-free world. So, let’s deal with terrorism at a level that we can actually deal with during our lifetime!

First of all, the idea that terrorism is a result of poverty is not entirely ridiculous but borders on that somewhere. Poverty is used as a hook to get people ‘execute’ the bomb blasts. ‘Execute’ as in place bombs, arrange for vehicles and accommodation, etc. The poor guy does not provide all this, he arranges for all this by coordinating with concerned parties as he is a localite and is trusted. So, these guys are just pawns in a bigger game. The game has been strategized by someone who is not poor for sure, who is not uneducated for sure and who is not technically dumb for sure. So, the real enemy is this. The brain behind the whole event. This brain is rich, educated and tech-savy. And the brain is globally present with its tentacles spread into every single locality of every city.

So, our first step should be to make sure that we get across to tracking these brains. It is very clear that the majority of them belong to a certain creed. These brains need to be tracked and their funding arms need to be cut off. Finding this is probably the toughest part. But I really hope someone is doing this. I have watched a BBC program where they once showed how the Interpol was tracking suspects of something that was about to happen. And when it happened on July 7th they could not avoid it but within days they got across to the guys who actually did it, the brains behind it and the financial channels too. I guess as Indians, we need to help our police in tracking suspicious candidates.

If we are only bothered about me, myself and my family, like I did by running to the airport in the shortest possible route and time, then I think I need to change. And I saw a lot of people do the same along with me and would assume that we would call it very ‘natural’ to do that. Okay, but then from wherever we stay we need to resolve to do something about the degrading state of security of human lives in our country. We need to fight the bad intelligence with good intelligence. Finally it all comes down to bad versus the good. Unfortunately, when the good ones sleeep, only bad seems to prevail. If these blasts don’t wake us up, I shudder to think about the next alarm!

The partly charred body of 48-year-old Basha was found lying in a pool of blood. This is the fourth murder under similar circumstances in the Ashok Nagar and Vadapalani area in the last one month, the police said.

I stay in Ashok Nagar with my wife and our 15-month old son. She is alone in the house for most of the day as I am away at office. While she is definitely scared about the whole thing, I am worried about one thing: What the $#@!% is the Ashok Nagar police doing? I mean they are hardly a kilometre away from where all this is happening and the murders continue to keep happening. I guess if the victim was a rich man they would have done something, but since the profile of the dead is like rag-picker, watchman, etc they seem to be displaying ample apathy.

Though I must admit that there are a lot of policemen/ women going around in uniform 24/7 near our house, there has not been a single public announcement or any sort of sign from the police that they are in control of the situation. Simply going around in mass wearing khakee uniform and for the murders to actually continue happening is in fact an insult to the uniform.

I trust the police to do something about it and stop the fear from spreading more than it already has. For example, yesterday night the uncle who stays downstairs actually called us up on the mobile to tell us that we should close all the doors and windows and not open the door even if someone knocks. He actually said that if there is a knock on the door, don’t open the door instead start shouting at the top of our voice and I will get help for you. I thought that he was being a little over-cautious. And to top it all, he called my wife on her mobile and told her in detail what had happend and what he thought we needed to do. While I appreciate his concern for us, this phone call of his actually made my wife panic!

My view on the whole thing is this: The probability that the four murders were all connected is remote. Further, the probability that the connected murders were all done by a single person is even more remote. Digging even more further, the probability that this person is a psycho is much more remote. So it becomes, 1/(remote)^3 to the mathematics enthusiasts like me and for normal people: just because the four murders have happened in close proximity to where I live is why I am even getting to feel the anxiety underlying this string of coincidences. I am concerned about my family for sure but I am even more sure that this is a false alarm and will die its natural death unless the ‘psycho’ theory is proven true!

My deepest condolences to the families who have lost their dear ones. May their souls Rest In Peace!

Tata releases their Rs. 1 Lakh car named ‘Nano’. ‘Nano’ means the small one in Gujarati. It looks good. 624cc engine; 20+ kmpl mileage; 20% larger than Maruti 800; own one today and pay Rs. 2200/- per month for 5 years (there must be a downpayment clause that I must have surely missed); satisfies all safety norms; obeys all emission norms (Euro IV and BS III).

Everything sounds too good to be true. And maybe that’s the reason there is so much of argument about this car increasing road congestion, pollution (apparently sheer volumes will push up overall pollution), making roads uncomfortable for pedestrians and others.

But please help me understand one thing: Why blame Tata Nano for this? What about the automobiles that have been sold till now? Are not they creating congestion? People make me sound like an idiot when I ask these questions. They go “C’mon, it’s because of the congestion that those cars have already created that we are asking ‘Nano’ not to make it worse”. This is like punishing the best because he did not enter the market earlier.

And coming to the problem on the roads and the Nano there may be an obvious link between the two, but the responsibilities for each are with different entities. The Indian Government must wake up and take measures to avoid further congestion. As citizens, I guess there is a need for mass agreement to obey traffic rules. And as far as I can see, both these things don’t seem to be happening in the near future. If I am wrongly informed, please correct me. Handcuffing corporate organizations with country’s economic problems and asking them to stop developments on innovation and cost reduction does not sound necessarily right to me.

There is a probability that Apple would have gotten away with this if they had done this in India considering the ancient laws we have protecting the consumer. But in America, I believe you have a possibility of making $1 Million if a company does such a thing as Apple has done. Check it out. A customer who had bought a 4GB iPhone for $499 has sued Apple for $1 Million.

We, in India, need a system in place to atleast to help keep the consumers aware of their rights.

I, for one, am pretty miffed with Nokia for announcing that the price of its latest phone Nokia N72 is Rs. 9399/-. I paid Rs. 9696/- for it! :( Let me look up my consumer rights booklet immediately and keep my resignation ready.

Thinking in the background: $1 million means Rs. 4 crores. 1 Mercedes Benz (Rs. 60 Lakhs), 1 flat and 1 farmhouse in Mysore (Rs. 40 Lakhs)… anyone wants a loan?! :D

And today they have converted the ‘Bandh’ to ‘Strike’ in view of the Supreme Court’s observation of why not implement President’s rule in TN?

And there in Karnataka, I guess people themselves will go on a Bandh in few days considering all the confusion in the coalition.

Sometimes, the pitfalls of a Democratic system become showstoppers. I guess we need some infusion of youngsters into our political system. Though the process has started I guess even we, the common people, need to get our brains in one place and infuse sensibility into our system.

During his road widening spree, there was one thing that he religiously followed. He would go around demolishing everything in the way of his proposed wide road except places of religious worship. It could be a temple, mosque, church or a gurudwara, he would just leave alone that area of the road that’s covered by the structure and convert it into a roundabout. He did that to respect the beliefs and sentiments of the religions involved. He did not want to arouse riots in the city because of relocating a structure of religous belief. He never thought about demolishing any of them.

I only wonder why our central Government cannot have an ounce of sense while deciding to go ahead in demolishing the Rama Sethu (Adam’s Bridge)! It is connected too deeply to the sentiments of the Hindu religion. It is considered to be the bridge built by the vanarasena for Rama to cross over the sea to Lanka to bring back his kidnapped wife Sita.

Now questions like: Whether the bridge was really built by man or not? (Technically, the question should be ‘whether the bridge was really built by monkeys or not?’) OR Whether Rama existed or not? OR any other such inane question is irrelevant. Rama is a Hindu God and he needs to be respected for it. If there is something in this world that can be connected to people’s faith about Rama then it needs to be respected. You cannot go and demolish it straightaway. Apart from the sentiments, faith and belief of the Hindus, you also need to consider various other points.

In my opinion, the Government would be committing political harakiri by going ahead with the demolition. Even the US wants to preserve the Rama Sethu. [Link] And TN CM Karunanidhi (He leads a party called DMK that’s a part of the coalition government at the centre) isn’t quite helping matters by releasing statements like these. “Who’s Ram?”, he asks. Hey Ram!

This was on Headlines Today. It should be called Headless today!

First scroller:
SALMAN KHAN IS TRAVELING IN JET AIRWAYS 9W… IN SEAT NUMBER 3C

Second scroller:
OUR JOURNALIST IS SITTING NEXT TO HIM

Third scroller:
SALMAN IS SENDING MESSAGES TO HIS NEAR AND DEAR

Fourth scroller:
SALMAN APPEARS COOL AND COMPOSED

—————–

From the CNN IBN website:

SRK flaunts six-pack look, charms Sania Mirza
(and they had an interview with Sania mirza for about 3 minutes on NDTV)

Did anyone bother what the news was about?
—————–

Headlines Today’s coverage of this event:

With these scrollers running,

First scroller:
SANIA MIRZA SPOTTED IN A POLKA DOTTED DRESS WITH A SHRUG

Second scroller:
SANIA MIRZA’S ATTIRE ON COURT HAS ALWAYS BEEN CONSERVATIVE

the news channel had Mr. Dilip Cherian and somebody else on the studio to discuss the whole thing out. Is anyone channel bothered about what the event was? It was supposed to be a promotional event for the Sunfeast Open.
—————–

Katrina Kaif had once been to Jaipur to visit Salman Khan in jail. HT’s coverage with visuals of the jail entrance for over 5 minutes. The scrollers again:

First scroller:
KATRINA KAIF IS VISITING SALMAN KHAN IN JAIL

Second scroller:
SHE IS WEARING A WHITE KURTA AND BLUE JEANS TO SEE HIM

Third scroller:
ALONG WITH HER ARE SOHAIL KHAN AND SALMAN’S SISTER

I am sure you have seen funnier news. Comments section is open! :)

More than the feeling of my philosophy being questioned I am wondering if I was totally wrong in the first place itself. As in was I wrong to include Islam in my list of ‘all’ religions to be tolerated? Were my friends who strongly opposed every bit of the religion right?

I always thought that religions were invented to help us live our life better. To me Hinduism is not a religion it’s a way of life. Please note that Hinduism taught me to say ‘a way of life’ not ‘the way of life’. Hinduism taught me that there are other religions that exist and they ought to be respected. Hinduism said there are many gods in this world and each human being is free to pick the God of his choice. The only thing Hinduism doesn’t talk about is atheism. Anyway, that’s a different topic for another day. The underlying thread tying up these thoughts is a thought that “A religion is a way to reach God”.

Reaching God was always meant to be a peaceful process – a process of doing good, being good without hurting others, speaking the truth and being conscentious throughout one’s life. There might be various operational ways of doing this and I thought each religion prophesed its way. While I have no knowledge of the ‘Quran’ or any such holy book of the other religions which guides people through their operational life, it beats me as to how someone can interpret the holy book to mean exactly the opposite. I am sure you understand that I don’t need an indepth knowledge of the ‘Quran’ to make this statement.

Hinduism teaches humanity as a religion. Of course, several people have interpreted the ‘Choose your God’ option differently and created castes and sub-castes, but then none of these interpretations (read as castes, sub-castes, etc.) broke the basic tenet of ‘reaching God through doing good, being good without hurting others, speaking the truth and being conscentious throughout one’s life’. But the interpretation of Islam as religion of hate, to kill innocent people and reach God (Jehad) is not only the exact opposite of what the religion is meant to advocate (according to my understanding that is) but also an indication of the existence of ambiguity in the ‘Quran’.

A holy book like ‘Quran’ should be clear in the fundamental message atleast. It can’t go wrong in that. If it does (go wrong), then what is the whole point of having it? If a few (rapidly growing in number from few to many) groups people are able to interpret it in a way to incite violence and kill people, then it means that the religion is being used against humanity. And it defeats the whole purpose of having created the religion in the first place.

My friends who used to criticize the religion before are now scared. Their theory was that the modus operandi of these extremist groups would be:

Their theory was being shot down at the first assumption itself and that was the reason for their fear. All these are carefully and logically made assumptions as you can see. During the failed Glasgow airport attack in London, the entire mission is believed to be masterminded and executed by doctors. Can you believe that? Doctors! And apparently Osama had a lyrical poem to convey the potential damage to a cleric in one of the British churches, “Those who will cure you will kill you”.

Doctors are supposed to save lives and ensure a longer life to those still living. This profession has a certain standard of ethics that is generally looked upto by society. If well-to-do people from this profession of care and love can be incited to hate and kill, then it is scary. Really scary. And also, questions the basic tenet of religions – love for all.

The world is no longer a safe place to live in. The failed Glasgow airport attack has been an eye-opener for people like me who had blind faith in all religions. I am afraid to say the faith is no longer blind. Faith has been scared away and questioned like never before.