Short Story - Fort High School Fest

Retirement had brought out a new side of AB. He saw retirement as a relief and now looked forward to starting his “real life”. A hundred days had passed since his retirement and he was making the most of not having to put on the suit. He would still suit up, but not because he had to look good in front of customers. He was after all a creature of routines.

AB got off the phone and said.

‘It seems Yesudas is singing at the Fort High School fest today, we should go.’

The Rama Seva Mandali established in the early 1900s hosted the month long Fort High School fest every year, and this would be the 79^th fest.  The fest was among the biggest classical music festivals in all of India.  Though much celebrated, many felt both the fest and the Mandali had hit the twilight. They had no trouble packing the fest with performances. Four performances a day with popular artists taking the evening prime time slots. Sundays would see the best names come out and pulling the biggest crowd.

‘I remember going there as a child. I, Rukku and Viji would attend all the concerts, all thirty days. Of course, we didn’t have the money to buy tickets. We would go in late; an hour or so after the concerts had started. By that time the counters would be empty and gated unmanned.’

 AB was talking about his childhood again. Dev now didn’t have the heart of say no. He might enjoy it too, he thought to himself. Yesudas was one of the legends of classical music in India, both in his time as well as his father’s.

~

The line was too long, almost half a kilometer. The season pass was selling at 500 and VIP season pass at 1000.

‘Five hundred? One thousand? That’s all?’

Spoke Dev, to himself. ‘No wonder the fest is dying.’

‘It was 25 at one time’ said AB, happy but smiling.

Father and son were still not happy about standing in the queue. Although there was a sign of happiness and content on AB’s face. Dev was not sure why.

After about twenty minutes, they got in. The season pass had run out and they had to by the “only standing” tickets for 50 rupees.  The crowd was huge, not one seat available. There were people stuffed and pouring out of every exit, still trying to listen to the music. The voice of the aging Yesudas was just as refreshing and his music disarmingly fixating.

The Mandali had arranged for extra chairs, and they were still bringing in more chairs for those of the “only standing” tickets.

Dev was surprised.

‘What’s the need to get extra chairs? If the venue is full, it’s full. We don’t see people getting extra chairs or making room when there’s a game of cricket, or the concerts at Palace grounds’

It was beyond reason to Dev why the host would take that extra step.

‘Well, that’s just a good gesture, the fest was organized to give us good music, and wouldn’t music be better if you’re comfortable? It’s not a business or a “gig” as you people call it. It’s a practice and a tradition that these folks have been keeping alive for 78 years, and this is the way they do it.’

AB didn’t want to talk in long sentences, but believed sometimes it becomes important to put the young ones in their place.

AB, although was an avid fan of classical music and liked Yesudas, wanted to leave early.

‘We need to reach home in time for dinner, let’s leave after the next song.’ AB declared without taking his eyes off the stage.

‘Sure’ Dev one worded.

~

The bus stop was slowly filling up. People had just started coming out of the concert.

‘If the crowd is so good throughout the thirty days of the fest, the Mandali would be in a much better position, right?’ Dev casual questioned.

‘Yes’

A small pause lingered when both father and son admired a grandfather-granddaughter duo. The granddaughter more than the grandfather.

 ‘The Mandali has been doing quite alright these past few years’ AB ventured into a theory.

‘For the most part, the crowd consists of oldies like us. And for good reason. We grew up in the times when classical music was at its peak, and as we got busy making our career, starting families and making choices for you, we fell out of music or anything recreational.’

Bus number 212 pulled into the bus stop; they would have to wait for 215K.

AB continued

‘Now that we are retired, and that we have young adults like you, who’ve just stared realizing that parents and grandparents need care and some time out too, we can go to these concerts again.’

‘Yeah, there were a lot of grandparent-aged at the concert’ Dev pointed in agreement.

‘And young-adults like yourselves with them’ AB’s presented his finding.

Dev felt a little warm about going out with his father, thinking of it, he had even liked classical music of Yesudas.

AB started in his conclusive tone.

‘So to spot a pattern, or to paint a big picture, the Fort High School fest has found a new life in its new audience.’

AB looked at Dev with a smile before continuing

‘Us, the oldies have started getting back to the fest because we are no longer bound to our duties of earning the bread of the house, and you the new gen responsibles are ferrying or accompanying your elders to the fest.’

‘So they are getting twice the expected audience?’ interjected Dev

‘Yes, and hence the fest is going to live.’ It was obvious, but AB liked to conclude and Dev let him.

The homebound bus ride was quite. 

~

Dev muted the credits of the show on TV before going to bed and asked,

‘But dad, didn’t your generation take their parents or grandparents to the fest?’

2 Years Later

What’s wrong with you? Why haven’t you written in almost 2 years? I asked myself. Is it because you're lazy or because all of a sudden there are too many bloggers in the world and you suddenly realized you're not as good as you thought?' Not easy questions to answer, because it was asked by the self. Answering to oneself is easier than answering others, because as my dad says 'Nam devr satya namig gotilva?' (Literally means don’t we know our god's truth, or can mean don’t we remember that we hid the skeletons in the back?) So I answered to myself, you're good, but not good enough for a. you're not opinionated and b. you’re vocab is limited, of course your spellings suck too.

 

That’s ok, most of the writers these days are like that; sure, there's too much noise these days with everyone being a blogger, but everyone was always a blogger, everyone always wanted to be heard. Why is it more noisy now? Because English is easy? Because there are more readers now? more people want to Google before talking? And there’s more people willing to pay for writing? Because blogs are places to sell ads? Maybe. Are these not reasons for me to write? Guess not.

 

Ok, if you don’t want money, don’t want to talk, don’t want to enlighten people and are not opinionated, then why do you want to write and why are you mad at yourself for not writing for long?

 

Good one, inner me. I started writing because it was good; the popular ones had blogs at school.

 

OK you wrote because you wanted to show off your blog. Now you don’t want to show off?

 

You're being ruthless inner me. The truth is I still want to show off, I still think I can write better than some people and words line up well when I start putting them together. And I like it when people read and comment or appreciate my writing.

 

So you stopped writing because people stopped commenting?

 

Not true, I get comments. Some good and some bad because I started writing about politics and some were anti Modi.

 

So you're Modi fan friends started liking you less because you're anti Modi?

 

Wow wow wow... slow down when did I say I'm anti Modi?

 

Hello, I’m not Raaghu or Vatsie or anyone. I’m inner me. If I called you anti Modi then you are anti Modi.

 

Oh yeah... Sorry. I'm trying to put on a I'm not anti Modi, I'm just neutral costume so that others can still be friends with me.

 

Yeah, I know. Fitting in thing is hard, but it’s ok. As long as you don’t lie to me, I’m cool. But lying in general is not good.

 

Really? come on, you know that doesn’t work for me.

 

haha...

 

Ok, so you're posting this on your blog, I know you are. But why?

 

First, because it’s a long text and it counts for a literary work.

Second, because… Well I don’t, I had to post something. Even if it a selfie.

 

Cool, but we still don’t know why you didn’t write.

 

I told you, ok maybe not in this text, but I told you, I’m first of all, kinda lazy and lack-structure to stick to a schedule. Secondly, there’s too much noise. I’m kinda feeble, so I don’t talk much when others are talking loudly.

 

Hmmm... You mean empty vessels make more noise?

 

Yeah!

 

So all those talking are empty vessels and you’re intelligent?

 

Not really... I'm just saying, people talk confidently when they know, and people talk emphatically when they believe in what they know. So I think, too many people are convinced that what they know is the absolute truth and they want to put that out into the work as fast and as loudly as possible.

 

And you don’t believe in what you know?

 

Not like that, but yeah maybe a little like that. Because I call myself a reasonable person, like Brian, I want the freedom to change my view about things as and when I'm supplied with new information.

 

Hmm... ok.. Good talk. Yeah post this on the blog. Who knows? Maybe there are others like you.

Feed the Fed

Alright, it’s been way too long since I brewed something… So... Let’s get to work.

The Context:

October Jobs Report.  It seems that companies have added about 271,000 jobs in October. This sudden surge in the number of jobs added has been the fastest rate change yet and as an effect has sent the unemployment rate to 5% which is the lowest level since April 2008.

Ok, what does that mean?

Well, according to Economics, inflation rises as unemployment goes down. I know sounds strange at first because we are used to associating negatives with negatives… but Economics thinks otherwise.. for every good, there is bad. Hence, as more and more people get employed, they have money to spend, and as their spending ability increases, so does the demand for things and hence price rise or inflation. Tada!

All right ok we understood that employment increases inflation, what’s next?

Coming to that; USA’s central bank rate has been practically 0% for almost a decade now... 8-8.5 years actually. So now they want to increase that. Now maybe you’re thinking, wait increase bank rate or as its popularly called Fed rate in USA, wouldn't it increase the cost of loans? That would make it harder for people to get their hands on more money, that’s bad, why does USA want to do that??

Weeeelllll…. Inflation in USA has also come to about 0% and now that there’s a sudden drop in unemployment, this inflation will go up and they don’t want that to happen. Simple right? Wrong! Nothing is ever simple!

 Think about it, if inflation goes from 0 to 0.5 or even 1% what’s the big deal? Growth and inflation are directly proportional, so if inflation rises (up to a certain extent, not like Zimbabwe) it means somewhere you are making growth. So the story of wanting to keep inflation under check is bogus.

Wow, ok boss, so what does all this mean then? Why do they really want to increase the fed rate?

I’ll tell you… because they want to look good.

For a stable economy, the Bank rate needs to be respectable, well at least not 0. Japan’s central bank rate has been at zero for almost 15 years, and everyone knows Japan is a saturated economy. They don’t want the same to happen to USA.

Alright… We get it now... so they want to give the Fed rate a hike because they want to look good and look like they made a recovery from the 2008-09 crash. But if this make believe stunt is what they want to do, then why didn’t they do this earlier?

Good question. Frankly, I believe they are doing this because of the presidential elections. However, this post is about a conspiracy theory. Now, where’s the theory??

The Theory

We know what the context is, how Recession, Recovery, Fed Rate, Inflation, Growth and Unemployment are related to each other. And we also know that unless Obama and his govt. show some proof of recovery, it will be really hard to get a third term for the Democrats. So, there’s but one option to show this for sure, increase the fed rate.

This might choke cash flow in the system but! And I mean a serious But! This fed cut is not to choke or pour money into the common man of USA, but it is to show the outsiders that USA is on track for recovery. We must note that people are really wry of the situation. Japan is in a recession, China is looking unstable, and India is still volatile. Everyone else is anyway insignificant. So investors will put their money into USA.

But sir, what about the employment? The govt. can’t simply cook it up, how did nearly 200 thousand new jobs come up within a month??

Ask yourself that question again! How did nearly 200 thousand jobs come up within a month?? Come on!!

I looked it up; the October jobs report a little and I found and I quote

“White-collar businesses added 78,000 profession jobs. Health care added 45,000 positions. Retailers took on 44,000 new workers, and restaurants hired 42,000 people.”

I’m not chasing after everyone, but I got curious at the restaurants and so did a little more digging. About three companies did 80% of this 42000. And surprisingly, these three are Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC. All three belong to the same parent organization of Yum Brands, Inc.

Now about this Yum Brands, Inc.

Yum Brands stock tanked 11% in October. They said it’s because the company didn’t meet the analyst's expected quarterly revenue... seriously? 11% because it missed “analyst estimates”?? Ok I'll believe even that… But listen… The quarterly revenue actually grew by 2.2% and increased the "adjusted earnings" by 14%.

Now the stock, even after recovery is at 5% below last year’s price, but the earnings are high and they just hired 42000 people!!

Here’s where I come in... US wanted to hike the fed rate so bad... But they couldn’t just do it.. Neither could they leave it at 0 and be another Japan... sooo.. They called some of the big guys... like Yum and a few others… and said, look guys, you need to hire more people.

We just saw, that the sales revenue of Yum isn’t that great, the stocks tanked 11% but still its profits are awesome. How?? Think! Universities and Hospitals are known all too well for Govt. indulgence... Sooo… I’m just thinking… somehow someone made a big donation or an “adjustment” leading to a growth in numbers, then the hiring boom and hence creating a clean, unsuspecting and natual green signal for the fed rate hike.

But the question is … will you buy this natural green signal??? Is it all that natural in the first place? Will you invest in USA after knowing this??? Or is Obama really looking for investment in America and the American people or is it all just to get money for a short term till the elections are over??

Do You Read Fast?

This happened a few weeks ago, another friend posted a pic on facebook showing off her incredible reading spead. This has been happening to me all my life. People telling me how they read books in a night or sometimes people say they've read full books in 2-3 hours time.

I've googled about it, lots of times. How can they do this? I learnt to skim read when I was preparing for aptitude exams, do they skim read entire books? can they do that? then I created new theories, maybe they don't read it too well, maybe they just go with the story and wont remember the details, or they fake read, they skip, they don't enjoy the word associations and sentence forming. They don't see the parts of speech, the prepositions, or don't pay attention at the beauty of the adverbs. All possible theories, I came up with so many things to protect my slow reading pace. But none of them actually made sense. People who read fast, like 10 or 20x faster than me knew the story line better than me, including the details. So whats going on??

More googling lead me to the reason. Its called subvocalisation. Meaning, your actually saying or imagining the words that are being read, or you imagine that you are listening to the words you read in your head. This is called subvocalisation, this imagining the sound of the words is what takes time. Most of our brains are alike, well upto a certain extent, so almost all of us can read at the same speed. But people who subvocalise while reading are spending that extra time to read out or imagine the sound of the words in their head. Hence the slow reading speed.
Next, how do you solve this?

Step1: Google, yeah I googled again and found some really simple techniques. I put them to the test and I gotta say, they have worked, a little albeit.

First, remember how they told in primary school that using fingers to read was bad, unlearn that. It might look uncivil to read with the help of your fingers, but try moving them along the words, it really, really helps reduce subvoculisation.

Second, distract yourself, simple, think of non sense, keep repeating words or listen to non lyrical music. Thinking or saying non sense in your head maybe a little risky, so try to listen to instrumental or play non lyrical music. It will help.
Try these two things, your reading speed will surely improve by atleast 70%.

One needs to remember though, that while scrutinizing documents or while reading technical reports that may have new words that you don't know, subvocalisation helps you remember it. Also, if you want to learn something by heart, subvocalisation can be of help even there. But if you are jealous of your friends who can read books in 2 hours, start practicing these 2 things and you can do it too. Go!

Government’s Goldberg

It’s surprising how most of my writing happens on Wednesdays; maybe I need to consult an astrologer to find out why. OK so today’s big news in the paper this morning was the Gold Monetization scheme. Gold Monetization is where Gold will be treated like Cash. 

This scheme was announced by the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in this year’s Budget. The scheme is a two pronged answer to the Indian obsession with Gold.

1.       The scheme shall allow public to deposit gold in scheduled banks and earn interest on their gold.

2.       The scheme allows Banks to use the gold received in this scheme to meet the CRR and SLR requirements.

So what does this mean?

Simply put, you and I can deposit our gold in the bank and earn an interest after a fixed maturity period. How does this happen? Well it works just like cash, the Bank will measure, test and tag your gold, and then lend it to jewelers or other investors who may be willing to buy or borrow at a rate higher than the banks offer to pay you. The interest earned in this scheme is not taxable under income tax or tax from capital gains. Please note that interest will be calculated in terms of gold. That is, if you deposit 50g of gold, 10% would be 5g of gold.   

This brings us to some simple but genuine questions

1.       How will they pay interest? Will they add another gram to my bangle? 

Well, no… Your gold will be treated just like cash. Meaning, you will not get to see the same gold bangle at maturity. If your bangle was 50g, then you will get 50g back + interest, but not in the same bangle. You may get the maturity amount as bullions of gold or you also have an option of redeeming it in cash. However there’s a catch, you need to specify if you want gold or cash while signing up for the scheme.

I’ll say what you’re thinking now… Nope, not gonna happen! My mom would never lose her bangles for 5% or 10% or even 30% if she’s never going to get a chance to see the bangles again. 

So why make this scheme? Politicians and bearcats are probably smarter than us, they would obviously be aware of our attachment to personal jewels, why would they draft such a thing??

Well the answer is simple. The general public is not the target of this scheme. This is for investors who already have gold in their portfolio. Gold itself would grow its worth in time, imagine depositing it in banks and earning interest on it, that’s a double income on a single asset! 

All this is fine and obvious. What are we missing? Well, tipping the rich to invest more is not the only goal here, the second leg,(which is actually the first) is that Banks would be able to allocate this gold to meet CRR and SLR requirements. Banks, need to place certain percentage of their deposits with the RBI, currently the CRR and SLR together constitute 21.5% of the deposits.  Meaning, if a bank has 100B of deposits it needs to deposit 21.5B with the RBI. The remaining 78.5B can be used for their business that is; giving loans. So, now that gold has come into the picture, Banks may keep gold in the RBI and use more cash to give away more loans and hence increasing growth in the country. 

So to summarize, what’s this scheme about? 

1.       Make big investors earn two times on a single asset.

2.       Allow banks to use the gold to meet their duties and save cash to give more loans. 

 

Will this reduce gold imports?

No

Will this make any difference to household gold?

No

Will this mean anything to small investors?

No

Do we need this scheme?

I don’t know.

Bubble On The Line

This comes two days after the news broke about Ratan Tata investing in Urban Ladder. I somehow felt it was a mistake. I had a theory and it actually made a lot of sense when I found some interesting pattern.

Well I was actually whiling away time on another lazy Sunday afternoon when suddenly I thought of working on my dissertation paper for this winter. My topic happens to be in Financial Engineering. I’m trying to create some financial instruments to spot arbitrage opportunity created by the price difference between good sold online to those sold in brick and mortar stores. 

So while I was working with some numbers I found that stuff was generally sold at a much lower price online. Duh big discovery! Of course stuff is sold cheaper online everyone knows this, so what’s the big discovery? 

The big discovery is that they only sell at lower prices online. Selling online means selling at a loss. The mantra of e tailing these days is selling at such low prices that we lure the consumers to our shores and gain maximum market share. OK, what do you plan to do after you’ve lured them? Pull an Amazon? No way, you can do that in the airlines business or the hospitality industry but not online. 

 

Amazon got into heaps of trouble and got called bad names because we found out that it charges more to returning customers. It’s not a sin really, everyone does that. But the problem is you can’t replicate it that easily in the online market place. There’s so many website that I would just move to someone else and buy stuff if he’s selling at a lower price. Come on! Its e business we’re talking, you can’t expect loyalty here. At least not that easily.

 So I realized that this online market is a very competitive place and you just can’t raise your prices. The one who sells at the lowest price gets the customer. So the key to winning is to lose. 

Nice right? But you know the thing about online, people are very comfortable being rude and demotivating. I got this one comment, check it out

 

The thought is kinda natural. There have been many other internet bubbles in the past and any industry growing as fast and big as ecommerce in a short span of time is generally thought to be an inflated bubble waiting to burst. Investment advisors and market gurus alike have expressed concern about this growing ecommerce boom. Their angle however has been about the quantum of capital raised by the ecom giants of India and the ‘creative’ accounting practices employed by these firms. There have been various issues on the valuation front too. There has been a general apprehension on the frequency of the call for capital from the ecom companies and obviously on the pace of their growth. But the focus has essentially been on speculation.

Anyway even got rude, well in my own sarcastic way 

 

 Back to the point. Things will not cost more online. Things will continue to grow costlier offline. Cuz face it, we only have so many natural resources.

Now you may be wondering how I could prove convincingly that it’s not a bubble? Well, there are websites that don’t sell a thing and yet make millions right? That’s it. Now don’t go telling everyone theres no ecommerce bubble. There’s sure is one... and it’s coming to get you! 

Le Me of the Meme

OK I was disappointed in myself for not having written anything in over 3 months, so.. well I had to write something.. but nothing really interesting is coming to my head, anyway so this is a small post, its about the million memes that have been doing rounds.. there doesnt exist a topic, public event or a celebrity who or who's actions havent been made into a meme.. people make memes of their friends, colleagues or even themselves .. here's one of the few that I made at work..

ok that wasnt my best, dont judge me yet.. it was a colleague at work, she wore a lot of rings thats all :D

Now, whats this post about, its about the me and normal people saga of the memes.

here's an example:

hilarious right? here's another

you see a pattern here?
No? ok here's one more.. this till with 1 comment.

You spot it yet? the comment reads "same here"
thats exactly the reaction I had and sometimes even made such comments on the "normal people and me" saga memes.

Theres some more memes like that.. heres a frisky one

I know perv thought.. but come on.. every guy thinks like that once hes hit high school.. or even less nowadays I guess..

OK one last one.. and this had the most "me too" comments

So what I'm trying to say is every damn person is "me" or Derp(the meme guy).. and no one really is the "normal people" So... everyones Derp and think the others are normal (lame and boring basically) so we can say being Derp is the normal thing to be.. every Derp is normal..

here's my meme..