King of All Times

There are very few days when I’ve worked after dark, but whenever I do, I make sure to take a look at the lit glass buildings near my office and the fiery collation of brake lights on Richmond road. The UB city is hard to miss from my building. The lit elevator shaft and the blue and red of the helipad on top are always sites I envy. Yday I happened to see a few lit windows too. Mallya must be at work with his managers I thought, or maybe drunk? Whatever the case, but I don’t know if they could afford to burn so many lights I thought to myself and smiled. 

As I was walking out towards the exit I caught a third eye’s view of the top floors of the UB city. He must be working so hard, maybe coming up with something ingenious. I was actually surprised at myself, Mallya has lost a lot of things while trying to revive his airline with a broken wing and yet I seem to have some strange confidence in him. Strange indeed, but that’s when I remembered reading the Forbes of July 20. The cover story said that Mallya and his managers never looked worried or desperate when they went to talk to their banks or investors. In fact there seemed to be an air of poised arrogance in their arguments and they had complete faith in their plans and were completely certain that the KFA would fly again. Their only argument was - FDI.

Banks together have lost close to rupees 7000 crore! More than half the staff of KFA is on strike and none of them have received their salaries from 6 months!! How the hell is he gonna come out of this one?? Then suddenly news comes out that there might be a deal with Diageo, the world’s largest liquor maker. Mallya and Diageo were in talks for 2 to 3 years and the talks had failed every time, maybe nows the end of the road when there needs to be some selling and sacrificing to get some inflow of money.

That’s when it struck me, how were Mallya and his men so confident of the FDI?

Just making casual conversation, I spoke with my friends:

Me: Boys! I gotta theory,

Me: Maybe, Mallya’s deal with either Heineken or Diageo took some serious turn and he got some prospects of cash, then with his charisma he cast a spell on the govt to pass the FDI, the govt is anyway in favor of the brave and the rich, so with pranav da gone, and chidu taking over finance ministry, Mallya had a chance. Chindu is anyway too close to the banks, his family or extended started 4 banks in tamil nadu right? So maybe Mallya worked closely with Chidu, Chaudhary and a few other bank and govt guys to convince them that if the FDI was passed he would get all the money he needed to make his kingfisher fly again, and maybe get a bit more.  

Me: Andddd… with the FDI passed, he doesn’t have to make deals with both Heineken and Diageo, maybe that’s why he’s stalling the Heineken deal.. lets see.. its just a theory :D plus.. you should see his tweets on FDI :P 

Friend: But It’s a tough deciesen for anyone to buy shares in a company with 7k crore in debt.

Me: dude! Anyone would buy once the govt is out of the way.. as in FDI is passed.. I know I would

Friend:  dude.. KFA shares are at 16 rupees or something.. :P 

Me: lol.. yeah I know.. ok heres the time for my ~serious statement making face~ I don’t buy shares for money dude.. I buy shares for my share. ~hunk look~

Friend: lol :P die.. its end game for Mallya dude.. hes gonna lose the dominant role in UB and US and even if he gets investors (fat chance) its gonna be pretty much the same on KFA.. and its all too famous that hes too hard to work when hes not the boss.

Me: hmmm…

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

So, the wide spread opinion about Mallya is that much has been ruined and the only way to keep his head afloat is to sell off everything and just be a pawn. Well, that’s ridicules.

Now, many people might not like him, his extravaganza or his business, people might call him an opportunist or even arrogant. I have members in my own family circles that don’t like him because he made money from the liquor that ruined so many families. Well, We can blame the Indian conservatives for that.  

 

Speaking on Mallya, we all know who Vijay Mallya is; hes a rock star! How many Indians decided to buy an F1 team and name it after India? How many Indians decided to buy Tipu Sultan’s sword for 505,250 pounds? And who made sure India didn’t cut a sorry figure when we couldn’t stop the auctioning of Gandhi’s belongings in 2009?? Mallya. 

There might be a lot of reasons to pull down Mallya and beat on him when hes low, but hes really a man of the riches who also means well. He doesn’t just want to be and feel rich alone; he wanted all of India to experience the riches. He wanted to give a luxury experience to the ppl of India, maybe that’s where he went wrong. When just a simple air travel is considered luxury in our country... maybe he went a little ahead of time to provide luxury to everyone in the country. 

Ok.. where does he go from now? And what do I see for him?

It’s simple, the FDI was the last hurdle and now that hes beyond that, he should be clean. He just needs to watch out for a few months and then with his charm and elegant arrogance it would be no time before people joined him in catapulting the broken bird back in the air. 

I believe the King of Good Times has proved it that he has no problems being the Baron at Bad Times… And to all those in strikes and literally being a pain in his ass... you better switch sides before hes rich again 

Strike The Root of Penury, Strike Not the Heart

Crisp Air turned Pungent and rolling wheels stuck. That’s the September of 2012 in Bangalore. Just after the BBMP called an indefinite Strike regarding the garbage clearing problem, five employ unions of the BMTC, KSRTC, NWKRTC and NEKRTC together called for an indefinite strike against the management calls of a 10% hike. The 10% salary Hike was not all that the Strike was based on, but it sure was the tipping point for the men. 

Talking about Strikes, they are not bad things.(in fact very good things for school kids) Strikes, Bandhs and demonstrations are powerful tools in a democracy. But how you use it is the question. Hurling stones and glass buildings, setting old tires on fire and painting walls is all that happens in India. Now I dont want to talk a lot about the ways we Strike in India or why we do them, but lets think of the whats happens when people strike. 

Obviously this article is coming but because of the Bus strike, so Im gonna talk about a few things I saw on tv. The Thousands of buses going off roads, lakhs of people stranded in bus stations. Some angry people throwing stones at buses, streets filled with cars and private vehicles, autos costing more than double or triple the meter price, or In short, everyone was having a bloody hard time. So can we conclude that the purpose of striking is to induce pain and cause damage??

isnt there a better way of striking? 

lemme quote buzzle

"One of the most important Japan facts is that the Japanese are amongst the most hard-working people in the world. Once, the workers of a shoe factory in Japan went on strike. The way they protested, represents certain facts about Japan which are typical of its industrious population. They simply worked on the manufacturing of single shoes (only for one leg). This way the production remained on course, but the company couldn't sell the product. Once the issue was resolved, the other pair was manufactured, resulting in a win-win situation for both company and the workers."

Can’t we do something like that?? 

Bandhs are all too famous in india.. but finally its india losing.. not the govt or some specific group of people. Its Indias growth that gets hampered during bandhs, businesses counting losses when banks call strike, and people lakhs of em suffering when theres a strike by something as important as public transport. 

We can’t be like Japan, we are different people all together. We’re not as hard working as them, and neither do we care if our inaction causes loss to the public. But we’re emotional people, and people like you, me and us built this nation and made what it is today.  We made India as big and powerful as it is. Today, India constitutes upto 80% of the total GDP in all of South East Asia. We’re not as useless as we think, we’re good people. Everyone panics when pushed back to the wall. We just need to know how to think. All of us are the same, and if I don’t care for the greater good, then how could you?  

PS: notepad typing, so spare my spellings pls :D

Democracy with an H

It’s not hypocrisy; it’s just democracy with an H. That pretty much summarizes how the politicians… No wait.. Why just politicians? That’s how all of us think. The last few days have been so shameful and disgusting for the democracy of India. What makes it worse is no one knows what is right and what wrong. It’s true that right or wrong are relative terms, but the events of 5^th june really negate every little bit of hope that the common man has in reason and justice. 

Looking back into India, corruption has always been a part of any society and it remains to date. People come to power only to make personal use of it. Defining democracy, it is a form of government where citizens elect their leaders to serve them. Over a period of time, the serve has been replaced by rule. So now, people in power are just rulers and not really leaders or people who come to serve us.

Speaking about the recent events, we all know who anna hazare is, he is an ex army soldier and now a popular social reformer. Ok I won’t bore you with his facts.. moving on.. anna hazare fasted to bring the jan lokpal bil into act and can be called to have been successful(hopefully) to a certain extent… but what his fast did was it raised a hope.. and there he was, world famous over night and had lots and lots of followers (including kids like me who decided to skip dinners and got yelled at by mom) now if this was it.. it would’ve been great.. but we’re all humans, and everyone wants a piece of action and so it was with popular leaders, diplomats, movie stars and that.. is where baba ramdev comes in.

Baba ram dev is supposed to be a samyasi who took to teaching yoga and pranayama and lived a (supposedly) peaceful life.. like all teachers and “good-doers” he wanted to spread his goodness and started with a few things like yoga research centers and stuff.. all this is cool.. but in September 2009, he bought an island for 2 million pounds!! How can someone do that? So he has this huge “aashram” in haridwar, has an island where he again has his “aashram”(which I think is actually just a spa) and flies in a private jet.. this has got to be the most coolest “sanyasi” in the history of sanyasies.

Ok so the deal about 5^th june.. now one cant really point out whos wrong and whos right.. it seems that a few reports and papers say that baba ramdev hired the ram lela maidan to conduct a yoga camp, now how can he call for a protest satyagraha?? If you ask the bjp.. I guess they would just say “its immoral but not illegal” anyway.. so that was the baba’s bad.. what about the government? From going to the airport to receive a “sanyasi” to sending cops in the middle of the night and breaking apart a crowd of more that 50k people, does anything make sense? everything makes the government look like a confused and desperate flock of crows.. and now we have the political tamasha of everyone digging history, making allegations and hurling stones and shoes at each other.. where am I? where are you? Or where is any citizen of India? long live democracy huh? 

From what we know, a sanyasi is supposed to be someone whos abandoned everything and lives only for god.. this doesn’t sound like ram dev baba now does it? Actually that’s how its been with all spiritual leaders, everyone has some part to play in politics or with big money. So if the learned, enlightened, holy men who’ve abandoned everything and have inner peace(sorry, saw kung fu panda yday) cant keep their hands off money and power, how do you expect the politicians to be clean? 

What I mean is, the government may not be perfect, democracy might not be working, and not all gurus may be leaders, but you are you... What I mean is… some people look for leaders and some for followers, you.. Just need a path. If your path is right... everythings right.