New England Roots, Indian Fruits 

Boston has been my home for the last 2 years and I've learnt a lot about America during my time here. One of my favorite pastimes is making a note of all the historical connections between India and America and in this post, I'm going to try to jot down a few I can remember.

Gandhiji's many independence movements are the stuff of history books every Indian kid is familiar with. Civil disobedience, Quit India... A fact omitted from the textbooks is the inspiration behind civil disobedience. The name comes from a work by Henry David Thoreau who practiced his civil disobedience near Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau was an early practitioner of the environment-friendliness movement and decided to live off the land taking as little as possible from Mother Nature or the government. He built a cottage near Walden pond in Concord to stay away from other residents of Concord. Unfortunately the tax collector thought he owed Uncle Sam money and Thoreau protested by refusing to pay taxes. Gandhiji, the disciple clearly outdid the master Thoreau in this instance... Thoreau's civil disobedience seems like a storm in a teacup when compared to Gandhiji's campaigns. I find this an interesting connection given that later in American history Martin Luther King drew inspiration for the Civil Rights movement from Gandhiji.

Thoreau's cabin near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts

A British Raj character one reads about prominently in textbooks is Lord Cornwallis, appointed the Governer-General of India by the East India Company in 1786. Lord Cornwallis was also involved in the Anglo-Mysore wars between the British and Tipu Sultan. Turns out Lord Cornwallis in a past life was also one of the major players in the American War of Independence and was the general who surrendered to the American-French forces after a defeat in the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. Clearly Cornwallis's failures in America didn't disqualify him from the top job in British India. All the same I'm happy to report that there are Indian connections to the American Revolution besides the tea at the Boston tea party.

 Lord Cornwallis surrenders after the Battle of Yorktown

Where would you say Mowgli was conjured? The Jungle Books are books one would instantly associate with the jungles of India. Even the names of the characters like Bagheera, Kaa and Mowgli have an Indian ring to them. I was surprised to find out that Kipling wrote them when he stayed at his mansion "Naulakha" in Brattleboro, Vermont about 3 hours north of Boston. The Times reported this one last year and notes that one of my favorite authors, Arthur Conan Doyle visited Kipling in Vermont. 

Kipling's Naulakha mansion in Vermont

iPhone4?

10:28AM " Now I'd like to talk about the iPhone."

It was a scene straight out of 1980's India. Instead of 5 Indians gathering around a small radio with commentary of an India-Pakistan cricket game at lunch time, it was a group of my coworker friends gathered around V reading out the live Engadget feed on his iPad. Even passers-by were curiously peeking over V's shoulders to check out pictures of Steve Jobs displaying a picture of another feature of the iPhone. The launch of the new iPhone had all of geek-dom engrossed today and what luck it was lunch time in Boston. Now that's what I call genius... getting consumers primed to watch a 2 hour commercial of your company's wares.

Completely mesmerized I was willing to drive to the nearest Apple store to buy one on my way back home. Turns out instant gratification was not the order of the day today. Thankfully better sense may have prevailed as well. Do I really need a better screen than my 1st generation iPhone? The 5 MP camera with a flash would be a nice to have, but the video chat ability really is meaningless right now. Good-looking people might like the idea of video-chat I guess. And the deaf too.

So what's my conclusion? I have no idea. The price is not as prohibitive as when the first iPhone came out. $15 per month for the cheapest data-plan with AT&T could actually save me money. I did manage to damage my existing iPhone, so it would be nice to have one in pristine condition. I could still make an impulse buy, but honestly it's not much of a step up.

The Mayo Clinic Diet

As I am fast approaching the big 3 and 0, I have decided to dedicate my last few weeks of relative youth on this planet to a completely selfish cause. I am going to try to lose weight. They say this gets harder with age and clearly my impending uncle-dom will not help matters. I was inspired by the Mayo Clinic Diet. One of their ideas is to adopt 5 good habits and abandon 5 bad habits. Full disclosure... I have not read this book. I have only read its reviews online. Hopefully if none of you fellow human beings pick it up from my local public library before I do, I can change that last line. : )

One of my thoughts is to blog about it, so that my progress will be available for anyone to peruse and track. That may put some shame into play so that I don't chicken out of a 2 week goal. Starting to sound like a lot of fun, huh? ; )

Hopefully one in three posts will describe a good habit I am adopting at least for the next 2-3 weeks. Habit 1: Go natural. This habit is inspired by Michael Pollan's writing about food. One of Mr Pollan's rules is to not eat anything that your great-grandmother wouldn't be able to recognize. Well so in short all your new-fangled victuals are out... no Splenda, no processed foods, so no Lean Cuisine, no burgers, no chips, no French fries, no sugar. In short if you need to snack, you're stuck to fruits, vegetables or nuts. I am going to make a couple of exceptions here. Fat-free milk is allowed, even though all 4 of my great-grandmothers would call it water. Restaurant food is allowed so long as I stick to the principle and eat minimally processed stuff... ie salad, grilled fish or vegetables, although my forebears clearly would be displeased at my non-vegetarian tendencies.

Another note... I am not very overweight. The last time I weighed myself I was about 168 pounds. I'll be happy if I can achieve 160 pounds. I'd like to reduce whatever central obesity my Indian genes predispose me to.

Dinner today: Spinach, carrots, almonds and walnuts with lemon juice as dressing.

Danny Boyle's "Millions"

I watched Danny Boyle's excellent movie "Millions" on this lazy Saturday. Mr Boyle's, multi-Oscar winner "Slumdog Millionaire" was not my favourite movie by many a mile. What I disliked most about it, is that it gave people a way to stereotype Indians and use the word "slumdog" for any Indian, even someone like myself who grew up in comfortable circumstances with physician parents in India.

Anyways "Millions" is about two brothers, 7-year-old Damian and his elder brother Anthony, who have lost their mother recently. Damian lands up with a bag full of pounds while playing close to a train line, shortly before a fictitious currency switch from pounds to euros in the UK. Damian's brother, Anthony, is a natural Wall-Street banker in the making and is completely obsessed by the money and ways to make it grow. He says, "If you tell the government they will take forty percent of it. FORTY PERCENT! Do you know how much that is? That's nearly ALL of it." On the opposite end of the spectrum, Damian considers the money a gift from God, and decides to emulate the many saints he day-dreams about. I love the parts where Damian roams the streets asking people "Are you poor?" before he takes them to a Pizza Hut for lunch or donates a wad of cash.

Surprisingly there is much that is similar between "Millions" and "Slumdog Millionaire". Trains, children, brothers, "Who wants to be a millionaire", gangsters, serendipitous change of circumstances, but "Millions" also has a simple message. Money is something I am still developing the right attitude about... what's the right balance between stingy and profligate? How much greed is bad? How much of your money should you donate? Greed is something that drives so much of the world around us. We live on a planet where the price of an hour of labour varies so widely based on where you do it, and where any moneyed interest will struggle to the ends of the earth for a gain regardless of the human or environmental costs. Money at times creates more trouble than it is worth.

A Trip to Puerto Rico

Columbus arrived in the Caribbean in 1492 and mistook it for India. About 500 years later 2 Indians went to Puerto Rico and can understand why Columbus could have been mistaken. Some of the obvious facts which were probably true in Columbus's days... Temperatures in San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, average about 84 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. The surrounding areas have forests with basaltic rock formations quite like the Konkan coast. The Arawaks were probably brown-skinned too, although today most natives probably have some Spanish blood in their veins. Chillies may have originated on Hispaniola, so that takes care of some of that spice angle. And if you tried that Puerto Rican chicken stew, I bet it would remind you of a sort of curry... Even today's San Juan looks like a hybrid of Goa, Vashi and Prabhat Road melded into one city.

Why Puerto Rico you ask? Well blame it on our American visas. Leaving the country would mean that we need to get our renewed H visas stamped. Puerto Rico offered an escape to another country within American borders. Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States and was conquered by the US sometime in the early 20th century. An upshot is that our cellphones worked. Everything is priced in dollars avoiding the hassle of converting either physically or mentally. You can find the same restaurant chains as continental US on days you don't feel too adventurous. They also have interstates, although you better know enough Spanish to figure out which lane is closing for repairs ("izquierda" for left and "recha" for right) and which lane to use in case you don't have the exact change at the toll plaza. (If you do need to learn some Spanish, I highly recommend the BBC's Mi Vida Loca)

In addition there is tonnes to do. Old San Juan with its beautiful colorful houses, cobbled streets and 400 year old forts offers a trip to another era. El Morro, a fort whose construction started in 1539, feels as if it were right out of scenes of Pirates of the Caribbean. We also enjoyed a few sunsets on the Atlantic, just wading through the waters and the golden sands. We also made a day-trip to El Yunque, the only rain-forest in the US Forest Service's area of operation. On our final day on the island we went to Arecibo Observatory, home to the world's largest single-dish radio telescope. Arecibo was featured in the movies Contact and Goldeneye. If you are in San Juan, don't miss the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico. I was pleasantly surprised that so much great art could emerge from a small island territory. Also don't miss the Museum's rock garden tribute to Monet and Giverny, replete with a pond with waterlillies and a bridge.

Forbes Richest Indians

Ask an ordinary Puneite, who the richest person in Pune could be and I think you'd hear the names Chitale (of the bakarwadi fame) or Kirloskars (of the diesel engine fame). The truth is neither of them figure in the Forbes list of the 100 richest Indians. There are definitely a few surprises...

Mumbai tops the list in terms of the number of people as expected. The real surprise for me was that one of the 2 Marathi names on the list, (#51) Virendra Mhaiskar actually runs the company that operates the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. Crazy! It makes me wonder if politicians are unofficially some of the richest people in the country but just aren't listed here because all their money is stashed in the Swiss banks.

The richest person in Pune is Cyrus Poonawalla of the Serum Institute and the stud farms. A very long time ago, I studied at the Bishop's school. This was from Kindergarten to class second, and one of my classmates was actually Mr Poonawalla's son. I don't remember a whole lot from those days but I do remember that his son would have his name embroidered on his shirt and that his lunch was decidedly more lavish than other ordinary mortals like self, wish servants to set up a table and serve him from a pretty tall box everyday. Eventually we moved to the other side of the city so I started attending Loyola High School. There were probably a lot of rich kids there including sons of prominent builders, companies like Finolex and car dealers.

Anyways here's a link to the list of richest people in Pune

I wrote this post roughly 4 years ago, charting my personal computing evolution. I have now been a professional computer engineer for the last 4 years, and I have 2 degrees in the field. I help design graphics chips for a leading semiconductor technology firm. It seems like an unlikely end for a kid who used to wonder how the various chips on a motherboard worked. I used to think that someday if I become really smart I'll know exactly what all these chips do, and what the numbers on them mean. I could have never predicted that I would end up here 20 years ago. I still don't understand what these chips do btw. ;)

Somehow it feels strange to think that computers and I came of age at roughly the same time... my height increased as processor speeds increased. What's even more uncanny is that processor speeds stopped increasing, roughly when my own stature stopped growing. :)

Computers consume my entire day now. I sit in front of one for most of my waking hours... if I am not at work on Linux/Windows machines, I am at home playing on my notebook. I bought three computers in the last 7 years... the first was a Dell Inspiron 8600, the second a Macbook, and the third a Dell XPS. My iPhone is full-featured to the extent that it would outdo the desktop machine we bought 10 years ago. What's more now is that computers are ubiquitous... the Wii console, the DVD player, my iPhone, my LCD TV, my car all have some semiconductor chips in them. What will the world look like 20 years from now?