Brown Motion

 Literally. Well one of our neighbors - an energetic young couple decided to treat their neighbors to what sounded like a southern delicacy.  Roasting meat on fire. This turned out to be a whole hog cooked in a box lined with ceramic and covered with charcoal.  Turn on the heat and wait six hours or so the promotion went. Below are some pic of this epic event. The crowd was enjoyable and the evening was mild.  Sides and dessert came courtesy of the other neighbors - we brought some Red Velvet given our sweet tooth. Now the pig in my head was going to be pulled pork given how it would get dismembered post cooking, with varieties of barbeque sauce to liven up the taste buds. But it was my misconception.  The animal was only primed with an injection of OJ and Beer.  The syringe the pit master advised me would get blocked if salt and pepper were in the mix.  But then I was not quite sure why the meat was not dry rubbed with either or packed with Garlic and...

 As new Carolinians after being Californians for almost two decades, we are taking in the sights and smells of the southeastern United States one weekend at a time. This time we drove about 100 miles north to the city of Greensboro NC, established as a result of the old cotton and tobacco economy just 50 years back. Lee Jeans owner VF is among the brands still in the area.  Although a much smaller form of the erstwhile boom town when tobacco was king there is still marginal presence of ITG the company that represents brands like Salem, Kool which were cool once. Today there is the UNC Greensboro campus just outside downtown followed by some manufacturing that supports the economy.  Volvo Trucks has a presence as do some other light industries.  There is also legacy retail money here. The founder of Tanger outlets a chain of outlet stores was from here and has bequeathed large sums to the city for its beautification. We took advantage of such generosity that truly mak...

 In all the tales you read about a no one becoming a someone, there are some similarities. They are just born lucky.  As in to win the lottery first you have to buy a ticket kind of luck. So being born is number 1. Then where you birth is equally important.  If you were born in a war torn nation your chance of reaping the harvest are dwindling already.   Who procreates you can be another important variable. Silver spoons notwithstanding a culture that promotes education and gung ho spirit or a love for reading or great outdoors are some classic tells that might aid the growth of someone unique in the future. But all those clichés aside there is also another element of the rag to riches type stories that I found intriguing.  Many of these so called made men and women happen to have run a paper route in their childhood.  This to a foreigner is a task that a young adult say in their early teens might undertake with a local newsprint distributor (all forei...

 I am not a fan of any sort of production whether Indian  or American.  But one series that became part of American pop culture in the late 90s was a comedy called Seinfeld.  That became my only real favorite show that I watch to this day (on DVD) and sometimes on Netflix although I still prefer the DVD - not sure why.  Maybe it is so I can re-watch the behind the scenes banter on the disc. I only discovered the show when I saw the re-runs on some TV station in early 2000's.  Perhaps because our first few years in America were spent simply acclimating to the new culture and getting ahead in our (wife and I) respective professions.  No time for watching TV really. What appealed to me personally was that the comedy was clean yet relatable even though I come from a very different cultural background.  One common aspect was the presence of cranky and idiosyncratic parents in our lives.  Aunts and uncles add to the mix. Recently the actors who pla...

 My dentist chronicles alone can fill pages of a book.  Below some thoughts I have when I visit with this profession. I need to.  My addiction to things containing a complex carbon, hydrogen and oxygen compound commonly referred to as Sugar is the reason. That combined with a lifestyle that did not exactly pride itself in flossing and brushing twice a day.  This was late 20th century Bombay.  I am not sure which middle class kids knew what a floss was. Any rate the architecture shows signs of decay. Literally.  Plaque - that layer of bacterium that develops absent a rigorous cleaning schedule dents into the protective hard shell called enamel. At least that is what this professional I visit wants me to believe.  Apparently my alcohol consumption needs to go up I thought.  After all it is a disinfectant no? I could swirl more as I gulp?   I visit a new office (yeah that is what the profession calls their operations - dental office) here. ...

 What is the fascination people have with knowing who retires when?  And then more bizarre is to track what happens after.  As in watch the person unretire from their retirement. Recent news is similar to lot of people in the sports industry before them. Tom Brady in American Football (which involves no use of foot to engage with the ball). Ashleigh Barty in Australian Women's Tennis who announced she will retire at age 25. Brady realizing he had not saved enough money apparently decided he needed more and did a U turn in less than a month to say - his family was crazy and he did not want any time with them after all. Just kidding.  While he has more money than god there must be some sort of calculus that he cannot rid himself from a sport he spent decades playing. But what of it? People hold certain individuals to hero status that everything he or she does gets scrutinized and discussed and sold.  I guess the ones profiting from this foible are the media machin...

 This title alone harkens to tomes written about the topic.  I am going to attempt to focus on a slice.  Education in India. As someone who grew up in this erstwhile British colony; an erstwhile Mughal empire; and many ersts before it I find it fascinating to see the changes that have occurred in the realm of education. India became independent of foreign rule in 1947. It adopted a socialist, democratic operating model and has been attempting its foray into the industrial world since. Not quite 80 years into her experiment it also finds itself in an unenviable situation of having to support over a billion hungry people. Having received my entire formal education in India - what that means in practical terms in another blog - all the way from kindergarten to a master's degree in business; I still struggle to understand whether as a nation she is able to make the most of her educational infrastructure. Perhaps the question is better framed as - does India have the right edu...