the journey home blog

Kindly Adjust

swades — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 19:39:17 +0000

Today I was travelling from my new office in Baner, Pune to my home. Half the road has been dug for concretization work. All the office goers were navigating their way through mounds of cement, stones and sewage water, the way only Indian drivers can, with a look of calm satori on their faces. This road being Baner Road, where probably half of Pune’s small scale IT companies are located. And yet not a whimper from any one. Everyone was totally at their “kindly adjust” best while squeezing any available square inch of space to shove in any available piece of their vehicle.
This got me thinking. When I had arrived in India, back in December 2005, I had taken this same Baner Road to get off the Mumbai Pune expressway and get to my home near Deccan. And five years back, they had begun work on this five-odd kilometer stretch of road. We are six months away from December 2011, and the work has not yet been completed. Can you believe that? More than six years to concretize a five kilometer road!
And that in a nutshell symbolizes the India growth story for me. Big talk, no action. High on hopes and low on delivery. Here is my lowdown on what really happened in India:
In the 1990s, with better telephony, communication and the internet, came this TADA! Moment when CTOs across the world salivated at the thought of getting their work done in India for a fraction of the American costs. Work started to get shipped over to India to be done by Indians. The first wave of IT professionals were the IITians who had stayed behind, the REC and BITS guys, who really delivered on projects. We are talking 1995 here. Then the onshore model evolved with the Y2K bug, and suddenly every American corporation wanted an Indian on their premises to save them from the impending Y2K apocalypse. 2000 went by and the dotcom bubble did to the markets what the Y2K bug couldn’t. The CTOs sent the IT guys back to Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune, Noida with a rider that they set up an offshore team in India. Suddenly recruitment in India picked up. Why have 4 guys on a project when you can afford to fail-proof it by having 16 coders and that too at a fourth of US prices?? Now you had guys from decent engineering colleges with a not-so-stellar academic background getting jobs. The wage scale shifted. Domestic consumer spending increased. All other economic sectors started getting pulled up. Young 20 something programmers wanted duplex and duvets and everything in between. Now the talent benchmark went down across the board. In a lot of sectors, you needed to be a warm body and show up for work to pick up your paycheck. For six years from 2002-2008, the frenzied fad of outsourcing anything ensured that IT sector in India pretty much pulled the whole economy ratcheting up close to 8% YOY GDP growth.
About this time (2002-2008), for a good six years, any government would have picked up the drift and invested heavily in creating good infrastructure, a favorable investment climate, lesser bureaucracy, etc. However, just like the first IT boom (1995-2000) was not the government’s doing, similarly during the second IT boom (2002-2008) the government preferred to use the boom as an alibi to make itself tons of money via scams and red tape. Consequently, governance and a long term vision always took a backseat.
We are now slowly entering the third phase in this outsourcing trilogy. From 2011 to 2015 is going to be another period of growth for the IT industry. And no, it is not going to be even close to the roaring 90s and noughties. The teens are going to be tough. Every business deal will be hard fought. The days when clients dropped bundles of cash on your table are gone. No one has that cash anymore. This will also be the final four to five year window for India to get its act together politically. By 2015, my gut feeling is that wage inflation would have priced Indian labor out of the IT market. You will see a lot of Indian companies opening shop in Vietnam, Phillipines, Africa and Latin America. Unless the government does not take the initiative to create a vibrant domestic economy, flight of IT capital is going to be very bad news to the Indian economy.

The IT boom began in 1995. In 2015, it will be 20 years of the IT boom. The credit for which largely goes to non-government players like Infosys, Wipro, etc. The government’s biggest help in these years was this it stayed away from IT. Mostly because the half literate men who make up the joke called the Lok Sabha did not understand IT. However, what surprises me is the total lack of vision in the upper echelons of power. Did no one get a drift of what the IT boom was doing to India? That it had the potential to change India’s backwardness for good? That all we needed was to bring faster and clearer decision making to the table, and so many more jobs would have been created? So many people brought out of absolute poverty? My gut feeling is that we mistook the trees for the woods. The fleeting prosperity of the IT days gave us a false feeling of euphoria and might. And our totally Indian sense of vanity appropriated this moment as a matter of right, rather than acknowledging it to serendipity.
Such opportunities come by only sparingly in the lifetime of a nation. I really hope that the emerging, monolithic middle class will knock some sense into the heads of our political class and shake them into laying the groundwork for an economically vibrant India.
I will probably be in my new office in Baner for the next two years. I hope the road will get completed by then. If not, kindly adjust……..

On Governmental Regulations

swades — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 18:28:48 +0000

Entrepreneurs are of a type. Most of the entrepreneurs I have seen are the ambitious, go -getter types. Many of them are “big picture” guys who are extremely goal oriented. They do not have the time for the fine print. They know what they want and they know how to get it.
The world of business, though, is not always about the big picture. Many a times (and possibly, more often than not) it’s the small print which matters. May it be a contract with a vendor or an agreement with a buyer, it is usually the party which is more diligent about the fine print which comes out victorious if things don’t proceed amicably.
The emphasis on fine print is even more accentuated when dealing with the Biggest Brother of all-the government. Many entrepreneurs I know (including me) usually see the government as a hindrance than a facilitator. In a governance deficit country like India, the contempt of the entrepreneurial class towards the political class is even more vicious and many a times, not unjustified. Unlike in several first world countries, where the government sees the positive co-relation between the capitalist class and jobs and thereby their own political survival, in many third world countries the political class seems to have a mindset embedded in archaic bureaucratic principles which were created to choke entrepreneurialism and stifle the ambitious. Thus, most entrepreneurs like to avoid the government and if possible, completely by-pass it. There comes the hitch.
Death and taxes. We have all heard it before. Try as you may, you cannot outsmart them. You might be the shrewdest businessman alive, but you cannot outwit the taxman and the Reaper. While Death usually collects it booty once in your lifetime, the wrath of the taxman can make you want to make your appointment with the Grim Reaper a.s.a.p. In a bureaucratic country like India, which is riddled with multifarious entities for taxation (Income Tax, Professional Tax, Fringe Benefit Tax, Minimum Alternate Tax, the list is endless) the situation only gets worse. Akin to having several mother-in-laws, each government department can make your life misery by arriving at your doorstep at different but regular intervals, to seek their loot. The cumulative effect of this is that you end up spending more time in managing the taxman than on managing your business. And we all know what happens to a businessman when he takes his eyes off the business.
So how do you avoid getting caught in the governmental conundrum? Easy, firstly acknowledge that the government has a right to put its hand into your till and take their due. Secondly, however inept they may sound, your government does need money to put in place basic infrastructure that powers your business (the roads, airports, power, phone, etc). Thirdly, hire an all-star team of an accountant, a lawyer, and (in India) a company secretary. Put your faith in their hands. Occasionally, they might send you the totally inflated bill, but go ahead and pay it. These guys are your best shield against the Big Brother. In the unlikely event of having your account books scrutinized by the taxman, your CPA and lawyer are going to be your Ma and Pa, and shield you from the wrath of the tax guy. And fourthly, (and most importantly), get well versed with governmental regulations (tax laws, and other yada yada). Meet regularly with your accountant. Ask him every stupid question. I know you will hate it, we all do. But its your money, and you got to protect it. And it’s also a rite of passage. If you can come out to the other side, you will emerge undefeatable. You will be golden. Your accountant will admire you in awe as you spew forth different slabs of taxation for different types of corporations to the tax guy. He will know that you cannot be messed around with.
Running a successful business is a daunting task. Between increasing sales, managing deliveries, ensuring client satisfaction, bringing in the collections and keeping employees happy, your hairline would have receded quite a bit. To avoid total baldness, do not mess with the government. Hire a good team of an accountant and a lawyer, and put your faith in their hands. And as they wrestle the government on your behalf, you can start working towards that first million and the much deserved vacation in the Bahamas.

A visit to my ancestral village

swades — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 18:21:33 +0000

As I had mentioned in one of my previous entries, one of my endeavors this year would be to bring the internet to 10 remote villages in the district of Ratnagiri in Western India. So, in December 2010, I ended visiting the field area, identifying the villages, interacting with students and teachers in the area and enlisting them into the plan.
To do a quick re-cap of what I am trying to do: For those who may not be aware of it, India has a huge urban-rural education quality gap. Students in rural areas do not get access to modern informational technology driven education. Due to this, they enter the labor force with a skill set deficiency that lasts for their entire adult lives thereby relegating them to the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid. This further exacerbates the urban-rural migration problem because lack of technology skills forces these children into menial city jobs and some of them end up on the wrong side of the law as well.
I happened to go to my ancestral village in 2008 when I realized that kids in that village school do not have access to the net. This made me wonder as to how much these kids’ lives would change if they got an opportunity to get access to the internet. Imagine if they could get out of caste, religion, gender and economic scarcity based shackles and explore the world through the internet. The world would literally be their playground.
So after successfully bringing the internet to one village school, I have endeavored to bring the internet to 10 more village schools this year. Below are the names and the schedule when I will make these schools internet-enabled.

Sr.No. Name of School Address Schedule

1 Madhyamik Vidayalaya,Abloli Abloli January
2 Mahatma Phule M.V.Pacheri Aagar, Guhagar Pacheri Agar February
3 Shree Pandurang Rupaji Phatkare M.V,Shir Shir March
4 Madhymik Vidayalaya, Panchkroshi, Kolawali Kolawali April
5 Saraswati Vidyamandir Highschool,Jamsut Jamsut May
6 Madhyamik Vidayalaya, Pacheri Pacheri June
7 M.L. Bhau Hedavakar vidyaniketan, Hedvi Hedvi July
8 Madhymik Vidayamandir, Waghambe Waghambe August
9 New English School, Padve Padve September
10 Madhyamik Vidayalaya, Kudali Parisar Kudali Kudali October

When I went to meet the kids from these schools, it was really an eye opening event for me. What separated me from my US educated-world of a million possibilities and their world of deprivation was one window of opportunity- the internet. The more I spoke and interacted with these kids, the more I realized how talented they were. Their dreams were as vivid and real as any other kids’. God and nature had relegated them to a remote corner of India, but talking to them one realized that their dreams could not be shortchanged. My hope is to internet-enable the school system in entire district of Ratnagiri one day. Many decades back, my grandparents had sat on the benches of one of these schools. Now it is my turn to give back.

The Clarity Principle

swades — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 18:12:48 +0000

My experiments with clarity began about two years back. It had been three years since I had started my business. I was still nowhere close to where I had wanted to be in terms of my personal, financial, emotional and professional lives. I had this very vague sense of being dissatisfied with what life had offered me. Out of this dissatisfaction stemmed a feeling of disappointment and a little depression too.
Growing up in a liberal household, I was never really brought up with any kind of aspirational targets. Whatever I did, wherever I went, there was really no pressure to perform to any kind of benchmark. While this freedom to experiment gave me the essential life lessons of my formative years (and also shaped my character and value system to a large extent), it also instilled in me a false notion that life was all about “let the chips fall where they have to”.
While this fatalistic mode of thinking was great when I was in my teens and early twenties (because it gave me a liberal outlook towards life and helped enhance my world view), it was not necessarily the best thing once I started my professional life. For one, professional life was all about numbers and concrete achievements. And secondly, to achieve anything in one’s professional life was a conscious process, which could not be left hostage to forces like destiny and fate.
Going back to my predicament two years back, during my existential crisis, I realized that I did not have an idea what I wanted from my life. Not knowing what I wanted from my own life, my only measurement of my self worth was in terms of my peers. And we all know that we can never really keep up with the Joneses.
So one weekend, I did a simple exercise. I took a sheet of paper and wrote down the following:
Things that I want to be when I am 65 (65 being the age when I want to retire from a professional life):
I divided it into the following categories:
1) Personal
2) Professional
3) Health
4) Spiritual/ Social Service
5) Financial

Once I did that, I started filling out these categories

1) Personal
1)Be a good father, son and a husband

2) Professional: (1) Achieve domain competency in one subject (2) have at least 2 flourishing businesses
3) Health: (1) Not have any major disease (2) be able to follow one sport religiously (3) be able to work out for an hour
4) Spiritual/ Social Service: (1) Change at least 10 lives
5) Financial: (1) Be able to maintain present standard of living after retirement (2) Be able to afford Medicare after retirement (3) Have the kids go to a good school, university and be able to bear their marriage expenses

Once I did this, I knew the general direction I had to take to take to get to these goals. For example, under Financial, if I have to maintain my present standard of living when I am retired, I better start putting a part of my salary into some kind of a pension fund. For some of the vague goals, (for example, under Personal ) I tried to bring more clarity to them. I asked myself what was being a good son? Is it simply calling my parents on parents day? Or is it about taking care of them in their old age? If yes, how much would that cost?
Once I brought more clarity to each of these goals, I put two columns next to them: Time and cost.
For example, to pay for the university fees of my daughter, I needed to save Rs30 lakhs (approximately USD 60,000) at today’s prices over a span of 21 years.
Once that got nailed down, I divided my lifespan from now ( I am 30 now) till 65 (when I want to retire) into 5 year milestones. Knowing where I wanted to be at 65, I reverse engineered milestones so that I knew where I had to be at those points in my life in order to make my goals at 65. For example, if I wanted to have changed 10 lives for the better by 65, I must have identified an NGO (not-for-profit social service organization) whose cause I am aligned with by 35. By 40, I must have put charity in my routine so that I would have changed at least 2-3 lives by the time I am 45.
I did this exercise when I was 28. Today I am 30. Having done this exercise brought phenomenal clarity to my life. This exercise did make me a better professional, a better father, a better husband a better citizen. Today, I can assuredly say that I am content with where I am and I know where I am going. Gone are the days when my self worth used to be measured by what my peers earned.
Life is a mosaic and it is upto each one of us to decide how to fill it up. Surely each one of us will pass through life’s ups and downs. But having a flight plan helps get through turbulent weather. In school, we are given an education but we are never taught the important lesson of clarity: how it can be applied to our own lives as well as our dealings with others. If only we have clarity about where we want to go, life can only be a pleasant journey.

Pareto Principle and the entreprenuer

swades — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 18:10:34 +0000

Wilfredo Pareto, the great Italian economist is probably the most referenced man in today’s commercial life. Known for his famous Pareto principle which says that 80% of the output depends only on 20% of the factors of production. For example, if you observe your daily life as a businessman, it is those 2 or 3 critical tasks which really make it or break it for your business. For example, being watchful about sales, monitoring the quality of your goods and overseeing accounts receivables. Your list might be different from mine, but essentially, you will concur with me that it is those few critical tasks which will typically make or break it for your business.
The Pareto principle can essentially be applied to almost any area of your life. For example, you will observe that recurring conflicts and issues in your life arise from your doing (or not doing!) certain critical tasks.
The Pareto principle I have noticed is applicable in almost all areas of our life, from personal to professional. For example, only 20% of your friends could be counted as your real friends, the kinds who will help you in times of need. Or, how about this: Observe your thinking, you will notice that your life will be dictated by the 20% of thoughts that have formed a repetitive pattern in your mind. Or that typically only 20% of your attention is focused on the job at hand, while working. Or my personal favorite: all the major issues in our life arise from the 20% of all problems on the table.
What Pareto probably meant was that to every idea, act or problem, there is a crux which determines the eventual output. If you can identify that crux and give your 100% to it, your chances of doing well increase manifold. If you are attending university, there is always that one week of classes when the most important chapter is taught. And if by a stroke of Murphy’s law (by the way, Murphy’s law somehow always runs contrary to Pareto principle) you get the measles in that one week, you can rest assured the rest of the semester will be an uphill climb.
So whether it is sales, project management or inter-personal relationships, weed out the 80% that adds limited value and focus your thoughts on the 20% that does. You will save yourself precious time that can then be devoted to other 20% that add the 80% joy to your life, like spending time with your family or taking that much needed vacation.

My Social Service Plan for next year

swades — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 17:34:34 +0000

So its December already. Last year this time, I had helped bring the internet to a remote village in Western India. Though I have done some truly fulfilling things before, I can confidently say that nothing gave me more happiness than the joy of helping someone else. I feel that the highest good a human can endeavor towards is to be of help to another human being.

This year I have decided to “bring” the internet to another ten remote villages in Western India. The idea is essentially the same:
1)Identify ten different villages whose school principals are a little progressive and would like to give the whole internet thing a shot
2)Enlist the help of the local telecom utility guy to get the telephone lines to that hamlet (this could be tricky if the approach road to the terrain is rough)
3)Help the school to get funding for a PC from the local MP (Member of Parliament’s) Area Development Fund
4)Donate a modem and UPS to the school (taken care of by me)
5)Introduce the school to the portal which will help them become “web ready” and learn the essential life skills to succeed in today’s India.

My ten year vision is to adopt 100 such village schools (at a rate of ten villages per year). Cumulatively, this program is expected to improve the lives of about five thousand children in those hundred schools.

I will be doing this program as a part of the corporate social responsibility of my business.

On the personal front, I have decided to donate Rs 2,500 a month to sponsor the Anti-retroviral therapy of 5-6 kids in Pune. I will also be working actively to help out a local day care center which caters to kids of commercial sex workers in Pune.

I am hoping that beginning next year, I will be able to make social service a more integral part of my life.

A big thanks to God for everything he gave me. Now its my turn to give back a little.

PS: See my past work here: http://www.aviontechnology.net/content.php?cont_id=csr

Chak De India!

swades — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 07:24:17 +0000

For all the times when I crib about India being dirty, chaotic and unplanned, there are times when India makes me proud, actually immensely proud.

For example, while we have goondaism and regionalism on one side taking us back to the Dark Ages, we have the folks at ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) who are taking us ahead in spite of gargantuan hurdles and resource constraints.

While we have corruption in my once beloved sport, cricket, we have redemption in the form of the Abhinav Bindras and the Vijender Singhs who are pushing the envelopes in their respective disciplines, often paying out of their own pockets for their training and nutrition.

So I was waiting anxiously to see how India would react to the Ayodhya issue. Flashbacks of 1992 and 1993 appeared in my mind. God, were we going to see another carnage, another riot, another spite attack, brother pitted against brother?
And, then like that unlikely sixer from a tailender which clinches the unexpected win, India pulled a stunning beauty! She stayed calm and mature after the Allahabad High Court’s verdict. Hindus and Muslims preferred to wage a bet on their united (and prosperous) future than to settle scores on past vendetta. India, you slow moving yet chaotic, methodically mad, magnificently pluralistic, all embracing, mystical beauty! You did us proud! Chak de India!

5 minutes a day to a better life

swades — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:40:32 +0000

Our modern lives are cluttered. Period. Between sales targets and school exams, health checkups and paying bills, today’s human being has to manage so many different aspects of his life. Not only does he have to manage it, he is expected to excel in all the different spheres of his life. He /she is supposed to be a to be a super performer at his job, a great dad/mom, a great child, an ideal citizen, etc etc . the list is endless.
All of the above mentioned dimensions of life require certain activities to be fulfilled. For example, to be an ideal mom, you need to attend PTA meetings regularly or to be an ideal citizen, you need to pay your taxes on time. Bottomline is that your life is a mosaic and you need to fill this mosaic with all the different activities that will help you accomplish your dreams.
However, for most of us, we are so wrapped up in a reactive approach to life that we let life decide what it wants to do to us. For example, we get into an argument with our spouse right before that big meeting with the company’s big boss, when the solution was to do a quick “time out” and resolve the issue over the weekend. The result: (1) Bad impression for the big boss, and (2) the fight with the wife happens anyways (without any solutions to the underlying problem).
While that may make perfect sense from a spiritual “let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may” fatalistic perspective, it can also be a recipe for frustration if you do not end up where you wanted to be. And nothing is more frustrating than a wasted life.
In the next few articles, I will propound my “clarity principle” theory. In this article, I will share with you a small tip that has added immense value to my life- the daily to-do-list.
Here is how to do this list:
1) Take a blank sheet of paper or better still a diary (I still prefer a diary to a PDA)
2) List out all the things you want to do on a given day
3) Divide that list into priorities i.e. if you need to pay your electricity bill to avoid your utility from being disconnected, write a number 1 there, doing the presentation to your boss can be number 2.
4) Now divide the tasks into the following categories: personal, professional, spiritual/social , financial, health, etc. (you can add to these categories)
5) Now divide the sheet into these categories and place each item from your to-do-list into those categories
6) Once you do that, your daily mosaic will emerge.
7) You will then get an idea of how balanced your life is. For example, if you have too many items in the “personal” category, but they are all low priority items, it means that you are spending too much time on items that are not contributing a lot to your life. On the other hand, if you are spending too little time on something critical, for example, your health, it is time to do a little re-thinking on that front. Once you have all these pieces in place, put a time schedule for each of these items. For example, your list might look like this.

Personal
Pay Bills (1) 9:00-10:00 am
Buy groceries (3) 6:00-7:00 pm

Health
Gym (2) 8:00-9:00 pm

Work
Complete analysis on Micronet account (4) 4:00 – 5:00 pm

What this method does is:
1) Helps you plan your day well, while making maximum use of your only real asset: time
2) Helps you free up time for other activities which you always complained you had no time for ex.
Social Work
Find all my old clothes for gifting to the orphanage (5) 9:30- 10:00 pm

3) The biggest advantage of this method is that, over time, it helps you analyze the patterns in our living. Are we more work oriented? Or do we prefer to give more time for personal work? Am I chronic procrastinator? Would I be able to create another revenue stream if I started writing a blog for an hour each night?

At the root of this planning is the realization that we are here for a finite amount of time. It is upto us how to use this time. It is a travesty that people who were less talented and wealthy than most of us, went on to do great things with their lives, while the majority of us continue to suffer from existentialist dilemmas and a feeling of inner void. We have forgotten the value of time. If only we can spend 5 minutes a day, planning our next day, we would be able to add meaningful dimensions to our lives, the kinds we never experienced before.

Quick Poll

swades — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:58:14 +0000

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A Case for Maharashtra

swades — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 21:15:15 +0000

There has been a lot of hullaballoo these days about Mr. Raj Thackeray and the Maharashtra Navanirman Sena (MNS). So much pandemonium that even Shobha Rajyadhyaksha-De ( I am sure she would be SO embarrassed when she reads her maiden name in her august company) had to get out of her Page 3 ivory tower and condemn her native culture and its offsprings at all costs. I knew something was going wrong when a thousand Rediff discussion boards were cursing Maharashtrians and all the news channels were showing the same oft-repeated video footage of a samosa vendor in Mumbai being thrashed by goons. The entire gamut of national media from NDTV to Aaj Tak were casting aspersions on the seemingly unrightful aspiration of Maharashtrians to have a collective ego and actually standing up for their rights as opposed to bowing down to the wishes of 10, Janpath or their powers that be in Delhi. How dare the national status quo be changed in favor of a self-respecting race? How dare they raise their voice against anything that seems to challenge the accepted notion that the entire Hindi Heartland is the soul of India and every other part is a mere fief owing obeisance to her Lordship Miss Maino.

So I got down to reason out the entire situation. And the more I probed, the more I realised that the concept of India was not the monopoly of North Indian origin but our collective decision to be part of a larger whole where the common denominator was our allegiance to a concept of a nation united in diversity which will stand the test of time because its foundations are built on mutual acceptance of each others’ region, religion, caste and creeed. I felt relieved. Our nation was strong. Our republic was intact. The edifice of our grand nation was built on something so beautiful, that even the most idealistic of nation builders, the founding fathers of the United States, could never dream of.

Then what was the MNS. And what was their grouse? Who were these sons of the soil, and what did they want?

Maharshtra is the only state in India which was woven around the concept of a nation. Maha= Great, and Rashtra meaning nation. A great Nation. A symbolic ovation to the collective aspiration of a race striving to create a better state of union- a great nation. Using Carl Jung’s theory of collective psyche, every descendant of the founding fathers of Maharashtra finds in him the seed of creating a better standard of living, a greater union, a superior nation, a great nation, a Maha Rashtra.

Today, the average Maharshtrian youth finds himslef in the midst of a turf war, where his identity and being gets annihilated in vote bank politics of New Delhi. Today, every Maharashtrian finds himself hostage to imperial strategies emanating from 10, Janpath where the policies of his state are created based on what will win Meerut, Jaunpur or Azamgarh. He asks why his elected representatives rush to New Delhi to seek sanction of her Lordship Miss Maino when he runs helter skelter to fulfill his basic necessities of food, water and clothing. Today the average Maharashtrian is dismayed at the fact that the descedants of those who planted the flag of sovereignity on the ramparts of the Attock fort have to denigrate themselves at those very feet whom he helped unshackle. And he is angry.

He is angry at being called ghaati, at his culture being mocked at, his accent being made fun of, him being stereotyped as the maid, the dabbawala, the goonda, he is hurt that the very people he welcomed with open arms seem hell bent on holding him hostage by their unwillingness to share the resources of his land. He laments that they dont see a Sumant Moolgaonkar in him, a General Arun Kumar Vaidya, a Baba Amte, an Acharya Atre, a PL Deshpande, a Kusumagraj, a Sachin Tendulkar, a Dhanraj Pillay, a Lata Mangeshkar, an Asha Bhonsale, a Prabodhankar Thackeray, a Neetu Mandke, a Yusuf Hamied, an SL Kirloskar, a Keki Gharda, a Major Raghoba Rane, a Lt Col Ardeshir Tarapore, a Milind Soman, a Madhuri Dixit, a Gokhale, an Agarkar, a Tilak, a Savarkar. All they see in him is a ghaati. All they see in his culture is an object to be mocked at. So much for being hospitable. Thanks for the gratitude for opening our homes to give flight to your dreams. He laments that they see the price of real estate in Mumbai, but they don’t give two hoots about the sharecropper who commits suicide in Marathwada. He cries for the Shahrukh who sings paens for Delhi but refuses to acknowledge the land that made him King Khan.

Maharashtra has always been a nationalistic haven. Any talk of secessionism or sedition from Maharshtra is baloney. The land of the famed Jangi Paltan of the dreaded Maratha Light Infantry (for proof, ask any Pakistani soldier near LOC, Uri, Kashmir) can be only be steeped in valor and uber-nationalism. But today every Maharashtrian stands to see his beloved culture wiped away in a demographic tsunami that will have his progeny being outnumbered by a class and creed eager to annihilate and take stabs at the very foundations of his nationalistic being- his Marathiness. Will the sons of Chatrapati Shivaji Raje and Peshwe Shrimant Thorle Bajirao stand by the wayside and watch this annhilation with impotence or rise to defend their rightful place in this exhalted Republic Of India is something only time will decide.

PS: This piece is dedicated to Baba and Babuji, two people I have met in my life who remind me of the immense moral strength that the Marathi Manoos has in him.