MUSINGS FROM A CORPORATE CAREER... Meetings with HR

Meetings with HR are the worst: 

A) they lead nowhere 

B) you have to be politically correct 

C) you have to  agree with what they say because they are so correct

D) it is only when you come out of the meeting that you realise that nothing happened 

E) even though nothing happened, you are still left with a feeling of a vague inadequacy which can, according to HR, be rectified by following some vague prescriptions.

What HR told me I can  do to improve: 

Be more focused, and at the same time,  be more broad based in my thinking, 

Be more detail oriented, and at the same time be more strategic, 

Be more goal oriented, and at the same time be more people focused, 

Be more empathetic, and at the same time  be more task oriented,

Be more inclusive, and at the same time  encourage performance,

Encourage teamwork, and at the same time foster individual excellence,

Be more meticulous, and of course exhibit  high level thinking,

Be more empathetic, and at the same time  ensure discipline,

Don't use sexist, racist, homophobic, non inclusive language - by the way most words we normally use are sexist, racist or homophobic,  and of course be a better communicator,

Be more communicative and definitely  be more focused, 

Etc etc 

I have recieved a million suggestions from HR in my lifetime, some of them directly told to me by HR; some of them told to me by the India Head as told to him by HR to be told to us; and some of them told to me by my boss in our one on ones as told to him to be told to me by HR. 

All the suggestions sounded great when I heard them. I used to walk out of the meetings totally pumped up. 

But when I sat down to think about how to implement them, I would realise that not even one of those suggestions were actually implementable. 

I guess they were not meant to be

The Samosawala

The samosawala who used to operate at the corner, where our lane meets the main road, disappeared two months back. 

Now hold it! Before you say what's the big deal, samosas are a dime a dozen, etc etc, this fellow used to make the best samosas you ever had. He didn't have a shop, he operated from under a tarpaulin strung on the side of the road. With a  large iron kadhai over a wood fire for the samosas, and a smaller one for jalebis. Very nondescript, very unassuming, but what Samosas, and what jalebis! 

His main customers were the students from Kristu Jayanti college nearby - the more well heeled would obviously prefer to buy their samosas from Anand Sweets which is just 100 meters away. But having eaten from both the  places, I can vouch for his wares; I am willing to wager that no air-conditioned shop selling its samosas at three times the price can come close to the taste! 

For the last two months, everytime we passed by the place, we would sigh a wistful sigh, and say, oh how we miss his samosas and jalebis! My mom in law included, who was a big fan of his jalebis. 

You know what they say, you  don't know how much you miss someone till they go out of your lives! Well, it was the same with us. 

Anyway, to cut the long story short, today the wife came home with our favourite samosas and jalebis! He is back!, she announced; I have never seen that look on her face when I returned from a long absence, that is how I know that she is genuinely thrilled. Apparently, he had never left, he had just gone to his "gaon". 

Well, he is back now and all is right with the world. And from the moment he opened his shop again, it is surrounded by devotees clustering around for their samosas. 

All you techies who are reading this, it is time to introspect. If you disappear from your office to go to your gaon for two months, you will not be recognised when you come back to your office; if your job is still waiting for you that is.

HOBSON'S FARCE

Oh what a farce of an election,

Of a crumbling once great Nation; 

Everyone's racing to choose between, 

Two execrable abominations! 

One is a bull in a China shop,

Swaggering around wearing a cowboy hat; 

The other is a cackling idiot,

Who defines cringe and makes your skin crawl! 

Each half votes against the other, 

No one here is for the Nation; 

An election defined by hate, 

Voting for Captain while the ship is sinking! 

Like fiddlers on the Titanic they play,

Foot tapping music for the masses,

Who dance away oblivious;

It is a tragicomical farce! 

Meanwhile the wrold runs on its own, 

Or it would be seemingly so; 

The real helmsmen are behind the scenes, 

It really does not matter who wins! 

SPACEX NOTCHES UP ONE MORE SUCCESS

A leader with messianic zeal,

Who drives people hard and hardly sleeps; 

For whom failure is not an option, 

Nor old fashioned way of doing things! 

The company is like a furnace,

Where everything is forged in high heat; 

Employees offer themselves as fuel,

Willingly, and thus transcend themselves! 

Subordinate themselves to the cause, 

Sacrifice every minute to it; 

Work, their sole purpose and reward,

At work's altar they give their all! 

A group of people that'll change the world,

To them the future is here and belongs; 

Each of them, one to one, like us,

But as a group, totally transformed! 

All credit must go to their leader,

Who creates in them this frenzied drive; 

Like the famed Messiahs or Prophets,

Who made the seas part ways for them! 

As a human he has his weaknesses,

And not just a few, a lot of them; 

But as a leader Musk transcends, 

That is what it takes to change the world! 

Ratan Tata passes away

An industrialist has just died,

Who inherited his empire, 

And tended to it modestly;

Like self, modesty was his hallmark! 

In death, everyone wants to claim him, 

As their own, bask in his glory; 

There is a newfound love for him,

Evidenced by public display! 

It is safe to extol the dead, 

Raise them on a high pedestal; 

They won't refute from beyond the pale,

When you claim him as one of your own! 

All legacies are very useful, 

To those of us who are still living; 

To those who keep his body in state,

It pays to show that they are mourning! 

The man himself would be quite bemused,

At the crowds lining up for him;

He was humble, soft spoken and quiet; 

Unlike the farewell being given to him! 

Dinesh Gopalan,

10 October, 2024

Ratan Tata

 I have had the privilege of interacting with  Ratan Tata when I was CFO of ITPL. 

I was the Tata nominee as CFO  of ITPL, which was a joint venture between the Tatas and Ascendas of Singapore. As the Tata nominee,  I was the one assigned to meet him and accompany him from the airport or to Board Meetings. 

A thorough gentleman who defines the term, he was unfailingly courteous to me, just one of the CFO's of one of the many companies in the group, and a very small company at that. 

During the drive to the meetings when I was alone with him in the car, he made it a point to not talk about work. I realised that he did not want to put me in a spot by putting me on the interrogation floor. His constant attempt was to ensure that I would be comfortable in his presence. He would keep the conversation light.

On one occasion when I went to pick him up at Raffles Hotel in Singapore, I was a bit early. I called him from the lobby; I obviously said I would wait for him. He would have none of that. He cancelled the breakfast that he had  ordered to his room, and insisted on coming down to the coffee shop and having breakfast with me. 

He would never allow anyone to carry his bag, or expect them to run any errands for him. This courtesy extended even to the drivers or hotel  staff. 

At the Board Meetings where he was Chairman, he never threw his weight around. His word was of course law, he didn't really need to demonstrate that he was the boss, but I believe that his politeness stemmed from an innate sense of humility. 

Like Rajiv Gandhi who had no choice but to step into his mother's shoes to carry on the legacy, Mr Tata also landed into his inherited role. I have a feeling he was a reluctant satrap, he would probably have been more happy left to himself tending to his dogs. He was famous for his love of pets; the Taj Hotel's pet friendly policies are credited largely to him. 

The legacy he leaves behind is mixed. He had his share of successes and failures, but he was respected as a man of his word. He would not renege on a deal even when he justifiably could have, even when it entailed a huge financial loss. I was witness to one such deal in telecom when I was in Bombay House handling telecom, where he went ahead with a deal with the RPG group when he could have legitimately backed out. 

What we remember of a person is not their position, money or status, but their interactions with the rest of us. Ratan Tata was at the core, a decent human being. 

May his soul attain peace. Om Shanti.

On Wheat

Virgin wheat. 

In India we have a variety  called emmer wheat, Jave Godi or Khapli. 

It is good to shift to those forms of wheat. 

Wheat has been extolled as food from ancient times, "have this day your daily bread, etc" and is a staple the world over. Yet, the maximum degeneration in health today is due to the wheat we eat. Whenever anyone suffers from an extreme form of stomach distress like IBS or colitis, they should first try dropping wheat and then milk from their diet; there is a good chance that they will get better. 

So how come a food like wheat that has been extolled since ancient times is the cause of ill health? That is because the wheat we eat is no longer the same as what our ancestors used to eat. Nothing is, the tomatoes and sitaphal that we eat are hybrid versions too, but those seem to have worked out fine at least so far. 

Even the allopathic doctors, who are usually slow on the uptake, and gastro-enterologists, who, being more qualified alopathic doctors would be more prone to give wrong advice, have started recognising this. They advise their patients to drop wheat from their diet in case of unresolvable stomach problems or allergies without a cause. 

So how do we go towards the original biblical pristine wheat? Try shifting to Jave Godi. Or give up wheat altogether and shift to rice. Or shift to other grainss like millets. 

Even better from a holistic health perspective is to give up eating grains altogether. Since ancient times, natural healers have recognised that grains are not really good for health. 

Also note that such discussions are possible only if we buy our own grains, vegetables, and fruits, and cook them at home. The others can ignore all this and continue having their Kellogg's flakes and packaged orange juice for breakfast, which items being so far removed from food as to be not food at all, are perfectly fine to have.

On Commencement Speeches

Whenever any great person achieves greatness, they are invited to give a "commencement speech" to the next generation of young hopefuls who would presumably be enthused by the great man's or woman's words in their quests  to go and conquer the world! 

Now all these people who come on the podium at such events are veteran speakers who have been there, done that, and have no doubt   made hundreds of speeches. But there is something about addressing young hopefuls that brings out the best in them. 

They all try to distil their lives into as few lessons as possible and deliver it to the young hopefuls who are looking adoringly at them willing to absorb every golden word falling from their lips, integrate the success mantras in their lives, and remember the great person's words at crucial stages in their lives and careers. Or that is what they think. 

Meanwhile the listeners couldn't care a shit about what the great person is saying. I have yet to see a single college boy or girl paying attention to what anybody is saying, leave alone paying attention to a speech. All advice given to the young falls on deaf ears and all efforts at improving them are wasted. 

Then why do the great persons do it? Why do they accept such invites to speak at commencement ceremonies? Partly because their son or nephew is graduating, and they can't refuse;  or they are an alumnus from the same school. And partly because all cynicism has not yet gone out of their lives, they still feel someone somewhere out there will be inspired by their words and thus they can pass on their hard learned wisdom to future generations - in short, their egos are gratified.  Basically they are all very strong reasons which is why an invitation to give a  commencement speech is a succulent treat no one can resist. 

Take this typical  man here for example. Retured army general or supreme court justice or some such dignitary.  I am sure the chap genuinely means what he is saying to the young hopefuls.  "You must face misfortunes so that you will become strong", "you must encounter setbacks so that you learn to fight" etc etc. The audience hearing all that is waiting impatiently to rush out to party the night away. And to rush out into the world to commit the same mistakes, repeat the same follies that every generation before them has committed and repeated. 

Every prophet since Moses, every well intentioned speaker since the dawn of time  has faced the same fate. They may as well be talking to the mirror in their room for all that the world cares. 

Meanwhile, I love hearing these commencement speeches. There is always some good advice hidden in there. The fact that it is too late for me is most relevant - that is when people start paying attention! If you are appreciating commencement speeches, it means you have retired!

Lessons from the Tirupati Laddoo case

How can you get pure cow ghee for 500 rupees per kg? 

Good question. 

Let's ask the same question for oils, the vegetable oils that we routinely buy for cooking. 

The price at which, say  coconut  oil is sold is less than the cost you will bear if you buy coconuts and crush them at home or at your nearest oil mill. 

What's the secret? There is no secret. The oil is adulterated with liquid paraffin. The cold pressed oil manufacturer near my house says he gets routine visits from salesmen offering to sell liquid paraffin along with additives to make the oil look and smell like whatever oil you want. 

 "Refined" oil further goes through processes which make it completely unhealthy. The factories that process them are finally industries that work for profit. 

Now if you are a halwai / mithaiwala, which oil will you use? I don't even want to go down that path, it is distressing to even think about. 

And we order food casually from "cloud kitchens"! 

And then wonder where our health has gone. The litany of ailments if listed would only be cause for further depression. 

There is no alternative to tracking all your food to the source. Meaning: tracking each ingredient to the source. 

And buying from people you know who buy from people they know. 

And buy only things that grow from the supermarkets, only cold pressed oils, raw unprocessed sea salt. 

And cook your own food at home. 

I am not presenting this as a case to be debated, I am making the case that there is no alternative. 

And learn to cook. It's a life skill, and increasingly essential in the modern world where you cannot trust the sources from which you get your food. 

If you have a better idea on how to ensure that the food you are eating is actually food, let me know. 

And we have not even touched upon the chemicals, additives and preservatives that are added in our foods. We don't need to go so far, it's an open and shut case even before we go there

From the Sacred to the Profane

The recent controversy over the Tirupati laddus is extremely shocking and distressing. Beef tallow and pork fat were used in making the laddus! The ghee for the laddus was procured on "lowest tender" basis, and the supplier who quoted an unbelievably low price got the order. The price is lower than what it is possible to manufacture ghee at. That this person who got the order happens to be a crony of the erstwhile Congress government and supplies ghee to many other temples as well is grist for the scandal mill, but I shall ignore those aspects for the point I am trying to make. 

The underlying reason why this happened?  Distance from farm to table, and it holds a big lesson for all of us when it comes to daily life as well. 

What do I mean when I say "distance from farm to table"?

Food is sacred. It is fundamental to us, and it impacts our body, mind and soul. We are what we eat. 

Food needs to be grown in soil with natural inputs, in other words, it  needs to be organic. 

It needs to be harvested in the right way. Now this may sound bizarre to today's readers but in some cases there are guidelines on how to harvest the food. For example, turmeric was never harvested by women when they were menstruating; certain crops  are plucked only at a certain time of day for maximum effectiveness, etc. You may or may not agree with some of it, but I am making a larger point - that there are vital energies that are transmitted through food to the human body and these energies were given attention to. 

Ayurveda recognises foods as satvik, rajasic and tamasik, based on the effect they have on the human body and more importantly, the mind. Also, as "heating" and "cooling". These classifications recognise the effect that food has on the body and the mind. 

That food, grown with good inputs, and harvested with care, is then cooked at home. Instructions for cooking? The lady of the house takes a bath, and immediately proceeds to the kitchen to cook for her family with feelings of love and with "bhakti". If the food is meant as "prasad", additional care is taken. But the main point is, all food is Prasad, and needs to be treated as such. 

And then the food is to be eaten fresh, within hours of cooking. While sitting down to eat, one has to be in a good frame of mind. 

Grace is said before eating, thanking God for putting the food on the table. This practice exists across cultures and religions. 

Let us assume that you are the farmer who grows all the food that you consume. Your distance from "farm to table" is the least. That is the only way you can ensure that your food remains "sacred". 

Contrast that with today. We don't know who grows our food. It is grown in industrial farms with industrial processes using industrial chemicals called fertilisers. 

It is then transported to industrial factories where it is stripped of its nutrients and mixed with a chemical cocktail of preservatives, additives, colorants, etc. 

The factory is most interested in reducing costs. Each ingredient and sub ingredient in the food is broken down and replaced with cheaper alternatives. Like the beef tallow in the Tirupati Prasad, that is just one example. 

And then it is transported across large distances over a period of months. This is cooked in industrial kitchens who couldn't care less about quality or sacredness of the food. 

And that is what we order and eat,  when we order from Swiggy or Zomato. Thus, the journey from the sacred to the profane is complete. 

How to ensure that you eat good food? Reduce the distance from the farm to the table!  Both in terms of kilometres and in terms of time. Also in terms of the people involved. 

Buy directly from the farmer, or from trusted organic stores who buy directly from the farmer. 

Buy only what grows, not what is manufactured. 

Cook that stuff at home yourself, with an attitude of love and gratitude. 

Eat it within hours of cooking. After offering it to God in an attitude of thankfulness. 

Reduce the distance from the farm to the table. Remove the profane, and reclaim the sacred in your life!

On peanut allergies and the like

https://www.wsj.com/health/how-pediatricians-created-the-peanut-allergy-epidemic-952831c4?st=HhQZsU&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

See the article above on peanut allergies. 

peanut allergy is a peculiarly Western problem. 

"Exposure builds immunity", that is basic common sense. 

So you want to escape all flu viruses ? 

A) you can't 

B) you are told to practise social distancing which goes against evolutionary biology, basic immunology, and simple common sense. 

Btw, on the peanut allergy, I suspect there is one more major reason. All allergies increase due to the chemicals and preservatives in food, which also compromise your immune system. 

Recommendations of scientists and allopaths are often like weapons of mass destruction. They cut a wide swathe of destruction across the populace, and have permanent long term debilitating consequences. 

The best part is, you don't have to be a doctor or even have studied science to figure all this out. In fact, those qualifications are probably deterrents to clear thinking

THE STORY OF A BANGALORE TECHIE

He was enticed the young techie,

Straight out of college in a bus; 

Recruited by this big MNC,

For a big fat salary! 

From Day One Techie was pampered,

All the things in office were free; 

The vending machine spewed round the clock,

Whatever techie wanted to eat! 

But the timings he kept were late, 

Anyway no one was at home; 

Techie also had a girl friend, 

Techie never thought of going home! 

The only outing was for beer,

To loud music, fat laden foods; 

The food in office was much worse,

For nothing in it was natural! 

Slowly the techie forgot,

What is real food and how it's made; 

Both he and his girl friend made out,

And ate the free food, morning and night! 

Techie never went into sunlight,

Never got wet in the rain; 

There was no need to even walk,

For transportation was arranged! 

Fifteen years passed very quickly,

Lots of gains in money and weight; 

Techie, the girlfriend, now the wife,

Were millionaires, with two fat kids! 

Evolution for them moved apace,

They had forgotten how to walk; 

Their food had settled in their waists,

All heavy, and fifteen years' worth! 

Techie has added to his diet,

Has a bunch of pills that Doctor gave; 

It's all paid for and it is free,

So techie and wife have two of each! 

He competes with all his colleagues,

On who has longer list of ailments; 

He boasts of his cars and other toys,

Vacations in plush destinations! 

His kids go to international school,

Where the kids are as dumb as any; 

But since they pay very high fees,

They get genius level grading! 

Now tachie and his wife are fifty, 

Their kids are fatter, more obese; 

There's not an ailment they don't have, 

Which for them is a matter of pride! 

They're the envy of all they meet,

Role models for nephews and niece; 

Look at techie and his lovely wife, 

And learn in life, how to succeed!

Dinesh Gopalan,

12 August, 2024

ON REITS

Real estate in India is opaque. 

There is no genuine price discovery. 

Builders are, without exception, crooks. 

Politicians and underworld, that's a tautology,  are involved in every facet of Big Real Estate. 

There is large component of black money. 

It is basically a cesspool out there. 

Add to that the inherent inefficiencies of "layering". Corporate structures, moron managers ( we have all been managers, so we can personally attest to the moronity, and yes, they need to paid well) , a structure like REIT, maybe listing. All this adds several layers and it gives highly educated people like us a false sense of security. Very highly educated people are always suckers for pigs with lipsticks. 

Add to that the fact that large REIT models are exposed to macro variables. 

What all this ensures is that you will never make a larger than average profit. 

I am not against real estate. But specifically in the Indian context, I would rather invest directly. At least that way,  if I hit a jackpot the gains will accrue to me. 

The unscrupulous people running the REITS, the nature of the market and the layering, will ensure that any lottery or jackpot will never be passed on to you. 

In short, in India, if you want to invest in real estate, invest directly or not at all

About immunity and how to build it

An excellent article in today's TOI about how our immune systems break down. 

What is stated here is Immunology 101, basically common sense. 

Summary: ( with my comments in brackets) 

Your illnesses are getting longer and more debilitating because your immune systems are getting weaker. 

Reasons: poor diet, lack of exercise, high stress and insufficient sleep. 

( In order of importance, first comes proper sleep, followed by diet, followed by exercise) 

Also: misuse of antibiotics. Even if  used  properly antibiotics destroy good gut bacteria. ( Ayurveda recognises the gut as the seat of health. Add: all allopathic medicines are harmful, period. ) 

And now comes the big point: viruses, especially those causing cold and flu, mutate rapidly.  ( And hence, and hence, vaccines cannot protect you from covid, or any other cold and flu virus. Pure common sense and I am not saying this based on hindsight, I said this before the covid vaccine was released. And if all allopathic medicines are harmful, if antibiotics are even more harmful, vaccines are even more deadly. Vaccines are a cocktail of poisons. The vaccine cannot protect you against viruses that mutate rapidly, it needs an, a hilarious term follows, "update" every few months. And here is the fun fact: every vaccine that you take weakens the immune system further. And every vaccine that you don't take strengthens the immune system further. Hahaha the joke is on all of us Muppets! ) 

And finally the last para. Children have weaker immune systems, their immunity strengthens as they get "exposed". ( Hahahahaha. Which is exactly why social distancing should not be practised. Again, Immunology 101). 

( Let me add one final point that the article does not talk about. Deep breathing is absolutely vital to good health. Most of us do not know how to breathe properly. To learn, contact a yoga teacher. Masks make you breathe shallow and hence are extremely harmful to your health. This is basic 101, yogis have known it for centuries. Your allopathic medical system knows nothing about it. But then, your allopathic medical system does not know anything about health. The surest way to destroy your health is to follow your doctor's advice) 

( Posted to my blog: http://www.dineshgopalan.com )

Defining the New Luxury

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/H8d9eN8Sm7TUVLHJ/?mibextid=hBBs4f

Check out the above link about a lady offering a boutique dining experience at her home. 

Small format businesses, personalised experiences, non scalability, will define the new luxury. 

As will spending on experiences. Spending on things is passe. 

Gourmet, boutique, exclusive ... When there is abundance of everything what do you crave for? 

Having money is no longer something to boast of. Having time is. Do you have enough time to do what you want, when you want? Can you step out for a half day drive with an hour's notice? Being able to do that defines luxury.

Fitness my foot!

Interview with Rohan Bopanna on his retirement from playing for India, see below 

He is right. 

Indians are a bunch of lazy slobs. 

The height of aspiration is to be seen as  part of the "khate Peete log". There is no fitness consciousness either. Watch any person above the age of forty, male or female - most people have weak muscle tone and sagging muscles. 

As to encouraging sports in their kids, forget it. The aspiration is the exact opposite, Narayani or Chaitanya college, target IIT, fourteen hours study daily, every minute of time spent in the open considered a waste. 

But we Indians do not lack for success in sports or any field for that matter. The moment Bopanna wins a match, all Coorgis will think they have won, sorry played and won. The moment Rohit Sharma hits a fast paced hundred in a One Day Match, every Indian couch potato's adrenaline reading will go through the roof, since he thinks he has done it. 

Vicarious pleasures, vicarious living, vicarious joys - we Indians specialise in that. 

No wonder we are the outsourcing capital of the world.

( Interview extract from news item) 

New Delhi, Aug 1 (IANS) Indian tennis player Rohan Bopanna, who recently announced his retirement in playing for the national team following a first-round exit in the men's doubles event at the 2024 Paris Olympics, has revealed about the times he's went to many companies for sponsorship, but was declined.

"India is not a sporting country to be honest, we go to watch the celebrity of the sport. I have gone to numerous companies asking for sponsorships and they have declined because tennis is not shown in the country."

"Last year, at the US Open, my team was calling the media broadcasters to say please show my match and they say no it is only one Indian and we cannot show," revealed Bopanna on "Be A Man, Yaar!" season 2 show, by Yuvaa.

Bopanna, who has been honoured with Padma Shri, will continue to play at the ATP Circuit. At the start of this year, Bopanna became the oldest man to win a Grand Slam title in the open era of tennis following the Australian Open men's doubles triumph with his partner Matthew Ebden. That title also propelled Bopanna to become the oldest top-ranked man in ATP rankings for men's doubles too.

He also addressed the issue of online criticism and trolling that often sportspersons face following defeats. "We get abuses every day, social media is great but you get those abuses also. It's constant. Everybody feels they are also a part of it, so it's hard you know every day you need to wake up and say be strong."

Bopanna, a recipient of Arjuna Award and Padma Shri, signed off by crediting his psychologist wife Supriya Annaiah Bopanna for being an unwavering support figure while he's traveling to play tennis. "My wife never advised me on my sport but always listened and improved my communication with my Tennis partners."

THE WOKE CANCER

Any kind of madness,

When not nipped in the bud,

Will become a menace,

Grow too big to combat! 

Basic curbs are needed, 

Nature has set down laws; 

And over millennia,

Society has evolved! 

Females with penises,

Males who boast of vaginas,

Gay is being celebrated,

And queerness is the norm! 

Blacks can do no wrong,

Brahmins are never right; 

Facts and evidence be damned,

Wokeness demands you be blind! 

Maths is ambiguous,

Two and two can be five,

Merit is Oppression,

And victimhood is rife! 

Any kind of cancer, 

Eats you from the inside, 

It destroys your vitals,

And it hollows you out! 

Sane people, unite,

Sanity is under threat, 

Loonies are taking over,

Making the world a circus! 

We need to push back now, 

Reject all that is woke; 

Too late? I am branded, 

As madman and a threat! 

What made things come to this pass? 

You and I are to blame; 

We are afraid, inert,

We fear to take a stand! 

Dinesh Gopalan,

1 August,, 2024

Feedback!

All you do is go and buy one small item from any store. They feed your number into their computer and the bombardment starts. 

Clothes are not like alu pyaaz, you don't need to buy them every day. But look at these messages, they think my clothes are all single use, use and throw! I mean who needs to buy  shirts or jeans every day? 

And then the next level,   there are those car dealers, they are worse. They put their call centre people on the job. "Sir, your car is due for service". Arre baba, my car, I will come and give it for service when it starts rattling or something, what is your problem? 

I still get reminder calls for service for my Swift, which I sold six months back. None of those call centres who calls you has a facility to update the records. It is completely futile telling them the car is sold, update your records, etc etc. They are paid to call you and bug you, not to update records. 

And then there is a nexter level where the computer IVR calls you. "This is from FedEx, Your parcel for delivery has been rejected". Obviously the infamous FedEx scam, but I get that call every alternate day! The computer calling you is especially bugging, since the computer has oodles of time, and it is eating  into yours. 

Technology is let loose on you every day. It is like being chased by a bunch of dogs, always nipping at your heels. Even if you want to ignore them it involves some effort. 

Every Uber ride you take, you have to give feedback. Every flight you take, every visit to the bank, feedback. Every service visit for the car, feedback. If you give anything less than 10 on 10, there are follow up questions. So you learn to give 10, or ignore it, there are only two practical options. Ignoring Uber feedback I am not inclined to do, because the computer may just tag me as a habitual non-feedbacker, which in turn may reduce my rating, and next time I want a cab, I may not get one! 

You can't ignore it, and you can't live with it either. 

Technology rules!

Expired Milk!

There is this news item which says people are upset that a McDonald's employee used expired milk to make milk shakes. It is causing a furore. 

Idiots. 

The milk has already expired even before it was put into the packet. 

You create separate cow species, like Jersey or Holstein, "optimised" for milk production. 

You house the whole lot in cattle farms, in close disease-inducing proximity. 

You feed the cows food mash, not grass and other naturally growing food,  laced with antibiotics. You inject the cows with oxytocin to increase contractions that increase milk production. 

The milk is transported over long distances to the factory. To prevent the milk from  curdling on the way, people in India add urea to it ( yes urea the fertiliser), don't know what they do in the US. 

Then the milk is pasteurised, which please note, is not the same as boiling the milk that we do at home. Pasteurisation is supposed to kill all the bad germs. Unfortunately, it kills all the germs, including the good ones. 

Then the milk is homogenised, an innocuous sounding word, but what it does is to change the molecular structure of the milk itself. 

Then, and this is more so in the US, the milk is converted into a few hundred variants, no fat, ten percent fat, lactose free ( quite possible , I am sure this exists), diet milk, colored milk, flavoured milk, goo, poo... The list can extend indefinitely. 

And we the people buy that crap from the supermarket shelves. 

What we are buying  looks like milk, it tastes like milk, but is not milk. 

And then we worry about someone giving us milk that is past its expiry date! 

I feel like telling them: 

The milk, my friend, expired long long ago. You are making much ado about nothing!

If I write a book on Arjuna

If I write a book on Arjuna for today's youngsters, this is the way my introductory chapter would flow...

This Arjuna dude, he was a real macho dude who could kick ass big-time. Maan oh Maan, what a dude! 

And then they get cheated of their kingdom, you know how it is. Greedy cousins, evil king and all. 

They had a common wife, noe check that out! And they had several individual wives, at least  Arjuna did. He used to bed women wherever he went! Crazy shit, right!  Even divine damsels used to fall for him, and he refused one of them! Can you imagine that? No shit maan, I am telling it to you like it is! 

And then he fights this great war. Arrows flying all over the place, and dudes like Arjuna, there were a few others also, they were called Maharathis meaning Real Kick-ass Dudes, knew some divine weapon stuff, the stuff that goes ka boom when you chant a mantra! You know, mantras are real potent Maan, I mean they could bring the gods down and make them do stuff for you. In fact, Arjuna was born with the help of one such mantra. His dad was king of the gods, ruler of heaven. Dig that maan, it's crazy stuff right?!

Diamonds are forever... A scam!

See this article in TOI today about diamond prices going down: 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/timesofindia.indiatimes.com/times-special/losing-shine-india-sitting-on-a-huge-diamond-stock/amp_articleshow/112092241.cms

This was anticipated. Diamonds have never been a great investment for a variety of reasons.

 Arriving at their value is a highly subjective exercise, involving Color, Clarity, Cut and Carat, all of them subjective parameters including the last one. 

They have been valued since ancient times, but the demand and price uptick came when De Beers, the largest diamond producer in the world, embarked on a campaign to make it popular. Diamonds as an emblem of getting engaged to be married was not the norm before that. 

To complicate matters further, "lab grown" diamonds, which even experts find impossible to distinguish from real ones, have become increasingly common. 

If all you want is a piece of jewelry, buy the lab grown diamonds. They are anyway indistinguishable from the real ones. 

If you are considering buying diamonds for investment, don't. Buy Gold, Silver or Copper instead. Or go on a vacation, at least you would have put the money to good use!

If you have diamond earrings that have been handed down to you from your grandmother, sell them. 

Diamonds are good neither as investment nor as adornment. 

Musings of a retiree

I retired from corporate life in 2013. The past eleven years has been a good ride. 

The usual advantages are of course there. Not having up get up at 6, get ready by 8, and rush to meet your doom is the obvious one. When I go past the slaughter house in Cox Town, I see goats led by  their goat herders, rushing inside, since there is some grass enticingly kept there. 

Whenever I step into a glass building, the likes of which despoil the whole of Bangalore, I close my eyes and mutter a silent prayer to my guardian angel, " but for the grace of God, here would have been I, thank you God". 

Many of my friends who could have retired earlier than me, did not. They stuck around for as long as they could. Some of them lasted till 60, but most left some time in their fifties. One columnist coined a good term for it, he called it "forced entrepreneurship". 

What are you doing after retirement? I am thinking of starting a startup. I have started a startup. I am consulting with a startup. Now, that seems very much like getting back into the rat race, but if that is what they want, so be it. They really like doing that stuff, I cannot for the life of me figure out why. In any case, the start up bug does not last for long, it is just a brief foray, a transition period to get adjusted to the idea that you have retired, somewhat akin to the interim job that the prisoner gets when finally released after twenty years in jail, which helps him to slowly ease  himself into the demands of the world outside. 

Quite a few of my friends have taken up "stock trading" after their retirement. I know only one who actually makes money on it. The rest are in it for a bunch of different reasons, none of them to do with stocks. Reason 1: have to get out of the house, spouse eating brain. This is from the friend who went to his broker friend's office every day to do stock trading. Reason 2: have intellectual horsepower and nowhere to deploy it, and am used to doing a lot of activity for very little output - stock trading is the right fit. Reason 3: No one can really make out how much I am working and how much money I am  making when I do stock trading, and it is impossible to judge. If I take up baking for example, every day I will be told that my cakes taste like mud! 

I, on the other hand, chose a different path. I took the path that appeals to a few retired people, that is that of giving Gyan. I became a part time teacher in an MBA college. Now this comes with a load of advantages. Adv. 1: The spouse is happy that you are busy, all spouses need to see you busy, otherwise they get mighty upset. Adv.2: There is a captive audience willing to listen to you, or at least pretend to be listening to you. I have reached the stage in life where no one listens to me at home. Adv.3: I get a lot of respect, the same respect that my Direct Reports used to give me when I was in the company. The students laugh at all my jokes and keep telling me how great I am in different small ways. The fact that I am the sole arbiter of their marks has nothing to do with it of course. Adv. 4: I have some place to go to,  that is very important. 

One thing I have noticed about retired people. They are immensely courteous to each other. Whenever my retired friends call me, they always say, "Dinesh, I hope I am not disturbing you in the middle of something important?". Now,  they know and I know that I am not likely to be doing anything important, but the pretence has to be maintained. I return the same courtesy when I call them and , as if on cue they reply, " oh I was in the middle of something, but for you, Dinesh, I will make the time!", which is of course exactly what I want to hear. 

Meanwhile I get more time to write, more time to travel, and more time to do nothing in particular. And I am always busy - there is something about work, it expands to fill the time available. The last three days, for example, I was busy on my Tax Returns. When I was working full time this would have taken me three hours at most. 

I am glad I retired when I did. Every day in the last eleven years has been a picnic. 

To my friends out there who are still working, I would like to say this: 

Retire boss, retire, it's a good life!

My impressions of Chennai

I stayed for a couple of weeks in Chennai when my mom was there. That whole city puts me off.

The autowallahs are nasty of course. The vegetable vendor starts screaming at you ( saavu giraaki is the opening salvo) if you touch the vegetables. 

There is no concept of customer service, or quality. Or even doing a basic job well. And everyone is kind of closed in their mind for anything new. 

The average Darshini in Bangalore serves better food than the popular names in Chennai. Murugan Idli may be an exception but the likes of Veena Stores or Brahmin's cafe will beat even Murugan Idli by miles. 

Had a chai at the airport, kiosk outside saying "Tea something". 100 rupees. One sip and I spat it out. I am not exaggerating when I say that even a beggar in Bombay will refuse to have that tea. 

Construction quality, very poor. Plumber, electrician, they don't even come for days. The concept of dry toilets does not exist. My mom's landlord had not even installed a washbasin, she did it at her own expense. 

I am a tamilian by upbringing and I was totally put off. 

Imagine the plight of a North Indian who doesn't know Tamil landing there.

Post match media interaction

These post match reminiscences are so boring. 

Oh, I am so excited to be out here today ( once the Americans came on the scene this word has lost all its meaning. Being excited all the time and nothing else merely indicates a poor vocabulary) 

The boys really played well ( always give credit to the boys. This cricketer was so used to this phrase that he said that when someone congratulated him on his child being born) 

I thought let's bat and put some runs on the board, that was the need of the hour ( ya sure, that's what you do in cricket) 

The first ten overs were crucial. So were the last ten. And the middle 30  overs were very critical ( I am waiting for the day when someone says these ten overs were not critical) 

The dew being what it is, and with the lights coming on, it could aid swing... 

The pitch was firm though without grass, and we thought it would start crumbling towards the end and aid our spinners.. 

( All this is pure mumbo jumbo designed to keep the non serious follower out of the conversation. Don't worry even they don't know what they are talking about) 

And the newbie...   I am grateful to Rohit Sharma for encouraging me, he is a great mentor ( smart chap, he knows whom to butter up ) 

I just went out there and played my game ( well obviously you nitwit, whatever you do you have to play your game) 

And so on and so on. 

Post match interviews are definitely not grist for the intellectual mill, and they tend to be boring, repetitive, full of stock phrases, in short they sound like a bunch of teenagers talking. 

Which is to be expected. We selected our cricketers because they are good at playing cricket, not for their intellect, vocabulary and general knowledge. 

What I don't understand is, why then do we insist on repeatedly asking for their insights and waste our time listening to them or reading their Gyan.

About blood thinners and their ilk

Link to an article in today's  TOI : 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/breakthrough-common-blood-thinner-can-be-affordable-antidote-for-cobra-venom/amp_articleshow/111817389.cms

👆"repurposing existing drug" for a hitherto unknown use. 

Sounds great. And it is. 

But think about it slightly differently. Blood thinners are prescribed like chocolates nowadays. Anyone and everyone you know is having blood thinners. 

They are effective as anti venom also, as it was just discovered, "they act as a decoy antidote, binding and neutralising the toxins" 

The question to ask is.. all those  lifestyle drugs that  you are you taking, from the pill box that you carry around.. how many of them act as decoys to bind to what all and create what all havoc in the body? 

And remember that  it all started when you went for that "preventive" medical check up, which is basically a trap for enticing the gullible into the medical system's welcoming arms.

100 tests, at sixty percent discount! 

When you test for 100 parameters, there is a close to 100 percent chance that some parameter is "not normal". How is normal defined? Anything, say five percent to the right or five percent to the left of the normal distribution consisting of the population. 100 parameters like that, and the chance of getting a clean report is close to infinitesimal, do the math yourself. 

So your LDL was low and HDL was high, or Vitamin D3 was inadequate, and you landed at the local corporate hospital ( the discounted tests are decoys, they are actually marketing agents for the corporate hospitals, the front line goons for the medical mafia).

And before you know it, you are on statins, blood thinners, cholesterol lowering drugs..  

In roughly around five years from that point you are carrying around a pill box with compartments with dates and times filled with pills of various colours. And you are saying things like "I need to eat every two hours or I will die", "I cannot sit on a two wheeler, God forbid, my back will dislocate itself", "I am gluten, lactose and peanut intolerant"... We are all familiar with the list, except that in the last few years the list is growing. 

Meanwhile the neighbour, who is a trader  in  Chikpet, and  seventy five years old, continues to travel all around the city on his Kinetic Honda, eat 

anything, go anywhere, life weights, spend ten hours at his shop, and is mentally and physically active. 

What is the secret to his  good health? 

His ignorance. No one told him about medical tests.

The Circus comes to town

The teams are equally matched, 

The margins of victory slender; 

The game veers this way and that, 

And then goes one way or the other! 

But yet we pin our hopes too much, 

On slender momentary wins; 

The fights and wins we lack in our lives, 

We seek vicariously in them! 

Too much elation on victory, 

End of the world on a defeat; 

This too shall pass; and once again, 

One turn into the other! 

Our self esteem has been outsourced,

To fickle momentary events; 

To gladiators in a Circus,

Paid to fight and die for us! 

So much of me has been invested,

On someone, somewhere, outside control; 

Like those rides in a carnival, 

I am screaming, passive, and belted! 

And then I totter to the next; 

One draining ride after another; 

One day wonder where all the days went, 

I'm spent, with nothing to show for them! 

Generative AI

This is extremely scary. 

Computers exploded on the scene after the 90's. That's well within our adult lifetime, thirty years back. Mobile phones, internet, high speed computing, connectivity, ditto.

Coders were in high demand, they still are presumably. 

But now the computer is going to write all the code, generate all the music, write all the articles, suggest all the remedies, and pretty much do everything that we humans prided ourselves in doing. It's called generative AI. 

What is the skill required in this new era from those who operate the computers? Prompt engineering! Like "delivery partners", a fancy term to glamorise a humdrum occupation. 

Prompt engineering is the skill of how to ask questions to the computer. The computer knows all the answers, the computer is God, the computer will answer you properly provided you ask nicely. Presumably, prostrating or kneeling down in front of it with hands folded while asking the question. 

Meanwhile, they will develop another computer, or Generative AI engine, to ask the right questions. 

Then this computer will talk to that computer. And together, between them, they will have all the questions and all the answers. 

We will be on our knees in front of the  computer, begging it to tell us the answers. 

The future awaits.

Review of Kalki

Watched Kalki today on IMAX 2D. 

Indian mythology meets dystopian world meets Marvel Superheroes meets Star Wars meets Mad Max meets VFX. 

After Bahubali and RRR, you thought these Telugu guys have already reached the top in over the top entertainers but no, this one is beyond those two. When I say over the top I mean it in a complimentary way. After this fare, you will find other films insipid. 

Kamalahasan as Supreme Yaskin the villain, Amitabh as Aswatthama, Prabhas as Karna reborn with multiple shades to his character, Deepika as the heroine in whose womb the Lord ( Krishna of course) will be reborn as Kalki, who will come to save the world. And Amitabh as always, steals the show, I just don't know what it is that gives him that screen presence! 

The movie, a full three hours long, only manages to build this alternate universe , in preparation for the sequels to come. 

As the Telugus will say to those Marvel folks "meeru yovvaru ra, superhero movie Ela ceyalo memu meeku chuputhamu! ... Jeragandi , maa samayam vacchindi!!"

( Subtitle: who are you guys? We will show you how to make superhero movies! Move aside! Our time has come!!) 

It's difficult to make out where the live shots end and the VFX takes over, the entire experience is one big extravaganza. 

Made with a budget of 600 crores, not even a week has passed since release, I  believe it has already recovered most of the money. 

On a Monday afternoon there were hardly any seats empty. We will get to see this film become a mega hit in India and outside. 

Watch it in Telugu ( there are English subtitles), over the top plots somehow go well with Telugu, on the big screen, preferably on IMAX 2D.

The Decline of the School System

Quote

" The New IPL in India*

I am teaching a girl Class 12 Macroeconomics

She is studying in Kendriya Vidyalaya and essentially *knows NOTHING*

*NO CLUE on the 1/2 base height formula of area if a triangle, 

Cannot even identify where Sri Lanka is on the world map, no idea on the state capitals and capitals of our neighboring nations*

*LITERACY IS A FARCE IN INDIA, THE LAND OF THE VEDAS*

 

"Unquote 

👆 message from a friend and batchmate just now. 

I find this to be increasingly true. Parents are sending their children to posher and posher schools, spending more and more money, and their children are getting more and more marks. 

But the children are learning less and less. Most children of today know essentially very little of what is covered in their own standard school curriculums.

I have been making a case for pulling the children out of school and shifting to home tuition. One of the reasons is this. 

The other reason is that school systems, like any organised system, exists to ensure the survival of the other stakeholders, like the teachers. The needs of the primary stakeholder , the child, are irrelevant. 

One diabolical manifestation of this is the complete takeover of American schools by the woke virus, and the consequent teaching of damaging trash to the kids, who are getting brainwashed into being walking talking confused zombies. This includes colleges too, not just primary schools and high schools. 

Observe what is really happening in the name of education. Brutally and logically evaluate how much your own child is learning. 

And be afraid.

Review of Chilli Chicken

Just saw the Kannada movie "Chilli Chicken" at PVR at Bhartiya City. 

A slice of the life of migrants from the north east, a slice of the city of Bangalore, or the story of migrants anywhere...  It could be called any of these. The movie is based on the story of these migrants who are employed in a Bangalore restaurant. The language in the movie shifts between Kannada and  Manipuri, hence the need for subtitles which are there. 

The movie has a story line that keeps you gripped throughout. There are no famous stars here, but all the actors give convincing performances. 

At times it has the feel of a Noir movie, with its surprising twists in the plot, and an accidental murder woven into the story. The background music and songs are  good too. 

It also brings out a social message, about how all of us treat outsiders, in a subtle way, woven into the plot and the dialogue.

The cinematography is good and the editing is slick - it kept me engaged throughout wanting to know what comes next. 

In terms of overall mix of elements, I would think it comes closest to Lapata Ladies, though the plots of the two films have nothing in common. 

It is obviously not a big budget production but the whole thing has coalesced into a great finished product. A lot of credit for this must go the Director, Prateek. This his first film but it certainly doesn't feel like it. Very impressive effort - Prateek is set to go places in the industry. 

*The Director Prateek Prajosh lives in our Layout

On Food Additives

All processed foods contain many additives, all of them chemicals, and none of them fit for consumption. 

The additives could be for the purpose of: 

Faking the food: Hershey's strawberry syrup has no strawberries, for example. 

Making it last longer.

Adding colour,

Adding flavour,

Adding some property, like say, a chemical to make salt non hygroscopic and free flowing. 

But they are all "safe", within safe limits, goes the argument. 

The apologist who puts forward this argument should go back and read that forward on medicines once again. Every allopathic medicine is a chemical with dosages in milligrams. Individually, these medicines are harmful, and collectively they are deadly. No tests are done, in fact it is impossible to do any tests, for the millions of combinations in which these drugs may enter the human body.

It's the same with food additives. They are individually harmful, and collectively, they are deadly. And no tests are done, in fact, no tests exist, for the millions of combinations in which they are used. 

We insist on taking our food, killing it, adding manufactured salt, refined oils, white sugars, high fructose corn syrups, hydrogenated oils, flavours, preservatives, colours... And we even irradiate foods, ripen them chemically, put wax coatings on them, use chemicals and pesticides while growing them... The list goes on. 

Each of these processes and additives kills the food and makes it less edible. Together, these processes convert our food into poison. 

So we eat processed foods, in other words,  poison instead of food. Then we get sick. Then we take more poisons as medicines. 

The only way out of this cycle is to opt out. 

Stop drugging yourself. 

Say no to drugs. 

Say no to allopathic medicines. 

Say no to processed foods. 

Say no to white sugar. 

Say no to refined oils. 

Say no to manufactured table salt. 

Say yes to organic food, freshly procured, from trusted verified sources.

Say yes to cooking at home, using only the best and purest of ingredients. 

Say yes to eating your food within hours of cooking. 

Doing all that will increase the quality of your life, and paradoxically, reduce expenses in the long run

Use Your Finger

Use your finger

To vote for progress, 

Against the forces of regress,

Use your finger, 

To reject appeasement,

At the cost of everyone else, 

Use your finger,

To stop the unchecked loot,

We suffered since our nation took birth, 

Use your finger, 

To give more time,

To those with honest intent, 

Use your finger, 

To reclaim the pride,

That is ours by right, 

Use your finger,

To protect what is yours, 

By right and inheritance,

Use your finger ,

To protect home and hearth,

From being broken or burnt, 

Use your finger, 

To reject throwing money, 

In freebies that are not earned,

Use your finger,

To guard against partition,

That they would foist upon us, 

Use your finger, 

To keep from breaking,

Our country one more time, 

Use your finger, 

To reject the Hand that misleads,

Along with all of their ilk,

Use your finger ,

And allow to bloom,

The Lotus in each one of us,

Use your finger,

To reclaim our temples, 

From ruins and barbarians,

Use your fingers, 

To stop the return, 

Of the masters of loot and run,

Use your fingers, 

To show your true clout,

Which to yourself was hidden, 

Use your fingers,

To enable once more, 

Ramrajya: the rule of the just! 

In the train from Bangalore to Coimbatore, I am reading this "in train"  magazine placed on the rack near the seat.

The Railways are learning! The articles are typical photo heavy shallow stuff, and they are liberally peppered with words like biodiversity, sustainability, responsible tourism, carbon neutral, etc. 

Meanwhile, vendors keep passing selling chai, samosa, chikki , etc.

India is always a great study in bridging contrasts and blending diverse things into one sensory heavy experience. 

I am now waiting for sustainability and ecological responsibility brochures next time I pass through Dharavi. We are beating the goras at their own game...

Ruminations on food

Don't count calories. It's a waste of time. 

Don't look at nutrition labels on food packages. It's a waste of time. 

Salt being bad for health is a myth. Just have the right kind of salt, which is raw sea salt or rock salt, and forget worrying about salt. 

Saturated fat being bad for you is a myth. Have ghee. And butter. Eat ghee. Drink it. Cook in ghee. The entire "science" of cholesterol is complete nonsense.

Avoid white sugar. Take it as close to zero as possible. You can use gud or other traditional sugars. There are dozens of varieties in India. 

Statins or blood thinners do no good. They only cause harm. Irrespective of what your doctor is telling you, throw your statins into the dustbin. 

Have honey. And sugar cane juice. Even if you are diabetic. 

If you have allergy problems, or auto immune disorders, or anything that refuses to go away, try dropping  milk and wheat from your diet. There is a good chance that your problems will disappear.

Avoid foods which have preservatives and chemicals added in them. 

Trace all foods to the source, as far as possible. Where grown, if fertilisers and pesticides used, when harvested, etc. for processed foods, what process, how processed, what additives, what preservatives. Once you attempt to do this , you will never eat any food that is processed. Or, even if you do, you will stop telling people not to smoke. Processed food is more unhealthy than smoking.

Biscuits are processed food. So are store bought attas/ flour. Cool drinks are not food. Pasteurised homogenised milk is processed food. Etc etc. the list is long. They are all poisons.

A long list of don'ts is difficult to remember. You can replace it with a short list of do's. Which is: 

Buy only what grows. 

Buy only cold pressed oils, non white sugars namely guds, raw unprocessed salt. And A2 milk. 

Reduce grains in the diet to the extent possible. 

Eat light at night. 

Eat only while hungry. 

Eat only while in a good frame of mind. 

Practice mindfulness while eating.

Cook food yourself. And eat it fresh. Any cooked food that enters the fridge is not fresh. 

Eat only half stomach. 

Fast once in a while. 

You want to still summarise it further, then it will help think of it as follows. 

Consider your food as prasad, an offering to the Gods. 

What precautions will you take if you are cooking for your God? 

That's it. That one thought puts the whole thing in perspective, and the right actions follow. 

A lot of progress in a lot of areas in life depends not on rushing forward, but  on going back, peeling the layers, and simplifying. 

Go back to the basics. Go back to your elemental nature. Reject all that is not pure. 

It sounds simple, and it is. But it is far from easy.

Ah! Gold!

Retail gold sales are shooting up. See this link: 

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/pamp-it-costco-selling-200-million-gold-bars-month-wells-fargo-says

Sensible. Everyone needs gold in their portfolio. 

1) Gold is the one asset that  is the ultimate backup. In case of a dystopian end of the world situation, only two things will  help, gold, and guns.  

2) We are talking physical gold of course. 24 carat .999 purity, real, solid, gold biscuits. 

3) Gold has a negative correlation to other asset classes,  and is good from the diversification perspective. 

4) It is a hedge against the depreciation of local currency against the dollar.

5) There is a limited supply of it and it cannot be made in the lab.

6) It is easy to store, hide and carry. One hundred grams gold is the size of a small glucose biscuit, and the value is Rs. 7 lakhs.

7) Physical gold is outside Big Brother's radar. The additional bonus is that it is highly tax efficient.

8) Gold in ETF form, or as SGB's, tick some of the boxes, but don't tick all. Physical gold reigns supreme. 

9) I would suggest keeping 15 to 20 percent of your portfolio in gold. 

10) You will now ask, when is the right time to buy? The right time to buy is always now.

11) The right time to sell is never, or when you need the money. 

12) Physical gold is also hugely satisfying. Try holding a gold biscuit in your hand, you will feel a tingle run down your spine. That is a message from the Universe that you need to own gold for your well being and happiness.

Bill Gates admits that covid was just a flu

See the link : 

https://x.com/wideawake_media/status/1775915959124918699?t=0gthRleF8l30DvxuNr0iZw&s=08

Pharma lobby and deep state are colluding. This pandemic was planned long back. The objective is to destroy people's confidence, mind control, and extending state control over the population. 

People are idiots. 

Doctors and scientists are greedy, and are idiots.  They are either colluding with the lobby or have been completely fooled. Considering that I l, as a layman , could see all this *before* the vaccine was even launched, the doctors and scientists are in short, evil greedy bastards. 

People are wired to panic under certain circumstances. They have been conditioned to listen to authority figures. Throughout history, authority figures have been bought and people have been made complete ch,*"*'*s of. 

Does this mean we have learnt our lessons? No. 

This will repeat. Next time the virus will be a little more deadly. But , as always, the consequences of taking the vaccine will be deadlier.

It does not require any intelligence, nor even application of logic beyond common sense level to see that social distancing and wearing of masks (a) do not  help in the least and (b) are severely harmful. But people will refuse to see that. 

As to why the deep state is doing this, there are several possible reasons, and all of them get into the realm of conspiracy theories.

Listener Beware

The pressure of being an academician is to keep publishing "insightful" papers. 

The pressure of being labelled an intellectual is up keep coming up with intelligent hypotheses, observations , and conclusions. 

Finally, you reach a stage when you have nothing intelligent to say, but the eco system around you expects you to say intelligent things.

Which is when you start spouting intellectual nonsense. There is an entire ecosystem waiting to lap it up, amplify your sayings and disseminate your wisdom. They will of course do all that since their salaries depend on it. 

The only defence against this can be exercised at the consumer's end. You need to have a very strong bullshit detector and not waste time on pseudo intellectual stuff that adds no value to you. 

That caveat applies to all kinds of "experts" in all kinds of fields. 

Listener / Reader/ Consumer beware!

1000 WAYS TO GET SICK, ONE WAY TO STAY HEALTHY

The spread of Diabetes, what is the reason? It all boils down to nutrition and lack of vital minerals in the body. 

Ah well. There are 1000 different ways that the body can get sick, and diabetes is just one of them. The medical industry focuses on the 1000 different ways in which you are sick since that is how they make their money. 

In your case, all you need to do is to focus on the one way which will keep you well, and ignore the 1000 sicknesses entirely. 

And what is that one way? 

Eat food. Yes food. Not processed mash made in factories where the manufacturing process strips out the minerals from the food. 

Eat food, yes food,  not from chain restaurants with a "supply chain", which could not care less about your nutrition, they care only about their profit. 

Eat food, yes food,  not from cloud kitchens, which are anonymous cost cutting mass producing factories.

Eat food, yes food,  made from good ingredients, not from "refined" oil, "manufactured" salt, "analogue" cheese substitutes or white sugar.

Eat food, yes food, which has not been doused in pesticides. 

Eat food, yes food,  which you can trace to the source. So that you know who grows it, and how. And you buy what grows. And cook it. At home. And eat it when it is still fresh. 

Yes, it is that simple. You want to be healthy? 

Eat food.

THE MODERN STOCK PICKER

The latest missive from the Old Man of Nebraska talks about how the stock markets are becoming more and more like a casino.

Link: 

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-says-stock-market-212445057.html

Old Man, as always, is right. It pays to listen to Old Man Buffett. 

My thoughts on why this is happening: 

If you apply the logical  DCF methodology to stock picking - pick any Nifty or Sensex stock - you will most likely end up concluding that the stock is overpriced, however optimistic your assumptions. 

At the core, investment is all about buying assets at lower than their "intrinsic" value. 

Intrinsic value is the discounted value of expected future cash flows, discounted at a rate appropriate to the risk profile of the particular stock. On which value you give a margin of safety. That, in summary, is the Benjamin Graham approach. Benjamin Graham was Buffet's professor and teacher. 

Buffett and Munger added their own insights on what a "good company" looks like. Just a few parameters, which all investment gurus will agree to, are: 

 1. Adequate "moats " like brand strength, pricing power, independence from regulatory interference, patent protections, distribution strength... A moat is anything that enables the company to sustain its competitive advantage for the foreseeable future. 

2. Pricing power

3. A business that is not easily comoditisable or capable of being swamped by "china imports" 

4. Growth prospects of the industry in which the company operates. For example, with the rise of disintermediation and alternate financing options, pure play credit card companies may not be a good bet today 

5. Management with long term vision

6. Good ROE and ROCE

7. Low Capex needs

8. High replication possibility at close to zero cost 

9. Consistent sales and profit growth 

10.  Something in the DNA that will make the Company  extract a greater premium from its customers over a sustained period of time 

Etc etc 

But are the markets purely driven by fundamentals? The logical fundamental investor certainly hopes so, but that is less and less the case.

As more and more people enter the market, and as stock trading becomes easier than buying groceries with 15 minute deliveries, the market, to use the term introduced I think by Soros, becomes more and more "reflexive", finally adhering to the financial equivalent of the definition of a Socialite, a person who is famous because she is famous. The stock price goes up because it is going up and everyone expects it to go up, and the reverse on the way down.

Whatever the trendline may be, prices yo yo wildly around it. Computerised algorithmic trading, now aided by AI and machine learning algorithms, magnify this tendency a hundred fold. 

Add to this cross border money flows searching for cross country arbitrage, and the availability of easy money due to extreme monetary "easing" policies, and it becomes a perfect madhouse.

Sense and logic,  where art thou, cries the fundamental investor, as he looks on with bewilderment. Stock prices seem to have a mind of their own - and they do, it is an independent mind beyond human control driven by algorithms- and all ups and downs are much faster and extremely magnified. 

In such a situation, sticking to fundamentals alone may not be the right strategy. At the very least, for a long only investor, setting a strict stop loss when entering any stock is absolutely mandatory. 

And the old old adage of Buffett, I don't care if I don't see the market for a year, for I have picked fundamentally good stocks, may no longer hold true. If like Buffett, you decide to retire to the metaphorical hills of Omaha, Nebraska, and come down to the plains only once a year to check on your stocks, you are likely to find, like Rip Van Winkle did, that the world has left you behind and moved on in your absence, leaving you with nothing.

Can you catch the trend? 

Can you Intuit the future? 

Can you second guess the crowd? 

All while being dependent on them! 

Can you get in before them,

Can you bale out in time? 

Do you have balls of Steel,

And a heart that is as strong? 

For those are the qualities needed,

In today's crazy world,

To succeed in the markets,

Or for that matter,

In anything at all! 

( Posted to my blog 

https://www.dineshgopalan.com )