The end of De Beers

De Beers is desperate now, diamond prices are going down. But this time they won't be able to retrieve the situation. 

Diamonds have never been a great investment. Their prices have always been "controlled " by De Beers, the largest owner of diamond mines in the world. Over the years, they started facing increasing challenges from other players, along with undercutting. 

The whole idea of procuring  a "diamond ring" for getting engaged, is a creation of the De Beers marketing department, just like buying gold on Akshaya Tritiya is a myth, if not created, fostered by the Indian Gold Council. 

Diamonds are highly subjective in their pricing, involving the 4 C's of Color, Cut, Clarity, and Carat. This makes them unreliable as an investment. Further, the trade margins are too high. 

Indians being smart have never been too enamored of diamonds, with the exception of Sindhis and traditional Tambrahm maamis. In general, the sensible Indians prefer gold. 

"Diamonds are forever" goes the tag line, I suspect created by the De Beers Marketing department. But then, every stone is "forever", that hardly makes it a good investment does it. The gravel under my driveway I am sure is a few thousand years old. 

In the last couple of decades a new problem emerged for the diamond industry. Artificial lab manufactured diamonds  became better and better, and now they are so good as to be  indistinguishable from the original. Even experts can't tell the difference without detailed lab analysis. 

I believe the prices are still artificially propped up by the diamond lobby, and they are all set to go through the floor any time. 

If you had diamonds, you should have sold them ten years back, this development is not sudden and was known to everyone. If you still have them, sell them right away, and buy gold. 

But, these are my great grandmother's earrings, my granddad bought them for her in Sindh, you say. Well, this is an investment discussion and those are irrelevant considerations. 

But they look good on me, you say. Sure, the lab stuff will look equally good. And you don't need diamonds, you are already so beautiful / ugly (depending on who I am talking to) that nothing will make a difference! 

And yes, if you need De Beers to teach you how to express your love, I have nothing to say!

Pot Belly, the New Normal

Obesity, pot belly... The new Indian normal 

See this article: 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czjnd4rzmglo

QUOTE from the article 

Scientists still don't fully understand the biological reasons behind the fat distribution patterns. Though numerous genetic studies have been conducted, no single gene has consistently explained this tendency.

UNQUOTE 

"Scientists" are wasting their time. The way to maintain  good health, the root causes, are always the same. In  order of importance: 

Good sleep, 

Good diet,

Enough Movement,

Good thoughts, 

In short, good lifestyle. 

"Scientists" will not go in that direction. They will invent "anti obesity" drugs, like NLP 1s, which are the current craze, and starting with people like Bill Gates ( who said recently, changing lifestyle is difficult, drugs are the panacea for obesity) will go around promoting them. 

Meanwhile, as more and more people becomes obese and pot bellied, they will not want to be called obese and potbellied. That, my dear, is "body shaming". So, I, who am not obese and am flat bellied, will be ashamed of myself, meri tummy uski tummy se flat kaise?. There will be seminars on diversity and inclusivity for OP people ( obese potbellied). LGBTQOP+ will be the new mantra. 

When a majority of the people are aberrant, in whatever sense, society will find a way to normalise the aberration, and make those who are not aberrant, feel guilty. 

Meanwhile, rather than eating well, sleeping well, moving the body, and stilling the mind, society will promote a new religion that does exactly the opposite. 

And anyone who does not join the new religion will be banished by cancellation, ostracised... Most people can't stand to be banished so they will rush to get a pot belly and then join support groups of the pot bellied which will help them revel in their own victimhood and feel virtuous about it!

Prepare for the next Pandemic!

This is the reality of the new sci-fi world we are entering into. 

( See news item below) 

I keep saying that Covid was only a trailer. In fact it didn't start with covid, it started with SARS in 2010. 

Engineer a virus, 

Engineer a pandemic,

Engineer its spread,

Create a panic,

In a population primed,

With fear instilled deep inside, 

Covered in gory masks,

Peeking with fearful eyes;

Lining up for the jab,

Which makes them weaker still, 

Panicked and jabbed till they turn, 

Dumb scared infertile! 

Exploit man's innate fears,

Of demons in the dark;

The amygdala takes over, 

Survival is paramount;

Use that fear to drive out,

All independent thought; 

Control their minds and slaves,

Will willingly submit to the Masters! 

Agency and choice are key,

To defining us as human; 

The masters of the world, 

Are turning us into zombies;

Where we think as one act as one,

A vast untinking herd, 

Welcome to this the future, 

The brave new world!

__----------+----____----------_____

News item: 

*WHO conducts a 2-day pandemic simulation called 'Exercise Polaris' – bringing together 350 predatory health groups worldwide* 

 *A new global control apparatus is trying to take shape* 

In a world still reeling from the aftermath of the COVID-19 scandal and a barrage of unlawful mandates, the World Health Organization (WHO) has once again taken center stage with a two-day pandemic simulation, Exercise Polaris. *This latest drill, involving over 15 countries and 20 regional health agencies, has reignited debates about the true intentions behind such exercises.* Health freedom advocates point out that these simulations are not merely about preparedness but are part of a broader agenda to exert control over global health narratives and policies. *The same planning took place in 2019, right before the release of COVID-19.* 

Exercise Polaris, held last week, was designed to test the WHO's Global Health Emergency Corps (GHEC), a framework aimed at strengthening countries' emergency workforce, coordinating the deployment of surge teams and experts, and enhancing collaboration between nations. According to the WHO, the exercise involved more than 350 health emergency groups connected worldwide, *simulating an outbreak of a fictional virus that spread across the globe.* 

Participating countries included Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ethiopia, Germany, Iraq, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Mozambique, Nepal, Pakistan, Qatar, Somalia, Uganda, and Ukraine. Participating regional and international health agencies included the Africa CDC, European CDC, IFRC, IOM, UNICEF, the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, the Emergency Medical Teams initiative, Stand-by partners, and the International Association of National Public Health Institutes.

https://www.newstarget.com/2025-04-09-who-conducts-2day-pandemic-simulation-exercise-polaris.html

Talking about Gold

Gold is in the news nowadays. I thought it's a good time to dredge up this series of articles on Gold that I posted in my blog at the end of 2010. 

https://www.dineshgopalan.com/2010/10/

https://www.dineshgopalan.com/2010/11/fwd-talking-about-gold-and-silver-part.html

https://www.dineshgopalan.com/2010/12/talking-about-gold-and-silver-part-3.html

In the last fifteen years since I wrote that, Nifty is up about 3.5 times and gold is up about 5 times. 

Nothing much has changed in terms of the premises on which I was recommending gold then. I would still recommend gold as part of your portfolio, except that I would change the  recommended  allocation, from 10 to  15 percent of your total investment portfolio earlier, to one third of your non-real estate investment portfolio. 

As to silver, well, I think I am changing my mind on that. When you have gold in your portfolio, why do you need silver? It is  more volatile without necessarily having more potential for upside. It is both a precious metal and a commodity, and both the precious metal market dynamics and commodity market dynamics have an influence on silver. Also, it seems to be going nowhere and no one really is talking about it, it's like some poor neglected cousin of a rich family! 

I am getting more and more inclined to look at only gold and not silver.

"But, gold has gone up so much, it is at a high, should I invest now?", will be the natural question that arises. 

There is no such thing as too high, too low, the exactly right time, or timing the market. Just do it! 

In the midst of a stock market boom, everyone wants to pile on to stocks. In the midst of gloom and doom everyone wants to sell. There is a humongous amount of time spent  discussing stocks, worrying about stocks, exhilarating over stocks and wailing over stocks. If you invest in gold instead, all that wasted energy can be used elsewhere! In the last fifteen years, gold has significantly outperformed stocks. 

Will the same be the case in the next fifteen years? No one knows, least of all the talking heads on TV who you waste time listening to, along with wasting time watching IPL matches. You can save all that time for watching more wasteful IPL matches if you don't invest in stocks and put your money in gold instead! 

But yes, coming back to your investment strategy, the best long term investment strategy is to be diversified across the four Asset Classes of gold, real estate, equity and debt. And stop worrying about the outcome, karmanye vaadhikaaraste and all that, you can only do your duty and leave the rest in the hands of God. 

So stop suffering from FOMO since you don't have any gold in your portfolio. And start investing in gold also. 

But, you say, it has already gone up so much, what will happen... 

I know, I know. Life is incredibly complex, what to do... 

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

The Healthcare "System"

Healthcare has become a "system", requiring huge investments, driven by profits and obsessed with metrics which are used to drive the doctors to perform. 

The focus is on the Doctors' careers, money, and return on capital. 

The doctors are armed with knowledge gained from a highly corrupt scientific establishment which is driven by evil Pharma companies with motives that do not align with the health of the patient who lies at the end of the value chain, helpless in his hospital bed, with the tentacles of every stakeholder in the system embedded into him, sucking his blood. 

Neither the patient nor the doctors have any power in the giant blood sucking machine called the medical establishment. They interact with each other in a role play that could be a tragi comical charade, except that it is for real. 

The way to deal with the system is for us the patients to reclaim the power to decide for ourselves what is good for us, but for that we need to be well informed and have courage of conviction, which is very difficult when you are attached to the system in so many different ways. 

You cannot expect your doctor to give you good advice for they know very little about what constitutes good health, and are, with or without their knowledge, driven by incentives that have nothing to do with the patients' health or wellness. 

You certainly cannot expect your hospital to care about your well being. 

There is nothing surprising about what the doctor is outlining in his book, but the establishment is acting surprised. The establishment has to do that, what choice does it have? Those who know about its evils and profit from them, have to pretend that they never knew and they are cursing the bloody doctor who wrote the book. Those who didn't know about the evils of the system and are truly surprised are the naive trusting aam janta, who don't have a choice. They have to trust the system since it exists for their benefit, right? 

Right. The medical system, education system, civic amenities system, food system, government system, everything exists for their benefit. 

Right, sure, of course!

Meanwhile, I have some rules that I follow to deal with this evil machine called the medical establishment. 

Never go for "preventive" medical checkups. Never, ever, go for preventive medical checkups. 

If you are walking on the road and passing a hospital, cross to the other side so that even the shadow of the hospital does not fall on you. 

Just because you are insured does not mean you go in for treatment. Remember, the more you get into the system, and the more you spend, the more you get fucked. 

Retain the right to decide which medicine to take, and which to avoid. Remember, the doctor is merely a consultant, you are paying him for his services, and you have the right to decide which part of his advice to follow. In the rare occasion that I happen to visit a doctor, I am fully attired in an armour of scepticism, it has helped me immensely. 

Never ever get trapped into taking life long medication for any illness. The moment that happens, you are doomed. 

There are a thousand illnesses with several  thousand symptoms with millions of drug combinations. It's all very confusing. 

But the rules for good health are very few. Very very few. Focus on health and not on illness, and you will never go wrong.

Why do you need to study Maths?

Why do you need to study Maths? Random thoughts on a Thursday morning... 

Calculators can do all that stuff... True, AI can do more advanced stuff too. We actually don't need to learn anything in the brave new world.

Meanwhile, there is something called "reasoning" which distinguishes man from other animals. Maths is the language of reasoning, of helping you think more clearly. 

We need "tools" for systematising our thought process. Maths offers us those tools and helps us think far beyond what mere conventional language would limit us to. 

Maths insists on precision. Most people nowadays get by with wishy washy thinking, and language consisting of word salads. A person trained in Maths is incapable of talking like a Kamala maami of US election fame or like pappu the redoubtable scion!

Maths expresses grand ideas in elegant form. In that sense, it is like music. Losing oneself in a maths problem is the same feeling as getting carried away by a sublime piece of music! 

Like music or karate, Maths involves dedication and discipline to learn; has graded levels for judging incremental progress; and there is no end to the learning. Maths is a combination of science and art - it is all science  in its formation, but it is like art in its application. 

Maths is at the same time: grandeur and brevity; precision and breadth; logic and beauty. 

Maths is a language but it is unlike a normal natural language. Like any language, it helps in communication, expression  and expansion of  ideas. 

The difference between a literate and illiterate person? It's not IQ, I know servant maids who are smarter than many of us. It's not wisdom, most less educated  rural folk  are wiser than many of the educated folks we see around; it is basically the ability to structure thought logically, and form "chunks" of knowledge to build upon. Knowledge of maths helps considerably in doing that. 

We are not talking "advanced" maths here, we are talking of basic school level stuff. 

Whatever the advancements in technology, maths will still be relevant. 

And yes, it requires a bit of hard work. Which is good. 

Whatever happens, don't let your kid drop maths as a subject at least till tenth standard. 

The proverbial three Rs, Reading, Writing, and 'Rithmetic, are still the basic skills every person needs to learn to call themselves educated!

The MBA is dead

The MBA is no longer so great an option. About a quarter of the class of elite MBA colleges in the US have not found placements in the last couple of years. 

Actually, MBA stopped being a great option quite a while ago. Let's look at it from the point of view of (a) placement, and (b) skills. 

When it comes to placement, the conventional wisdom is that recruiting from a better college will guarantee you a better outcome. That was always a lazy person's option, what prevented the companies from casting the net wider? But that involves two things. (1) Doing a lot of work identifying the right candidates. Since when have you seen any HR person who does real work? I have yet to see one. (2) It's a risk. If you recruit from IIT or IIM, no one will blame you. Which person in corporate wants to take risk? In my experience, no one. Only entrepreneurs take risks. 

Many parallel developments are combining to make the MBA obsolete. Especially the full time ones. Some of these factors do not apply to part time MBAs which may still retain some value. 

1. Just like the Civil Services Babu was a go between, from British times,  between the masters and the larger population, the MBA served as a buffer between the capitalist class and the other educated labour. With democratisation of information, free access to resources, internet, mobile, etc., all kinds of dalals or in betweens are losing out. 

2. What skills does the MBA bring to the table? Nothing that the same person in the same position without the MBA degree could not have done. 

3. Demand for all "general" skills will die out. I still need the barber for my haircut, but why do I need an MBA? Just think, if you are an entrepreneur, why would you want to recruit an MBA? Cobbler, barber, cook, driver - I understand what skill they have, that they have trained for. What skill does an MBA have? The MBA course in any college is an artificially assembled hodge podge of impressive looking curricula, after all the colleges have to survive. They never taught anyone much. 

The MBA never had a right to exist. I mean, what exactly is "management" and how do you "teach" it? It's just babudom in a different guise, and in the new world, all kinds of babudom are under threat. 

Forget MBA. If you are a youngster thinking about what to do in life, think about this. The gourmet cook is always sought after. The world values her skills and she actually does something useful. What skill do you bring to the table, and in what way can you add value?

Stuck in escapism

The modern world has accustomed us to the idea that we keep needing to make money.  Make money to do what? To do things that will make us happy, things that don't involve work!

Now this puts us in an unenviable trap. While working, we are all the time fantasizing about our time off. We don't enjoy the work as a consequence. While taking our time off, we want to "maximise" that limited window, so we try to pack more and more things in it, go to better and better "destinations", and have better and better insta pictures in order to make our friends more and more envious. 

Our friends when they look at our insta pictures of our road trip in our newly acquired Tesla, are not thinking about us - they are thinking about themselves in that situation and having FOMO. The time we don't spend on actually doing something is the time spent on FOMO. 

So we are all the time doing something that we want to escape out of, that thing called work, in order to earn money to do high octane things to impress others who don't give a shit but which cost a lot of money, and at the same time envying those who are somewhere else! 

There is something drastically wrong in this whole construct. 

It is both sad and hilarious at the same time. Like most tragedies in life are.

Thoughts on food processing

Raw fruits and vegetables are good, human beings have the ability to digest it. 

Once humans shifted to agriculture, we started making denser foods like grains. Grains were initially used only to feed cattle, and not for human consumption. It entered the human diet only about 6000 years back. Due to population pressure, grains then became a large part of our diet. 

For optimal health, reduce grains in the diet. There is a huge amount of time spent on debating why Ragi or Quinoa is better than rice or wheat. These kinds of debates are needless if you anyway decide to reduce grains in your diet. 

If you anyway  have grains, then remember the following. In case you have a lot of inexplicable health problems or allergies, IBS, etc the first thing to drop from the diet is wheat.  Wheat has undergone so much modification in the last two thousand years that the modern version has become a problem. You can try "emmer wheat / jave godi" , that may work for you. 

Milk is in general not required for the human body. Eliminating milk is a healthy option. However, the vegans have it all wrong. Butter, ghee, curd and buttermilk are good for health, extremely good in fact. The vegans, in avoiding these, are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. 

Naturopathy is generally in favour of raw foods. Ayurveda however typically recommends light cooking. When it comes to cooking, heating in the presence of water or steam is better than dry heat, since the yang of fire is balanced with the yin of water. 

Rava, Poha, Sabudana, noodles, pasta,  are all "processed" foods. They are made from rice or wheat after boiling, heating, dunking, rolling, flattening, etc, processes. In today's parlance, this is not what we refer to when we say "processed" foods. 

The rice that is milled in the rice mill is processed in a manner of speaking. The more the "polish" the less the nutrients that remain. However, this is not a major concern for two reasons. (1) I do not depend on rice for my main nutritional needs, for that I have vegetables, fruits and spices. (2) In any case, rice or any kind of grains are not great for health.

Best not to worry about how much processing the rice has undergone, and try to keep progressively reducing the amount of all grains in your diet.

With all these caveats in place, now remember that processed foods are extremely, extremely bad for health. When we say processed food, a short and sweet definition is: any food that is made in a factory. As to the reasons why processed foods are bad for health, those can fill a book. 

Rather than getting into huge debates on what constitutes "processing", to what extent is processed food ok, which processed foods are ok, or into semantical arguments on the definition of processing, it is best to understand the spirit of what is being said, the broad contours of what foods are good, and to maintain an eighty twenty principle. So long as eighty percent of the food you eat is "good", the body can handle the other twenty percent. 

On second thoughts, make it ninety ten.

On Nutrition Labels on Food

Reading labels on food packages is a useless pastime. The food industry has deliberately misled you into looking at the wrong things, irrelevant things. 

It is good to broadly know what are the important nutrients that body needs, and know which foods give you more of those 

It is also good to know what foods are "superfoods", foods that pack a nutrient-dense punch. 

But right now we are talking about why not to read labels, and what to focus on instead. Ok, so here goes. 

Any food that is minimally processed is better compared to highly processed. An example of highly processed is instant coffee powder. Ever thought how the poor innocent coffee seed is converted into that wonder? 

Any food with a wonky name, like Dairy Whitener for milk powder, or Frozen Dessert for Ice Cream, is a definite problem. 

Any food with a very long shelf life is a problem. 

"Added nutrients" are a fraud. 

The bigger the set-up of the company that makes the food, the more of a problem it is. A McD is worse than your local Darshini. 

Refined carbohydrates are bad. White flour is horrible. 

Refined oils are bad. 

White sugar is bad. Substitutes for white sugar are worse. 

Reading any amount of labels will not make these facts go away. 

When I started penning this, I thought I could give guidelines on which processed food is better and / or what to look for when it comes to processed foods. 

Unfortunately, as I am thinking this through, the conclusion is again becoming apparent. 

There is no alternative to cooking at home. 

If you can't do that, catch hold of a neighbouring auntie who cooks fresh food every day and let her send you a dabba.

India is full of such aunties. Every lane has one of them. I believe the US is full of them too, New Jersey for example has enough supply of Andhra or Gujju or Tamil aunties doing this. 

It's not practical, my lifestyle does not permit it, you say? 

Well, then face the fact that you are eating junk, and give up the pretence that reading labels will improve the situation in any way! 

Belief

Every age has its beliefs, and belief by its very definition, excludes rational analysis. 

People believe that a dip in the Ganga will wash them of their sins. A dip in the Ganga where it meets Yamuna and Saraswathi will do the same thing, except perhaps more potently. A dip at the Triveni Sangam in Prayagraj when the stars are favourably aligned, which happens once in twelve years, is even more potent, the best of the best. 

That is a belief that has carried forward since ancient times, and it is in our DNA. We saw the result of that in the Kumbh. No rational analysis is possible here, so let us just assume that India is about the most sinless place right now, since so much sin has been washed away. It won't help, because people will take that as an opportunity to commit fresh and newer sins; after all there needs to be enough to wash by the time the next Kumbh arrives in twelve years! 

Meanwhile, statistics say that fifty crore people visited the Kumbh in the last forty five days. 

Now that is a big number. It is forty percent of the population of India. 

I know many people who visited the Kumbh, it is by far the biggest event in terms of people I know attending it, yet, and here I have to pause... Have four out of ten people I know visited the Kumbh? The ten people here includes children, senior citizens, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, everyone in the population. 

Seems a bit of a stretch. 

Ok, start applying the caveats. First one is that people who go to take the dip twice in their visit are counted twice. I don't know what the other caveats are, I am sure there are some. And then tell me the adjusted number in terms of number of visitors counted only once. 

The Kumbh that is just  concluding is by far the biggest, best organised, most inspiring gathering in human history. Of that, there is no doubt. 

But the way people bandy about that statistic of 30 crore, 40 crore, and now 50 crore, is amazing. They just accept that number, there is no attempt to grasp it, understand the magnitude, critically examine it, parse it, or question that number in any way. 

Personally, I would be equally impressed if the number was 10 crore or 50. The scale still is awesome. 

But I am amazed at the capacity of humans to believe anything without questioning.

That is what I call Belief.

The dilemma of gold

The government introduced the Sovereign Gold Bond ( SGB) scheme in order to save foreign exchange that was being spent  on gold imports. 

India has historically been the largest importer and consumer of gold. Indian people are smart, they always held their wealth in the form of gold. 

Since India does not manufacture any gold, all of it has to be imported. In times past we paid for it with pepper, and other valuable things for which India was famous. Nowadays, we have to pay for it with precious foreign exchange. 

So the government said, give us your money, and we will give you a certificate for an equivalent amount of gold in grams, that you can redeem eight years later for the prevailing gold price at that point in time. We will make it tax free on redemption they said. But the public didn't bite, so they said we will give you an additional 2.5 percent interest per annum. They called it SGBs. 

They kept coming up with issue after issue and the public bought the SGBs. Everything looked good for a while, till gold prices suddenly started shooting up. 

Madam Nirmala cannot  harangue gold into submission, like she tries to do with all those who trouble her. Both Parakala and gold are outside her control, though she may terrorise the rest of the world.

It is not just that gold prices are outside her control, it is also that there is no certainty about future prices. So the government  stopped issuing SGBs a few months back. Word is out that they may even offer a premature redemption window. I wouldn't be surprised if this is accompanied by an unsaid threat that the capital exemption on redemption may be taken away soon. 

In any case, the best way to hold gold is away from greedy eyes, and governments are always most greedy and untrustworthy. 

Expect a spate of articles in the financial press running down gold and saying how those who buy gold are unpatriotic, anti development, anti poor and in general enemies of civilised society. 

When that happens it is time to buy more. Physical gold, mind it!

Gold!

Gold is the only real asset there is. All governments are scared of gold, because it takes power away from them and puts it in the hands of the holder. 

Governments can play around with fiat money. They can print more of it as they please, devalue it, or manufacture inflation. Inflation is nothing but a hidden tax that we all pay to redistribute wealth to the haves from the have nots. 

All commodities are good as investments, but gold is the ultimate commodity out there. 

It is a store of value. The gold that your great great seven times removed great  grandmother bought still exists, undiminished, undestroyed. Where is the currency note that existed five hundred years back? 

It is a medium of exchange. In fact it is the best medium of exchange there is. Everyone accepts gold, from the most primitive tribe in the jungle to the highest echelons of Wall Street. 

It is indestructible. Even if your house is destroyed by fire, when you go back to retrieve what is left from the debris, the gold will be intact. 

It packs in very high value in a very low volume. A one kg gold bar which costs almost one crore today ( 90 lakhs to be precise) can fit into your pocket and you won't even notice it. 

It is easily transportable, hideable, and handlable. 

In times of war, the currency becomes worthless, the stock markets shut and your stocks are, I was about to say not even worth the paper they are printed on, but nowadays there is no paper certificate also! The only thing you can carry with you when you run is gold. 

It has never been known to erode in value. It may not give you astronomical returns but it will keep you inflation hedged. 

Gold is also a good hedge against rupee depreciation, since the prices are internationally the same. 

It is time to look at increasing the gold allocation in your portfolio. I would suggest, keeping real estate aside ( that's lumpy), one third each in gold, debt and equity. 

What form to hold gold in? Physical is best. In the form of 24 carat gold biscuits. Having said that, any other form is fine, so long as your government is stable and the markets are holding up. The moment there are signs of great uncertainty in the macro environment, it would be wise to shift etf and other non physical holdings into physical gold. 

But the prices have already gone up, etc etc? That doesn't matter, trying to predict future trends is at best an interesting intellectual pastime, ignore all that. Any time is a good time to buy. 

Having said all that, time to look at silver also, in the immediate future. The silver: gold price ratio is at an all time low. The allocation to silver can be from the same bucket that you have set aside for gold.

REVIEW OF CHHAAVA

Saw the movie Chhava yesterday. It is loosely based on the story of Sambhaji, son of Shivaji, battling Aurangzeb and finally becoming a martyr. I say loosely based, because the narrative is heavily dramatised and fictionalised, and, in any case, there is nothing about the film that is tight. 

The story is simple enough. Shivaji dies. Sambhaji his son, Chhava "the lion cub" played by Vicky Kaushal,  takes over. He sacks Burhanpur, a city that is Aurangzeb's pride and joy. Aurangzeb, played by Akshaye Khanna,  goes berserk. Mobilizes his entire army and marches to the Deccan. After many years, Sambhaji is finally captured by Aurangzeb, thanks to the treachery of two of his key commanders, tortured gruesomely ( this part is historically true) and killed. 

That's a good enough story for a good Director to get going and make a decent movie. 

But then, our Director, Lakshman Utankar, is not one of your ordinary directors. He seems to be from the school of Tamil serials. The first half is full of characters assembled in a room mouthing dialogues, and after each dialogue, each character's face is shown in turn. You know how it is in those Tamil serials, it's the same  here. And the dialogues, oh they are cheesier and more banal than the characters assembled in a room. A kid writing dialogues for a school play would do a better job. 

And you would think that A R Rehman as music director, would salvage something from this mess. I think A R Rehman has surpassed himself in this movie. It is not easy for anyone, I repeat anyone, to produce such a bad output. What the director set out to do with his dialogues and close ups of hamming characters, A R Rehman resolutely completes. He is determined to make sure that you the viewer, who are already cringing, positively gets embarrassed and ashamed at the shoddiness of the whole thing. 

In short, it's a cringe fest. All the way. 

Vicky Kaushal, the hero, has been asked by the director to throw out his chest and walk like a lion. Ask your eight year old son to do that, and roar like a lion. Well, you get the idea. Vicky does that throughout the movie and mistakes it for acting. 

Akshaye as Aurangzeb is the only saving grace of the entire movie. Subdued, kind of meditative even, he gives a good performance. Maybe the director didn't direct him and just let him be. 

And the director has fights of fancy. Oh he and his flights of fancy! Every now and then, The hero will go back and relive a childhood memory, talking to his mom and dad, in a kind of floating dream sequence. More cringe. 

And the director really thinks his screenplay is so good that he inserts long stretches where the dialogue is the chief character and stretched, and stretched... Utankar thinks he is divinely inspired during these scenes and the viewer will be blown out of his mind. Well I was definitely blown out of my mind. Whatever was left of my mind finally exploded. 

Any good thing to say about the movie? 

Well, it is so bad that is good! 

So yes, go watch it, to see how completely cheesy and cringey a movie can get.

We Indians are lucky when it comes to food

We Indians are lucky in many ways, but we don't realise it. 

Ganne ka Ras, Sugarcane juice, is the healthiest drink you can have, including for diabetics, and we have it at every street corner. But we will still pay more for a cool drink which is nothing but aspartame and  colours mixed with carbon dioxide, a deadly concoction if you think about it. My friend while staying in California, used to drive 88 miles each way to have fresh ganne ka ras, but being a crazy Indian, he would still do it twice a month. 

In India, as you are driving, you can stop the car and buy boiled peanuts. NRI's can't do this, since anyone who has breathed the air of USA even for a few months is very likely allergic to peanuts. 

We get healthy "plate meals" at less than hundred rupees. But we will still prefer the Mc Burger or pizza or Subway sandwich, all of them extremely harmful to health, at five times the cost.

We have very healthy breakfast options, and they are as varied as there are regions in this country. But we will eat Kellogg's with orange juice, both of which qualify as the junkiest of junk foods, and be happy to be privileged enough to pay much more for them. 

I roamed around London for a week, and believe me you, it is not possible to get freshly cooked food anywhere. The Brits' idea of fresh food is quaint, most beggars in India will refuse to accept those foods as fresh. 

Travelling in the north east by road, all we had to do was stop at a random place and order food. Fresh, tasty, and hot, all for less than hundred rupees ( in most cases less than fifty) a meal. Ditto of course is true for anywhere in the country. 

Our chaats are actually very healthy if you think about it. And so is most of our street food. A little bit of a premium place to ensure that the guy doesn't use margarine instead of Amul, and avoid the ice - but you will learn those tricks soon enough. 

We Indians just don't realise how lucky we are when it comes to food. And for us, those who are reading this, considering that clothing and shelter are already taken care of, of the three basic necessities, food is the only thing left isn't it?

Rules for good health

Isn't it obvious? 

Eat unprocessed or minimally processed foods that are nutrient dense. 

Eat lots of vegetables and fruits

Eat whole grains, but keep reducing the proportion of grains in your diet, grains are not really good for you

Eat lots of butter and ghee

Milk and milk products are not good for you, but butter and ghee are the exception. 

Have oils in moderation, but only cold pressed oils 

Have natural sea salt or rock salt, not manufactured salt, that whole thing about added iodene in salt being essential is a big scam 

Reduce white sugar to close to zero. Have gud ( organic) or other kinds of locally produced sugars, but in moderation 

Avoid all processed foods - say that 100 times, repeat that every day in your prayers. Any food made in a factory is processed food

Let your diet be mainly plant based and whole foods based. Organic is preferable. 

If you eat meat, limit its consumption. And remember, meat cuts that you pick up in the supermarket which have long shelf life are deadly carcinogens. Buy freshly killed free range / grass fed / equivalent meat only. 

Have fermented foods in your diet. Curd, pickles, kimchi, dosa, idli, are all fermented foods. Every culture and cuisine traditionally has its own variety of fermented foods. 

Buy only what grows 

Cook at home or buy from a source that cooks fresh food like your neighbouring auntieji 

Remember that spices are a storehouse of nutrition

Include superfoods in your diet. Some of them are: amla, moringa powder, carrot juice with other veg juices raw and in small quantities, nimbu,  dates, honey only raw unprocessed non-Agmark variety from a trusted source, herbal teas

Have Ayurvedic supplements, some examples are : chyavanprash, dasamoolarishtam, shilajit - each of them comes with a short set of rules on when and how to have. 

Get sunlight, early morning ( upto one and a quarter hours after sunrise, early AM say 11 am, and evening sunlight 

Walk barefoot on natural ground for at least twenty minutes every day 

Avoid shoes, wear chappals 

Keep moving. Stand instead of sit. Sit on the ground instead of on a chair. Keep the energy in the body moving, don't let it stagnate 

Sleep on the floor on a chathai ( mat made of natural material), and if in a cold place with a thin cotton razai on top. Avoid high tech mattresses. 

When it comes to exercise , prioritise flexibility first, followed by cardio ( walking, swimming, etc) and then by weight bearing / strength exercises, like calisthenics. Avoid exercising with gym machines that exercise specific muscles, they are harmful; dumb bells and kettle bells may however be ok 

Avoid taking any health advise from doctors or nutritionists trained in the allopathic school

When you have an acute or life threatening condition, head to the nearest hospital. But for all chronic issues and to regain your health, read all the rules above 

This is just a top of the mind recall - for those who are subject to my daily barrage of posts this will be an n time repeat - but the rules will remain the same, they are age old treditional wisdom combined with common sense. The ad nauseum repetition helps either to revise and revisit, or furthers your resolve not to read any of my posts 

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, or a 'trained" health professional. But I have good gurus, there are many of them out there. Nothing that I am saying here is original or of my own invention.

Slowly, we are losing the ability to cope

 

Times are such that everyone wants to be "safe", and eliminate all risk from their lives. 

There is a fundamental flaw in this kind of approach. Everything that you do has a consequence or reaction, and going to any one extreme will result in unforeseen outcomes. 

Let's take a few examples. 

In any gated community in Bangalore today, there are security systems and apps so that no one enters without prior approval. The place is kept insulated from any outside influence. Things have come to such a pass that people panic if someone rings their doorbell. Children cycle on the podium which is a vehicle free zone, on bicycles with extra wheels so that they don't fall, wearing helmets and knee pads! 

How well adjusted will the children growing up in this environment be, and how will they cope with the outside world tomorrow? Forget children, I see a reluctance among adults staying in these communities to cope with the world outside. Slowly, we are losing the ability to cope. 

Vaccines are taken for every flu, with annual "updates". Now vaccines, like every drug, have side effects. In the case of vaccines, the vaccine itself is a shitload of poisons being dumped directly into your bloodstream. We think this will keep us "safe"! What is actually happening is, we are losing our natural immunity, every vax we take weakens it, and we are reaching a state where we are convinced that a common cold is a deadly illness to run away from. We are weakening by the day, and we are slowly losing the ability to cope. 

Parents get paranoid if their children are missing for ten minutes or step out of the gated enclave. Contrast this with the way we grew up, our parents didn't even know where we were at any time, and there were no phones then. "Oh no," you say, "the world is much more dangerous now... etc etc". Sure. Maybe. I don't know. But I do know this. That world  is the world our children are going to step into. If the animal that has been raised in a zoo is suddenly released into the wild, it goes and gets itself killed. Our children are slowly losing their ability to cope. 

Most parents do not want their children to drive a motorbike, they directly want to graduate them to cars. Reason? Motorbikes are not safe. Sure, I can't dispute that, but can you really insulate yourself and your children from all the risk out there? 

Slowly, we are losing the ability to cope. We are now reaching a stage where even the normal problems of day to day life seem like unsurmountable challenges. We are beset by germs from all sides. Thieves are forever ready to break into our homes.  There is danger in the air! Safety, we need to be conscious of safety! There is danger all around. 

See, I told you, we need to be careful. Vigilant. Forever on guard. Fearful. 

There you go. That state of mind is a self fulfilling prophecy.

How to keep your head in all the chaos

People say all kinds of things, there are divergent viewpoints, you don't know what is right, your head is spinning! 

How to deal with this situation? 

The thing is to ignore what everyone says, and build your own conclusions from ground up. 

Most people do not like to think or reason. They will blindly accept whatever is being fed to them. It actually doesn't matter which side they are on, both sides in any debate are like that. 

Therefore, for most people, what works is, pick the view / book / guru / ideology they are comfortable with, and stick with it. 

Pray five times a day facing a particular direction and heaven is assured! Sure. 

Observe vrat for 40 days, then visit this temple, and heaven is assured! Sure. 

Those who lay down those guidelines for people to follow, hopefully are evolved souls, who understand the second order and third order consequences of their prescriptions. 

When those people who lay down those rules are venal politicians, morally deficient warlords, or big businesses whose only objective is to make money, is when things start turning ugly. 

People being people will still blindly follow what the institutions tell them. Which is why one of the first things the powerful do is to capture the institutions, like Bureaucracy, Judiciary, Media. 

Then they apply the rules that Goebbels turned into an art form for the Nazis. Repeat their lies often and in so many different ways that people start believing it's the truth. 

The individual who is not taken in by this propaganda either because he knows better or because he is immune to hypnosis, watches bewildered as the world around him goes mad. When he dares to point it out, and most will not dare, he is in danger of getting lynched. Because people don't like anyone who tries to shatter a shared collective illusion. 

The sane individual is one who, as everyone around him is losing their heads, keeps his composure, and charts his own path. 

The sane individual who is wise does this unobtrusively and quietly. The sane one who is foolish tries to convince others of his point of view. That is not a wise thing to do, no herd likes an outlier if he is too vociferous in his protestations. Outliers are tolerated to an extent so long as they keep their mouth shut.

For the outlier who thinks who knows better, and I find myself in this situation sometimes, a sobering thought is to think of himself as the inmate in the lunatic asylum, who, looking out at the passers by, thinks they are all mad, little realising that he is the one who is in the asylum!

The dangers of Masking

With the HMPV drama, masking is once more a thing. When I call someone I have to hear a full minute of "wear masks, follow social distancing" kind of nonsense before the call goes through. 

Sigh, there we go again! But then, we always knew that Covid was only a trailer. There are more, many more to  come. 

Given this backdrop, it is good to reflect on the following: 

1. Are masks effective in stopping the spread of germs? If they really are, then it would have stopped the flow of air also, and you would be dead by now. 

2. The body has its own immune system to handle viruses, starting with the nasal passage itself. Trust it. 

3. Deep breathing equals health. Shallow breathing equals sickness. ( Read up on it if you don't believe me. Avoid reading any allopathic literature of course, they don't know their nose from their assholes).  Masks make you breathe shallow. Think about it. 

4. The dirty mask is saturated with your own exhaust, and you are breathing IN through that muck. 

5. The microplastics in the masks enter your lungs. 

6. The psychological effect of wearing masks are terrible. 

7. Masking is a psychological tool used by those in power to keep the population in perpetual panic mode. 

8. Those who are working, and especially heading, organisations which have espoused mask policies, will have huge cognitive dissonance in accepting any of this. 

9. Forget science, forget  medicine. What does your common sense tell you?

How a God is turned into a Demon

The Sun is considered as God in every pagan culture. Exposure to sunlight is necessary for good health, Vitamin D being only one of the reasons but a very important one in today's context. Of course, people know all about when and how much exposure to have, wearing turbans / caps, hydrating, cooling drinks, etc. 

Of course, such embedded traditional wisdom is bad for commerce. 

So what do the modern marketers do? 

1. Demonise the sun. Sun exposure causes cancer! Tan! Wrinkles! Skin that looks like parchment! 

2. Embed the fear deep, so that it becomes unquestioned dogma.

3. Put some cheap chemicals in tubes, which is of course bad for the skin ( the skin is a living breathing organ, and you ingest whatever you apply on it) , and convince people that it is good for them. Sun protection is just one example

4. Sell those cheap chemicals at obnoxiously high prices. Do this next time you buy any cosmetic. It is say 300 rupees for a twenty gram tube. That works out to 15,000 rupees a kg. Cold pressed coconut oil which is the best skin remedy in the world costs 450 rupees a kg.

5. Convince people that they need, as in NEED, the chemicals in the tube, in order to live. This thing, convincing people,  modern marketing is highly skilled in doing. As to the ethics of the marketing profession, that is a whole different story for another time. 

6. And then, you reach this stage. Where a "sunscreen" is considered "essential" even when you don't go out in the sun. See the billboards which say so"sunscreen not just for a sunny day, for any day!" 

7. And then people stop going out in the sun, and apply cancer causing chemicals on their skin by the shitloads( pun intended).

We live in an age where all the accumulated wisdom of the ages is being systematically erased. It only takes two or three generations for the process to be complete. 

It is not inconceivable that, fifty or hundred years from now, whoever goes out in the sun is arrested for endangering others since sun exposure can cause infectious diseases, which it will, since people will be so weakened with indoor life and being repeatedly vaccinated,  that they will have to live only in  artificial chambers. 

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

Mumbai

Mumbai is no longer liveable.

I grew up in Mumbai, and though now in Bangalore, I  keep visiting Mumbai frequently. 

The city always lacked green spaces. People always had to commute long distances in conditions that are similar to prisoners being transported in cattle cars during World War 2.

Real Estate has always been expensive. People used to invest their life's savings and pledge fifteen years of future income to buy a pokey little flat in Dombivi ( a suburb fifty km away). Now, people invest their life's savings and pledge fifteen years of future income to buy a pokey little flat on the seventeenth floor of a highrise building that resembles an anthill in an anthill colony. 

People in Mumbai are earning more and more and spend more and more for getting basic necessities. Taxis cost 60 rupees a km. Paan ordered on Swiggy costs 75 rupees each. And so on. 

Traffic on the road does not move, period. 

Metros, monorails, underground trains, overground trains, and all kinds of "flyovers" and "flyunders" are being built for the ants to commute from one anthill to another bypassing the crowded roads clogged with more ants below. 

Whatever three storeyed buildings exist, are being demolished to build multistireyed buildings. On the same plot of land. Setback from the road is almost nil. Open area nil. Lung space nil. 

But why do you need all that? You can be born inside the ant hill, live inside, work inside, commute inside, reproduce inside, and die inside the anthill without ever seeing the sun or being out in the rain. 

The ants are happy living their busy busy lives. A former ant who is now living outside sees, and wonders, why would people want to live like this?