Taxman Cometh

As I write this post, I watch A.R. Rahman win his much-deserved Oscar. Congrats. I first noticed his music in a Doordarshan program called Madras Telugu Academy Presents that used to be telecast on Sundays. He had composed music for the programme's title and credits. It was the first time I had heard a synthesizer and it was mesmerising to say the least. More than the programme, I used to wait for the end credits to roll when the tune used to be played. Seems that I do have a taste for good music after all ;-)

Anyways, its that time of the year again when the taxman will come pay me a visit to take his dues. Which reminds me of the unpleasant fact I worked a little over a third of my time for the him this year. It is painful to see that the very people who are responsible for making sure that this money is used with prudence are themselves misusing the funds. And I also end up paying on behalf of the tax evaders who know a million ways to hide their money from the taxman. I wish there was a little more rationalization while the taxman cast his tax net so that it could be spread wider instead of deeper. Sigh! all that hard-earned money which could have bought me a well-earned vacation or some such well-earned stuff being given away without a question.

Having said that, I don't mind paying my taxes as much. So long as the money is spent for the right purposes. I feel comforted by the fact that I am also paying for the country's defense forces, for its infrastructure and for the countless number of children who can avail free and subsidized education. Taxman, you are welcome. But just make sure that you make good use of my share of dues.

Steamy Memories

Sometime last year, when I was flying with Lufthansa, I came across an article about restored Junkers in Lufthansa's in-flight magazine. Junkers JU 52 were pre-WW-II era aircraft that were used for both civilian and military services. Lufthansa had lovingly restored one of the planes and was even flying them on a special route from Berlin Tempelhof to give its passengers a whiff of the bygone era. Nice.

Now, I am not a big fan of all things old but there are still a few things that make me say, "In the good ol' times we had...." One of them of being the Steam Engines that powered our railways till the electric and diesel versions took over. I can never get over this steam engine fascination of mine. While all the kids (at least I think most of them) in the class were dreaming about becoming pilots, I used to be firmly grounded driving (if you can call it that) trains over a pair of parallel rails. In reality, I was lucky enough to be around these Steam Engines during my holidays. I always liked the way the grimy bandannaed engineers handled these machines and I wanted to badly belong to that elite club. I knew then that I would one day be a Steam Engine driver/engineer (depends on the continent you are on).

All this might sound like a juvenile English assignment (with a very corny title) but I can't express it any other way. Steam Engines were cool. Period. An engineer's ultimate driving machine if you can call it that. To use a clichéd phrase, you needed to get up close and personal with one to believe them. The long black imposing machines spewing steam looked like a beast that'd just come to life and is ready to devour anything in its way. The huge wheels interconnected by coupling rods that moved in tandem, smokestack belting out black smoke and soot and the faraway look of the headlight that gave a feeling that the engine was already planning out its trip to the destination. While all this was happening, in case any dumb soul even managed to venture near its path, the engine's mighty signature high-pitched whistle was a sure warning of the things to come. A display of unadulterated raw power.

As an engineer (or engine driver), you had to stick out your neck out (literally and idiomatically) to peer over the long boiler to see what lay in the engine's path when it moved. The glassless windows meant for viewing were as good as useless. The only view one had through these windows were that of the boiler. The heat inside the engineer's cabin due to the boiler's furnace would be unbearable and one had to work like a slave to keep the engine moving. The driver and his assistant had to constantly haul coal from its coal truck and shovel it into the boiler furnace, so that the steam pressure was maintained just right. One had to use a regulator to control the speed (which depended on the train, the bogies and the distance to be covered). No computer readouts telling you the speed or the steam pressure. No auto pilots. You had to depend on just plain pressure gauges, the sounds - read that as puffing, wheezing, drumming - the engine made and then use your years of experience to interpret these sounds correctly to ensure that the passengers or goods reached the destination safely and on time. No cozy air-conditioned cabins, no joystick type levers, no satellite or two-way radios, no silent whirring of the turbines and definitely no cushioned seats to relax on. A true labor of love. And if you felt (yes, felt) that you were losing traction you had to drop sand through sand pipes every now and then on the tracks to prevent wheelspin. It was a constant rigour of backbreaking work coupled with alertness. But extremely satisfying at the end of the day. A real job for a real man.

I still feel sad that you don't get to see them anymore. Steam Engines have become relics of a bygone era. By the time I was of a legal driving age, the steam engines had run out of steam. For me, it was an end of a career I had dreamed of even before it started. All that massive hardware becoming obsolete and extinct in a way depicts the extinction of the industrial era's dinosaur. But while the steam engines interconnected places and changed our economy, they were commanding beasts indeed. At the cost of repeating myself, one of the few things that make me say, "In the good ol' times we had...."

But all is not lost. Microsoft's Train Simulator (though a poor substitute to the real thing), Railroad Tycoon 3, Sid Meier's Railroads have helped me sustain my fascination, at least virtually. The Murder on the Orient Express and The Flying Scotsman in MTS are real fun episodes and I never get tired of "driving" these special trains. And while these are cool, cooler still is the series "Thomas (the Tank Train) and Friends." I enjoy it as much as the kid next door does. I am sure the producers of the show love steam engines as much as I do. May their tribe increase.

Money for Nothing?

As Olympics 2008 came to an end, so did a lot of things. One of them happened to be the fate of the Bird's Nest Stadium. It definitely cost a bomb - and then some - to build. Now, it is not clear what this spectacular structure is going to be turned into. The stadium has not been used much since the end of the Olympic Games and paint is already peeling in some areas. Was all that money spent for nothing? A point worth debating. But in my opinion, some structures need to be built.

I remember a story about one such monument called Bada Imambara in Lucknow. The story goes that Bada Imambara was built during the 18th century when the kingdom of Avadh faced a big famine. In order to create jobs for the people, the then Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula commissioned a huge project of building a monument that would employ the people stricken by famine. The famine lasted for a decade and so did the construction of the building. Story goes that while the workers carried out the construction during the day, the Nawab employed people to break down the structure during the night in order to ensure that the construction lasted till the end of the drought. If this story is true, then it was a noble act indeed. Maybe such a make-break-make project should be commissioned during these hard times too. History is full of such lessons we need to know about. Unfortunately, we are too busy dealing with our present to look back into time. Perhaps, we should hit the pause button once in a while and rewind a bit to see if there are any such easter eggs we can discover and use them now.

Do Super Strategies Work in Hard Times?

I wouldn't want to add another line to the billions of lines already written by experts about the global slowdown. But what I'm really interested in is how to make a consumer buy any product in such tough times. Of course, many of us will tend to buy only stuff that is really really necessary. But before that, we would first evaluate if that stuff is really really necessary. And think again till we are convinced that it is really really necessary. However, how about products that are really not so necessary or can wait? How can you make people buy such stuff? I am sure that this is a big challenge for marketing professionals and companies. And since companies don't have enough budget to spend on advertising, the challenge gets compounded. So how can you persuade people to buy your products?

I am curious because of the spot of bother the automakers are in. The automakers would like a faster turnaround of their inventories by making people buy their cars. Though changing a car or buying a second car might not be a necessity for us in these tough times, it is necessary for the automakers that we buy their cars. Because, they need to make newer cars, they need to invest in research for newer cars and most of all, they need to keep their employees from losing their jobs. So, will the super strategies of the advertisers and companies that worked in the past work now? At the same time, even if the companies did have a super strategy, how will the companies persuade people to spend money when they don't have any? Looks like a vicious circle that's going to be a bit tough to break. And of course its not just the automakers, there are other companies too. I would love to see if someone's strategy does work in these very hard times. Anyways, its going to be an interesting case study. One of my company's top bosses said that this current global meltdown is once-in-a-century kind of thing to happen. I couldn't agree more and I wouldn't want such a thing to happen even once in a century. And while people try to work their way through this mess, how will a bailout to an automaker help the consumer who ultimately has to buy that car? Who's going to bail him out to buy a car if he doesn't have a job? Go figure.

Non sequitir: Why do chemical companies still blatantly dump toxic affluents in areas where they are not supposed to? Really, its such a pity that we don't do much about this problem. I wish we were a lot less indifferent to such criminal deeds.