Around the recent gastroenteritis scare in Bangalore, NDTV was running a poll:

Then, there was this whole one hour dedicated to hearing viewpoints from Veerappa Moily, Swathi Ramanathan and the general public regarding Bangalore’s infrastructure.

Okay, okay, I know most of you by now are saying “Oh, come on, don’t you have anything else to talk about? You’re so boring”. Maybe I am, but when I shift most of my “outside” chores to the middle of the day just to avoid traffic, and hate going out on Sundays because of long queues for everything, it affects me and I’d like to know if the situation can improve or not.

I liked how Swathi Ramanathan explained that the business people have come together to pitch in their part. The way they’ve analyzed the 15 critical junctions leading to the Bangalore International Airport which should have good roads otherwise traffic will bottle up here and will throw us into further crisis, err okay, I’ll stop here.

It reminded me of the Singapore 1:1 Island Exhibition I visited on Day 12 (Jan 02, 2008) of my Singapore trip.

(To be honest, I was a little hesitant to write about this topic, even though this is my space, my blog. The last time I wrote something, people wrote in to say that I’m not Indian enough because I talked negative about our current situation and asked me to go ‘home’ to Singapore or USA!)

You can see many more photos in my Day 12 photo album.

I absolutely loved their Skyline newsletters where they discuss the upcoming developments. Do check out their last Nov/Dec 2007 edition. I can almost guarantee you that you’ll come away inspired, especially the Design Wonders section.

It’s not so much about Singapore that amazed me, it’s the fact that they have such a vision about the place they want to live in, and the effort that goes into planning of such things, the importance given to design and architecture, and finally ensuring proper execution.

And it is a seemingly open process. Visiting the Urban Redevelopment Authority website shows the first sidebar on the left which says “I need info on Master Plan / Land Use Planning / etc.”

Maybe that’s what we need for cities like Bangalore?

It would help if things were more transparent, instead of the government hiding facts like a part of Lalbagh that would be razed for the metro. Or something like what Stefan Magdalinski did with TheyWorkForYou?

CitizenMatters.in seems to be a step in the right direction, but at the end of the day, it’s just competing with the hyperbolic news channels. I think a more useful idea would be a website with a categorical depth of works happening in the different parts of the cities, the government offices involved, what is being done, and so on. But the website is still useful, for example, via an article on ward works came to know about this:

Coalition Against Corruption Guru Ravindranath Tel: 65734444

If you have noticed any governmental apathy in your area, CAC and Guru Ravindranath will guide you in fixing things.

Question is: Would I call Mr. Guru if I do come across something? I have this eternal fear regarding these issues about getting into something that I’ll regret.

My favorite memories of my Singapore trip is Day 9 (Dec 30 Sun). We went to Pulau Ubin island. What is the only activity on this island? Cycling.

It was fun to see people of all ages, from families to large groups of teenagers to avid cyclists all here for the same reason. It reminded me of Cubbon Park on a Sunday evening.

The first thing you see on entering the island is shops on either side to rent out cycles. We went in, took cycles and started pedaling, all in a matter of a few minutes.

Those giant “Thailand coconuts” were simply fulfilling.

Next, we randomly cycled and ended up at Chek Jawa. We read about the sea life conservation efforts that go on here. The highlight was the bungalow, along with the view of the sea.

The above few dark sunset photos are courtesy of Abishek Nair (just to make it clear that the good photos here are not taken by me).

We had become obsessed with the view here and just enjoying the sunset. Finally, we had to push ourselves to explore some more and return back the bikes. We even did some bird-watching (seriously).

I was sad to take a bumboat to get back to the mainland, but I did get to see the planes dive to land in the airport which is right next to the beach.

Like a broken record, I keep coming back to What are the killer web applications for India? So, I decided to make a list.

A list of websites that are useful for most people in India. But what kind of websites am I looking at? The website should be something useful enough to compel a person without internet access to go to a cybercafe just to access this website.

Here’s what I have so far:

• RedBus.in for bus tickets
  • Also KSRTC.in for govt bus tickets in Karnataka
• IRCTC.co.in for train tickets
• Inasra.com to book hotel rooms
• HungryZone.com (especially HungryBangalore.com) for restaurant reservations and home delivery
• YellowPages.Sulekha.com for finding local businesses and services
• BookMyShow.com for movie tickets
• MapMyIndia for maps and driving directions (even in Bangalore)
• Handiman for handyman services

Note: The definition of usefulness here is in terms of the concept. However, these websites are not verified in any sense. There’s no guarantee that they are good or even trustworthy, but I would encourage you to check out their services if they are useful. That’s the whole point.

I’ll keep updating this list as and when I find more such websites.

Update: Added BookMyShow, KRSTC.in, MapMyIndia.

Update on 2008 May 15 : Added Handiman

I’ve been provoked and I can’t stop thinking about it.

Incident 1. It all started on Day 2 of my Singapore trip (Dec 23 Sun) when a hotel owner was too friendly. Maybe he didn’t have much work, but anyway, he got pretty chatty with us and was asking about how we like Singapore. All we wanted to do was eat noodles.

He started talking about his visit to India, and like most Singaporeans, he had been on a Buddhist pilgrimage to India. I can still remember the angst in his voice.

He said that the central government in India is good but the state governments are bad. Strike 1. I had to agree.

He said that it’s not a safe place for businessmen to invest money. He said one of his close friends made huge investment, but when the government changed, the policies changed and the friend made a huge loss. Strike 2. I don’t know much about such things, but I can imagine that it is possible.

He said that India hasn’t advanced enough, there’s still too much poverty, there’s still so much chaos. He said ‘take a look at China’. For example, if the parents invest some amount with the government, they’ll give back 10 times the amount in 10 years, or something like that, and this is guaranteed by the government to safeguard the child’s future. I don’t remember the numbers he used but I was impressed with what he said. Strike 3.

I was beaten and didn’t know how to fight back.

I’m not a patriotic guy. I don’t go around burning boards written in non-state languages, nor do I go around speaking only in Hindi and refusing to speak in English. But I believe in the concept of India as a nation and I instinctively feel that I should defend my country when someone makes says negative about my country.

But I was stumped. I was completely caught off-guard. I didn’t know what to say. I just nodded. I desperately looked for things to tell him. But I got nothing. Throughout the trip, I kept thinking of things to go back and tell that hotel guy that India is a great country, but what do we really have?

Specifically, the question is:

Post-independence, does India, as a nation, have achievements to be proud of?

I’m not talking about our ancient history or ‘culture’. I’m not talking about what some Indian did when he went to a foreign country, or even someone who went out of his way to achieve something within India (like the paeans being written about Tata Motors and their Nano car).

I’m talking specifically about the 1. post-independence era and the 2. ‘as a nation’ part.

A week after that incident, I was still trying to forget about it. But the same thing happened again on Day 9 (Dec 30 Sun) with the store owner of a bookstore that Abishek and myself randomly walked into. We had a long conversation about Buddhism and our beliefs of God and how we pray. It’s surreal that we randomly started talking our intimate spiritual beliefs with a complete stranger. But such is life. And then she mentioned the same exact things that the hotel owner did. She specifically mentioned that she was appalled at the poverty when she went to Bodh Gaya.

Yes, we are talking about poverty, not just about the beggars on the busy roads of Bangalore, but he fighting-for-food kind, the kind that we saw in ‘Swades’ movie.

Incident 2. After visiting the Kaala Chakra exhibition, I realized how influential India has really been, especially to most of South East Asia, from language to politics to trade, Indian-related stuff is everywhere in South East Asia. I used to wonder about why Tamil is such a common language here in Singapore, and only after I visited this exhibition, I realized that this goes back to the B.C. ages!

Notice the irony that I got to know more about Indian history and influence when I’m outside India.

Probably because there is such importance given to history and culture in Singapore. But people in India have no time for such things, we are still fighting and struggling for our basic needs.

This immediately reminded me of “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs”:

We are still struggling in Levels 1-3, that’s why we are just touching Level 4, and we’re a long way from reaching Level 5 of Self Actualization. At least, my point of view.

Incident 3. I know there will be lots of people that say that I’m wrong, and that everything’s fine in India. (It reminds me of Rahul Bose in the “Everybody Says I’m Fine” movie.)

The problem is that everything’s fine as long as nothing bad happens to you or you witness it, only then you realize how bad the situation is. God forbid, you end up in an accident, only then you realize the problems with the police, the hospital, the insurance, and so on. The situation is the same everywhere, irrespective of the aspect of life.

I don’t know how better or worse we are compared to other countries, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be in a better situation. There is simply no reason to! We have the money, the people, the resources…

Incident 4. I came to know recently that at a premier medical institution in Bangalore, teachers are openly telling students that if they don’t “help” the teachers (i.e. pay them money), they will make sure that 30% of the students will fail! I am not kidding you, this is for real. Where’s the sanctity of education? Where’s the concern for the students’ future? Where’s the concern for encouraging future doctors (especially because the number of doctors is already dwindling)? Where’s the concern about setting precedents for future of medical profession? Even if they don’t think long term, how will students afford this? I know many medical student friends who have struggled to pay the hefty fees, what about these students who simply cannot afford to pay bribes to teachers?

Incident 5. Similarly, lecturers in PUC colleges have stopped teaching in college and they tell students that they are anyway going to tuitions. If not, they should join their own tuitions! What happens to all those students who can’t afford it?

Incident 6. Abishek’s close friend and special effects friend Osmand is a third-generation Indian. When he was about to fly from India to China to visit his relatives, he was abused that he was a Chinese person, and this for a person who’s born and brought up in India his entire life! The difference in attitudes was telling when the Indian immigration officer made him wait for 3 hours to prove that he’s an Indian compared to when he explained, that he’s a third-generation Indian originally hailing from China, to the Chinese immigration officer, he said “Welcome home.” Now, Osmand is as Indian as it gets, irrespective of how it looks. Tell me, who’s the racist here? Osmand is so fed up of this attitude that he wants to go back to China.

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On Day 7 (Dec 28, 2007) of the Singapore Trip, I visited the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay. Esplanade can be compared to a jumbo-sized version of our own Rangashankara but on a much grander scale – while Rangashankara is a place where plays are produced and played (pun intended), Esplanade is a place for all kinds of performing arts including music. It has a 1,600 seat concert hall and a 2,000 seat theater. It was opened in Oct 2002 and within 5 years, it had 5000 performances and 20 million visitors.

What I was impressed most with Esplanade was the story behind it from the conception to its architecture. There was a ‘Passages’ exhibition on display explaining the story and I watched 3 videos on the TV screens and I was very inspired.

The ideas was originally conceived in the 80s by the then Culture Minister of Singapore. However, he realized the time was not right for a performing arts center when they’re still building a nation. In the last decade, the same person became the Prime Minister and got things moving. There was a long process of conceptualizing what Esplanade stands for, and in the end they said it’s a performing arts center for the people, and the stress on the ‘common people’ aspect can be seen in every decision, in every aspect of the place.

For example, the weird open-glass structure was a result of their focus on “for the people”. How? They wanted common people walking by to be able to look inside on what’s happening and to consider it part of their society and that they can participate as well, and not think of it as just some building for some crazy artists. So, the structure had glass through which people can see, but considering the climate, the architects came up with the leaf-like structure which can be controlled by computers to fold. The result was that during the daytime, people can look inside as well as the sun’s heat gets inside the building. During night, the metal leaves are closed, and the heat remains inside. What a beautiful design! In fact, this architecture has won many awards.

Similarly, they set up restaurants inside the complex so that the general public can use this as an excuse to visit the place. Even the shape of the building is like the common-in-Singapore durian fruit for the very same reason!

On Day 8 (Dec 29, 2007), I went back to Esplanade to experience the free weekend concerts at the WaterFront called “stage@powerhouse”, and boy, was I impressed with the local talent.

There was a performance by ‘The Rhythm Chefs’ who make music out of kitchen utensils! It sounds stupid, I know, but seeing these guys performing live, their music was actually catchy.

Later in the night, they got the audience involved from tourists to mostly kids who were excited at being able to bang away to make some music together.

As I’ve written before, notice how Singaporeans make things as visual and as interactive as possible. The crowd really liked the make-your-own-music session.

There was also a stage show by bands such as the ‘Peep Show’ band. They were decent but the lyrics were way too clichéd. I liked the tune of one of their songs “I know”. There was also a performance by a band called ‘Comic Strip’ (if I’m not mistaken) and they were more of a big orchestra doing everything from pop to salsa-like songs. They kept the crowd dancing by the bay, although I couldn’t understand which language the singer was crooning in (apparently it was English, no offense meant).

The best performance of all, was a performance of ‘Hotel California’ by a couple of 12-year old kids. We were so blown away, Abishek, Srinivas and myself, we were just speechless. The kids were supported by an experienced guitarist guiding them (but carefully and sometimes slyly letting the kids do most of the music). He said “Please don’t think that your 12-year old children or nephews or nieces just listen to music, they can play well too. I would encourage you to send them to Esplanade and help them learn to play music just like these talented kids right here.”

It was interspersed with the singing performance of a teenager girl. She had surprisingly good control over her voice and sung some popular pop and rock songs.

I seriously wonder if I have any talent in anything that can match these kids. Damn.

Even on the way back down the underground passages to get to the subway trains, there were paintings and artwork by 5-year old and 6-year old kids all over the passage.

We need more articles like this one by Prof Dr Geetha Viswanathan (emphasis mine):

Makara Sankranti, also called the harvest festival or Pongal, falls on January, 14 or 15, when the sun passes from one zodiac sign to another. This festival marks the beginning of Sun’s journey to northern hemisphere, called utharayana.

Homes are cleaned, white-washed, and red mud smeared along the walls. In front of the house fresh cow dung is smeared and designer rangoli designs made. A make-shift stove is built on the verandah and a new mud pot decorated with turmeric leaf and rhizome used to cook newly-harvested rice in the presence of sunshine. Sweet pongal is prepared, offered to Sun God and distributed to all.

In the evening a mixture of roasted gingili seeds, dry coconut copra, and jaggery is distributed to all friends and relatives along with sugar candy.

On the third day cows are decorated after bath, their horns painted, and body smeared with turmeric. A small heap of dry hay is burned. Each cow is forced to cross the fire at least three times. Then camphor is burnt and aarthi is shown to the cow, especially to the udder and back. The cow is fed with sweet pongal and gingili mixture.

All that is not meaningless tradition. There is hard-core science behind it. White-washing the house with calcium carbonate (collected from molluscan shells) helps to kill spiders and other insect vectors in house. Fresh cow dung in presence of sunlight produces methane which forms a thin film in front of our house and prevents entry of bacterial pathogens and also kills microbes. Red mud will close all pores in the house which are breeding place for many vectors.

Cooking rice in presence of sunlight helps to get vitamin – D for one full year. Gingily is a good antioxidant; dry kenel of coconut is anti bacterial agent and anti viral agent. Dry coconut has saturated fatty acid which prevents infections. Dry coconut has lauric acid, which is a very good antiviral agent oil in the nut helps to rejuvenate the muscles and enhances hair growth and premature aging of our skin.

During this season that signals the end of winter and beginning of spring followed, is the optimum period for viral and bacterial colony to breed. Mumps, measles causing adenoviruses breed fast during this period. These viral infections can even cause damage to chromosome 17 and create a chromosomal or genetic disorder which can be passed on to next generation. Eating coconut gingili mixture with anti viral agent helps to prevent the viral attack. Turmeric used in pongal is also an antiviral agent.

Cowpox viruses belonging to poxvirus, foot and mouth disease virus and anthrox leptospirosis are found to breed during this season, which is their optimum period. These cause disease in cow and buffalos, encephalitis infection is transmitted through milking. Cowpox milker’s node, Orthopox virus causes infections in cows, buffalos, mouse, monkey, rabbit, camel at temperatures between 25- 41 degree centigrade. Cowpox is absent in Europe because the temperatures are lower than the optimum for the virus.

Crossing the fire by the cows reduces the chance of the infection; camphor arathi will also prevent infection of theses virus because camphor is an anti viral agent.

So it can be seen clearly that our ancestors had a good reason to do what they did. It is time we realised that.

I’m just amazed at how our ancestors took a proactive approach to health rather than our our reactionary approach, and that too, we depend on artificial means like manufactured pills compared to their simple clean natural ways.

True story.

On Day 7 of my Singapore trip (Dec 28, 2007), Chinmay and myself were at ‘The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf’ shop. The lady in front of us in the queue said this. When we heard this, both of us looked at each other, with the look that meant “Did I just hear that right?”, and then we burst into laughter.

P.S. Oh, and this is my first ToonDoo. ToonDoo has way too many bugs, it took me one attempt to create the comic strip, but 15 min of 4-5 attempts to actually get it to save properly. Even now, the text cloud in the first panel is in the wrong direction even though it was proper when creating it.

On Day 5 of my Singapore trip (Dec 26 Wed), Abishek and myself visited the Greek Masterpieces from Louvre exhibition at the National Museum of Singapore. This was the largest collection ever to be allowed to be borrowed from the famous Louvre museum in Paris (which you might have heard of from ‘The Da Vinci Code’ book).

The exhibition was so comprehensive that I was amazed. I raised my eyebrows on seeing a ‘Sports’ section and went on to read stuff like this:

Untranslatable, the word ‘agon’ denotes a gathering, and more specifically games and competitions, but also struggle, combat and battle, a trial or a debate, and a critical moment even. Personified by a winged man running, the notion underlies the whole of Greek civilization which has been described as ‘agonistic’ that is founded on the spirit of competition.

Then, I remembered that Olympics Games were started in Olympia, Greece. Duh. But the important thing to note is that they started it in 7th century BC! They gave sports so much importance more than 2500 years ago, and compare it to the situation today in India, except for cricket (My theory is that cricket was made popular because it is the perfect advertiser-friendly game ever, where else will you get a 15-20 second ad break after every few minutes i.e. an over!)

Next, I learned that theater was about politics and way to live, and the audience was paid to attend including their wages for several days since they would have to take off work to attend these plays! Now, that is a truly modern society!

There was so much more that I just couldn’t digest it all in such a short time: poetry, sports, religion, philosophy – Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, schooling children with 3 teachers on specific areas of life, religion linked to running of the state and city – including patron deities protecting the city such as Athena for Athens, heroes such as Heracles (Roman ‘Hercules’), Achilles, Ulysses, Paris, etc., Zeus was King of Gods, there were 12 Olympian Gods including third-generation gods and goddesses, Alexander the Great was the greatest conqueror of all time, Romans stole most of the Greek artifacts since they were obsessed with Greek history and so they made copies of Greek statues and much of what we know about Greece is actually from these Roman copies.

A very interesting section of the exhibition was the “Dress like a Greek” section. There were a couple of robes kept, just like the ones you see the Senators wear in ‘The Gladiator’. There were directions in a poster on the wall. People took interest in trying it out and taking snaps. I was amazed at how they make everything visual and interactive in Singapore. This idea was a masterstroke in my honest opinion, because it makes something like history that can be so dry to be accessible and understandable for a layman. There were more sections such as a huge wall for kids to write their own sequels to the story of Troy (basically where Odyssey by Homer took off), and there were many hilarious writings by the kids.

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A while ago, I was asking myself Where are the killer applications on the web for India?

Today, when I read ReadWriteWeb’s article on The State of Innovation in India, a thought struck me about the relationship between innovation and universities. Everyone knows the story of about how many companies like Yahoo!, Google, Sun Microsystems all started at Stanford University, how FreeBSD came out of Berkeley University, and so on. I hope you also know how the great Nalanda University in the 5th century was a hotbed of advancements (more on that in another story).

Is it that a strong ideas culture is instilled only in a good university environment and the ecosystem around it which includes startups and businesses? Perhaps this explains why there is such amazing stuff being incubated at the TeNeT, IITM.

It reminded of an article by Prabhakar Raghavan, Head of Yahoo! Research where he says:

India’s real infrastructure problem–with no solution in sight–is not airports or electricity; it is the virtual nonexistence of graduate education and research in information and other crucial technologies. Consider this for starters: The U.S. produces about 1,400 Ph.D.s in computer science annually and China about 3,000. By stark comparison, India’s annual computer science Ph.D. production languishes at roughly 40. That number is about the same as that for Israel, a nation with roughly 5% of India’s population size.

Now you may ask why is this important? That is best explained by C.N.R. Rao, Science Advisor to India’s Prime Minister speaking about why money is spent on moon rockets when there is poverty to address:

You cannot be industrially and economically advanced unless you are technologically advanced, and you cannot be technologically advanced unless you are scientifically advanced.

Amen.