Know your IQ

My wife Suvidha wants me to take an IQ test she thinks is very accurate. Time and again, I am bemused by her obsession with vocab and anal development; could be a hangover from various national level management exams. I feel lazy and give up on such questions, often too easily. I find myself regurgitating the importance of a 'milansaar' approach to people skills - I liberated myself of guilt the day I entered the land of opportunity. Americans, I found, were much more open minded than us. Being business oriented, as contrasted with being business process oriented, can be an advantage here, something you can see from the glittering navratri celebrations all over NJ. The americans do not gauge smartness from scores alone, which may be a function of cultivation, often a distraction from the real callings of business, or even technology. If the deal you bring to the table is smart, you need not feel embarrassed about every odd score. This is probably a comfortable antithesis of Indian mandarin culture, which IMHO need not apply to business, other pursuits maybe withstanding. Going back to the times of nehruvian brahmin condescension of business, jokes about stupid baniyas appeared in widely circulated news papers. One went thus : Einstein went to heaven and a gujju bhai approached him. Humbly, the latter asked in congenial adoration : ' how did you manage to solve the greatest riddles of physics ?'. Einstein replied 'I have an IQ of 148,...  I would like to learn how you managed to make so many millions in the stock market ?' at which the gujju bhai responded, ' well I have an IQ 82' !! When I went to work at a prestigious financial firm in Chicago, I realized how narrow our Indian preconceptions about business were. Einstein himself, the son of a businessman, might have studied with great interest the application of probability to the stock market, a subject that dated back to Bachalier. In the end, even Einstein did not have a very high IQ for his accomplishments; he outshone most similarly endowed aspirants of genius. So, I tell Suvidha, 'correlations do not imply causation' ; and...business by the way is not correlated with low IQs, it is just that in India, people with lower patience with scoring subjects are relegated to business'. So, in the end, all that we do on Walls street is a genre quite independent of IQs or theoretical physics acumen, both of which are quite independent of each other. It may be that smart people have an advantage here, but so do stupid people, by being singularly focused. Suvidha does not look impressed. But so what. Who cares anyway.

Are NRI grooms still in demand ?

Frustration gleamed from their eyes. Jaws clenched, they would move on their toes from chore to chore, as if postponing  urgent needs. They would look back, only askance, in case reason instigated quandary. Dude, where's your lady ? One might argue that you are, by indian standards, an accomplished professional. You have a respectable job, a good salary and belong to a good family. The answer would usually be a query  "Bhai, kidhar hai ?. Where are the women ? Do you think anyone single-by-choice ?" Reason could argue - if not in the continental United States, can you not find them in New Delhi or Mumbai or wherever else you are from, No ?... firmly No. The girls who showed up online were not our type, usually. We had all grown up around a certain kind of women; we could not find them on the NRI matrimonial websites. When we went back to Desh, we saw them everywhere. Everywhere. And with guys just like us, except they had jobs in India. Suddenly, the NRI groom was not a thing of fantasy. I take a step back to retrospect.

Back in the silicon valley, where I had worked previous to Chicago, I knew a girl who volunteered at Maitri, an NGO dedicated to "rescuing" NRI brides from abusive husbands and families. I was aware of the famous Ambati case - Balamurali Krishna Ambati was a real life Doogie Howser; his family had managed to create waves a second time around tormenting their newly arrived daughter in-law over dowry. I had thought these cases to be rare. Even so, my own mother thought the risk would not be worth taking if she had been in the marriage market to offer brides instead. In the public imagination, such aggravating NRI stereotypes are being promulgated by movies like Mahima Chaudhary - Shah Rukh Khan starer 'Pardes'. You can ask young women and they blithely come up with fine examples of abusive NRI grooms. "Yahin ho jaaye to acchha". As if the indian bred avant garde engineering contingent did not even exist in the US. What fine husbands we might not make, helping in the kitchen, planning cross country trips and whipping out board games every night. Also, just imagine how poignantly hard it might be to make it small in a foreign country. How living next to millionaires, nobelists and olympic medalists may not already have whittled down techie egos. But this entire section of NRI society does not appear in the popular or unpopular media. Fire brand feminist Deepa Mehta, in 2008, released "Heaven on Earth", another cynical tale of an educated punjabi bahu yoked to a sickly often violent unemployed sikh-canadian groom, and here is where I feel up to my neck in feminist hype. Look, enough of this. Khoop zhaala he sagda says my friend Anil ; he is parked in my living room, periodically taking breaks from Nandan Nilekani's book.  He says in Bollywoodesque candor, Bohot ho gaya ye sab. Kuch karna padega. We need to resolve our internal differences attend to our exploding demographic problems.

All ye NGOs and filmmakers out there. Could you please make something less cynical ? Do you realize, how good the life of an NRI is in comparison to your average suburban mumbai ka chokra. Do you realize, the NRI crowd is quite diverse. What we need is a little compassion for the NRI millionaire. Could you make more Kal Ho Na Hos and American Desis, which by the way are also quite representative of NRIs, sections that do matter in this information age - we should not be cutting our own wood here.You do realize that NRIs grooms might be able to offer movie star lives, and they could also be intelligent fun people. Please also realize Desi public is easily disposed to complacency. Bad stereotypes would tip the argument a little too heavily against migration, and with that innovation could go boink. Unless, of course, we want to mitigate all the fine progress Indians have made in businessworld America.

Meenakshi Sheshadri's second life

For whatever it is worth, some people follow the lives of Bollywood's leading ladies well into their second, if not third, lives. Meenakshi used to be an old favorite of mine. The film that impressed me the most was Damini, but other than that, it was just the phenomenal charm of this talented Iyengar damsel from Jharkhand that etched solidly onto LTM. During my freshman year ragging at college, I made the mistake of mentioning her as a favorite, the one least forgettable. My aggressor leapt out at first, but just pulled back and quipped "bhen he, aur koi ?", and I rolled my eyes searching for names other than Madhuri. In that decade, she was pretty much the best looking, I thought. In an age where most actresses stereotypically marry billionaires, Madhuri married a rather upstart LA surgeon, about one twentieth or lesser in salary, and vanished from Bollywood. Since then, her #1 spot has remained vacant. I realized then, Meenakshi had executed a similar plan. She had picked a software engineer groom and settled in the US; IMHO a rather novel after life to a Bollywood career. In these days of desi opulence and cautioned NRI shy families, it is soothing to recollect what NRI grooms once meant to the Indian woman.

The lamp that lights the way

There are times when you need to recognize your geniuses. Even in a business dominated by the Telgu, the Kannadiga and various brahmin communities, some Gujaratis have made their presence felt.

Dewang Mehta, a chartered accountant by qualification, once thought he wanted to explore the media arts. In addition to his professional obligations, he worked with filmmaker Shyam Benegal, and maintained a keen interest in computer graphics and journalism. As chief of nascent Nascom he had a more successful career assisting then communications minister Pramod Mahajan foster innovation in the IT industry. He is accredited with relaxing regulations hurdling growth, eschewing long delays experienced by other sectors. Is he the man behind the scene, the brain behind "India's shining" ? Now deceased, Mehta is celebrated by the entire IT industry as torchbearer and thought leader.    

Sam Pitroda grew up the son of a middling carpenter in Orissa. His parents had enormous respect for the Mahatma and young Sam was schooled on national scholarships, awarded entirely on the basis of merit. Sam Pitroda is the forbearer of the indian IT revolution. Read wiki article for more trivia.  

The legendary Vikram Sarabhai, father figure and inspiration to all thought leader wannabes.