Will the current financial crisis affect your personal lifestyle?

A visit to a popular mall with thousands of footfalls per day left me intrigued. None of the 12 washrooms had a toilet paper roll. I attributed this aberration to napping janitors & caretakers. But a recent report in a local daily led me to believe that disappearing toilet papers are not due to janitors & careless caretakers. It is one of the myriad ways adopted by many employers to cut costs.

Welcome to post economic tsunami washrooms!!

The economic meltdown is subtly yet surely affecting our mindset & hence our lifestyle. All of us are directly or indirectly affected by job retrenchment. If not our own selves, at least one or more of our colleagues, friends, relatives or acquaintances have lost their job or are on the chopping list. It is new age socialism where the head of the CEO is as likely to roll as that of the junior most executive. Such a scenario is causing us to crib less about our employers & bosses & we are just plain grateful to be on the payroll .Thereby, it is causing us to be more contented with our current jobs. In the wake of retrenchment by reputed employers like Lehmann Brothers, A-grade business school pass outs can no longer snigger at their less fortunate peers. It has also meant that many careers are abruptly on hold where parents have paid through their nose to enable their wards to pursue courses of their choice. Its again back to struggling & penny pinching lifestyle in many such families. So, if your parent paid an astronomical sum for that fancy degree, you will have to wait a while before you can buy them that vacation or small car as a mark of gratitude.

The underlying cause of this crisis is over- consumption , very high standard of living & a ‘give me more’ attitude. But this crisis has led to a general tightening of the purse, hence, under consumption & a lower standard of living in the past couple of months. Gone are the days of complimentary snacks, freebies, frequent flier privileges & off-site meetings at fancy locales. People are giving desserts a miss to cut down on their restaurant bill. It is no longer’ movie & candle lit dinner’ if you are in love. You might have to give either one of the two a miss!! And if you are used to being picked up by the luxury car that your company sends, do not be surprised if you see a chartered bus coming to pick you up.

The positive aspect of this economic meltdown is mostly felt by environmentalists & green brigadiers. To cut costs, employers are cutting down on refrigeration & air conditioning, thereby reducing the carbon footprint. So, if you were in the habit of sitting back for an hour in your air conditioned workstation in office chatting with your friends on the many social networking sites, you will have to just break that habit.

We are gravitating towards a vegetarian diet instead of high calorie non vegetarian meals. If this trend continues, it would imply a predominance of vegetation agriculture than livestock agriculture. Thereby, it will reduce our demand on soil, water & land resources. A pronounced shift towards vegetarianism, as it burns a smaller hole in your pocket, provides a faint ray of hope of reducing mortality due to ‘diseases of civilisation’ like cancer, diabetes, cardiac, etc.

Because of escalated prices of fossil fuels, we are opting for car pooling & public transportation leading to slightly less congested roads. Hopefully, now governments will pay more heed to developing non conventional sources of energy like, solar, wind, bio-fuels, geo thermal,etc.

Excess demand on the environment is also caused by overpopulation. News of couples postponing having babies, is trickling in from many European countries would It seems that the economic crisis will enable us to achieve what many population control programmes could not. This again implies a DINK-double income no kids-lifestyle. And if you wanted a small ‘Barbie like cute girl’ for your ‘whiz kid son’ to play with, even that has to be on hold for a while.

The crisis has caused a reduced dependence on crèches & day care facilities. So, nuclear families are going back to the old joint family system where children grew up listening to tales & fables narrated by their grand parents.

Two wrongs do not make a right. And neither can one hope to go back to old value systems by making forced personal compromises ,riding on the wave of the current economic scenario. But the crisis has taught us a lesson or two about life & counting our blessings for a change.

The Sailor

It was one click which came out just as I wished it to.It was a humid MAY DAY(not the 1st!) in Kolkata this summer.I & my parents along with my son had gone to spend a couple of hours at the Mangal Pandey Park in Barrackpore.The park is a photographer's delight-well kept grounds, towering trees, plus a view of the ghat...
I was busy capturing my son & parents in frame after frame , when all of a sudden, this man came in his small boat & tried to get ashore.As it was cloudy, the red shirt of his stood out amidst all the grey around us.And, I captured one of MY favourite memories...

A date with our galaxy

The over night study tour to a dark site for the night sky observation is a very important event in our school calendar. This year the excitement for the trip was at an all time high as the astronomy club membership is a whopping 63 comprising of 11 & 12 year old & their zest is far higher than the 16 or 17 year olds who take a casual interest in most things. So, it was quite a task to manage these young & eager kids during the full 14 -hour study tour.The site was a school in the small village called Jewar , which is around 100 kms from Noida. We took 2 1/2 hours to reach the site . As we stepped down from the warm comfort of the bus, we were greeted by a sharp nip in the air. After steaming cups of piping hot Chai, we started with our observations. The resource persons of S.P.A.C.E., who conduct these clubs in various schools, were all set with their powerful reflecting telescopes. The first study was of Venus & the craters of the moon. The image of the moon was so sharp that the bright speck was even visible when your eye is a foot away from the eyepiece. The image was so beautiful that I could not prevent myself from holding my cell-cam in front of the eyepiece to take a click. That is the image you see above this text. Beautiful!After a while we were treated to a tasty veggie dinner while the RPs(resource people) went about setting up their telescopes for the next round of observations. It was 9.30 pm & a sweater & jacket seemed inadequate for the falling Mercury. The children were now being taught how to use the latitude finder & planisphere( a chart that helps you get an idea of the night sky at a particular time of the day of the month/year). The senior kids, who are well versed in the usage of these devices were being shown deep sky objects-about him we read only in the science pages of the leading newspapers. Hold your breath!! The first objects that were focussed were star clusters located millions of light years away. Next on were the Nebulae(!!!!) Orion &Crab. It was a moment when we realised how miniscule we were in the larger scheme of things. While the kids were all excited at these sightings, my co-teacher & I were in deep discussion about how insignificant & small were we in this galaxy. As if these musings were not enough, the RP announced that he was ready with THE fuzzy object 0on this telescope. Can u guess what he focussed ? It was the ANDROMEDA galaxy, the farthest object visible to us, situated 2.5 million light years away & containing one trillion stars. So, on that cold December night of the year 2008, we were watching andromeda galaxy, the way it looked 2.5 million light years away!!! A humbling & spell binding experience.Meanwhile, the junior group were being taught to locate rare constellations like, Cassiopeia, Taurus, Aries, Cancer etc. Let me add, that in urban areas one can see only 30-40 stars with the naked eye. While, here, the sky was a black velvet banner with over 2000 twinkling stars!!

The chill in the air was causing shivers , after all its not everyday that you are out I the open at 1 am in the night with the mercury 4 deg Celsius. The salvation was another round of a hot cuppa strong ginger tea. The students , meanwhile, were sketching their observations under torch light. I must mention that it was pitch dark(hence the name dark site) which made it impossible to see a person who is sitting 5 feet away, The second study session came to a close at about 2.45 am .

The students were free to take a nap or watch a documentary on the International Space Station. While some sought refuge under blankets , others watched the documentary.

Soon it was time to get up for the last & final session. This time it was the beautiful Saturn. I have no words to describe the 1 millimeter sized image of the planet along with its ring. As the students took turn to watch the most beautiful member( I would say) of the solar system, the care takers had laid out our breakfast of hot puris with mixed vegetables. It was something out of the ordinary to have one’s breakfast at 5 am in the morning, outdoors when the temperature is 7 deg Celsius.

It had started to sink in that our date with our galaxy was over & it was time to return to the dust & smog of Dilli.

Mama Mia- is ‘ABBA’ once more!!

For all those fans of ‘ABBA’ & ‘Mery Streep, out there, here is a movie that you just cannot miss!!

Mery Streep is Donna, a single parent with a 20 something daughter Sophie(Amanda Seyfried) who is to tie the knot very soon. But Amanda is determined to find her father before her big day. But, she has a problem. After reading her mother’s private diaries, she discovers that he may be one of her three past loves. So, she invites all the three of them to her little Greek island home. And what ensues is confusion, fun, & a heady dose of dancing & laughter to the greatest hits of the & 70s band, ABBA.

It is s a movie to watch with friends & family & sing along to the foot tapping numbers!! And not to forget, the spirited show by an all star cast comprising of Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Dominic Cooper and Julie Walters.

The economic wasteland?

I am less worried these days. The headlines are not screaming figures of pink slip issues in thousands. And, if the 'pink slip pandemonium' is not a front page story but is now occupying a 2x2 space somewhere inside, I am not complaining. For a person like me, who is working in a sector which is least likely to be affected by economic tsunamis, I can only imagine the plight of the employees who have been at the receiving end. I really do not understand the dynamics of 'systems & operations' & 'finance' of the corporate sector but I do wonder if sacking was/is the only solution.
My very very limited entrepreneurship sense says that a more moderate approach could have been adopted.Instead of laying off 2000 employees, perks of say 5000, employees could have been scrapped, threreby covering part of the loss & cost.One does wonder, if the employees who managed to save their necks , do not mind the extra work that has ended up on their laps.Even if they are complaining, they dare not be vocal about it.Maybe , there is a paragraph somewhere (in some page of a thick book on Corporate law& finance) about a lower scale being offered in exchange of retaining one's position in case of an economic crisis..I am just wondering.
With each one of us burdened with mortgages & instalments, I can only hope that our economic pundits come up, fast & quick, with some plans of economic salvation.
Who said life is difficult outside the Earth?!! It isn't easy here, either.

Games Indians Play-A Book review

Games Indians Play, by V. Raghunathan ,explores the Indian mentality of being privately smart & collectively foolish.The author, a faculty at one of the IIMs, uses behavioural economics & game theory to explain why we do what we do & how acting in the common interest of everyone will do good to us in the long run.

The author uses prisoners' dilemma to explain why we Indians act selfish & go for short term gains. The book doesnt tell us anything new that we already dont know but the mode of putting across his point with a dash of humor ,makes it a very good read. I have never touched Economics even with a barge pole but his lucid explanation, with a good sprinkling of examples ,made the aforementioned theories qute simple to understand. Do grab a copy!!

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