Monday, January 30, 2012

Cat out of the bag

The cartoon on the business page of my newspaper today shows some executives of the sales division of a large company saying to one another: 'We don't need smarter products, we just need dumber customers.'

So now it's official. That is how we keep our economies growing and civilization progressing. Gold plated WCs, personality enhancing pills, phones with 66,000 apps, banks which offer 'relationships', $10,000 pens which give you a special status in the eyes of other morons like you, coaching classes that will make Edisons, Curies and Fords out of every idiot kid, anything will do.

Just so long as the customer is dumb enough.

Friday, January 20, 2012

A future for 'stillness'?


“Around the same time I noticed that those who part with $2,285 a night to stay in a cliff-top room at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur pay partly for the privilege of not having a TV in their rooms; the future of travel, I’m reliably told, lies in ‘black-hole resorts’ which charge high prices precisely because you can’t get online in their rooms…”

I read the above lines in a recent and very timely article written by the expatriate writer of Indian origin, Pico Iyer, and sent over to me by an ex-student yesterday. Some other people are apparently also looking at the future, and thinking along the same lines as I do: heartening news. Do let me know what the article meant to you.

Friday, January 13, 2012

'relationships'

I found this wonderful reading because I have suffered at the hands of this strange breed of creatures (I won't call them humans-) who are titled 'relationship managers' in smart banks nowadays. I hope my readers will be forewarned. 'Relationships' mustn't be cheapened. The word is sacred...

Friday, January 6, 2012

Rising star

There's a 13-year old moron who has scribbled on the cover of his homework book "I'm a hot guy with a cool attitude". From what I have found out about him, he's neither very intelligent nor very studious, and pathetically lacking in the GK and worldly wisdom that I should consider appropriate for his age. He thinks, for instance, that you need to be 'brilliant' to get through the West Bengal Joint Entrance examination, and that they teach engineering at the 'prestigious' Presidency College in Kolkata. 

If I know something of the career trajectories of creatures like this, he will be working at Rs. 20-30,000  a month for TCS or Infosys in ten years' time, or if he's very lucky he'll have a slightly better job at a public sector enterprise such as NTPC or SAIL or SBI, and his mother would preen about how well-'established' her son is, and look for a bride whose dad would be willing to cough up at least Rs. 50 lakhs as dahej.

Any comments?