Does history repeats itself across continents?

They say history repeats itself but does it really apply to events across two different continents?

I have seen and personally experienced the stock market bubble (and the subsequent crash) in US from 1998-2000. It was the time when NASDAQ kept on going up! There would be an news item daily on how people are quitting their primary jobs and going full time into day trading! Every one, and I mean every one was trading stocks and talking about it all the time. It seemed like you couldn't go wrong, just pick any stock and it would go up and up and up...everyone (including myself) started believing that we can pick any stock and make money. NASDAQ doubled in those years! US dollar was running very strong against any other currency in the world! Real estate prices were soaring!!

Then as you all know, bubble burst NASDAQ came crashing down. Real estate growth slowed down. US currency started to weaken...etc. etc.

Now 7 years later, now that I am in India, it is deja vu time (all over again) :) for me. Sensex (india's stock index) has doubled in last few years and more than quadrupled in 5-6 years. Real estate prices are soaring. Indian rupee is strongest it has been against US dollar in last 10 years! Just check out the comparison chart between sensex and dow jones! This chart by itself shows why India has been so hot in recent years! You don't need a degree in finance to figure out that the growth at this rate may be a bit too fast!

Real estate prices have ballooned in last few years. Mortgage rates are at whopping 14-15% And people are still buying properties in speculation of making money. Pundits are saying that sensex will continue to rise because of strong india story...blah blah blah...there is a difference in being bullish and total bullshit! :) (hey i came up with this quote just now and I am taking full copy rights on it!)

I have seen it happen in US when everyone was saying that it won't happen...it won't happen. Right now, people are saying that it won't happen here in India. I hope that they are correct and that the history will not repeat itself.

If at all there is a downturn in indian economy, large foreign investors will pull out their money in a jiffy and the common man who has all his fortunes invested in this bullish stock market will crash and burn! I hope it does not happen! I hope history does not repeat itself across continents!

Two good web sites I recently came across. One is designed to empower citizens by allowing them to register issues that the web site promises will get looked at within 72 hours!!! http://www.OurPune.com. I am definitely going to register few issues and see if the promise holds up.

The other web site is actually pretty old by now but still worth a visit. It was started as a website to educate people about improving pune traffic. Check it out at, http://www.SavePuneTraffic.com

is anyone out there?

Is anyone actually reading my blogs? As I am finding out, writing a blog is very much one way activity. I need to know if you are reading my blog. If no one is reading it then I will stop wasting my time! :) So this is a request for you to enter a comment letting me know that someone out there is reading my rants!

Changing face of MY earth

Pune is growing without limits in every direction. There are HUGE buildings coming up everywhere you see. All this construction is an indication that Pune as a city is booming. However so much construction can also get appalling at times. As it is the infrastructure (roads, water, sewage, electricity) is lagging behind the old Pune population. Consider this, a vacant plot or even an occupied plot that sustains at most 20-30 people is used to construct 30 story building that contains over 150 flats, which would then host anywhere from 400 to 800 people. How does a city go from supporting needs of 20 people to supporting needs of 600? The building will take at most 2 years to build but how do you support a 3000% increase in capacity in just two years! And this is just one plot!!! When plots all around it are also developed at the same mind numbing pace, the future of the city becomes very bleak.

The slogan by Kakade city builder sums it all up, "We cannot change the sky" THANK GOD "but endeavor to change the face of earth". Yes, all builders are changing the face of earth here in Pune and making it a city that I cannot relate with anymore!

I am sorry but I am in very saddening mood today after having spent almost the entire day in a registrar's office trying to register our rental flat agreement. The office resembles an office from gold rush. People are there to get their property registered or traded or rented and to make money, they don't give a damn about the planet.

Here are couple of photos from that office. The second photo captures the mentality of people perfectly. (The sign in marathi says "do not spit") :-(

Daily mumbai photo

As I was browsing the web to find photos of recent rain havoc in mumbai, I came across this nice blog. The photos are excellent and I like the concept of blogging via photos. In fact I think I am using that style already in my blog partly due to the fact that it is very hard to come up with content everyday that is blog-worthy!

Monsoon shots...

Just the other day, I was returning back to Pune from Mumbai. Now it is the sixth straight week where I have travelled to Mumbai once every week. Wow!

On my way back in a rickshaw, I had my faithful mini digital camera ready to take some of these monsoon photos. The theme here is how bike/moped people deal with rain in Pune. BTW, the guy on a red bike with helmet is actually trying to reach for his mobile phone while driving his bike with one hand going at atleast 25 mph! I dont know how he managed to talk on his mobile phone with his helmet on, while it was raining! I was really hoping to catch that on my camera but my rickshaw could not keep up with him :)

Rickshaw

There is so much I want to write about rickshaws in india...for now I will just post a picture. More to come later...

Shoe shine for Rs 5 (12 cents)

This is a guy who sits on the corner from Rhea's school. I have been watching him work as I wait for Rhea to come out of the school. When someone is working proudly and diligently it is always fun to watch them do their job, regardless of what job they are doing. He has his routine set up perfectly. He even washes his hands after each shoe shine!

The red tin bag you see is his entire office. At the end of the day he packs everything in it and goes home. (i guess, i didn't wait till end of the day to confirm it) Talk about a mobile office!

This guys will shine your shoes for Rs. 5 (12 cents) I wonder how many shoes he has to shine a day in order to feed his family! :(

Random sights - 2

While coming back from Rhea's school yesterday, we saw this truck on Karve road. Karve road is one of the busiest streets of Pune. I cannot imagine the traffic mess this truck must have created later in the day. I was so nervous driving next to it as it seemed like it would come down at any point. These days I am driving everywhere with my digital camera ready with me all the time. The random sights such as this one are too precious not to be captured on the camera!

From the newspaper...

As I am running out of things to blog about, I thought of blogging one interesting news item every day.

At 60, India more stable than ever before
... The striking thing about this report is the paragraph that says India is surrounded by some of the most unstable countries in the world.

It is also noteworthy that India dropped from 76 to 110 in just two years and in 2007 India is considered more stable than China. This should bode well for further expansion of indian economy.

Click on the picture to the right to read the news item.

The ugly...(from the good the bad the ugly)

There is a HUGE gap between the average population and the top 5% population of india when it comes to wealth. Everywhere you see, you see poverty in India. At traffic signals, you run into children selling petty items. While driving on streets you see slums with kids playing in conditions that would cause major factories to shut down in US in terms of air pollution, in hotels you see children working away as cheap laborers....

The prices are rising, inflation is very high but at the same time the average population in India does not seem to be making enough to make ends meet. People are working away day and night to earn enough to feed their families. At the same time you encounter hugh in efficiencies everywhere and it seems like there are multiple layers of bureaucracies everywhere. As I was travelling back to Pune from Mumbai last week, in my fully reclinable AC bus, I could see people just sitting every corner. I was wondering how can all this human power be harnessed to make the nation more efficient and wealthy. But then again, like any other top 5% population person, I focussed on my own worries and started working away on my laptop. :(

India (and other south asian countries in general) have huge human capital. The gap between the rich and poor is widening like never before. I wonder how long can this continue.....the only thing that I can console myself with is the fact that it has been like this for centuries...and hopefully the whole thing won't collapse around me!

Moments like this, I feel like returning to the cozy bubble of USA. That way, through media I will be fed with enough local issues like "how local firemen rescued a cat that climbed up a tree" and I can be worry free about the real issues in this part of the world.

Wedding photos..

Here are some photos from the wedding. As I found out, my camera refused to focus on pencil cells that you can get in India. Apparently (even brand new) cells in India do not have enough juice for the camera! Luckily we have plenty of Kirkland signature pencil cells on its way in our shipment! phew...

Henna is pretty traditional and a must in Indian weddings. Bride has the most elaborate henna design done on her hands/feet. It can take anywhere upto 6-8 hours to get these elaborate henna designs done. Kids also get henna done but that usually takes 10-15 minutes!

Weddings are also the time when everyone dresses up. Even kids get to wear elaborate dresses. Rhea got a special saree. (For those who know Rhea will notice the sea green color! :))


I was hoping to check out the fort next to Satara, "Ajinkyatara" but the sleep got the best of me :( Apparently locals have seen paragliders taking off of Ajinkyatara!

Weekend trip to Satara

We had a nice weekend trip to Satara to attend Medha's cousine wedding. It was my first long drive after r2i. Much to my delight the entire road is now a freeway and it was not very taxing to drive 2 hours from Pune to Satara. Here are some of the pictures of the drive.

For moondoggers, Satara is in the same direction as PaanchgaNi/Mahabaleshwar. So the mountains that you see in the pictures are the kind of mountains you will get to fly in the upcoming trip!

Stopping on a dime

We came across this sight while on our way to weekend trip. Granted that the tempo cannot be going more than 25mph due to road conditions and engine size. Still can you imagine the whiplash one would get to stop suddenly (not even a screeching halt....!) like this?

We captured these photos on the Rajaram Bridge. The bridge has a barrier to prevent tall vehicles from using the bridge. The last photo is the rajaram bridge...

80-20 rule in action

I can get from Pune to Mumbai in less than 2 hours!!! But in order to reach my office which is in Andheri, it takes me additional 1 1/2 hours!

Today, I drove to Pune infotech park. The total distance from my place to where I was going, is approximately 30 Km. It took me half an hours to go upto the Wakad junction. From Wakad to infotech park took me another half an hour.

This is a perfect example of last 20 percent of work taking as much time as first 80 percent.

Luckily the first 80 percent today is a great drive. It almost comparable to driving in US where you can pretty much go on autopilot without being afraid of having a riskshaw, or a two wheeler or a cow or a camel coming in your way!

I am afraid, however, that the rate at which this region is growing the road that is more than sufficient today, will not scale to the needs of the future. (And by future I mean next 5 years!!!)

The other aspect that I have realized is that it is the least common denominator that decides the speed with which one can travel on the roads. Today you can buy BMW 7 series cars in India and in many places the roads are good enough to drive those beautiful cars fast! However 0.00001% population can afford the BMW 7 series in India where as majority of population will still be buying underpowered cheap automobiles and even traveling by rickshaws. So as long as those vehicles are on the same streets, the entire average speed will come down. Sure the beemer can go zero to 60 in 4 seconds but in India it would be lucky if it can go 0 to 6 in 4 seconds.

The other irony is that the cream of population that can afford beemers and mercs is also the kind of people who never drive themselves. So all BMWs and Mercedez benz have drivers. Can you imagine buying a beemer and never driving it yourself? I can't!!!

Power of social networking

In US while driving, if you are listening to radio you are accustomed to getting regular traffic reports. US has intricate network of traffic sensors, video cameras and traffic helicopters that constantly feed radio stations with data that then can be broadcast to listeners. Numerous times, I have benefited from such traffic reports in time to avoid traffic jams of I5 and 520 bridge.

Pune (or india) has no such elaborate technology to get traffic volume updates. So what do they do? Pune has a very famous radio station, "radio mirchi" (mirchi==chilli) What they do is they rely on people calling the radio station to give them traffic updates from various intersections. They then relay this information on the radio. Incentive for people to call in and report traffic is that their name gets mentioned on the radio and ratio mirchi gets the information that they need. This is a great example of social collaboration enabled by technology. Kind of similar to www.wikipedia.com.

Whether or not anyone actually benefits from radio mirchi traffic reports is a whole different story because it's not like you have multiple options if one of the intersection is blocked! But the idea of getting the information out to people is simply brilliant!

The good The bad The ugly!

So far I have been only mentioning good things about our move to India. I guess you can say that we are in the honeymoon phase. But slowly and surely the bad and the ugly things are surfacing!

The one prominent thing I notice is that it is VERY hard to take some time off from your working day to do some exercise. I am talking about professionals who have challenging/demanding jobs and am not talking about people who work 9-5. (and even those don't exercise!)

By the time you are done with work and your day to day activities you are mentally so tired that you don't feel like going out again, fighting the traffic, finding a parking spot and then do some exercise. This applies to Pune. In Mumbai, the situation is even worse since commuting times are longer and commutes in general are lot harder.

Relatively speaking, it was much easier to get some form of exercise factored into your work day in US. Either before, during or after work you could stop by the Gym and sweat. If nothing else you could bike to work and get the calories burned that way. (Biking to work is an option here in Pune too but you will do more harm than good to your body by inhaling all the CO2)

Having said this, if determined one can still get decent exercise in the mornings and on weekends. e.g. I had some great tennis sets last Sunday on a clay court of Deccan Gymkhana or was able to go running on the back hills of Parvati. But this still doesn't compare anywhere close to the amount of sweat I used to loose doing the Bikram Yoga sessions in Bellevue.

Any how, enough of the cribbing considering I am still in the honeymoon phase! :)

One thing is interesting to note. Even with all this lack of exercise, the average weight of people in India is much much lower than that of western countries! I am going to ponder over reasons for this over a cold calorie packed beer! Cheers...

Random sights

Here is a random sight captured on a main street behind our house. It is understandable to see a camel in front of this particular store which happens to be the best "dessert" store in Pune! :-)

First day of school

Rhea had her first day of school today. She was quite excited about her new uniform which happened to be her favorite color (Sea Green!) I dropped Rhea/Medha at Abhinav at 8am in the morning. After a brief introductions, they asked all parents to go home. We went to pick her up at 11am again. She seem to have done fairly well and did not cry at all. As per her report of the school activities, she got to play with beads just the way she used to play in her Redmond school. This is a good sign if she begins to like her new school :) Here are couple of the photos of her first day to school.

BTW, it is my strong opinion that schools should have a uniform and is one of the things I don't like about US schools. I believe that having a school uniform creates a certain level of discipline/respect towards the learning institute. Your comments/flames are welcome.

Sometimes you want to go...

Returning to Pune even after 14 years has not changed some things. The barber still recognizes me. The pharmacist on the corner shop is a family friend and knows our entire family. I went to the bank and ran into a school classmate who remembered my name. If I go to our regular restaurant such as Rupali, then I run into atleast ten different friends from school, college or swimming. Pune traffic has grown many fold or else I would still see/meet people just by driving on the roads.

Leaving the comforts of the US behind becomes easier when you meet and greet with so many people on so many occasions. It reminds me of the Cheers song, "sometimes you wanna go, where everybody knows your name...and they are always glad you came...."

Cheers!