min-myinnersoul

Does man (and woman) have a foot fetish ? I think so. What is it about feet that makes people get completely bowled over by the marketers and pamper and cosset it. No I'm not talking about the ridiculous pedicure . I'm talking about footwear and the amounts we splash on it.Each one of us is an Imelda Marcos - before you snigger, go and count the footwear in the shoe rack. Hyperbole dominates the footwear marketing industry. To think that by wearing "LeBron Zoom Soldier", I'll be able to dunk a basketball is pure fantasy, but it appears I am willing to buy the dream for $299 or thereabouts.  The sight of a Rajalakshmi tottering on high heels on the mistaken assumption that it makes her a 6 footer is equally humorous - I don't have the heart to tell her that her width is somewhat more than her height ! But surely the game has been taken to an altogether new level by Under Armour . Under Armour is a sports outfit company. They mostly make sports clothing, shamele...

Apparently men are heavier than women.  Did you know that ?  In many parts of the globe, that is probably true, but in India ?? Can you believe that Rajalakshmi, she of the considerable proportions, is inferior to Ramamritham, when it comes to the weight stakes ?? I somehow, seriously doubt that. But not, it appears GoAir, an India based airline.  This is the news from GoAir , that set off this post. Cabin attendants, flight attendants, stew, whatever name you wish to call them, are predominantly women, everywhere in the world. It all started in the initial days of flying. A pretty young air hostess was part of the decor of the plane. Nervous travelers, usually pot bellied men, could relax by looking at a smiling pretty face. As the years went by, the pot bellied business traveler remained the same, at least pot belly wise, but the nervousness disappeared. The flight attendants meanwhile aged, and age discrimination laws in the US and Europe ensure that these days its a m...

Some businesses I can completely relate to. Most businesses I understand,. But there are some that completely fox me . Take the case of the quaintly named company,  Lululemon. I was, of course, blissfully unaware of its existence until I read a news item that its CEO was leaving (polite term for being fired). Naturally, with a name like that, I couldn't but help read up. Apparently this Vancouver based company is  in the business of "yoga inspired" athletic gear , whatever that means. They are fast growing , but reportedly had a product problem recently which led to the CEO's exit. The "product problem" made further interesting reading, Apparently, their Luon range of black Yoga pants was getting too many customer complaints - the product was too sheer and ,er, "showed too much" ! A particularly sensitive topic when when doing yoga which involves stretching and contortions !! The outcry was so much that they had to pull the product from the shelve...

I think we have found the way to destroy Al Qaeda, or for that matter, any terrorist organisation. Don't send the Navy Seals or the National Security Guard or Special Forces. Send in Ramamritham instead ! This post has no place in what is ostensibly a business blog, but this writer could not miss the opportunity to ridicule Ramamritham anywhere and everywhere. So , with apologies , here's the story. When the French forces recently retook much of Mali from terrorists, the press who followed them found a detailed letter and a number of documents in a building which was a base or Al Qaeda. The letter was to a thug and hoodlum called Moktar Belmoktar. It throws light on how Ramamritham has wormed his way even into Al Qaeda. The letter was a "warning letter" to the said terrorist castigating him for not filing expense statements !!! It also was expressing displeasure at his skipping meetings which he was to attend !! He was also castigated for pricing below Head Office in...

Ravi, who wrote this piece on  various forms of gramophone records is a certifiable music nut. He can wax lyrical (pun intended) on most matters musical. But when he does so about women 100 years old , well ........ you form your own conclusions. T he bloke writes beautifully, writes with passion and his words have magic.  If, at the end, you too fall for big black women who are 100 years old, don't blame me ! Read on. There is something wonderful about the black American songstress of the days gone by.   They were usually big, with voices to match.   I can always tell a black singer from her voice, because of a certain something, a je ne sais quoi in their voices, in particular, in the voices of the great jazz singers of the 50s and later.    I venture an extreme opinion here when I say that singers of that era invariably were less schooled and less adept in the use of technology than their soul sisters of later decades.   For one – they had to gr...

Murderous rage is exactly what I am feeling for all "coders" at the moment. Noticing that a good rant has been somewhat long overdue on this blog and given that I think I have solved the answer to the famous question - why this kolaveri di  , I think this post is justified ! You see, a couple of days ago, Samsung released the new Android OS (cutely named Jelly Bean) for its smartphones in India. Yes I know, Jelly Bean is ancient news, but that's how long it takes for things to come to India. Yours truly's phone duly got updated.  And promptly lost all its screens, settings, etc etc. Having been a veteran of software upgrades from MS DOS (anybody remember) and having been burned a few zillion times, "kolaveri" had long given way to stoic resignation . But this one takes the cake. Remember the prompt when you are trying to delete and move something - it asks you - are you sure and gives you the option of OK or Cancel ? Notice it next time when that comes - its...

In my previous post on His Master's Voice, I speculated that "the LP nut", Ravi, would have an interesting comment. Instead I got a full post from him, written in his inimitable style. A classic, a collector's item and a passionate and wonderfully written piece. Here it is, as he wrote it. The LP was not invented in 1902.   At that time, the most common form of recorded sound was the shellac record that ran for 3 ½ minutes on each side. Shellac was easy to   mould but could break very easily.   It was spun at 78rpm on mechanical players. You turned a spindle to wind up the plate on which the record rested, and a little speaker connected to the pick up converted the markings on the record to sound using mechanical conversion.   The first medium for recorded sound was the wax cylinder, which was invented by Edison in the late 19 th century. There was no plate, but a spindle on which a wax cylinder was fixed.   Reproduction was mechanical.   Electrical reco...

To my generation, Nipper is an old treasured friend. Nipper is the dog you see on that immortal brand logo of His Master's Voice, better known as HMV. Most of us , in the good old days, owned a HMV Radio and certainly bought a few HMV records - or at least one or two, for the money would stretch only so much those days. In India, until Television really came to the country along with the Asian Games of 1982, HMV radio was the prime entertainment medium of the land. HMV has now gone into receivership and , I'm afraid Nipper will now be consigned to a dusty shelf in some museum. Nipper, was Mark Barraud's dog and lived in the late 1800s in Bristol in England. On his death, a sorrowful Barnard painted the famous picture of Nipper listening to a gramophone with a puzzled expression and sold it to the Gramophone company. A marketing genius there called William Owen made it the logo of the business and thus was the immortal His Master's Voice born. The Gramophone Company star...

Everybody wears glasses. Figuratively, if not literally. We view the world through the prism of our biases and values. That is all fine. But what I cannot fathom is why this is rose tinted. We think of the past as some long lost Utopia. Notice , how often the phrase "good old days" is bandied about. Certainly old, but good ??? I suggest not. The past is actually closer to hell than heaven. After all we have "progressed" ; haven't we ? So progress must equate to betterment. So, why the rose tint ? Nowhere is this more evident than in US politics. Everybody waxes eloquently about the founding fathers and swears by the Constitution that was written a few hundred years ago. The founding fathers have been elevated to sainthood. Balderdash. They were as roguish as the present lot. They had slaves and it was perfectly OK to shoot a fellow Senator. The Second Amendment begins as "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State ...... ...

Voilà . The real Ramamritham has been found !! He does exist. Hurray !  Or at least he did. See this post from my good friend Sriram for irrefutable proof !

The birth of a new year is a time of rejoicing, of drink and dance, of fireworks, of endless wishes, of resolutions and maybe the odd wistfulness of a year gone by. It is also a moment to reflect on the passage of time - of years whizzing by. I was prompted by this brilliant article in the FT   to muse on what sort of a world are we leaving for the young - for it is they who shall inherit the earth. It is the fond wish of every parent to care and provide for his children. Yet collectively, humanity seems to be doing the opposite. How can it be that a powerful motive for the self, disappears when it comes to the whole ? December was an awful month for the young. The shooting of school children in Newton, Connecticut and the rape and death of a young lady in Delhi would have shocked the most hardened of souls.  But those awful incidents have to stand by the side of equally awful things we do to the young Many children under the age of 5 die. Its a shame on humankind that 19000 c...

How would you like to chuck it all and travel around the world ? Tempting isn't it ?? Well that's exactly what two wonderful persons I know are doing right now. They blog about it here - follow it if you are interested in traveling ; its a gripping account of far away lands. If you fancy yourself on the road from Rangoon to Mandalay or on the Silk Road between Bukhara and Samarkand, then this is the travelogue for you. I happened to be in Spain and voila, discovered that they were in Spain too  - Ah the wonders of the internet. I was in Madrid and they were in Granada, so emailed them to meet at Seville which is where I spent a magical day today with them. No doubt they'll get to updating their blog on this day in Seville. Their blog is still in Turkey, whilst they have physically moved on to Greece and onwards to Spain. They'll write about the Catedral de Santa María de la Sede (Seville Cathedral), an imposing and awesome structure where we stood reverentially in fron...