THE BUSINESS OF EDUCATION - International Indian

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DIWALI 

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2008 • ISSUE 5 • VOl. 15.5 • EST 1992 

THE BUSINESS OF EDUCATION 

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[ EDITORIAL ] 

Calling Indian Hindus, Indian Muslims, 

Indian Christians: Divide and They Win 

Longstanding readers of TII are familiar 

with my views on institutionalized faith 

through middlemen vs personal faith 

in God. One keeps you horizontally bound 

to man-made dictates, the other vertically 

connects with the Creator. In my own spiritual 

journey I discovered there is a life changing 

difference between following something 

called Christianity and genuine faith in Christ. 

So my reaction to the current destruction of 

Christian worship places in India that people 

call “church’’ differs from the general outcry. 

The word ‘church’ is not an exclusive 

Christian term anymore than geographically 

‘Hindu’ is exclusively for practitioners of 

Hinduism. It originates from ekklesia, a word 

used in the context of Athenian democracy by 

referring to a chosen assembly of individuals. 

Somehow church buildings have acquired 

unnecessary religious significance, missing 

the wood for the trees. In destroying churches, 

the perpetrators of violence against Indian 

Christians need to understand that true 

faith-not the cultural variety is impossible to 

eradicate. They only have to study ancient 

Rome, Russia or Communist China’s relentless 

attempts to wipe out their people’s faith and 

carefully evaluate the situation there today. 

It is now obvious what the Sangh Parivar 

is up to across the country, but if the BJP’s 

proxy army of goons doesn’t halt ‘Operation 

Persecute’ they could eventually be responsible 

for altering India’s spiritual landscape into one 

they least expect. Wishful thinking? Not really, 

just a lesson from the pages of history. Genuine 

faith in Christ is not like a club membership-it 

cannot be inherited, bought, sold, transferred 

or forcibly implanted. The scriptures (John 

15: 16) in fact clarify that God chooses people, 

not the other way around. Paradoxically in 

his great mercy he also says, “Ask, and you 

will receive.” That incredible transaction for 

salvation is not signing up to something manmade 

called Christianity, it is fulfilling the 

longing of every human heart to be freed from 

sin and certain of a place in eternity. 

It is a privilege to interact with people of 

various faiths who genuinely seek the vertical 

divine connection and share important 

convictions. Long ago I stopped seeing 

people as Hindus, Muslims, Christians etc., 

so taking sides and joining the blame game 

against a particular religious community for 

the atrocities in India is not an option. All we 

Indians need to be clear about is that a nexus 

of criminal politicians, disaffected individuals 

goaded by unlawful political and religious 

groups is single-mindedly at work in our land. 

If they succeed in dividing us, they win. 

India is being taken over by hoodlums and 

neither the state nor the citizenry seem to 

understand the grave danger. Petty rajahs ruled 

before and the British seized their kingdoms, 

but today individuals with private armies 

possess wealth and influence from established 

power bases throughout the country. Lawless 

organisations like the Bajrang Dal, MNS etc., 

effortlessly challenge the state. Someone like 

a Raj Thackeray is only a more prominent 

incarnation of local goondas in every state who 

operate with impunity. Long before Indira 

Gandhi allowed the likes of Bhindranwalle to 

run free, India has been turning a blind eye 

to a growing network of political and criminal 

masterminds who know how to subvert 

democracy, and manipulate our unwieldy 

parliamentary government. Now the chickens 

are coming home to roost. 

We are casual about injustice in India but 

whatever our stand on faith or politics the 

slaughter of innocents and the plight of our 

fellow Indians is heartbreaking. They are 

being blown up by fanatics manipulated 

to believe their religion calls for revenge 

or butchered by rented mobs for political 

mileage. Hordes are motivated strategically 

by the absurd religious conversion issue that 

clearly violates our fundamental rights. If 

you belong to the silent, impotent majority of 

Indians who remain mute bystanders as the 

killings continue, you have only an illusion 

of safety. The forces being unleashed in our 

land may kill your neighbors in the name of 

religion today; unchecked, they will find other 

reasons to deal with you tomorrow. 

German Chancellor Bismarck once 

observed that, “God looked after idiots, 

drunks and the United States of America.” 

But publications like Der Spiegel in Germany 

say the era of American fiscal dominance in 

the world has ended. But India’s corrupt, pus 

infected underbelly is even more vulnerable 

and our most essential social foundations 

highly uncertain. Indian democracy may have 

withstood six decades of social, economic and 

political challenges, but the rule of law is still 

not established in the country. Religion in 

India is controlled by politicians and tainted in 

blood, the Indian tendency to claim spiritual 

high ground is a bad joke. There is something 

seriously wrong with India. 

In the past I have speculated that in a country 

with plural beliefs like ours, an idea to consider 

is combined places of worship for all, where 

we could share the most meaningful truths 

of our faiths. In community halls where there 

is harmony, our understanding of each other 

would radically improve and large chunks of 

prime real estate put to more practical use! 

Popular belief often ignores the fact that while 

places of worship have religious and historical 

significance, they are also monuments to the 

ambitions and dubious motivations of various 

institutions and clergy hooked on expansion. 

Jesus set no such example for earthly 

increase - religious empires are entirely 

man’s idea. 

Frank Raj 

Publisher & Founder Editor 

2 

THE INTERNATIONAL INDIAN

[ CONTENTS ] 

ISSUE 15.5 2008: ISSN 0964-8437 

Cover Story 

Sunny Varkey: 

56 

Entrepreneur 

& Educator of 

Excellence 

Sunny Varkey’s mission of redefining 

education in the UAE and beyond 

has succeeded in creating what no 

single entrepreneur has managed to 

achieve in the field of Middle East 

education. 

By Mona Parikh McNicholas 

and Frank Raj 

The Changing 

Face of Diwali: 

Politics 

The India Column 8 

by Vishal Arora 

Arab View 16 

by Rami G. Khouri 

Columns 

Guptara Garamagaram 18 

by Prabhu Guptara 

14 

Less emphasis 

on rituals, 

but more 

ostentatious. 

That’s the 

hallmark of 

the modern, affluent India. There 

are more lights, and electric ones. 

By Nita J Kulkarni 

Community 

Hyderabadi: 

Women’s Arena 25 

by Barbara Lewis 

Let’s ask Dr. Dobson 28 

Humour 30 

by Melvin Durai 

Foreign Affairs 32 

by Sreeram Chaulia 

India These Days: Tuticorin 

by Ashok Dongre 36 

44 

The Hindus and the Muslims are the 

warp and weft of the social fabric, the taana 

and the baana. Together they have woven 

wonders and held up a shining picture of 

communal amity. Unfortunately the actions 

of a few people have created this crazy picture 

where a wrong doer is always a Muslim 

with a beard and a skull cap. 

By Shyamola Khanna 

Sex, Lies and Truth 38 

by Melissa and 

Louis McBurney 

I Believe 61 

by Karan Thapar 

Buzzword 78 

Future Quest 80 

Features 

Investment 10 

by Archisman Dinda 

Business of Music 22 

by Archisman Dinda 

From UK - Dare to Achieve 40 

by Sarina Menezes 

From USA – Seniors Rock On 52 

by Prem Kishore 

Sangliana Saga 64 

by Ingrid Albuquerque 

From Canada – Mixed Marriages 66 

by Rubina Jacob 

Bollywood Profile – Anupam Kher 68 

by Amita Sarwal 

International Adoption 70 

by Ingrid Albuquerque 

Big Bad Branding of Bollywood 73 

by Naseem Javed 

Moneywise: Employee Benefits 76 

by Bob Parker 

Interview 

See U at the Top: Jonathan Jagtiani, 

CEO, Home Centre 48 

Miscellany 

Editorial 2 

Letters 6 

TII Hall of Fame 50 

Dr. H. Narsimhaiah, educationist, 

born Hosur, Karnataka, 1920 

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[ LETTERS ] 

Stand United 

I 

strongly condemn the senseless violence 

perpetrated against the Christians in Orissa and 

express my deepest concern. Christians practice 

their faith in peace and respect other faiths. It is 

disheartening to know that many innocent people 

have been killed in Orissa by communal groups and 

several houses, orphanages, and churches gutted 

during the recent communal violence. 

The Constitution of this great nation guarantees 

her citizens the fundamental right to practice 

their faith without fear. All Indians are equal and 

no group of individuals can take the law into 

their hands and deprive other citizens of their 

fundamental rights. Of late the secular fabric of our 

Mother India is tarnished by the senseless acts of 

communal forces. 

I also strongly condemn the subsequent decision 

of the Directorate of Education, Government 

of Karnataka, to serve notices to the Christian 

institutions who had closed their institutions on 

Friday, August 29, 2008. This was a peaceful protest. 

Not a single incidence of violence was reported 

Secular India! 

our latest magazine carrying an article written 

Yby Nita J Kukarni on Ramzan in India is really a 

thought provoking one and it kindled nostalgia of 

India within me. I spent a major part of my life in 

a small upcoming town down south – Coimbatore 

in Tamil Nadu. I recall those happy days with lot 

of friends. We used to celebrate all the festivals 

together – Diwali, Onam, X-mas, Easter, Eid, 

Ramadan. All our friends used to ensure that we 

were together on such functions with our families, 

enjoying the festive spirit. The important thing 

which I would like to point out here is that we were 

together not only in celebration, but even in times 

of difficulties – a treatment in hospital or death 

in family – we were together. Secularism in India is 

born with each and every Indian and politicians are 

hijacking it for their mean purposes. 

Proud to be an INDIAN! 

Vinodhkumar P, 

Dubai 

from anywhere. These institutions serve the people 

of all walks of society and provide education to all, 

without any discrimination of caste, religion, or 

social status. In a democracy, people have the right 

of expression and what is wrong when this is done 

in a peaceful manner? 

Let us stand united and demand: 

1. An impartial Central enquiry into the recent 

communal violence in Orissa. 

2. The guilty should be arrested and stern action 

taken against them. 

3. Preventive measures to be taken by the 

authorities throughout the country to prevent such 

incidents and deal with the police authorities who 

failed to take preventive action despite advance 

information given to them. 

Do forward this mail to as many friends to solicit 

their support for a cause. Do respond to 

contact.drhtsangliana@gmail.com with 

your name, address and telephone number for 

communication. 

God Bless our Great Country, 

Dr. H. T. Sangliana, Member of Parliament 

Great Articles 

think The International Indian contains some 

I absolutely fantastic articles targeted at the 

Gulf- Indian readers. I am not sure if I have seen the 

forward features list, I believe your website is under 

reconstruction. Overall, I found the magazine very 

interesting as a NRI reader myself – good work! 

Aakriti Kaushik 

London 

Correction Please 

I 

n the last issue, TII 15.4, we’d like to correct our 

mistake. Ajmal Perfumes’ turnover for the GCC is 

US$ 167 million; this is not the net profit as stated 

earlier. In terms of Zakat, Ajmal Perfumes gives 2.5% 

and an additional 10% towards charity. Both the 

amounts are taken from the net profit, which we do 

not disclose. 

Zubair Haider, Dubai 

Executive at Ajmal Perfumes 


Est. 1992: The region’s oldest, authoritative 

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THE INTERNATIONAL INDIAN 

Circulation 25,000 copies 

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[ THE INDIA COLUMN ] 

Futility of Inquiry Commissions 

“How long can the governments fool people by temporarily calming their anger by 

setting up commissions, which are nothing more than tokenism?” 

[ By VISHAL ARORA ] 

It is typical of state governments in 

India to set up inquiry commissions 

under the Commission of Inquiry 

Act of 1952 after incidents of largescale 

communal violence. But, is this 

exercise fruitful? There are at least 

thee reasons why it is not. 

One, commissions take too long 

in submitting reports and recommendations. 

For instance, March 

2010 is likely to mark half a century 

of the extension of the Justice M.S. 

Liberhan Commission, which continues 

to probe the 1992 demolition of 

the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya (Uttar 

Pradesh). On September 30, its term 

was extended for the 47th time by six 

more months. 

The Liberhan Commission was set 

up by the then P.V. Narasimha Rao government 

10 days after the demolition of the 

mosque on Dec 6, 1992. The order setting 

up the commission stipulated that it complete 

the inquiry “as soon as possible but not 

later than three months”. Regrettably, the 

three months’ deadline has been stretched 

to 16 long years. 

One fails to understand how an inquiry 

panel can investigate a crime months or years 

after its occurrence? It is simple logic that 

the longer one waits, the lesser the chances 

of gathering evidence against the perpetrators. 

But, the fact that the Liberhan Commission 

has recorded statements of several 

senior BJP leaders, including L.K. Advani, 

Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharati, and 

former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan 

Singh, suggests why there is such a delay. 

Two, the independence and neutrality 

of commissions are questionable. For 

example, five days before the term of the 

Liberhan Commission was extended, the 

first part of the Nanavati Commission report 

was tabled in the Gujarat state assembly. 

The report said the burning of the S-6 

coach of the Sabarmati Express train on 

February 27, 2002 near the Godhra railway 

station was an act of some local Muslims. 

It also absolved the Bharatiya Janata Party 

(BJP) government, which was believed to 

be behind the gory anti-Muslim violence 

that ensued. In other words, the report stated 

exactly what Chief Minister Narendra 

Modi wanted to hear and advertise on the 

eve of general elections. 

The Nanavati Commission report, which 

gave a clean chit to the chief minister 

who was called a modern day Nero by the 

Supreme Court of India for failing to protect 

the lives of Muslims, contradicted the report 

of a committee set up by the railway ministry 

under the leadership of Lalu Prasad Yadav 

and headed by former judge U.C. Banerjee. 

In its interim report submitted in January 

2005, the Banerjee Committee stated the 

train fire was an accident and that there was 

no evidence to suggest that it was planned. 

Besides, numerous independent inquiry reports 

held the Modi government guilty of 

allowing extreme Hindu nationalist groups 

to perpetrate violence on Muslims with almost 

total impunity. 

The Nanavati Commission report 

dismayed the minority Muslim 

community in India, but there 

was nothing surprising about it. For, 

the Commission, which was set up 

by the Modi government in March 

2002, comprised of two justices, 

G.T. Nanavati and K.G. Shah. Justice 

Shah expired earlier this year, 

and the government appointed in his 

place former judge Akshay Mehta, 

who is believed to be close to Modi. 

The appointment of Justice Mehta 

and the time of the submission of the 

report that was still incomplete raise 

doubts in the minds of people about 

its neutrality. 

Lastly, the findings and recommendations 

of inquiry commissions 

are not binding. Take for example 

the Justice Srikrishna Commission, 

which in 1998 clearly indicted the Shiv Sena 

in the infamous incident of communal violence 

against Muslims in Mumbai in 1992- 

93. It made several recommendations, but 

they have neither been accepted nor acted 

upon by any Maharashtra government since 

then. This, despite loud hues and cries being 

raised by numerous non-governmental 

organisations. 

If commissions take years to come up 

with findings, if they are not shielded from 

a possible influence of ruling governments, 

and if their recommendations are not binding, 

who needs commissions of inquiry? 

How long can the governments fool people 

by temporarily calming their anger by setting 

up commissions, which are nothing 

more than tokenism? Two years ago, the 

Supreme Court rightly observed that commissions 

were appointed for only mere 

political reasons “knowing fully well that 

nothing will come out of it”. 

Vishal Arora is a freelance journalist 

based in New Delhi. 

8 


[ INVESTMENTS ] 

‘Do not keep all your 

eggs in one basket’ 

“Actually, long-term 

investors are unwilling 

to take hasty decisions 

in taking fresh calls 

and are waiting for 

clearer signals. Even as 

inflation and global crude 

oil prices have 

been showing signs 

of coming down, 

in real terms there 

have not been 

significant changes.” 

[ By ARCHISMAN DINDA ] 

The old proverb that whatever goes 

up must come down seems to be 

making an impact in the Indian 

financial markets. After a sustained period 

of bull reign, the bearish moods seems to 

be prevailing far more than what analysts 

anticipated. With the BSE sensex slipping 

below the 10, 000 mark in the last month 

and then recovering after assurances from 

the government, what is worrying the 

analyst is the kind of impact that global 

factors have on the Indian markets. With 

major international financial institutions 

in the doldrums, there is a worry about 

how safe we are in globalised India. “If it 

can happen to them it can happen to us any 

day,” believes a major broker unwilling to 

be named. Even assurance from the finance 

ministers is of little help to the teetering 

retailers. And this negative sentiment is 

what is hurting the markets more than 

anything believe analysts. 

The very lack of confidence in the market 

is making sure that there is no buying even 

at the lowest levels. ‘There is no fresh 

commitment coming in. People are taking 

up opportunistic positions. Therefore, there 

is little commitment left in the market. At 

this point, the problem with the market is 

the lack of commitment and sustained fund 

inflows. Market analysts however prescribe 

sustained buying to get out of the current 

rut. Analysts are adviasing people to stay 

with known names in this market. The very 

basis of the Indian economy is on strong 

footing like never before, and nothing 

dramatic has taken place domestically. Both 

politically and economically, except for the 

rising inflation and the corporate numbers 

still showing substantial resilience, and 

the GDP remaining stellar, crude prices 

are showing signs of coming down, and 

analysts are hopeful of better tidings. 

However, the predicament lies in the lack 

of confidence and no one is willing to buy 

this elementary truth. “Actually, longterm 

investors are unwilling to take hasty 

decisions in making fresh calls and are 

waiting for clearer signals. 

Even as inflation and global crude oil 

prices have been showing signs of coming 

down, in real terms there has not been 

10 


[ INVESTMENTS ] 

significant change. Two things – the 

greenback’s appreciation against the rupee 

in recent weeks and the lag effect in having 

weekly inflation numbers – may have 

caused the difference. For example, crude 

oil at $106 a barrel in real terms now means 

$118 a barrel owing to the appreciation 

of over 11 per cent in US Dollar vis-à-vis 

rupee in the past four months,” believes 

analyst Sundar Patel. 

But such is the sentiment, that even 

known names are finding it hard to sell their 

brand value in such sluggish weather. In the 

middle of August, Tata Motors announced 

its plans to raise funds to part finance the 

$2.3-billion acquisition of Ford’s iconic 

auto brands Land Rover and Jaguar. The 

latest proposal is slightly different from one 

the auto major announced in May: That it 

would raise Rs 7,200 crore via three rights 

issues. There’s no change in two proposed 

issues to raise Rs 4,200 crore. However, the 

Tata’s have dropped a third rights issue of 

five-year 0.5 per cent convertible preference 

shares to raise Rs 3,000 crores. Instead, the 

commercial vehicles and car giant has opted 

to raise that amount through a divestment 

of its stakes in group companies. 

Around the same time, the Aditya Birla 

group company Hindalco became another 

Indian mega-corp— which had also made 

a multi-billion acquisition, of aluminum 

giant Novelis for $6 billion—to reign its 

capital-raising game plan. In June, the Birla 

aluminum major had proposed to raise 

Rs 5,000 crore by issuing one rights share 

for every three held, at a price of Rs 120. 

According to the Centre for Monitoring 

Indian Economy (CMIE), Corporate India 

has investments totaling Rs 71,10,334 crore 

lined up. But the question is: Where is all 

that money going to come from? 

The tamed sentiment on the Dalal 

Street is taking its toll on all forms of 

equity capital-raising: Initial public 

offerings, follow-on public offerings, 

private placements and depository receipts. 

Rights issues have been a trendy way for 

corporations, but as the tinkering in the 

Tata and Hindalco blueprints indicates, 

such fund-raising isn’t , without its share 

of hiccups. Hence, bank lending has raced 

up but as corporate chieftains (like ICICI 

Bank MD K.V. Kamath) have warned, 

“ 

There is a 

possibility that we 

would get better 

levels. Therefore, 

there is no compelling 

reason to go and buy 

because stocks have 

corrected now. The 

broader undertone 

will continue to 

remain bearish. 

” 

rising interest rates (which haven’t yet 

peaked) threaten to throw a huge spanner 

into the mega-expansion plans of Indian 

promoters. What’s more, the higher cost 

of debt will result in interest costs rising 

further, eating more into India Inc.’s profits 

(interest expenses as a percentage of sales 

have already begun rising in the quarter 

ended June 2008, compared to the previous 

year’s corresponding period). 

So what does all this means to retail 

investors? Should they hold on? Technical 

analyst Deepak Mohani thinks that for 

those people who have got a nice blue 

chip portfolio for several years, there is no 

reason to dump. “There is no reason for 

people with a long-term portfolio of blue 

chips they have had from 5 or 6 years to 

get out. They can absorb this decline and 

get into the next bull market,” he says. 

According to him, the trouble is more for 

those people who have got into the market 

in the last one or two months. He advises 

them to “book their losses even though they 

may be substantial enough.” 

Jaideep Goswami of HDFC Securities, 

on the other hand asks people to bide their 

time and postpone their buying. “There is 

a possibility that we would get better levels. 

Therefore, there is no compelling reason to 

go and buy because stocks have corrected 

now. The broader undertone will continue 

to remain bearish,” he says. “We need to see 

the overwhelming sense of optimism, which 

is not yet back. People are basically looking 

for profits even now. We may see some 

buying coming at lower levels in stocks 

like Larsen & Toubro or Ashok Leyland or 

Maruti Udyog for that matter,” he adds. 

Clearly, there is a sense of caution and 

even analysts are not sure which way the 

markets would swing now and what kind of 

strategy would be effective in these troubled 

times. This dilemma is best summed up 

by T S Harihar of Karvy Stock Broking. 

“The only strategy that I can think of is 

a volatile strategy, where one just takes a 

bet that the markets will be volatile. The 

only thing that I can bet on is volatility. 

One can make combination buy calls and 

puts. Other than that, it is very difficult to 

take a directional strategy in this market,” 

Harihar concludes. 

However, there could be some brave 

souls who are even now looking for profits 

in this volatility. In a volatile stock market, 

where prices change rapidly, there are two 

main strategies that can deliver good longterm 

gains to investors. The first rule 

is to believe in another age-old proverb. 

Do not keep all your eggs in one basket. 

Hence, diversify. You should invest in a 

wide range of different shares that can act 

as protection against other sectors. Also, do 

put everything into the highest risk areas. 

Invest in long established companies that 

offer stable results. Fast changing stocks such 

as those in the travel and technology sectors 

traditionally do well seasonally, but are also 

affected significantly by international news 

events. Secondly, you need to be on your 

toes to decide when to buy and sell in order 

to get the best returns. A fast changing 

market gives you plenty of opportunities 

to buy and sell, taking advantage of the 

best price for either action, but you need to 

commit yourself to spending serious time 

poring over your portfolio to discern the 

optimum moment for making your move. 

It is important to recognize the long-term 

trends that underlie short-term volatility, 

and position yourself to take advantage. 

Archisman Dinda is a freelance writer 

based in Kolkatta. 

12 


[ DIWALI ] 

The Changing 

face of Diwali 

“Less emphasis on rituals, but more ostentatiousness. That’s the hallmark of the 

modern, affluent India. There are more lights, and electric ones.” 

[ By NITA JATAR KULKARNI ] 

When Mrs Sayantara 

Purandare went to 

perform pooja of a 

cow and calf on the day of Vasu- 

Baras (the first day of Diwali for 

Maharashtrians) she was surprised 

to see a lone cow standing under 

the tree bereft of calf. As the 

presence of the calf is equally 

important (to venerate the mother 

for sharing her milk with human 

children), Sayantara was upset, but 

saw that a lot of women were not 

too concerned. After all the man 

had a glib answer: “The cow is 

pregnant,” he told them, extending 

his hand shamelessly for the dakshina. This 

would have been unthinkable a few decades 

back…no tout would have dared to mess up 

with an age-old tradition. But this is the face 

of Diwali today. Rank commercialization, 

and conmen able to make a fast buck because 

people are less finicky about rituals. 

Less emphasis on rituals, but more 

ostentatiousness. That’s the hallmark of the 

modern, affluent India. There are more lights, 

and electric ones. And not just in homes, but 

in neighborhoods and shopping complexes 

as well. Fireworks have got louder and more 

organised. So has the music. There are Diwali 

dances, Diwali beauty queens and Diwali 

shows. Diwali cards and Diwali gift packs. 

Rangolis are not the pretty decorations that 

one slaved at in one’s own courtyard but are 

now the subject of neighborhood competitions. 

Sweets and savouries are bought not made, 

and the well to do often exchange expensive 

gifts even if tradition dictates that it’s sweets 

and savouries that need to be exchanged. 

Chocolates are in fact the new fashion and 

ghee laden sweets are getting the go-by. Maybe 

diseases like high blood pressure, cholesterol 

and diabetes are restraining factors! 

Other rituals like decorating houses with 

rangolis, taking the ritual oil baths and 

performing aukshans are becoming optional, 

particularly amongst the younger lot. As for 

spring-cleaning (used to start a good 15 days 

before Diwali) it has become a superficial 

exercise, if done at all. All this leaves people, 

particularly elders, with doubts about 

whether the spirit of Diwali is intact. 

What do we mean by the spirit of Diwali 

anyway? Diwali signifies the victory of Good 

over Evil (return of Rama from 

a 14 year exile for north Indians 

and defeat of Narkasura by Lord 

Krishna in the south). In most 

parts of India Laxmi (the Goddess 

of Wealth) is worshipped. People 

purchase gold and remain at 

home to welcome Laxmi. It’s a big 

day for those in the northern and 

western parts of India and if one 

has to test the sanctity of Diwali, 

one needs to test it on this day. 

What one sees is heart-warming. 

The majority of people stay at 

home to celebrate Laxmi pooja 

as it is considered inauspicious to 

travel during this time or even 

leave the house. Fifty year old 

Sarita Poha doesn’t even party that day as the 

thought of locking up the house is anathema 

to her. “It’s not superstition,” she insists. “It’s 

religion, and I believe in it and so do my two 

grown-up daughters.” 

On the other days of Diwali, rituals are 

not adhered to as strictly. People may not go 

out and buy new utensils on Dhanteras but 

they do lights lamps and there is a festive 

atmosphere at home. People come and go 

and there are get-togethers. “The days are 

not unnoticed. I think faith is intact in spite 

of the dilution of ritualistic practices,” says 

Usha Vaidyanathan, a traditional Tamilian, 

and she doesn’t think that this change is a 

bad thing. “With the younger generation 

festivals are becoming less associated with 

religion and rituals and becoming more 

like social events and occasions for get- 

14 


[ DIWALI ] 

Sayantara Purandare is upset that Diwali has become 

more commercial and age-old traditoinal rituals 

forgotten 

togethers – more like how it is for desis 

overseas and in my opinion it is good.” 

Worshipping is a private affair with close 

family members and after that people party, 

splurge and “enjoy.” The emphasis being on 

bonding with others, not just close relatives. 

That is in fact what the spirit of Diwali is 

about. Bonding with the community. It cannot 

be a coincidence that Diwali takes place around 

the harvest season. In fact some major festivals 

of India like Diwali, Holi and Pongal take 

place during such times. On Holi there is an 

emphasis on togetherness, people drink and 

make merry. And well, Diwali is like that too. 

Why, in some regions gambling is part of the 

Diwali tradition. Goddess Parvati is thought to 

have played dice with her husband Lord Shiva 

on that day and ordained that people who do 

so will prosper the rest of the year. People may 

not gamble for the sake of Goddess Parvati’s 

blessings, but they do gamble! 

So, when revelers are not praying, they are 

feasting, bursting crackers, shopping, dressing 

up, gambling and partying! The fatter their 

pockets, the more intense the revellery! No 

one thinks it’s wrong…because most people 

follow the “important rules” of Diwali. 

Affluence, women working, and an 

impatience with rituals may the reasons for 

Diwali celebrations becoming irreverent in 

the metros today, but the nuclear family is 

another reason. A Diwali sans elders is bound 

to be a little informal. “If close relatives were 

here, we would meet them… but they are 

spread out all over the world,” says fifty five 

year old Pushpa Zawar, a traditional Marwari 

What Diwali means to 

different communities 

Although all Hindus celebrate Diwali, 

it’s importance varies with different 

communities. In Bengal, Durga Puja (which 

arrives before Diwali) is more important than 

Diwali, and in Kerala it’s Onam, and in Tamil 

Nadu it’s Pongal. 

Diwali also starts differently for different 

communities. Maharashtrians start it off with 

Vasu-Baras, while for most other communities 

of India, the day of Dhanteras is the first day 

of Diwali, which many in north India call Choti 

Diwali. There are many legends associated 

with Dhanteras, but primarily it is the worship 

of wealth. And while the main day of Diwali 

for those in northern and western parts is 

Laxmi Pooja, for many states in the south, it’s 

Naraka Chaturdashi. It is believed that Lord 

Krishna killed Narakasura on this day. 

On the day of Lakshmi Puja it is considered 

auspicious to purchase gold. Houses are 

lighted up and the doors kept open for 

Lakshmi (Goddess of Weath) to enter the 

home. The Bengalis however do not worship 

Lakshmi, but Durga. 

Bhaiya Duj celebrates the love between 

brothers and sisters and the sisters perform 

an aukshan for their brothers and in return 

get a gift. But the importance of this festival 

varies across India and in some communities, 

like in Tamil Nadu for example, it is not 

celebrated at all. 

housewife. Brothers, sisters and parents live 

far away, and the telephone and the internet 

is what helps them connect, particularly 

around Diwali. Pushpa also confesses that 

when she was a new daughter-in-law all 

rituals were followed religiously as elders 

were watching. Although a religious person, 

today she ignores some inconvenient rituals 

like rising before sunrise, the oil baths and 

the cooking of elaborate Diwali “goodies.” 

Sarita Poha: It’s not superstition, it’s religion. I believe 

in it and so do my two grown-up daughters 

Some have even stopped bursting crackers 

during Diwali, either because of personal 

safety issues or for societal reasons. There 

is an awareness about the Sivakasi factories 

which employ child labour, and then there is 

also the question of the exorbitant prices of 

crackers today. 

What’s interesting is that Diwali is becoming 

more pan Indian than ever. For example, Tamil 

Nadu tradition did not demand that diyas be 

lighted during Diwali, but that is not the case 

anymore. “People have begun to borrow what 

they like from other states and we find many 

Tamilian houses lit up with diyas on deepavali 

night,” says Usha. Another example is that of 

Bhayya Duj (a Diwali day which celebrates 

the love between brothers and sisters). It is 

giving way to Rakhi amongst the younger 

generation in Maharashtra, a similar festival 

which falls weeks before Diwali. Rakhi is not 

a traditional Maharashtrian festival; Bhau Beej 

is. Increased mobility within India has meant 

a familiarity of religious rituals from other 

states, rituals which are imbibed, often at the 

cost of traditional ones. 

People do what they want, the way they 

want, but they do celebrate Diwali. And not 

just Diwali, but other festivals as well. They 

are doing it with gusto, picking up the rituals 

they find exciting, but they are celebrating. 

If not with close relatives and elders, with 

friends then. The emphasis is on bonding. 

And young Indians are increasingly doing it 

on their own terms. 

Nita Jatar Kulkarni is a freelance writer 

based in Mumbai 

THE INTERNATIONAL INDIAN 15

[ ARAB VIEW ] 

Demeaning Democracy 

“As the consequences and costs of the Iraq war, the global war on terror and the 

economic mismanagement unfold, so does the 2008 US presidential election. 

Now, even the latter appears to disgrace the once admired ideal of America’s 

democracy in the eyes of the world.” 

[ By RAMI G. KHOURI ] 

BEIRUT – Watching the US presidential 

election from the Arab region 

is a confusing vocation. At one level, 

American democracy is an impressive, 

vibrant, often stunning, phenomenon that 

permits any citizen – certified idiots and 

genuine geniuses alike – to seek and assume 

public office, and control the destiny of 

society. It produces some of the most 

monumental errors and costly adventures in 

world history, in the military and economic 

fields; but it also contains the mechanisms 

for its own self-correction, reconfiguration, 

improvement and re-birth – as we witness 

these days in the economic arena. 

At another level, America also provides 

a powerful argument against a totally open, 

unregulated democratic system, because it 

allows the volatile and sometimes infantile 

emotional psyche of a bare majority of citizens 

to determine the exercise of immense power. 

Three specific examples of the exercise 

of power show how American politicians can 

have devastating impact all over the world: the 

economic crisis that has hit the financial and 

housing sectors most severely, the war in Iraq 

and its assorted regional consequences, and the 

wider “global war on terror” that the United 

States launched and has led since 2001. All 

three reflect decisions made by democratically 

elected leaders in both the White House and 

the legislature. In their own ways, all three 

have made the world a more dangerous and 

fragile place, adding American incompetence 

and criminality to the destructive work of 

those many thugs, thieves and killers who 

already haunt much of the rest of the world. 

The consequences and full costs of the three 

policies of Iraq, the global war on terror and 

economic mismanagement are still unfolding. 

While historians will long argue the rights 

and wrongs of these policies, the world’s 

current verdict seems widely critical. The 

fascinating element for me is not if a specific 

policy is judged to be good or bad; it is that 

reckless and destructive decisions have been 

repeatedly made by the most open and vibrant 

democracy in the world. 

At the same time, American leaders continue 

to preach to the rest of us that democracy and 

freedom are our best hope for a better future. I 

agree in principle. In practice though, watching 

American democracy at work dampens many 

people’s enthusiasm for that particular model. 

Rather, we need to temper the extravagant 

excesses of democratic systems that are so 

vulnerable to manipulation by special interests 

and lobbies, or that pander to mass hysteria. 

Watching the current American presidential 

contest brings these issues to the fore once 

again, especially on the Republican side. The 

Democrats have selected a pair of candidates 

who pretty faithfully perpetuate that party’s 

traditions, with the added fact of an African- 

American candidate with a Muslim father. The 

Republican ticket of McCain and Palin, on the 

other hand, is a much stranger beast, especially 

in the vice presidential slot. 

The fact that someone like Governor Sarah 

Palin, who lacks any national or international 

experience – perhaps even basic knowledge 

– can be a potential vice-president is a sign of 

American democracy at its worst. In one swift, 

serendipitous moment, she was transformed 

from a moose hunter in Alaska to a global mullah 

hunter in a contest and a world about which she 

knows zilch – as she reconfirms every time she 

opens her mouth. 

The fact that respected conservative analysts 

and commentators have already asked for her to 

be dropped from the ticket is about as damning 

a verdict as there can be of her qualifications. 

This is much more problematic, though, for 

what it tells us about John McCain, and the 

entire American political system. Clearly, 

something is wrong with a system that turns 

democratic electoral contestation into either 

a fantastic gambling orgy for impulsive and 

ambitious elderly men, or an exercise in mass 

psychotherapy for millions in the electorate 

who seek solace and emotional recovery by 

embracing the image of the bouncy cheerleader 

next door, regardless of what this could mean 

for the United States and the world. 

The open and honest American system 

once again simultaneously shows us its best and 

worst. There is historic brilliance in designing 

a checks-and-balance governance system 

anchored in the consent of the governed, and 

open to every man and woman who aspires 

to public service, regardless of color, religion 

or gender. Alongside this, however, there is 

also bombastic buffoonery in the manner in 

which desperados and simpletons occasionally 

gravitate to control the system by offering the 

electorate a hybrid candidacy of cheerleading 

razzle-dazzle with macho emotionalism. 

For now, the signals from this campaign 

and from the past seven years are frightening. 

They confirm that America’s political 

democracy and economic governance 

systems – in their current forms – are less 

impressive export items than its iPods, 

computers, popular culture or universities. 

May the best team win, and in the process not 

ruin the good name of democracy. 

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of ‘The Daily 

Star’ and Director of the Issam Fares Institute 

for Public Policy and International Affairs at the 

American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. 

16 


[ GUPTARA GARAMAGARAM ] 

Diwali and the 

Soul of India 

“More and more, the fundamentalists are hijacking not only 

our festivals but even our language. ” 

[ By PRABHU GUPTARA ] 

In case you are not familiar with 

Diwali, it is an ancient Indian 

festival which lasts four days and 

celebrates the return of Shri Ram, 

an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, 

from his 14-year exile in the forest, 

after killing a demon king, Ravana. 

Diwali signifies the renewal of 

life and the victory of good over 

evil, and encourages society to 

dispel darkness and ignorance, and 

to spread the power of love and 

wisdom. It has been described as a 

time for cleansing, for closure of past 

negativities, and for re-committing 

oneself to one’s ideals and dreams. 

My childhood memories of 

Diwali are so vivid: visiting friends 

homes taking mithai and going to 

visit friends and relatives - where 

we would be confronted by stacks 

more of mithais and namkeens. I 

remember the deeyas on the roofs 

and on the lintels and windows, lighting up 

magically every house, no matter how poor. 

Fireworks everywhere. Rockets that lit up 

the sky. When I was very little, the terror and 

fun of sparklers in one’s own hand. Pataakas 

of various sorts - and the terror and fun of 

lighting one of them and rushing away before 

it went off! And the even greater excitement 

of going to check why a pataaka wasn’t going 

off - was it a dud? Or was it only the fuse that 

had failed? - just in case it went off while you 

were approaching it or poking about! Most 

of all, Diwali was running about with friends, 

and all the fun and card games and Monopoly. 

Not just for an hour, which might happen any 

time, but for four whole days! 

The great thing about Indian festivals 

when I was growing up was that all our 

festivals were entirely secular. Muslims and 

Christians celebrated all the Hindu festivals 

such as Diwali and Holi. Hindus and Muslims 

celebrated Christmas and New Year. Hindus 

and Christians celebrated Id and enjoyed the 

special and rather delicious 

Ramadan meals (though only 

at night of course). The same 

applied to Buddhist, Jain and 

Sikh festivals and, depending 

on where one lived, I am 

sure that applied equally 

to local festivals. Everyone 

took presents around to all 

one’s friends and everyone 

was treated with respect and 

love beyond any thought of 

whether the person belonged 

to “your” religion or not. 

Sadly, those days appear to 

be disappearing in India. More 

and more, the fundamentalists 

are hijacking not only 

our festivals but even our 

language (“only PURE Hindi, 

please!”). Fundamentalists are 

also weakening our already 

corrupted and enfeebled 

institutions, so that the police 

and other government officials 

are increasingly unreliable not only when 

it comes to protecting minorities but even 

innocent people who are from the majority 

community if they are secularists, or not 

“powerful” or “connected” enough. 

In fact, it seems to me that there is a tussle 

going on for the soul of India. At Independence, 

the secularists were in the ascendant, due to 

the influence of the British and of Britisheducated 

Indians such as Gandhiji and 

Nehruji. Even though the secularists were 

18 


[ GUPTARA GARAMAGARAM ] 

tiny in number, it was they who set the tone 

for the nation. At Independence, most of 

our leaders were secular. Now there are 

few political leaders who are truly secular. 

Hypocritically, they talk secularism only to 

get political mileage out of it. 

Now, 60 years and two generations of 

leaders later, the influence of the British 

is of course (quite rightly!) gone, and the 

influence of the secularists, though it is still 

expanding in terms of numbers, is losing its 

moral authority both because of political 

fragmentation and because of corruption. 

With the decline of secularism as a force, 

there is a rising threat from fundamentalists, 

who are using mass violence to try to 

intimidate not only the minorities but also 

those elements in the police, judiciary 

and administration who are secular. The 

attempt is not new. What is new is the extent 

of their activities. Once the fever around 

Independence passed, there were of course 

a few occasional riots against Muslims. Over 

the last few decades, we see more and more 

riots all over the country, happening at the 

same time against Muslims and Christians, 

along side threats to any Buddhists, Jains or 

Sikhs who insist on considering themselves 

“non-Hindu” (and the traditional violence 

against Dalits and OBCs). 

Looking to the future, it seems to me 

that the next general elections, which could 

take place any time after April 2009, may be 

crucial to the future of secularism in India. 

Why? Because we have a tradition of 

throwing out the party in power. So it seems 

to me a foregone conclusion that the Congress 

will be thrown out. Why do we have a 

tradition of throwing out the ruling party? 

Because all parties are equally corrupt and 

none of them delivers much to the public. 

So, though Congress could still win by some 

miracle, let us examine the alternatives. 

One is the Hindu fundamentalists 

represented by the BJP, the political arm 

of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and its thugs 

in bodies such as the Bajrang Dal. “The 

BJP can’t win”, I am told, “because they 

are not a national party”. Well, they may 

not be a national party, but they could still 

be the undoubtedly largest party after the 

elections, even if they have to go into a 

coalition with minority partners in order to 

“ 

If the Dalits/ 

OBCs can resist the 

temptation of power at 

any price simply to line 

one’s own pockets, 

then we could see the 

return of secularism 

perhaps in a new 

political form. We 

could see the soul 

of our country being 

restored - and we 

could look forward to 

a time of cleansing. 

” 

rule. And if the BJP does come to 

that kind of power, this time they won’t have 

the moderating influence of very powerful 

partners in the last coalition, nor the 

moderating influence of Vajpayeeji. Their 

new leaders are out and out ideologues who 

have made it quite clear, by their words 

as well as by their actions, that they will 

unleash Hitlerite actions in the country 

against all minorities. 

So if the country does not want to be 

taken “back” into a new “Ram Raj”, what are 

the alternatives? First, it seems to me often 

forgotten that a major alternative is Maoism 

(“Naxalism”), which has recently taken over our 

neighbouring country, Nepal. The reaction, 

when I mention this, is usually absolute 

disbelief - till I point out that, according to our 

government’s own figures, Maoists already 

control 10% of India’s districts. Their recent 

murder of the Swami Swami Lakshmananda 

Saraswati in Orissa does not make any sense 

unless one sees it as their assertion of strength 

against Hindu fundamentalists. 

So if we don’t want the Hindu 

fundamentalists and we don’t want the 

Maoists, do we have an alternative? 

Surprisingly, we are seeing, into the third 

generation after Independence, thanks in 

large part due to the reservations system 

(with all its inequities!), that Dalits/ OBCs 

are finally being freed in massive numbers 

from the oppressive hold of castes such 

as mine. Naturally, no one likes to lose 

privileges and perks that go back thousands 

of years. Equally, some individuals from 

the Backward Classes, and even from 

the minorities, are sympathetic to the 

Hindutvans for reasons ranging from their 

own advantage to seeing (however rightly or 

wrongly!) in the Hindutvans a less corrupt 

and more efficient administration than that 

provided by the secularists. But that does 

not take away from the fact that the Hindu 

fundamentalists, at least in the rural areas, are 

attempting essentially to re-impose the hold 

of traditional structures. But we know that 

such an attempt will not succeed in the long 

term, whatever happens in the short term. 

So the long term future lies with our 

masses being finally enlightened enough to 

provide a corruption-free government that 

actually delivers the progress that we thought 

was within our grasp at Independence, but 

which has been so cruelly betrayed so far by 

our brown sahibs. 

If the Dalits/OBCs can resist the temptation 

of power at any price simply to line one’s own 

pockets, as all the other politicians have done, 

then we could see the return of secularism 

perhaps in a new political form. We could 

see the soul of our country being restored 

- and we could look forward to a time of 

cleansing, closure of past negativities, and 

re-committing our nation to our ideals and 

dreams of darkness and ignorance finally 

being dispelled, and the power of love and 

wisdom being spread all round. Then I could 

not only be able to look forward to future 

Diwalis, Holis, Christmases, Easters, Ids, 

Ramadans and other festivals with a secular 

ambience once again, but life itself in our 

country could be a Diwali. 

Professor Prabhu Guptara is Executive Director, 

Organisations Development, at Wolfsberg. He is 

responsible for the UBS Think Tanks on a wide 

variety of market and global issues. Professor Prabhu 

Guptara writes here in a purely personal capacity. 

He blogs at www.prabhuguptara.blogspot.com 


[ BUSINESS OF MUSIC ] 

The Rhythm 

of Money 

“... with technology advancing so rapidly, musicians want a share of the pie on not just 

cassettes and CDs but also from radio and television channels that air their songs, 

from sites that allow people to download music, and from ringtones that are being 

downloaded at a rapid pace.” 

[ By ARCHISMAN DINDA ] 

The century old Indian music 

industry, one of the prime forces 

that promotes Indian culture and 

makes India so omnipresent in the West is 

making up lost ground faster than any other 

music industry in the world. The industry 

from its high turnover of Rs 1,150 crores 

in 1990 touched the abysmal low of Rs 

450 crore in 2002, but since then has been 

growing at a normal pace and is expected 

to touch Rs 1,500 mark by 2009 with both 

CD and digital sales combined. Though 

all that seems good news, there are notes 

of discontent, and the melodies are shaky 

as the industry tries to rejuvenate itself 

from the slump. The growing discontent is 

openly voiced. 

“As long as the issue of royalty remains 

unsettled, musicians will continue to be 

insecure,” said a well-known composer with 

a request for anonymity. Music companies, 

he felt, need to have faith in their artistes, 

and the industry on the whole needs to be 

structured properly and give artistes their 

rightful share of money. What’s more, with 

technology advancing so rapidly, musicians 

want a share of the pie on not just cassettes 

and CDs but also from radio and television 

channels that air their songs, from sites that 

allow people to download music, and from 

ringtones that are being downloaded at a 

rapid pace. “These people are using our 

creations to earn money but are refusing to 

pay its rightful owners,” said Sonu Nigam, 

who launched Singers’ Association of 

India (SAI) a few years back along with his 

colleague Alka Yagnik. “ The association 

aims to tap the real issues that music 

companies fail to address,” he added. 

Music composers are disturbed by 

the lack of recognition. “If you hear the 

hit song Kajrare from the film Bunty aur 

Babli, it’s called the Aishwarya-Amitabh- 

Abhishek song. No one calls it the Shankar 

Mahadevan-Alisha Chinai-Jaaved Ali song. 

22 



It’s such a wrong attitude, and that’s 

what we want to change,” said Shankar 

Mahadevan over a telephonic conversation. 

The Indian music industry has a unique 

structure compared to most global markets. 

Until 1990, it was completely dominated by 

film and devotional music. With the advent 

of satellite television and private radio 

stations, increasing consumer exposure to 

non-film albums and remixes have gained 

popularity. In the non-film category, 

devotional music produced by smaller and 

local companies is the most popular. A few 

late entrants to this category have decided 

to stay away from the vagaries of film music 

and have focused on high-end classical 

devotional and other niche genres instead. 

“These days all music labels have at least 

something in the non-film segment and for 

new entrants like us, we would prefer to 

work in that segment only,” said Samiran 

Gupta, of India Beat. 

Though artists are happy with the growth 

of the segment, they complain that music 

companies are not willing to shell out money 

on the artistes and would prefer the artistes 

to give them the finished product. Usually, 

the cost of bringing out a non-film music 

album is anywhere between Rs 35 lakhs 

and Rs 50 lakhs. This means that the artiste 

records the album, complete with mixing 

and mastering, and also shells out the money 

for the music videos. 

“It is extremely difficult, especially for 

new entrants to have that kind of moolah,” 

complains singer Ritika Sahni, who recently 

launched his second solo album. “Music 

companies continue to encourage halfbaked 

products and subsequently decline 

in quality,” says an arranger. The situation, 

according to musicians, is getting bleaker, 

especially as a new trend arises. A trend 

where companies loan a certain amount 

to an artist for bringing out an album. The 

artiste, in turn, is expected to pay it back at 

the end of a certain period. Though music 

companies remain tight-lipped on this issue 

and artistes prefer not to talk about it in the 

open, the status is obvious. 

A majority of established artistes are 

finding it increasingly tough to convince 

music companies to invest money in their 

projects. The biggest losers have been the 



classical artists, specially the upcoming 

ones, says multi-percussionist and tabla 

player Bickram Ghosh. “These days you 

will hardly find new albums of classical 

artists and musicians. All that is being 

launched is basically old wine in a new 

bottle,” he added. This method of re-release 

has become the model of content creation in 

an industry that appears to no longer find 

viability in producing new content. 

The Indian classical music industry is 

stuck in a rut, and topmost on everybody’s 

blame list is the record label. “Where is the 

musical diversity that India is known for? 

When categories like classical music are 

relegated to the back of the store where five 

racks have become one rack, you know we 

have a problem,” says vocalist Anupana Sen, 

who has been trying in vain, to produce a 

cassette for more than three years inspite of 

her phenomenal success in various concerts 

both in Indian and overseas. “If young 

talent has been recorded, it is the offspring 

or disciples of the really big artistes,” she 

added painfully. 

Erstwhile champions of the category like 

Sa Re Ga Ma and Music Today are being held 

answerable for not sustaining their interest 

in the genre and repackaging their existing 

inventory. Sa Re Ga Ma admits it has not 

launched a single new artiste in the last five 

years in the classical genre. The spokesperson 

of Music Today, is defensive - if the entire 

music industry has slipped from Rs 1,200 

crore in 2002 to Rs 600 crore today, the share 

of classical music is no more than Rs 10 crore. 

“Sales in the classical music category have 

been stagnating. It has occupied 3.5 per cent of 

Planet M’s total business for the last two years,” 

informs its Public Relationship Officer. 

To put that in perspective, Hindi film 

music contributes to 50 per cent of Planet M’s 

business. At Rhythm House, a music store 

in Mumbai’s Kala Ghoda district, you will 

still find over 1,500 Indian classical titles, 

but Mehmood Curmally, the store’s director, 

says new releases at the store are down to 

less than 30 a year. “The others are all rehashed 

compilations,” he explains. “What’s 

happening is that more people are listening to 

more music but much of it is on the radio or 

on the mobile phone,” retorts Singh. Over the 

last 10 years most recording companies - Sony, 

Times Music and Venus - have ventured into, 

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING 

Rs 1,150 crore 

The total size of the Indian music industry 

Rs 450 crore 

Losses due to piracy 

Rs 15 crore 

Money earned through ringtone downloads 

Rs 400 crore 

Organised market of film music in India 

Rs 100 crore 

Organised market for non-film music in India 

APPROXIMATE COST OF INVESTING IN A 

MUSIC ALBUM 

Total cost 

Anywhere between Rs 35-50 lakh 

Dubbing, mixing mastering 

Approximately Rs 12 lakh 

Cost per video 

Rs 10 lakh (usually the artiste does two 

videos) 

Cost of promoting the album (ad spots on 

radio and television, posters etc) 

Rs 15 lakh 

“ 

Where is the 

musical diversity that 

India is known for? 

When categories like 

classical music are 

relegated to the back 

of the store where five 

racks have become 

one rack, you know we 

have a problem. 

” 

and exited, classical music. “Not every company 

has the understanding or the wherewithal to 

manage the category,” says Singh. It is not that 

there is no upcoming talent, so what is the 

reason for this newfound anathema. 

Some suggest the growing demand for 

other traditional music genres like spiritual 

music is another reason why record labels are 

losing interest in classical music. Spiritual 

music accounts for a fifth of Music Today’s 

top line. In addition, the new releases are 

not upto the mark, believes Chaiti Jacob, a 

music critic. “Last year there have been few 

releases that are being marketed as Indian 

classical bands, which will do more harm than 

good,” she believes. “People are habituated 

in accepting classical music in a said format. 

If suddenly, it is changed, the acceptability 

will fall even further.” However, renowned 

slide-guitarist Debashish Bhattacharya, 

is unwilling to accept the theory of lack of 

acceptability. “How can record labels claim 

the genre is not profitable when concerts are 

packed every time?” he questioned. Actually, 

it doesn’t have the higher rate of return and 

that’s what dissuades then from investing, ” 

believes Gupta, whose company is all set to 

release atleast five new classical albums. 

Music on the Move 

The advent of new technology where you 

need not buy cassettes from stores but simply 

download even while travelling, has opened 

a new opportunity, but is also a threat to the 

existing notions of vending music. Palash 

Sen, lead singer of New Delhi-based group 

Euphoria, says, “Technology has advanced 

considerably and expanded the listeners’ 

base, with people downloading music at a low 

cost. Music is easily heard on radio channels, 

music videos are shown on television and 

people are happily listening to innumerable 

songs on their MP3 players. However, this 

is precisely what has led to a considerable 

decrease in the sales of the music albums.” 

“Nobody,” says Sen, “wants to buy music 

cassettes or CDs any more because they’re 

happily downloading music off the Net.” 

Kirit Sengupta of Indian Music Industry 

(IMI) agrees, citing this as one of the prime 

reasons why the industry has bled profusely 

in the past few years. “Though many of our 

member companies have opened avenues 

for digital sales, it will take some time for 

others to catch up because the one time 

investment for such technology is still on 

the higher side,” adds Sengupta. 

Archisman Dinda is a freelance writer 

based in Kolkata. 

24 


[ WOMEN’S ARENA ] 

An Aria to Change 

Wasfi Kani 

From stately homes to prison cells, British Indian Wasfi Kani has crossed 

cultures and classes and smashed through glass ceilings by rising to the top of 

the elite world of opera and then taking the art form to the disadvantaged. 

[ By BARBARA LEWIS ] 

Kani’s years of determination have 

earned her an Order of the British 

Empire (OBE) and this May, she 

was recognised by the Asian Women of 

Achievement Awards. “I often say that I’m 

an alpha male in a female body. If you want 

to do something, enough, nothing will get in 

your way,” said Kani of her success in opera, 

whose management roles tend to be maledominated. 

“By combining theatre and music, 

opera is for me the most thrilling art form. It 

assaults the eyes, the ears and the heart.” 

Grange Park Opera, of which she is chief 

executive, was set up by Kani in 1998, while 

continuing to lead Pimlico Opera, which she 

founded in the late 1980s, to stage operas 

in unusual locations, most notably prisons. 

Productions, bringing together prisoners and 

professional opera singers, have included Les 

Miserables at Wandsworth prison, London, 

and The Marriage of Figaro at Wormwood 

Scrubs, also in London, near Kani’s old 

grammar school, where she excelled at maths 

and music. 

Because the glamorous country house 

operas help to fund the prison work, Kani 

has earned a reputation as Robin Hood of 

the music world, robbing from the rich to 

give to the poor, but she says it is a two-way 

exchange, as well-heeled opera-lovers wake 

up to harsh realities. “What has been amazing 

is that these people who would otherwise 

have had no contact with prison, embrace 

the idea of the need for prison reform and 

have been very generous towards our prison 

Wasfi Kani (centre) receiving the Asian Women of Achievement Award this year 

projects,” she said. 

For the inmates, the benefits are manifold. 

“Often the prisoners have never even been to a 

theatre but through the rehearsal period of six 

weeks, they must all work together alongside 

a professional director and production team, 

overcome their fears and work towards 

singing before a public audience,” she said. 

“The prisoners gain self esteem as the 

project progresses and find talents they did 

not know they possessed. The change in their 

attitudes is very evident, but the audiences are 

also challenged to reconsider their attitudes 

to prisons and how they may better prepare 

prisoners to be good and useful members of 

society on release.” 

Kani’s own background is a mixture 

of privilege and 

grit. Her mother’s 

family worked at 

the Mughal court in 

Agra from the 17th 

century onwards and 

her father’s family 

came from Delhi. 

Both Muslims, 

her parents left 

India at the time of 

Partition and went 

briefly to Pakistan 

before heading for 

England, firstly to 

London’s poor East 

End, where Kani 

was born in 1956, 

and then to west 

London. 

As a talented violinist, Kani at the age of 14 

won a place in the prestigious National Youth 

Orchestra where she was the only non-white 

member. At the age of 18, she was offered 

a place at the Royal Academy of Music in 

London, but she turned this down to read 

music at Oxford University. On graduation, 

she opted not for music, but for London’s 

City. Ten years work there in computer 

programming and designing computer 

systems gave her experience that proved 

invaluable when, in 1993, after studying 

conducting in her spare time, she decided to 

switch to a full-time career in music. 

(Text and picture, Courtesy: 

Women’s Feature Service, New Delhi) 


[ LET’S ASK DR DOBSON ] 

The Poison of Popular Culture 

James C. Dobson, Ph.D., is Founder 

and President of Focus on the Family, a 

non-profit organization dedicated to the 

preservation of the home. His syndicated 

radio programmes are heard on more than 

2,500 broadcasting facilities in North 

America and on over 3,000 facilities in 

over 40 countries. His website www. 

family.org is extremely popular too. Dr. 

Dobson served for 14 years as Associate 

Clinical Professor of Paediatrics at the 

University of Southern California School 

of Medicine, and was an attending staff 

psychologist for 17 years at the Children’s 

Hospital of Los Angeles in the division of 

Child Development and Medical Genetics. 

His first book for parents and teachers, 

‘Dare to Discipline’, has sold over two 

million copies and was selected as one of 

50 titles to be rebound and placed in the 

White House Library. His subsequent 12 

books on the family are also best-sellers. Dr. 

Dobson’s premier film series, Focus on the 

Family, saw immense popularity, and to 

date has been viewed by more than seventy 

million people. Numerous awards and 

honours have marked Dr. Dobson’s lifetime 

of work, including the 1987 Marian 

Pfister Anschutz Award and recognition 

of Distinguished Humanitarian Contributions 

by the California State Psychological 

Association in 1988. 

Can you illustrate your concerns about 

the lyrics of contemporary teen music, 

especially as it relates to attitudes 

towards parents? 

It might be helpful to see how popular 

music has changed over the years. Let’s go 

back to 1953, when the most popular song in 

the United States was sung by Eddie Fisher 

and was entitled Oh, My Papa. 

Here’s a portion of the lyrics: 

Oh, my papa, to me he was so wonderful. 

Oh, my papa, to me he was so good. 

No one could be so gentle and so lovable. 

Oh, my papa, he always understood. 

Gone are the days when he would take me on his knee, 

And with a smile he’d change my tears to laughter. 

Oh, my papa, so funny and adorable, 

Always the clown, so funny in his ways. 

Deep in my heart I miss him so today. 

That sentimental song accurately 

reflected the way many people felt about 

their fathers at that time in our history. Oh, 

sure, there were conflicts and disagreement, 

but family was family. 

By the time I had reached college age, 

things were starting to change. The subject 

of conflict between parents and teenagers 

began to appear as a common theme in 

artistic creations. The movie Rebel Without 

A Cause featured a screen idol named James 

Dean who seethed with anger at his ‘old 

man’. Marlon Brando starred in The Wild 

One, another movie with rebellion as its 

theme. Rock-n-roll music portrayed it too. 

But what began as an engaging drama 

turned decidedly bitter in the late sixties. 

Everyone in those days was talking about the 

‘generation gap’ that had erupted between 

young people and their parents. And their 

anger toward parents began to percolate. 

The Doors released a song in 1968 entitled 

The End in which lead singer Jim Morrison 

fantasized about killing his father. 

In 1984, Twisted Sister released We’re Not 

Gonna Take It, which referred to a father as 

a “disgusting slob” who was “worthless and 

weak.” Then he was blasted out the window 

of a second-storey apartment. This theme of 

killing parents showed up regularly in that 

decade. A group called Suicidal Tendencies 

released a recording in 1983 called I Saw 

Your Mommy. Some of the phrases in this 

song are “I saw your mommy and your 

mommy’s dead... chewed off toes on her 

chopped off feet…I saw her lying in a pool 

of red; I think it’s the greatest thing I’ll ever 

see – your dead mommy.” For sheer banality, 

nothing yet produced can match Momma’s 

Gotta Die Tonight, by Ice-T and Body Count. 

The album sold 500,000 copies and featured 

its wretched lyrics on the CD jacket. Most of 

them are unfit to quote here, but they involved 

graphic descriptions of the rapper’s mother 

being burned in her bed, and then beaten to 

death with a baseball bat she had given him 

as a present. There was not a hint of guilt or 

remorse expressed by the rapper while telling 

us this murder. My point is that the most 

popular music of our culture went from the 

inspiration of Oh, My Papa to the horrors of 

Momma’s Gotta Die Tonight in scarcely more 

than a generation. And we have to wonder, 

where do we go from here? 

One thing is certain: The younger 

generation has been bombarded with more 

antifamily rhetoric than any that preceded it. 

When added to equally disturbing messages 

about drug use, sex, and violence against 

women, the impact has to be considered 

formidable. And the most profane and 

obscene rock stars have become the idols 

to many impressionable teenagers. MTV, 

which promotes the worst stuff available, 

is telecast into 231 million households in 

seventy five countries, more than any other 

cable programme. Though it will not be 

popular for me to say it, I believe many of the 

problems that plague this generation, from 

suicide to unwed pregnancy to murder, can 

be traced to the venom dripped into the veins 

of the entertainment industry in general. 

One of the consequences of this shift in 

the popular culture is a generation that 

sees itself and its elders less respectfully 

than those who have preceded it. There are 

still millions of responsible and respectful 

teenagers out there, of course, but the 

culture in which they are growing up has 

changed – for the worse. 

28 


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[ HUMOUR ] 

Indian English: It vill 

be wery helpful, yaar! 

[ By MELVIN DURAI ] 

It is the year 2020 and call centres are 

opening all over the West, as the new 

economic power India outsources work 

to the countries where many jobs originated. 

Millions of Americans, still struggling to 

adapt to a global economy, are willing to 

accept jobs that pay them in a new currency 

sweeping much of the world: EuRupees. 

Some of them, eager to land one of the 

customer service jobs from India, are attending 

special training sessions in New 

York City, led by language specialist Dave 

Ramsey, who goes by a simpler name for his 

Indian clients: Devendra Ramaswaminathan. 

On this warm afternoon, the professor is 

teaching three ambitious students how to 

communicate with Indian customers. 

Professor: “Okay, Gary, Randy and Jane, 

first we need to give you Indian names. 

Gary, from now on, you’ll be known to 

your customers as Gaurav. Randy, you’ll be 

Ranjit. And Jane, you’ll be Jagadamba. Now 

imagine you just received a call from Delhi. 

What do you say?” 

Gary: “Name as tea?” 

Professor: “I think you mean ‘namaste.’ 

Very good. But what do you say after that?” 

Gary: “How can I help you?” 

Professor: “You’re on the right track. Anyone 

else?” 

Jane: “How can I be helping you?” 

Professor: “Good try! You’re using the 

correct tense, but it’s not quite right. Anyone 

else?” 

Randy: “How I can be helping you?” 

Professor: “Wonderful! Word order is 

very important. Okay, let’s try some small 

talk. Give me a comment that would help 

you make a connection with your Indian 

customers.” 

Randy: “It’s really hot, isn’t it?” 

Professor: “The heat is always a good topic, 

but you haven’t phrased it correctly. Try 

again.” 

Randy: “It’s deadly hot, isn’t it?” 

Professor: “That’s better. But your tag question 

can be greatly improved.” 

Randy: “It’s deadly hot, no?” 

Professor: “Wonderful! You can put ‘no?’ 

at the end of almost any statement. You are 

understanding me, no?” 

Jane: “Yes, we are understanding you, no?” 

Professor (smiles): “We may need to review 

this later. But let’s move on to other things. 

Have you ever heard Indians use the word 

‘yaar’?” 

Randy: “Yes, my Indian friends use it all the 

time. Just last night, one of them said to me, 

‘Randy, give me yaar password. I am needing 

it to fix yaar computer.” 

Professor (laughs): “That’s a different ‘yaar,’ 

yaar. The ‘yaar’ that I’m talking about means 

friend or buddy. You can use it if you’ve developed 

a camaraderie with a customer. For 

example, you can say, ‘Come on, yaar. I am 

offering you the best deal.’ Do you understand, 

Jagadamba?” 

Jane: “Yaar, I do.” 

Professor (smiles): “Okay, let’s talk about 

accents. If your client says ‘I yam wery 

vorried about vat I bought for my vife,’ how 

would you respond?” 

Randy: “Please don’t be vorrying, yaar. She 

vill be wery happy and vill give you a vild 

time tonight.” 

Professor: “Vunderful! I mean, wonderful. 

You have a bright future, Ranjit. And so do 

you, Jagadamba. But Gaurav, you haven’t 

said anything in a while. Do you have any 

questions about what we’ve just learned?” 

Gary: “Yes, Professor, I do have one question: 

Wouldn’t it be simpler to learn to speak 

Hindi?” 

Melvin Durai is a Manitoba-based writer 

and humorist. A native of India, he grew up in 

Zambia and has lived in North America since the 

early 1980s. Read his humor blog at 

http://www.Nshima com 

Write to him at comments@melvindurai.co 

30 


[ FOREIGN AFFAIRS ] 

Nationalism From Afar 

“Prime among the alternative foreign sources of succour for rebel groups are 

expatriates from the Diaspora who settle in wealthy countries but have strong emotional 

affiliations with the self-determination war in their original homeland. 

Nationalism among refugees and immigrants is centuries-old, but modern technological 

innovations make it deadlier in contemporary times.” 

[ By SREERAM CHAULIA ] 

Since the end of World War II, the 

dominant form of armed conflict has 

been internal war that is fought within 

the boundaries of states. Classic interstate 

wars have been far and few between 

compared to the rising tide of intra-state 

wars, thereby changing the very dynamics 

and context of large-scale violence. The 

dictionary of warfare today is loaded with 

terms like insurgency, counter-insurgency, 

guerrilla, terrorism, secession and national 

self-determination. 

Yet, the distinction between ‘internal’ 

and ‘international’ is blurred by the 

internationalisation of many internal wars. 

If the most common violent confrontation 

of our times is between a rebel movement 

and a state, it is also a pattern that each of 

these two parties receives external military, 

economic and diplomatic support. The 

degrees of internationalisation may vary 

from one internal war to another, but there 

is a discernible ‘foreign card’ that each side 

plays on the other for gaining an advantage 

in almost every internal war. 

During the Cold War, foreign assistance 

to internal armed conflicts came primarily 

from governments of states which became 

notorious for igniting ‘proxy wars’. While 

an internal war may have its own local bones 

of contention, foreign states added fuel to 

the fire in pursuit of their own strategic 

objectives and priorities. If the intervening 

foreign states were neighbouring countries, 

then one witnessed the phenomenon of 

‘regionalisation’ of an internal war. If 

the interveners were great powers with 

worldwide outreach, then the internal war 

stood chances of becoming ‘globalised.’ 

In general, the greater the foreign 

involvement in an internal war, the more 

protracted and bloody the conflict tended 

to become. If one takes the example of 

Angola, the USA’s all-out championing 

of the rebel group UNITA pushed the 

Angolan government to seek Cuban and 

Soviet help and plunged the country into 

a devastating three-decade-long war. 

Vietnam, Afghanistan and Lebanon also 

underwent prolonged spells of destruction 

due to globalisation or regionalisation of 

their internal political conflicts. 

With a vast supply line of foreign 

armaments and funds on both sides of the 

divide, internal wars attained a ‘balance 

of power’ despite being asymmetric wars. 

Typically, the state which is defending 

its territorial integrity and sovereignty 

has more resources and force capabilities 

on hand compared to the rebels. But if 

violent non-state actors manage to obtain 

overseas backing, it evens out some of their 

conventional inferiorities and equips them 

for a long campaign of attrition. 

The dilemma for guerrilla movements 

is that foreign sponsor states could change 

their policies due to the dynamic nature of 

international relations. For instance, at the 

end of the Cold War, a number of guerrilla 

groups which had been sustained by 

American or Russian largesse found their 

taps running dry. The essential fickleness 

of foreign state patrons is not unknown to 

armed revolutionary organisations, who 

have bemoaned numerous ‘betrayals’ by 

their former foreign allies. Given this 

uncertain mode of external support, 

guerrillas look to diversify their funding 

and alliance bases abroad. 

Prime among the alternative foreign 

sources of succour for rebel groups 

are expatriates from the Diaspora who 

settle in wealthy countries but have 

strong emotional affiliations with the 

self-determination war in their original 

homeland. Nationalism among refugees and 

immigrants is centuries-old, but modern 

technological innovations make it deadlier 

in contemporary times. The speed and 

ease with which an international money 

transfer or remittance can be transacted has 

upped the value of Diaspora nationalism in 

internal wars. 

The first major case of Diaspora 

nationalism benefiting a rebel movement 

after World War II is that of the Irish. 

The Irish Republican Army (IRA), a 

militant Catholic movement fighting for 

independence of Northern Ireland from 

the United Kingdom, set up a sophisticated 

fundraising infrastructure in north-eastern 

United States in the 1970s. Radical Irish 

American Catholics believed fervently 

that the IRA’s terrorist activities were 

justified due to the brutal oppression of 

their co-religionists by Protestant British 

troops. Without their money streaming 

into Ulster through bank drafts, couriers 

and laundering, the IRA would not have 

32 



had the firepower to seriously threaten the 

British state’s military occupation. The IRA 

enjoyed a safe haven in the USA to generate 

donations and weapons caches because of 

lax American laws up to the early 1990s that 

allowed considerable freedom to Diaspora 

groups engaging in ‘political’ actions. 

The opportunity space for Diaspora 

nationalism was even more liberal and easy 

to exploit in Canada, whose multi-cultural 

ethos and respect for minorities offered 

a favourite haunt for fundraisers of rebel 

organisations in South Asia. When the 

Khalistan insurgency reached its peak in 

the northern Indian state of Punjab in the 

1980s, the Sikh Diaspora in Canada and, to a 

lesser extent in the UK, emerged as a potent 

reservoir of militancy. Nostalgic visions 

of re-establishing the Sikh empire in the 

Indian subcontinent and boiling anger at 

the heavy handed military tactics of Prime 

Minister Indira Gandhi drove wealthy 

Canadian and British Sikhs into arranging 

massive propaganda, logistical and financial 

assistance for banned terrorist outfits like 

the International Sikh Youth Federation 

and the Babbar Khalsa International. 

As in the case of Irish Americans who 

stopped bankrolling terrorism in Ulster 

once a peace process took hold in the late 

1990s, the Sikh Diaspora’s sympathies 

for militancy declined as Punjab limped 

back to normalcy in the nineties. ‘Hindu 

imperialism’, which once agitated rich Sikhs 

in Toronto and Southall into religious rage, 

lost its appeal by the early 21st century and 

was replaced by the traditional moderation 

of the mainstream Sikh Diaspora. 

The South Asian rebel group that has truly 

mastered the art of roping in the Diaspora 

for fundraising and public relations is the 

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), 

which has been fighting for three decades for 

an independent state of the Tamil minorities 

of Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan Tamil expatriates 

living as refugees and immigrants in Canada, 

Australia and Western Europe are the 

principal sources of the LTTE’s seemingly 

bottomless treasury which has upheld a 

world-class fighting unit. 

In the formative years of its international 

network, LTTE solicited contributions 

from individual businesspersons in the 

Tamil Diaspora who were highly motivated 

“ 

Long distance 

nationalism has proven 

to be a big propelling 

factor of high resilience 

in a number of identitybased 


It thrives on the guilt 

complex of expatriates 

in the Diaspora 

that they might be 

accused of forsaking 

their brethren back 

home who are being 

mauled by the might of 

repressive states. 

” 

by the separatist cause in Sri Lanka. Later, 

it resorted to establishing humanitarian 

front organisations that collected funds in 

the name of charity for Tamil war victims. 

The LTTE’s ‘third generation’ modus 

operandi for overseas fundraising is now 

said to include business ventures selling 

prepaid phone cards and satellite television 

channels in Western countries with large 

Tamil Diaspora concentrations. 

By means of innovative ideas and 

its legendary secrecy, the LTTE has 

successfully evaded the dragnet of Western 

host state restrictions on Tamil Diaspora 

remittances, which continue to reach the 

guerrilla group in various guises. As long 

as the government of India was the LTTE’s 

chief benefactor in the 1980s, the Tamil 

Diaspora’s role as financier of the Eelam 

wars was not crucial. Ever since New Delhi 

dropped the LTTE as a hot potato after the 

assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, however, the 

Diaspora has been the organisation’s mainstay 

in its war against the Sri Lankan state. 

A similar change of hands between a 

foreign state sponsor and a nationalistic 

Diaspora occurred in the case of the 

Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), which 

has spearheaded a violent uprising against 

Turkey for separate statehood of Kurdish 

minorities since the 1970s. The PKK was 

originally financed by Syria, Iran and 

Greece, who were interested in weakening 

Turkey. Syrian support lasted up to 1999, 

after which Damascus cut back its PKK 

partnership to avoid a Turkish invasion. 

In 2002, Ankara also entered into an 

agreement with Iran to ban the PKK as a 

terrorist organisation. 

As the state sponsorship evaporated, PKK 

turned to the Kurdish Diaspora in Germany, 

the Benelux countries, and Scandinavia for 

a stable source of income. It raises around 

US $ 9 million from the German Kurdish 

Diaspora alone and supplements it with a 

dose of heroin trafficking by expatriate 

Kurds. Turkey complains of inadequate 

cooperation from EU states for stemming 

the PKK’s overseas financing mafia and, 

indeed, the alacrity with which the EU has 

frozen the tracks of Basque separatists from 

Spain has not been matched in the PKK’s 

case. Perceptions that Kurdish rebel groups 

and their Diaspora proponents are fighting 

for a just cause persist in Western countries 

and weaken efforts to neutralise them. 

Long distance nationalism has proven to 

be a big propelling factor of high resilience 

in a number of identity-based internal wars. 

It thrives on the guilt complex of expatriates 

in the Diaspora that they might be accused 

of forsaking their brethren back home who 

are being mauled by the might of repressive 

states. With this kind of mindset, the least that 

immigrants and refugees who have escaped 

to a comfortable existence in the West can 

think of doing is to write out cheques for 

‘liberations’ and ‘freedom struggles’. 

If war has taken on transnational 

dimensions in the age of instant 

communication, Diasporas bear their 

portion of the blame. 

Sreeram Chaulia is a researcher on international 

affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and 

Public Affairs in Syracuse, New York. 

























































“ 

Long distance 















” 




































































































































“ 

Long distance 















” 













































































[ INDIA THESE DAyS ] 

Why are Ice-Cream loving Punjabis 

Going to Tuticorin? 

Why are the Enterprising Gujjus 


Why are the Bollywoodwallas 


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[ By MELISSA & LOUIS MCBURNEy ] 

My Wife’s Just Faking It 

During a recent argument, my wife 

confessed that for the whole ten years 

of our marriage she’s been faking her 

orgasms. I couldn’t believe it – and I feel 

really angry and betrayed. I thought I was 

doing everything possible for her during 

sex. Now I don’t even want to have sex; 

her deception seems so cold to me. Is there 

any hope for our sex life? 

Louis: A recent survey reported that more 

than 60 percent of women have some problems 

achieving orgasm and 10 percent never have 

had an orgasm. So a wife’s “faking” an orgasm 

is not an uncommon occurrence. 

In a sense, your wife chose to give you 

many exciting nights of sexual pleasure as a 

loving gift. However, I can understand your 

disappointment in the way she hit you with this 

information – it must’ve been a real kick in the 

groin. I know my sense of being an adequate 

(or even super) lover has been important to my 

well-being. I wonder now whether your ego is 

so fragile that you won’t be able to change your 

focus from your own wounded-ness to your 

wife’s ten years of frustration and distress. If 

you can make that shift and show legitimate 

concern for her, there’s plenty of hope for your 

sex life. Your physical intimacy could become 

explosively erotic. 

Your attitude is foundational, but not the 

only factor. The second key issue is learning 

to deal with conflict more effectively. Your 

wife’s “confession” of her sexual frustration 

indicates her inability to keep short accounts. 

It would’ve been much less devastating to you 

if the two of you had talked about this with, 

say, nine years less accumulated tension. If you 

want to work toward a positive sex life, you’ll 

have to address other areas of your marriage 

– such as communicating about problems and 

working through them right away. 

Melissa: I’m glad you’ve desired in the 

past to “do everything possible” for her; 

that indicates a willingness on your part to 

discover what might be holding her back. And 

there are plenty of reasons for inorgasmia. 

Very rarely, a woman’s inability to achieve 

orgasm is tied to a physiological problem, but 

you could have a gynecologist evaluate that 

possibility. More commonly a woman doesn’t 

reach orgasm because some aspect of the 

lovemaking technique needs to be changed 

for her – timing, lubrication, foreplay. 

But most of the time the factors that hold 

women back from orgasm are emotional: a 

history of sexual abuse; unresolved guilt over 

premarital sexual experiences; fearfulness to 

release control as sexual intensity approaches 

climax; anger, resentment or disappointment 

in other areas of the marriage; a sense of 

sexual inadequacy reinforced by her lack of 

orgasm or an unrealistic expectation that a 

spouse won’t be able to handle the truth. And 

as with all sexuality issues, the side effects of 

drugs and alcohol must be kept in mind. 

Here’s the good news: your new skills in 

communication and sexuality are self- reinforcing. 

That means the better you get at connecting 

personally and sexually, the more exciting and 

fulfilling your marriage will become. 

Addicted to Lust 

My husband and I have been married seven 

years. During that time he’s been involved 

with pornography and voyeurism. He has 

been through therapy and counseling 

again and again, but nothing changes. It’s 

impossible for me to feel like having sex 

with him, since I know how much time he 

spends lusting after images of other women. 

It’s intolerable, but I’m trapped since lust 

doesn’t constitute biblical grounds for 

divorce. Am I just supposed to live with my 

husband’s addictions? 

Louis: Let me start with two disclaimers. First, I 

maintain a hopeful attitude about recovery, even 

though addictive disorders do present very difficult 

challenges. I’m wondering how motivated your 

husband really is to change. A “bottoming out” 

seems necessary before most addicted individuals 

will commit themselves to change. The most 

crucial ingredients are the motivation to change, 

the willingness for a spouse to be involved in the 

process and the man’s determination to seek help 

from God in his healing. 

Second, I rarely recommend divorce. 

The long-range effects on the individuals, 

families, children and our culture have been 

devastating. I’m glad you’ve had the bravery and 

determination to hang in there for seven years. 

Having said that, there are times when a 

spouse must show “tough love” – particularly in 

situations involving addictions. If you honestly 

feel there is no indication of your husband’s 

desire or willingness to break his addiction, it 

may be necessary to draw some lines. Setting 

sensible boundaries and sticking with them is 

often the only course of action that works. 

Reasonable limits in marriage are sexual 

fidelity, honesty, financial responsibility and 

mutual need-meeting. To clearly spell out the 

limits and the consequences of a mate’s refusal 

to abide by a commitment is well within your 

rights. Such boundaries should be communicated 

in first-person statements. For instance, 

you might say, “I realize you have a serious 

addiction. I’d like to have a relationship with 

you, but recognize my inability to change 

your behavior or to continue to live with you 

as long as the addiction remains. So I want to 

make clear my decision. I will stay with you until 

I have reason to believe you’re still involved in 

your addictive behavior. At that point I want you 

to move out. We can pursue a legal separation 

at that time (or whatever course of action seems 

appropriate) until I can be assured of your 

recovery.” If a predetermined time limit seems 

important to you, that should be clearly defined. 

Whatever boundaries you set will likely be 

challenged, so a great deal of resolve is necessary 

for this kind of intervention to be effective. 

This puts the ball in your husband’s 

court, making him responsible for changing 

his addiction. That’s important because 

most addictive personalities assume a 

passive, victim role, blaming others for their 

problems. If you’ve been carrying blame and 

responsibility, I encourage you to “resign” 

from playing the parent in a no-win scenario. 

You have shown great courage and character 

in sticking with your husband. 

Real Sex columnists Melissa and Louis McBurney, 

M.D., are marriage therapists and co-founders of 

Marble Retreat in Marble, Colorado, where they 

counsel clergy couples. Credit: Christianity Today 

38 


[ FROM UK ] 

Dare to Achieve 

“Many terms are commonly used to describe British Indians – Indians, South 

Asians, British Asians, even Br-Asians. There are more than two million people 

in Britain from the Indian subcontinent and around half of them are from 

India itself. If you think India and Indians affect the UK in a big way that 

impact is only going to increase. In the future India is going to become an even 

bigger part of the global scenario.” 

[ By SARINA MENEzES ] 

The Indian community in the UK 

is already the largest minority 

national group. London for example 

would not be the hugely successful city it is, 

and indeed it would be a very different city, 

without the economic, cultural and social 

contribution that Indians bring to the capital 

and the country. 

The International Indian meets three 

Indians who with their business acumen, 

skills, courage and a dare to achieve attitude 

have made great strides in their respective 

fields, adding value and contributing to the 

economy. 

Asheesh Dewan, 39, owns and manages 

seven restaurants under the Jaipur chain of 

fine dining restaurants in Ireland and the 

stylish Benares located in Mayfair, London. 

He is also a partner in the technology 

consultancy firm, Segala, which is based 

in Sandyford. With a business turnover of 

12.7 million euros per annum, his employee 

strength is over 170. 

Asheesh moved to Ireland from India 

in 1995. All he arrived with was loads of 

determination, his culinary skills and well 

rounded experience with world class hotels 

like The Oberoi Group and The Hyatt. 

He was recently presented with the TSB 

Permanent Ethnic Entrepreneur of the Year 

Award 2008 in Ireland. Permanent TSB is 

one of Ireland’s leading banks and financial 

institutions. The award aims to celebrate, 

promote and encourage ethnic entrepreneurs 

Asheesh & Rupa Dewan receiving the TSB Permanent Ethnic Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 Award 

grow their businesses and promote value 

and community integration of Ethnic 

Entrepreneurs. 

“My wife Rupa was already in Ireland 

running lifestyle boutique stores which she 

was on the verge of giving up to start our 

home. Dublin at that time lacked stylish fine 

dining restaurants and we both had a vision to 

start one. I went on to do an MBA degree and 

in 1998 started our first restaurant, Jaipur,” 

shares Asheesh. 

“The fact that I was Indian did not matter 

at all, in fact personally it’s an advantage as 

we are more driven, aggressive but optimistic 

with the great pain and emotional threshold 

that keeps us going. On the business front, 

it took a lot to convince bankers about the 

proposition because they receive so many 

each day and the market is crowded with food 

businesses trying to survive,” adds Asheesh. 

“However, setting up and surviving 

the first one is always the most difficult 

and toughest. My confidence was firmly 

established once Jaipur was; and the 

concept of eating Indian food in a stylish 

environment became popular in the market. 

But my true motivation was Rupa. 

Her constant encouragement led me 

40 


[ FROM UK ] 

Karl Pinto and his daughter Anya in Florida 

to envision a chain of fine dining Indian 

restaurants. Jaipur in Dalkey was the next one 

in the year 2000, soon to be followed by Blue 

Orchid, Dublin in 2001, Jaipur, Malahide in 

2003, Benares, London in 2004, Chakra by 

Jaipur Greystones in 2005, Mantra by Jaipur 

Ongar in 2007 and Aananda by Jaipur Dublin 

in 2007-2008. 

It has been an exciting and rewarding 

journey for Asheesh and Rupa who have a 

small family of two little girls aged eight 

and two years. For them taking time out to 

be with the extended family in India or an 

annual holiday is a must which they do about 

two to three times a year. 

“Our Indian culture is richly imbedded in 

us taking it with us wherever we go. We have 

this innate ability to influence cultures and 

people around us. Together with our faith, 

it helps us survive better especially in tough 

times. I have noticed NRIs today are more 

Indian simply because it bonds us together 

and helps us maintain our identity. Rupa’s 

family have a temple in their home which 

is open to all and everyone is welcome,” 

concludes Asheesh. 

Vimmi Singh, 36, is founder and CEO 

of DAWN (Dynamic Asian Women 

Network) - a hub for dynamic professional 

& entrepreneurial Asian women. Vimmi is a 

chartered accountant and company secretary 

and has an MBA from the London Business 

School, specializing in Venture Capital and 

Entrepreneurial Finance. With an illustrious 

career as a venture capitalist 

at JP Morgan Chase and 

Lazard Brothers, she was at 

one time one of the youngest 

company secretaries of a 

public limited company in 

India. 

In 2003, Vimmi co-founded 

DAWN with the vision of 

freeing, connecting and 

transforming the potential 

of Asian women. At DAWN, 

she brings her knowledge and 

financial services experience 

to focus on growing 

young businesses through 

entrepreneur programs, 

workshops and mentoring. 

In spite of coming from 

an illustrious corporate background we 

asked Vimmi how it felt to give it all up to 

start DAWN and the motivation behind 

this opportunity for Asian women in the 

UK. Her reasons were unique. “During my 

working career, I made some uncomfortable 

observations, the key one being the near 

absence of Asian women in corporate and 

entrepreneurial roles. And yet the Asian 

influence in British business is staggering 

though male dominated. Asian-owned 

businesses in London have a turnover of 

about £60bn a year and real Asian wealth 

increased by 69% between 1998 and 2005 

compared with UK GDP up by 23%.” 

There were a few isolated Asian women 

high achievers and there was a need to link 

them and provide a platform to especially 

mentor and inspire the younger generation. 

Today DAWN has over 1000 members, 

most being South Asian professional and 

business women from all industries. They 

are highly educated and between 25 to 50 

years of age. 

“My constant motivation is to ensure 

that Asian women, with all the cultural 

influences and social responsibilities at 

home, are progressing towards better 

careers, training and creating networks for 

themselves as a safety net and a trapeze,” 

she adds. “We have a partnership with the 

British Library and host many of our events 

at their conference centre mainly attracting 

high profile Asian and non Asian speakers 

to our events.” 

Vimmi believes in a balanced lifestyle 

and like most women, multi tasking comes 

easily to her. “I have a son, five years and a 

daughter, two years old. We have had a live-in 

nanny since the first was born. I leave in the 

morning for my appointments and on most 

days manage to conclude all my meetings 

by 3pm. I try to pick up my son from school 

and on the drive back, I learn a lot about his 

day, his highs and lows and stay in tune with 

his life. The children have activities after 

school - judo, swimming, football or have 

friends over. I slip into the office at home 

and catch up on my emails and documents 

before dinner and sometimes after their 

bedtime.” 

With a busy schedule in a city like London, 

Vimmi still finds time for herself. She adds, 

“For fitness, I combine personal training 

and Bikram yoga. I am at events, awards or 

dinners about two weeknights. My husband 

travels extensively so we often go out with 

friends on Fridays and just the two of us on 

Saturdays. Sunday lunch is sacred – we eat at 

home or go out as a family and depending on 

the weather, often end up in the park.” 

As a family, holidays are really special 

for this close knit family especially when 

you desire to get out of a bustling city like 

London. “We spend some of the summer in 

Portugal and usually spend Christmas with 

family in New Delhi, Goa or the Far East. 

In addition, my husband and I end up in 

New York every year without the kids. We 

also try doing something new during the 

Easter holidays.” 

What Vimmi is most looking forward to 

is her shift to Mumbai where her husband 

Amrit Singh will be heading the Mergers & 

Acquisition wing of Deustche Bank. 

“We are eagerly looking forward to being 

with both our families and our parents 

especially are glad to have this opportunity 

to spend time with the children. 

Of course, it will take us time to settle 

in and find our place socially but I have no 

doubts it will be an exciting experience. 

I have traveled and lived in various cities 

around the world including New York so we 

are used to adapting to new environments,” 

Vimmi says. 

During her time in India, DAWN will 

continue to function in London under an 

established team with Vimmi functioning out 


[ FROM UK ] 

of a Mumbai base with the occasional travel 

to London. On future plans or aspirations for 

DAWN, she shares, “Would I like to achieve 

my five year plan in one? Yes, very much. But 

DAWN has a pace and life of its own. My 

vision is that DAWN will evolve along with 

the needs and expectations of our members.” 

Karl Pinto, 38, serves as Chairman of the 

Board of Goodwin Biotechnology, Inc. (Wallace 

Group) a Florida based biotherapeutics 

contract manufacturing and services company. 

With a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering and 

a Masters in Business Management, Karl’s 

career spans 15 years with active experience in 

international business development, executive 

management and Mergers & Acquisitions in 

the USA and India. 

He started his career with the Tata Group 

and spent the next 10 years in the US with 

Wipro Technologies, Infogain Corp and 

Syntel, Inc. “I moved to the US in the mid 

nineties long before the IT outsourcing 

industry became the juggernaut it is today. 

Sometimes we carried a map of the world 

in our pockets to show American clients 

where exactly India was, before convincing 

them to send their mission-critical software 

development and the IT business.” 

Karl envisioned that the next big thing was 

going to be Life Sciences, another industry 

where India would play an important role. 

And how right he was! With a clear vision 

and determination, he set out to evaluate 

investment options within the US. Having 

family ties in the pharmaceutical industry 

in India also helped. “In 2004, I put 

together an advisory team and went around 

the US scouting for opportunities in the 

biotechnology business. This culminated in 

us acquiring GBI,” says Karl. 

As an Indian and having worked in the 

US for most of his career, Karl found that 

molding management styles was the biggest 

challenge but also an opportunity. “The US 

has a rich culture of innovation, risk taking 

and scientific management techniques. 

Indian business is characterized by relatively 

cautious and measured aggression, cost led 

innovation and steady if not spectacular 

growth,” discovered Karl. 

Karl has been instrumental in putting to 

practice and amalgamating both these styles 

at GBI and since the acquisition in 2004, 

investments in the company’s infrastructure has 

Vimmi Singh with her children in their holiday home in Portugal. 

led to improved management and systems and 

an increase in the employee base by 250%. 

No wonder Indians are perceived as 

good businessmen and in the international 

marketplace, considered smart and 

intellectually oriented. Earlier, this was 

due to the multitude of IIT graduates that 

moved to the US. In the nineties Indians got 

the reputation of being IT Gurus. But it’s in 

the last 10 years that Indian management 

strengths and their capacity to invest in 

global companies have begun to showcase 

themselves on the world stage. 

From a social perspective, the American 

society is by and large inclusive making it 

easy to be Indian and retain one’s Indianness. 

“Americans know more about India and 

Indians today than they did even a decade 

ago. It’s simply because India has made 

great strides in becoming America’s key geo 

political and economic partner. Coming 

from a cosmopolitan city like Mumbai, it was 

never a problem for me. My family and I have 

learned to imbibe the positives of American 

society while maintaining the important 

and sometimes conservative attitude of our 

Indian-ness,” explains Karl. 

Karl lives in sunny Florida with his wife, 

Divya who is a practicing pediatrician and 

a 21 month old daughter. With another one 

on the way later this year, Karl believes 

that family is important in order to perform 

optimally in life. “Ever since Anya’s arrival, 

family time revolves around her. From trips 

to the park to watching her develop her skills, 

Divya and I try hard to get involved in her 

life knowing these days will not last.” 

As for future plans, here’s another family 

who are eagerly looking forward to their 

move to India in 2009. “Professionally, we 

want to be a part of the excitement in India 

and ensure that we folks living overseas are 

not left behind. India today is in the midst of 

the optimism, euphoria and opportunity that 

knocks once in a lifetime. On the personal 

front we are looking forward to being closer 

to our families,” concludes Karl. 

All success stories start small. No wonder 

Indian entrepreneurs like Karl, Asheesh, 

Vimmi and many others are causing ripples 

right across the globe. Be it the UK, Ireland, 

US or any where else, this pinnacle of 

success can only be reached by hard work, 

vision, and an entrepreneurial spirit. Indian 

businessmen will continue to spread their 

tentacles in various corners of the world 

and flourish under globalization. 

Sarina Menezes is a free lance writer 

based in the UK. 

42 


[ COMMUNITy HyDERABADI ] 

Communal Harmony: 

Past, present and future 

“The Hindus and the Muslims are the warp and weft of the social fabric, the taana 

and the baana. Together they have woven wonders and held up a shining picture of 

communal amity. Unfortunately the actions of a few people have created this crazy 

picture where a wrong doer is always a Muslim with a beard and a skull cap.” 

[ By SHyAMOLA KHANNA ] 

In the 400 plus years of recorded history 

of Hyderabad, there has been no mention 

of any communal discord. Hindus, 

Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis and 

others have lived together peacefully for 

years. Mutual respect and tolerance of each 

other’s needs has been the bottom line—the 

Hyderabadi language (more a dialect!) and 

tehzeeb is inclusive of all this and more. 

At the time of writing this, the Ganpati 

festival for the Hindus and the month of 

Ramzan for the Muslims is going on. So far, 

no untoward incident has taken place. 

But why should I expect it and why 

am I relieved and happy that it has not 

happened so far? Why is there this kind of 

an apprehensive state of mind? In the twin 

cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad, 

communal harmony has always been the 

order of the day and never an exception, yet 

there is this underlying sense of fear. 

Two days ago, the horrific bomb blasts took 

place in Delhi’s most crowded market areas, 

very shortly after the bomb blasts in Jaipur 

and Ahmedabad The police in Hyderabad 

were on a high alert and once again people 

were scared to step out. 

But I love the resilience of the Hyderabadis. 

Notwithstanding the bomb blasts in other 

places and the high alert in the city, the 

organizers of Ganesh Utsava Samiti of Moti 

Nagar and Kabeer Nagar hosted a fabulous 

Susan and Anand Jaywant Rao with their two daughters, Lebanese son-in-law John, the grandchildren 

- Maya and John junior 

‘iftar’ for their Muslim brethren at their 

Ganesh Pandal. The area which is known 

as Borabanda has a great reputation for 

Hindu Muslim amity. Both the communities 

celebrate each other’s festivals with great 

joy. There were plenty of fruits, dry fruits, 

vegetable Biryani and other vegetarian fare. 

The editor said I need to look at some 

mixed marriages as a barometer of communal 

harmony in Hyderabad. My personal opinion 

is that in a marriage, once the hype and hoopla 

about religion etc is over, finally it is the 

equation between two people: how much they 

are willing to adjust and how much of a give 

and take there is between the two individuals. 

The first success story I came across is 

of Ayesha (31) and Azhar Mujahid (37) who 

are running the Abid’s Lakhotia Fashion 

Institute. They have been married for 12 

years and have two lovely boys: Aman (11) 

and Rahil (6). Ayesha completed her studies in 

fashion designing and then joined a computer 

course where Azhar was an instructor. Cupid 

struck and both the Hyderabadi youngsters 

realized that they would have to work 

hard to convince their parents who 

44 



were both initially quite concerned. 

Azhar is the eldest in his family with a 

younger sister and brother. His mother is 

a practicing gynecologist and they all live 

together. Good sense prevailed and the 

wedding was performed without too much 

of a brouhaha. With the passage of time, 

both the families have realized the value 

of what the young couple have brought to 

the fold. 

So what has the journey been like for 

Ayesha? “Between my husband and me, 

we have a lot of understanding. He is a 

very trusting and accommodating person 

and helps me a lot. He has given me a lot 

of freedom to be my own person. Initially 

there were a whole lot of relatives who used 

to pass a lot of snide remarks about me. He 

used to shield me from all that. I have made 

my own compromises and have earned a lot 

of respect from the other members of the 

immediate family. 

“When we started the fashion institute, 

we had some teething trouble. Now my 

father-in-law and mother-in-law are both 

involved in it and I feel that is why we have 

been fairly successful.” 

Mukul Puitandi Zaheer (55), is the CEO of 

Russell’s Institute of Spoken English which was 

started in the year 1986 as a small social service 

venture. Today, Russell’s is the longest surviving 

institute for spoken English in Hyderabad. In 

1988, she turned commercial and her husband 

also joined her in the venture. 

Mukul is the daughter of a bureaucrat; 

she was born in Purulia but was brought up 

and educated in Delhi. She was working with 

the UN in Iran, when she met Mir Ashfaq 

Zaheer, a Hyderabadi who was then working 

with Iran Air. The two met, fell in love and 

decided to make a life together. 

They were married in 1981 in Hyderabad. 

They have one son who is called Russell and 

the institute is named after him. Mukul, who 

is known as Nishat at home, laughs and says, 

“National Integration!” She is quite satisfied 

with the way her life has shaped up. She insists 

that she and her husband have both worked 

very hard on their marriage, “because a 

marriage like this needs dedicated hard work 

otherwise it cannot survive!” 

She clarified that while she was in Iran, 

she discovered that Islam has a very clear 

cut connection with the Almighty, and there 

are no middlemen required. So when her 

Azhar, Chairman, and Ayesha, CEO, Abids Lakhotia 

Institute of Art and Design, Abids Lakhotia Institute of 

Hospitality and Management 

father-in-law who was a retired judge of the 

AP High court, asked her to convert, she was 

more than ready for it. 

Among the hundreds of professionals 

making a mark in the field of architecture and 

interiors, a name to reckon with is the house 

of Siraj and Renu. This couple has built up a 

formidable reputation for being exceptional 

in their work. Siraj Hassan and his wife Renu 

Verma have been married for 35 years and 

they have this wonderful understanding 

between them which would be the norm 

rather than the exception in a marriage and 

work partnership which has spanned more 

than three decades! 

Renu tells me that all the three sisters 

– one older and one younger – married 

Muslims in Hyderabad. When her elder 

sister married way back in ’65, there were 

some rumblings from both families. But 

when Renu and her younger sister came 

of age and wanted to marry out of the 

community, the elders were willing to 

accept and allow the younger people to 

choose their own partners. “My parents 

were always open to our interactions with 

people from all other communities. I 

cannot recall my parents ever speaking ill 

about others in any context. We had friends 

in school and college and we had neighbors, 

from all other religious groups; there were 

hardly any Punjabis at that time.” 

Mixed marriages of the other kinds 

Hyderabad has all kinds of mixed marriages, 

other than the Hindu Muslim ones. There 

are some quite “mixed up” ones where 

there are more than two or three different 

cultural and religious groups, married and 

happily living together. My friend Susan 

is of Christian Malayali-Parsi parentage 

and she is married to Anand Jaywant Rao, 

the younger son of Telugu-Coorg parents. 

He has some Anglo Indian cousins and his 

elder brother, Dilip is married to Nalini 

who is of Hindu - Christian parentage. Her 

son has recently married a Brazilian. Susan’s 

elder daughter has married a Lebanese 

Christian. 

Are you still with me? Want some more? 

One of Susan’s brothers has married a 

Bohri Muslim while her sister, Anu has 

married a ‘mohna’ sardar (a shaven Sikh) 

The Jaywant Raos celebrate Diwali and 

Christmas with equal fervor. There are no 

narrow parochial thought processes here- 

--they are wonderful citizens of the world 

and happy being that way! Their open way 

of accepting anyone in their families is very 

endearing and attractive. Like Susan says, 

“there are no barriers of religion, language 

or community” She is a great ‘foodie’ and is 

thrilled at the kind of variety of foods that 

this whole ‘mixed up’ clan gets on its tables 

across the world! 

Across the road live the Nagraths a 

retired couple living in a quiet bungalow. 

He is Punjabi while his wife is a Muslim. 

Their daughter, Seema is married to a Mallu 

doctor. Brig Nagrath(retd) tells me he has 

people from all nationalities in his side of 

the family – apparently there are Afghanis, 

Bolivians, Argentineans and a couple of 

others married into his Punjabi clan! They 

live in cities across the world; he and his wife 

are the only ones who live in Hyderabad. 

My husband’s family were émigrés from 

Pakistan. The brothers and sisters grew up in 

Hyderabad and now the next generation has 

taken the meaning of national integration a 

whole step further. In the fold one can count 

Sindhis, Telugus, Mallus, Bongs, Tantyas, 

Kannadigas , Kashmiri Pandits, Gujjus – 

what more do you need? Yes, the far eastern 

states are not yet represented. Maybe one of 

the next generation will keep that in mind! 

Is it Hyderabad? 

The spirit of coexistence has been nurtured 

in Hyderabad for a very long time, post 

the collapse of the Mughal Empire and the 

cruel impositions of the last few stalwarts 



Siraj & Renu: All three Punjabi sisters are married 

to Muslim men 

of the clan. With the establishment of the 

Asaf Jahi rulers and the benign control of the 

British, when Secunderabad was established 

as a garrison centre for the British army, the 

Nizams allowed the Parsis to establish their 

homes and trade centers, the Sikhs came in 

to look after the treasury, and the Marwaris 

and Gujjus set up the shops while the Anglo 

Indians looked after the Railways etc. From 

such a beginning, the cosmopolitan air of 

the twin city grew and flourished. 

One has to walk through the narrow 

lanes of the Charminar area in the old city 

of Hyderabad and observe the names of the 

shops all around – if there is a Muslim name 

on the shop, the next one is bound to be a 

Hindu one. I sat and observed a Muslim 

youngster setting up his bhatti (oven) to start 

making bangles. Then he suggested that I 

go to the ‘lakhwaras’ (the Hindu guys who 

work with lac) since those guys started their 

work much earlier. I was nonplussed and 

told him that since I was new to the place, I 

would not be able to find the way. He called 

one little boy and said, “Amma ko mitti ka sher 

le jaa! ” (take Amma to the clay lion). 

Before I could gather my wits, the little 

fellow took off – through winding lanes, 

across alleys with my husband and me in 

hot pursuit! Suddenly we were there! The 

mitti ka sher was a clay statue of the Hindu 

Goddess, Durga who sits astride a lion. It 

marked the Hindu area. Then I started 

looking around and found a common wall 

between a girl’s school with a Hindu name 

and a madrassa whose name had been 

written in English as well as Urdu. 

The Patel market inside Charminar is the 

Mrs Mukul Puitandi Zaheer (55), along with 

her husband Mir Ashfaq Zaheer and son Russell 

place for the Muslims to buy their zakaat 

gifts. A recent article said that there were 

people buying as much as Rs 20,000 worth 

of gifts to give away to the poor. 

A number of people, especially those 

who are long time residents of the cities 

claim that communal harmony is intrinsic to 

Hyderabad and Secunderabad. One doesn’t 

have to announce it from the roof tops. It is a 

given; if there is trouble it is because outsiders 

interfere. Many believe that if there is any 

kind of communal trouble, you can rest 

assured that it is politically motivated. 

Group Captain S.M. Ghouse (retd) (64) 

is an old time resident of Hyderabad and 

when I asked him his opinion about the 

same issue, I could read the pain in his voice 

as he explained how a few vested interests 

were “ trying to break the beautiful fabric 

of the city. The Hindus and the Muslims 

are the warp and weft of the social fabric, 

the taana and the baana. Together they 

have woven wonders and held up a shining 

picture of communal amity. Unfortunately 

the actions of a few people have created 

this crazy picture where a wrong doer is 

always a Muslim with a beard and a skull 

cap.” Then he asked me, “Do I look like a 

terrorist to you – I also wear a skull cap and 

keep a beard?” 

How could he? I have known him for 

years. His lovely wife, Tayaba and Ghouse 

have treated all of us hungry hordes of the 

squadron to the most exotic Hyderabadi 

biryani with all its accompaniments. He 

was a religious man then, and remains one 

even today. But he never pushed his beliefs 

and values down anyone’s throat! He did 

Mr & Mrs Nagrath: There are many nationalities in 

his side of the family 

not drink and he did not offer any liquor to 

anyone else and laughingly told all the hudaks 

(the daaruwalas, the drinkers!) to have their 

quota at home before coming to his dinner! 

But then I would put Ghouse in the 

category of educated, moderate peace loving 

Muslims who have lived in Hyderabad for 

many generations and have added a deep 

and abiding glow to the love and affection 

shared by old denizens of the city. But then 

the catchword here is ‘old’ or ‘elderly’. 

What do the younger people have 

to say? 

In one of the BPOs, one young man sought 

permission to go out for his Friday prayers. 

When refused he started sending out rambling 

hate mails to the HR for refusing him special 

time. The management asked the HR to 

handle the issue with ‘care’. No one wants 

trouble. Ghouse says that he had a similar 

situation on his hands. He told the young man 

to go and pray during his lunch hour and if he 

extends the break, then he should work the 

extra time, to make up for the delay. 

I appreciate the voices of moderation like 

Ghouse and that of Asaduddin Owaisi, a 

Member of Parliament, who has spoken up 

against the sops given out to the minorities 

by political parties. His was the one rallying 

voice who insisted that there should be peace 

and quiet after the Mecca Masjid blast that 

rocked the city, a while ago. He does not want 

sops, like reservations for the minorities – he 

wants equal opportunities! 

Shyamola Khanna is a freelance writer 

based in Hyderabad. 

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[ SEE U AT THE TOP ] 

‘Set a goal and don’t 

take shortcuts’ 

“It is always great to work alongside committed people, individuals who are self 

motivated and have their own spark which allows them to be focussed and make 

their own special contribution to the overall organisation.” 

[ By A STAFF WRITER ] 

Jonathan Jagtianin, CEO, Home Centre, 

shares his views on the challenges of business, 

success and life as seen from the top. 

TII: What do you enjoy about this industry? 

The people, they are simply great to work 

with, whether they are customers, suppliers 

or our own teams. By nature in this industry 

we tend to build long lasting relationships 

with great customers and suppliers. We grow 

together with them and over time a great 

understanding develops. 

TII: Give an example of when you have 

worked under pressure. 

Most of the pressure came when we were 

just staring out. We had a very small team 

in 1995 when we opened our first showroom 

and getting everything done on time did 

create a lot of pressure. We started with a 

shoestring budget and looking back despite 

the long hours I still feel it was the best 

way to begin. Fortunately in those days the 

market was a lot more forgiving and we had a 

steep learning curve. After the first year the 

pressure was on again as we added twice the 

space in the ensuing four months in two new 

countries but we managed and by the time 

we opened the fourth showroom in Riyadh, 

the effort to grow was certainly a lot easier as 

many support roles had been added. 

Left to Right: Ibrahim Askar Jonathan Jagtiani, CEO, Home Centre, Vipen Sethi, CEO, Landmark Group, Balaji 

Sambasivam, GM, Home Centre, and Micky Jagtiani, Chairman, Landmark Group 

It is always great to work along side 

committed people, individuals who are self 

motivated and have their own spark which 

allows them to be focussed and make their 

own special contribution to the overall 

organisation. I also admire team leaders who 

can develop their own people, who keep 

others motivated especially when they are 

faced with difficulties. 

could be considered obvious measurements, 

I am always pleased to see the success of new 

products in the stores, new efficiency drives 

being implemented and great feedback from 

some of our advertisements. Being part of a 

retail company which is recommended means 

a lot to everyone here, the feeling of an existing 

customer advising someone new to the country 

that Home Centre is a great place to shop. 

TII: What kinds of people do you like 

working with? 

TII: How do you measure your own performance? 

Although sales growth and number of showrooms 

TII: What are you contributing to your 

organisation? 

48 



Seeing and understanding the right level of 

growth, planning for that growth and not taking 

undue risks which could burden the operations 

without adding value to the overall business. I 

am involved in the study of new markets and to 

question how far we can develop these. 

TII: How would you describe your working 

style? 

My working style is to lead by example. The 

beliefs we have at Home Centre are built on 

integrity, teamwork and respect for people. 

I am relatively relaxed these days and am 

focused on empowering the right people to 

manage many of our key functions. People 

can do extraordinary things if they like what 

they do and who they are doing it for. I do try 

and be a good listener and look to find every 

practical solution to any problem. 

TII: What is your passion in life? 

I enjoy working with passion and I love 

reading novels, it enables me to unwind and 

move my head into another dimension. Most 

importantly, however, my wife and our three 

children keep my feet on the ground and 

remind me of what is really important in life. 

TII: In your experience why do people 

discriminate for the most part? 

I would imagine any discrimination is 

based on either on ignorance and a lack of 

opportunity for dealing with different people. 

We employ a great number of nationalities 

and rarely do we come across any major 

forms of discrimination. 

TII: What advice would you give to aspiring 

young professionals? 

There is no shortcut unfortunately and it always 

takes longer than you first envisage. You really 

have to be prepared to work with commitment, 

believe in what you are doing, plan what you 

want to achieve in life and always think long 

term. Do have a goal and stick to it while putting 

in the hard work. Above all else remain true to 

your values, be open to emerging opportunities 

and be resilient. Try not to follow popular 

opinion but see for yourself if things can be 

done in a new way 

TII: What do you consider your biggest 

achievement? 

I have always aspired to spot new opportunities, 

Jonathan Jagtiani (centre) with colleagues (L-R) Ajay Antal, GM (Furniture Buying), Rajan Narayan, GM 

(Household Buying) and Bhaskar Venkatraman DG M (Finance) 

make a difference and maintain my integrity. 

I am proud of how fast we grew and how 

quickly we established a recognizable brand, 

however, one of my biggest achievements is 

to hold onto my principles and to only do 

things I believe. 

TII: What is the greatest benefit you have 

gained by your success? Discuss several 

if you like. 

Being successful allows you to learn about 

yourself and to develop the business in ways I 

would not have earlier thought possible and to 

be able to keep an open mind on new directions 

the business can grow. Working in a successful 

organisation also allows one to work along side 

other successful people. It certainly improves 

the quality of one’s working day to be able to 

attract like minded individuals who help to 

ensure we are all raising the standards. 

TII: What is your vision for the company? 

Our vision for Home Centre is to become the 

best operator in its industry and to deliver 

innovative and effective solutions that bring 

unparalleled value to our customers. The whole 

team is passionate to achieve the highest level 

of efficiency possible and ensure customers, the 

employees and our suppliers benefit from this. 

We are at the tail end of a major 

restructuring of our organization. It has been 

a lengthy process and the end result will allow 

us to continue to grow over the next decade. 

Moreover, a longer term vision is to increase our 

social responsibility and to give back something 

special and lasting to the greater community. 

TII: What are your strengths? 

I believe I am continuously learning, and 

keeping the bigger picture in mind, of what 

we wish to do. I try to focus on pushing many 

members of our team to keep extending their 

thought processes and help them believe we 

can continue to achieve so much more. 

TII: What is your greatest weakness? 

Most likely my greatest weakness is 

impatience and wanting everything to be 

perfect from the outset. I need to learn and 

live with an understanding of what will take 

time but I do keep pushing for many new 

improvements at anyone time. The people 

who work with me understand this and seem 

to make allowances for me. 

TII: Define what success means to you? 

What are the secrets for success? 

Success has been seeing the business growing 

strong and with a better offering with every 

passing year. The secret to success is in 



knowing what you want to create, believing 

in your abilities, setting milestone goals and 

putting in the hard work. 

TII: How do you manage family time with 

work pressures and travelling? 

It is always a difficult balance between 

family life and work. Especially in the early 

years when the children were young it was 

tough balancing travelling and working 

late with spending time with them. People 

often talk about spending quality time with 

their families but any time spent with them 

is certainly quality time. Now with less 

pressure even when I am around the children 

are often busy with their own interests. 

TII: How would you describe your faith in 

God? 

Irrespective of ones beliefs, our faith 

reminds us of matters we often forget in the 

world of business, such as family and social 

responsibilities. 

TII: What are your views on India and its 

future, its place in the world arena? 

India has come a long way in a very short 

Jonathan Jagtiani (right) giving away certificates for long and meritorious service to the staff at the annual get together 

time, but the real growth has yet to come. Key 

growth has still been only in certain industries 

and has not reached to the majority of people. 

It will certainly take some time before India 

becomes competitive and consistent in areas 

such as manufacturing. Although there has 

been a lot of new job creation due to new 

types of businesses opening, there needs to 

be a stronger development of skills levels to 

support these new industries. 

[ HALL OF FAME ] 

“I challenge him to create a pumpkin” 

I am a Gandhian and bachelor involved with 

education for nearly 56 years. As a student 

I was arrested for participating in the Quit 

India movement. I did my Ph.D. in nuclear 

physics from America and was a professor 

there before returning to India. I served 

as Bangalore University’s vice chancellor 

and founded the Bangalore Science Forum 

in 1962 for popularizing science and 

inculcating a scientific temperament. Our 

organization logo is a question mark because 

I think questioning and the spirit of inquiry 

is the basis of all progress. We conduct 

lectures, quizzes, film shows and summer 

schools and organize science festivals. 

Unfortunately, science has become only a 

means of livelihood and not a way of life. 

Our people are going to America and far 

off places for higher studies in the sciences 

but remain 

rooted in 

superstitions. 

Nearly 25 

years ago, I had 

an encounter 

with the famous 

godman Sathya 

Sai Baba, 

whose devotees 

include many 

powerful 

people of 

India. He said 

that it is possible to create something out 

of nothing. I disagreed as that was against 

the laws of science. He is supposed to make 

watches and rings appear out of thin air, but 

these are small things and can be hidden 

anywhere. I challenged him to create a 

pumpkin instead. Our farmers, using simple 

agriculture, have created thousands of 

pumpkins over the years but this godman 

is yet to create even one! I do appreciate 

the social work he is doing but I believe in 

the Gandhian principle – the means are as 

important as the ends. There is no question 

of my retiring. I will retire only once, which 

will be the final retirement. 

Dr. H. Narsimhaiah, educationist, 

born Hosur, Karnataka, 1920. 

TII’s Hall of Fame features India’s elderly 

– great, interesting and unusual men and women. 

Excerpted from the book ‘Ageless Mind and Spirit’ 

by Samar and Vijay Jodha 

www.agelessmindandspirit.com 

50 


[ FROM USA ] 

Seniors 

Rock On 

“It’s a frightening scenario to anyone approaching 

the sixties. And very soon a mass of boomers will 

be nearing retirement. All they ask for is to enjoy 

retirement in a secure and supportive community. 

Unfortunately, most senior Indian immigrants do not 

even address issues and problems as they hate to take 

advantage of counselling, since this may spotlight their 

family, and prefer to suffer without any outside help or 

intervention.’’ 

Prativad Narasimhan with Prem Kishore 

[ By PREM KISHORE ] 

I 

was eight years old. One afternoon 

during lunch break in school, my friends 

and I were huddled under a tree, ranting 

about the strict math teacher, when a group 

of older students passed by. There was a 

reverential hush. They were our “Seniors” 

and we were in total awe of this species. Was 

it their seniority in age, wisdom, intelligence, 

size? Whatever the reason, seniors were a 

special breed. And this intense worship of 

the seniors continued till I became a senior 

prefect and passed by a gaggle of adoring 

students, my head in the air, basking in a 

state of euphoria. 

Decades later, I am in the USA. Youth not 

seniority, I discover, is worshipped. Seniors 

are called “old geezers”. They are belittled, 

demeaned, denigrated, scorned on TV and 

talk shows. Tasteless quips label retirement 

communities as God’s Waiting Room. Comedy 

routines revel in absurd negative images 

of the elderly. The young are uncomfortable 

with an aging population. Being old is a liability. 

Women TV anchors and reporters, 

are hustled out as soon as they reach forty. 

There are radio stations in Los Angeles who 

do not take calls from seniors as they do not 

want young, hep, hip listeners to be put off by 

an old voice on the air. TV shows and magazines 

promote the young, body ad nauseum. 

Ads flaunt beautiful young people. There are 

some ads where seniors appear but all they 

do is promote a laxative, an anti depressant, a 

tranquilizer or health insurance. 

Seniors should be defined as “classic” old 

wine, old monuments, old trees, old cars, antiques 

are all cherished, so why not people? 

These objects are admired and appreciated 

precisely for their oldness, their increased 

beauty and the memories they contain. Seniors 

do not shut down as they grow older. 

Sure, some may be pernickety, conservative, 

stubborn and impatient. Today’s seniors are 

curious, alert, eager to experience every nuance 

of life. Most seniors are getting onto 

treadmills, hiking, volunteering, taking pilate 

and tai chi classes, volunteering and demanding 

to be recognized as a valuable asset 

to family and community. My aunt Beulah 

Souri who is 96, and lives in Seattle with 

her neurosurgeon son, has the sharpest of 

minds, reads the newspaper, watches TV, and 

quotes from Keats and Shakespeare (she was 

an English lecturer in India), sings hymns 

for half an hour every day, and was cooking 

a pilaf when I called her this morning. 

Though a little hard of hearing, she has a 

walker but has an amazing memory for 

52 


[ FROM USA ] 

faces, and names and constantly pores over 

her address book evoking remembrances and 

recollections of the amazing number of people 

who fill the pages. Since she lives with her 

son, she is content and sees her grandchildren 

and other daughter and son when they visit 

from the UK and California. This is a perfect, 

but rare scenario, a nurturing home base for a 

person growing old in a foreign country. 

A report states that about 12% of a population 

of 2.3 million Indian Americans in the 

USA, are seniors. Aging Indian Americans 

are the first generation of people who came 

to this country in the late sixties and early 

seventies. They qualify for health benefits 

and limited funding from the Government. 

The early immigrants to a large extent have 

adapted and merged in the mainstream and 

are entitled to all the senior benefits like 

Medicare and Social Security but now wonder 

where they should retire. The new immigrant 

seniors who have come to the United 

States to live with their families and enjoy 

the companionship of the grandchildren feel 

alienated, economically dependent on their 

children and miss the Indian rituals, the 

simple living back home, servants, friendly 

neighbors, and now have to cope with gadgets, 

indifference and loneliness. Some face 

language and accent problems or they cannot 

drive and receive limited or no health 

benefits. They encounter family conflicts. 

How do they earn respect and be self reliant 

and not be a burden on their children? With 

their families or in a retirement home? They 

have chosen to live in the USA. unlike some 

of their friends and relatives, who have gone 

back to retire in India. This group which adopted 

the USA when they were studying or 

working are challenging themselves by staying 

on. 

But there are problems. Indian seniors feel 

lonely since the adult children and grand 

children are away the whole day. Every day 

they question themselves. How do they cope 

with their increasing infirmities? If they live 

independently, who will take them to doctors 

and hospitals? Their sons and daughters 

may have transferable jobs. Would they have 

to uproot themselves and start all over again? 

What happens if they need convalescent 

care? Will the son in law/daughter in law tolerate 

their long term illnesses and their dependency 

on them? Will they be considered 

a liability, a crippling burden on the family? 

If they cannot drive will they be permanently 

housebound? 

You may ask why don’t the children of the 

aging community take care of their parents? 

This is not always possible. I know of a parent 

who is separated from his wife of 50 years. He 

lives with the son in Los Angeles because the 

daughter in law refused to keep the mother 

in law. The elderly lady is forced to live with 

another daughter in San Jose in Northern 

California, and sees her husband once in six 

months when he visits her. Many families 

take the Social Security or SSI or even food 

stamps (the seniors receive from the Government,) 

in return for providing shelter to their 

parents. I have heard of sons being indifferent 

to the injustices meted out to the parents by 

their wives and daughters. I have heard heartrending 

stories of parents harassed by a son in 

law who resents their presence in the house. 

Recently, a horrific incident took place in an 

Indian home in the USA where a son took a 

hammer and hit his aged father in the head. 

He believed that if the father was taken to the 

hospital he could qualify for assisted care in 

a senior facility. 

According to Sohail Inayatullah a political 

scientist/futurist, the aged, particularly those 

removed from family and community will 

be especially prone to mental illnesses. The 

World Health Organization estimates that by 

2020, depression will be the leading cause of 

disability due to a marginalized society. 

It’s a frightening scenario to anyone approaching 

the sixties. And very soon a mass 

of boomers will be nearing retirement. All 

they ask for is to enjoy retirement in a secure 

and supportive community. Unfortunately, 

most senior Indian immigrants do not even 

address issues and problems as they hate to 

take advantage of counseling, since this may 

spotlight their family, and prefer to suffer 

without any outside help or intervention. 

Enter retirement homes. There are choices 

offering flexibility of care and service. 

These places run by independent as well as 

the Federal Government (Housing Urban 

Development Program) is becoming a boon 

to those who wish to improve the quality of 

life as they grow older. Older people like to 

stay in their own home. I visited a Retirement 

Home, Leisure World, in Seal Beach 

Orange County spread over 500 acres, with 

6000 units and housing almost 10,000 retirees. 

Anyone over 55, with financial security 

L-R: Bobby, Prem Kishore with Prema and Rajmohani: Seniors are like classic old wine to be cherished 

can purchase independent one two or three 

bedroom condo. When the owner dies or 

moves away, the condo can be sold by the 

family. This particular facility which I visited 

had myriad activities ranging from travel 

and discussion focus groups to golf, bridge, 

music and gardening groups. There is a bank, 

on the premises, a hospital, indoor theatre, 

library, fitness centers, restaurants, computer 

labs, worship facilities for diverse faiths and 

even a shuttle service to ferry you across the 

campus. There is 24 hour security service. 

Twelve, eighty year old Caucasian women 

have founded Glacier Circle in California, 

the country’s first elderly co-housing 


[ FROM USA ] 

develoopment, a community for older people. 

Eight town houses circle a courtyard. There 

will be a common house comprising of a 

shared kitchen and dining area, a living area 

and a studio apartment that will be rented 

to a skilled nurse. At meetings decisions are 

made weekly, visiting speakers are invited to 

talk on a variety of topics and a book club has 

been inaugurated. There’s an idea for Indian 

American seniors. 

Seniors who cannot afford such retirement 

homes may qualify for federal or state 

funded low income housing or multi family 

government funded housing. Public housing is 

owned by a housing authority and you qualify 

for an apartment. Subsidized housing is owned 

by a private landlord who rents to low income 

seniors. Or you may receive a rental voucher 

and you find your own apartment. The rent 

is calculated as a percentage of your income, 

varying from state to state. It is usually around 

30 percent of your income. There are different 

eligibility requirements but generally speaking 

the criteria for eligibility depends on age 

(you must be over 62) household size, income 

and immigration status. 

I worked in a senior housing project for 14 

years in Los Angeles where we housed 240 

residents in 192 apartments. Sixteen languages 

were spoken in this facility. I interacted 

with Indians, Iranians, Caucasians, Hispanics, 

American blacks, Russians, British, Filipinos, 

Fijians, Scottish, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, 

Irish, Germans, Scandinavians, and Sri 

Lankans. They lived in one/two bedroom 

apartments which came with a kitchenette, 

bathroom as well as a communal dining plan. 

Seventy five year old Narasimhan, a financial 

analyst who lived in the UK for many years 

has now settled in Los Angeles, in a retirement 

home. He has been voted the President of the 

facility for three years and edits the monthly 

newsletter. He loves his independence, travels, 

performs Harikatha, drives, volunteers and 

enjoys his visits to his daughter’s home where 

he baby-sits his grandson from time to time. 

He recently performed in the acclaimed play 

In Search of Vishnu and at Redcat, Walt Disney 

Centre as well as in two TV pilot projects. 

This is the time when we have to seriously 

think of retirement homes for Indian Americans. 

These homes will have a special attraction 

for vegetarians who can cook their own 

food in the kitchen. 

In California, Dr Ulhas Bala, a former gynecologist 

is envisioning such a community 

If seniors wish 

to return to India 

and are able to live 

independently or have 

help they can be useful 

to the community in 

many ways 

and has already called it Vaanaprasti. She 

plans Cottages with 1,600 sq feet of ground 

floor, a two car garage, a swimming pool, tennis 

courts, a shopping center, gated security, a 

pharmacy, a spiritual place of worship and a 

community center. “I already have 18 people 

interested in the project,” she says. “These 

are people who have worked professionally in 

America and are looking forward to staying in 

a secure, comfortable environment independently. 

They all own homes and their children 

are settled. They plan to sell their homes and 

use the money to buy the new property in the 

senior community.” 

Raj Mohan an engineer working with the 

US Government has been abroad for the past 

35 years. Settled in his own home in Los Angeles 

with his wife Prema and living near his 

two daughters, he has no intention of either 

going back to India or entering a retirement 

home. “This is my home and I am not moving 

anywhere. My children and grandchildren 

live here and I need to be near them.” he states 

firmly. The government is encouraging a few 

programs where seniors can ask for home sup- 

“ 

” 

port. An aide visits a few times a week and 

helps in cleaning and grocery shopping or 

visits to the doctor. This service is sponsored 

by the government and is free for those with 

limited income. 

Some Indian communities are determined 

to lessen these hardships and burdens by organizing 

senior citizens groups. Such agencies 

address Social Security, Medicare, citizenship, 

job opportunities, senior housing, living 

wills, nutrition and health care. One such is 

the National Indo-American Association for 

Senior Citizens (NIAASC) which provides 

information and referral. In Long Island in a 

population of 60,000 people of Indian origin, 

there are 7500 Indian seniors. 

When I visit adult day care centres and retirement 

homes as a volunteer, I tell them, 

reinvent yourself. To seniors reading this article 

I have suggestions. Start a book club or 

a discussion group in your home or temple. 

Become a member of a travel club. There 

are many deep discounts for hotels, cars, bus, 

rail and cruise packages with lower rates 

for seniors. Join a reading club. Get a few friends 

together and read from your favorite books or 

pick up books from your library. Discuss issues 

in the newspapers both American and Indian 

and why confine your group to only Indians? 

Invite senior neighbours from other communities. 

Browse the internet. There is a slew of websites 

which will exhilarate you every day and 

keep you up to speed. The need for information 

is always unending. Internet use by those 

over age 55 constituted the fastest rising demographic 

age group of all according to Jupiter 

Media Metrix. Grow old and it may be the 

best life yet. If seniors wish to return to India 

and are able to live independently or have help 

they can be useful to the community in many 

ways. Indo American organizations invite 

you to volunteer in education and health care 

projects. Now here’s a different spin on senior 

issues. An American from mid-west, sent his 

90 year old parents to Pondicherry to live in 

an independent home near the beach where 

they would be taken care of by Indian servants 

while he worked in a software office nearby. 

The reason why he sent his parents to India 

was very practical. 

Care giving in America is very expensive. 

He would have to pay the nursing home (his 

mother had Alzheimer’s) almost three thousand 

dollars every month for the care of his 

parents and Medicare nor his salary would 

not be able to cover that. India offered a solution 

where the dollar went quite far and a 

friend who lived in Pondicherry set up the 

family once the decision was made. How 

long the parents will remain there is something 

their son has to consider. For now, 

his dad takes long walks on the beach, talks 

French to his neighbours, and the mother 

is in the hands of a loving caregiver who 

combs her hair gently and massages her with 

loving kindness. 

Prem Kishore is a freelance writer 

based in California, USA. 

54 


[ COVER STORy ] 

Sunny Varkey 

PROFIT & EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION GO HAND-IN-HAND 

“Sunny Varkey owns the largest network of private schools in the United Arab 

Emirates – 26 schools with around 85,000 students of 124 nationalities and 6,200 

‘education professionals’ – specialists and staff from around the world, providing 

the Indian, British, American and IB curriculum. His goal is extraordinary – he 

wants to be the biggest private education provider in the world, with a global chain 

of top class schools.” 

Sunny and Sons: Dino Varkey (left), Senior Director of Business Development, aged 28 and Jay Varkey (right), aged 25 years who has recently joined the Varkey Group 

56 



HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Sunny Varkey 

HRH Prince Charles and Sunny Varkey 

[By MONA PARIKH MCNICHOLAS & FRANK RAJ ] 

Sunny Varkey’s mission of redefining 

education in the UAE and beyond has 

succeeded in creating what no single 

entrepreneur has managed to achieve in 

the field of Middle East education. In four 

short decades the Dubai based Keralite 

‘edupreneur’ who strategically christened 

his educational organization Global 

Education Management Systems (GEMS), 

has successfully developed a multinational 

corporation with schools in the Arabian 

Gulf and beyond. It is no ordinary feat for 

a visionary who cheerfully admits, he was a 

good student, but studies were not his forte. 

“I love doing business and have always 

been an entrepreneur right from the start,” 

Sunny confesses. 

Charismatic and disarming, his innate entrepreneurial 

skills have clearly stood him 

in good stead where many a person with 

an ordinary educational background like 

his may not have succeeded. His success is 

the envy of competitors he has left far behind 

and much debated by people skeptical 

about his ‘business as normal’ approach to 

education. “We are pioneers, even radical 

you might say, and as such controversy follows 

us everywhere we go.” Sunny has succeeded 

by bucking conventional wisdom 

that conforms to the notion of education 

as a non-profit enterprise. Challenging the 

way society views high quality education, 

he runs GEMS like any successful business, 

for profit. 

Sunny was born on the 9th of April, 1957, 

in Kerala. His parents came to the UAE a 

year later as teachers and have taught English 

to many of the VIP nationals of UAE.” 

Their tuition fee of Rs 25 a month eventually 

resulted in the first Our Own English 

High School, founded in 1968, which was 

then only a makeshift setup.” In the early 

1980s, when required by the Dubai authorities, 

a purpose-built school was established, 

becoming the first step towards the Varkey 

global education empire. Did Sunny study 

at this school? “No,” he laughs, “I was in 

boarding school in India, a short time at 

St Mary’s School in Dubai and then completed 

my A-levels in the UK.” 

He first started his career in Dubai in 

1977 in banking, with a stint at Standard 

Chartered Bank and helped with his parents’ 

school, at times even driving the 

school bus at 5.30 am. But Sunny was restless 

for his own business. And the opportunity 

lay right before him. At the age of 23, 

when Sunny took over the management of 

Our Own English High School, it had 720 

students and 27 teachers. 

Today, Sunny owns the largest network 

of private schools in the United Arab Emirates 

– 26 schools with almost 85,000 students 

of 124 nationalities and 6,200 “education 

professionals” - specialists and staff 

from around the world, providing the Indian, 

British, American and IB curriculum. 

GEMS is the largest employer of Indian and 

British teachers outside of their home country. 

His goal is remarkable - he wants to be 

the biggest private education provider in 

the world, with a global chain of schools. “If 

the likes of Marriott have four or five thousand 

hotels, I don’t know why we should not 

be able to do the same,” he muses. 

GEMS manages a growing network of 

nearly 100 high quality international schools 

around the world. Sunny hopes to take that 

number to 5000 in 15 years. They currently 

have 11 schools in the UK and are in the 

process of signing up deals in the USA, Singapore, 

China and India. How does he view 

the educational sector in India? 

“In India, 98% of the so called ‘Educational 

Trusts’ are actually commercial,” 



“We are probably the oldest for 

profit education chain in the world. 

Obviously there will always be two 

schools of thought in education. But I 

always tell people I will have the last 

laugh because my objective is that 

the children and parents get value 

for money. I’m not here to run crappy 

schools. 

” 

Varkey explains. “They are not really Trusts but an indirect way 

of siphoning money by people. And therefore when we went to 

India a few years ago to get involved in the management of schools, 

I decided not to go in that direction. See, when you are teaching 

children ethical values and principles as we do at our schools, then 

you can’t get involved in hanky panky stuff. I’ve been offered land 

many times in India, but with the condition of forming a society 

or a trust to get government land. I have never agreed to that. I 

run for-profit schools. Traditionally in India, education has been 

a not-for-profit industry so to change that mindset will take time. 

India is still not ready to accept ‘for profit’ schools. Other countries 

are changing and I hope India follows them quickly. We at 

GEMS have developed the right balance between education and 

commerce and my standard phrase is that we are for-profit but we 

don’t profiteer. “ 

But surely the point is whether such an education paradigm is 

valid and ethical? Sunny obviously is used to being grilled about 

the issue and he is upfront and candid. “The problem with notfor-profit’ 

schools is that they are not innovative, they don’t have 

enough funds unless they constantly engage in fundraising. Their 

teachers are laid back; they have no incentive to improve, or any 

sense of accountability to perform. There are many inefficiencies 

and much wastage. But in our case, we have to constantly perform 

and upgrade. We can’t live on past glories. We are very different 

from state schools and ‘non-profit’ schools.” 

The age old Gurukul system in India is redundant and the respect 

for teachers no longer the norm; and though Varkey believes 

that teachers are the backbone of education, he says that given a 

choice he would choose a candidate for whom teaching is a career 

rather than a vocation. 

But Sunny acknowledges the worth of teachers uniquely. “We 

just launched the Guruvar Awards in India which has the highest 

prize money in the world for teachers - US $500,000, of which 

60% will be given as cash and the balance is for any project that 

they recommend. We will do the same thing in the Middle East 

Sunny Varkey with an image of the first school site in Al Bastakiya, Our Own 

English High School, 1968 

and then in the UK and USA. Eventually our goal is to create 

teaching awards that are equivalent to the Oscars. Teachers are 

undervalued and we want to change that. “ 

As far as attracting the best talent for teaching, Sunny points 

out the GEMS advantage, “If a new school advertises for teachers, 

they might get 100 responses. If I advertise for GEMS, I’ll probably 

get 10,000 responses, simply because people know GEMS is 

a brand… like a major five-star hotel chain.” 

What about the rumors one hears about a large turnover of teachers 

at GEMS? Sunny is not fazed by the query. “In regard to our 

Western schools, our turnover is lower than the world average,” he 

says. “It’s not because our teachers want to leave us, but because 

we can’t afford to increase their salaries due to the UAE government 

fee cap on some of our older Asian schools in the Emirates.” 

He shows a letter that he’s just written to the Ministry of Education 

in the UAE. “We have to remodel the low fee-paying schools, 

but they won’t let us increase the fees. Our Own English High 

58 



School has been serving the community for 

so many years but we cannot increase fees 

more than 6% a year. With radical cost of 

living increases in the last few years, we’ve 

been lobbying the government to let us increase 

the fees.” 

But isn’t the government just trying to 

protect the interest of parents so that they 

can afford to send their kids to school? 

“We are not a non-profit school. If we can’t 

make ends meet how can we assure quality 

education? So I’m saying, either you allow 

me to close the schools and open up new 

schools in a new name or you allow me to 

remodel them and increase the fees. New 

schools are opening and luring our teachers. 

So, if I can pay my teachers only Dhs 

2500 per month, other new schools not 

subject to the cap in fees are paying more. 

There is a total disconnect,” Varkey says 

clearly frustrated. 

“When the cost of living goes up, the responsibility 

to ensure that an employee is 

not underpaid is the responsibility of the 

employer. We have to factor in the cost of 

living and peg salaries according to that. 

Just because we are educators and there is 

a traditional mindset that education should 

not be for profit, you can’t expect the schools 

to bear the burden. If lower income families 

still want to send their children to higher 

fee-paying schools, employers will have to 

seriously look at raising parents’ salaries. 

“We’ve been in Dubai for 40 years, serving 

the community. Our first school started 

in 1968 with fees of Dhs 30 a month and 

now it’s only about Dhs 300 a month. We 

can’t manage on that. A new school is allowed 

to charge whatever they want. New 

Indian schools opening up charge from Dhs 

9,000 to 20,000 per year and we are still in 

the Dhs 3000 to Dhs 8,000 bracket. How 

do you expect me to retain good teachers 

who’ve been loyal to me for 25-30 years? 

There is no justification. Just because you 

want to keep inflation down, you can’t expect 

educators to suffer. We are answerable 

to our bankers, we borrow money from the 

banks and we have to pay them on time. 

“At GEMS we don’t take donations or 

charity. Take a look at the GEMS World 

Academy, where we are at the first phase 

of development. By the time we finish we 

will have spent Dhs 250 million for that 

GEMS Wellington International School 

Royal Dubai School 

GWA Facilities – Cafeteria 

Our Own English High School 

Sunny Varkey, Sherly Varkey celebrating Our Own 

English High School, Dubai 40th Anniversary; 

also pictured are previous principals of OOEHS, 

Madhav Rao and Suresh Mathur 

school. So what happens is that in the next 

5-10 years we are just literally recovering 

this money. 

“If you tell me in the next 18 months you 

have to open 200 schools, I can do that because 

we have the funds. In this office we 

spend US $25-40 million in just back office 

work. We have a training department, 

marketing and communications team, 

project management, finance and purchasing 

department – just like a multinational 

corporation. 

“But we are not big enough to be a public 

company yet so we don’t have to publish our 

audit reports. Abraaj Capital has invested 

from their infrastructure and growth fund 

for 10-12 years, and is a 25% shareholder 

in our company. We had top venture capitalists 

who wanted to be our partners but 

we never agreed because they look at short 

term investments of 3-4 years. Education 

is not a quick profit making enterprise and 

you must have a long term vision. We do 

have a mandate to go public in 5-7 years. 

These are the real challenges of privatizing 

education and operating it as big business. 

Being the middleman between the 

government and the parents is one of the 

most difficult tasks for Sunny Varkey. “But 

for the most part, I’m always on the side 

of the parents. We encourage PTAs in our 

schools to become involved in the direction 

the school is going. They are not asked 

to be involved in fundraising like in other 

schools. I am available 24-7 and parents 

have direct access to me.” 

His accessibility and personal involvement 

is uncommon. “I don’t know whether 

you are aware, but in Welcare Hospital,” 

Sunny’s well known medical business enterprise, 

“I would roam around in the lobby 

regularly for 2-3 years when we started. I 

would sit there, watching, talking to patients 

asking them if our doctors did a good 

job. They can talk to me anytime. I’m your 

3am guy.” People have noticed his dedication 

and he has been recognized with various 

awards, both as an entrepreneur and an 

educator. The most recent award conferred 

being the Rajiv Gandhi Award this year for 

his work in education. 

Quality education offered at a varied 

price range. Varkey uses the airline metaphor 

to compare his international-class 



Sunny Varkey with former Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi and... 

...Indian Superstar Amitabh Bachchan 

GEMS World Academy and low budget 

Our Own English High School in Dubai. 

You pay more for a better meal with your 

flight, a more comfortable seat and extra 

leg room. But everyone gets to the same 

destination. It isn’t about compromise he 

insists. “We’re all about quality. Within the 

educational sphere, teachers play a very 

important role, so even in a budget school if 

the teacher is good you will be able to deliver 

the kind of grades that are necessary 

to send a child to a good university. Everybody 

is making money, the people who 

supply the equipment are making money, 

the people who conduct the inspections are 

making money, the contractors are making 

money, so why shouldn’t educators?” 

Sunny is unwittingly right in the centre 

of what is known as the “Adam Smith Problem”. 

The challenge of trying to combine 

altruistic human motivation with the free 

market capitalist economy. Adam Smith, 

though a philosopher, is often identified 

as the father of modern capitalism. In his 

book The Wealth of Nations, he talks about an 

‘invisible hand’ in society that is defined as 

natural self interest that would lead us to 

improve the lot of others. 

Varkey, perhaps unaware, clearly subscribes 

to many of the ideas expressed in 

The Wealth of Nations. “At all our schools,” 

Varkey points out, “when parents pay 

money they expect value and service - and 

we’re always on the cutting edge of service. 

If I want to attract parents, I have to provide 

the right infrastructure, technology and 

teachers. Unless I deliver what I promise, 

I’m not going to be successful. We don’t do 

any cost cutting. In fact with all the economic 

problems around us, we are probably 

the only ones who increased the salaries by 

AED 40 million last year… it was in the 

newspapers. Even this year we increased 

salaries by ten percent.” 

“We are probably the oldest for profit education 

chain in the world. Obviously there 

will always be two schools of thought in education. 

But I always tell people I will have 

the last laugh because my objective is that 

the children and parents get value for money. 

I’m not here to run crappy schools.” 

As society debates the pros and cons 

of ‘for-profit’ versus ‘non-profit’ schools, 

Sunny continues to fiercely believe in education 

for all, rich and poor. He gives away 

chunks of his fortune to the poor and needy, 

drawing his inspiration from the Bible every 

morning before getting on with the business 

of the day. Varkey believes that poverty can 

only be eradicated through education. 

Bigheartedness combined with astute 

business acumen is Varkey’s trademark. 

He personally pledged an astonishing 

AED 100 million to the Ruler of Dubai, 

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin 

Rashid Al Maktoum’s ‘Dubai Cares’ education 

initiative. GEMS has also been the 

lead sponsor by giving 250,000 pounds for 

the ‘Read India’ initiative started up by an 

NGO called Prathim, with the aim of providing 

basic education to 100 million children 

in India. GEMS is also now managing 

22 State schools in Abu Dhabi, and have 

similar plans in Doha, Bahrain and South 

Africa, as well some initiatives with the 

World Bank. 

Sunny Varkey is indeed a pioneer. He is 

tilling new ground in the field of education, 

pulling out the weed of apathy, corruption 

and wastefulness from ‘state’ and ‘trust’ 

schools, and sowing the seeds of universal 

values into private schools and collecting a 

rich harvest. As he ploughs it back, we have 

to wait and see what fruits are borne in the 

next generation that is being bred on unequal 

playing fields. 

Mona Parikh McNicholas is Associate Editor 

and Frank Raj is the Founder Editor of 

The International Indian 

60 


[ I BELIEVE ] 

Who’s The Real Hindu? 

“So if thousands or even millions of Dalits, who have been despised and ostracised 

for generations, choose to become Christian, Buddhist or Muslim, either to escape 

the discrimination of their Hindu faith or because some other has lured them 

with food and cash, it’s their right.” 

[ By KARAN THAPAR ] 

Does the VHP have the right to speak 

for you or I? Do they reflect our views? 

Do we endorse their behaviour? They 

call themselves the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, 

but who says they represent all of us? This 

Sunday morning, I want to draw a clear line of 

distinction between them and everyone else. 

My hunch is many of you will agree. 

Let me start with the question of 

conversion - an issue that greatly exercises 

the VHP. I imagine there are hundreds 

of millions of Hindus who are peaceful, 

tolerant, devoted to their faith, but above all, 

happy to live alongside Muslims, Christians, 

Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Jews. If any one 

of us were to change our faith how does it 

affect the next man or woman? And even if 

that happens with inducements, it can only 

prove that the forsaken faith had a tenuous 

and shallow hold. So why do the VHP and 

its unruly storm troopers, the Bajrang Dal, 

froth at the mouth if you, I or our neighbours 

convert? What is it to do with them? 

Let me put it bluntly, even crudely. If I 

want to sell my soul - and trade in my present 

gods for a new lot - why shouldn’t I? Even 

if the act diminishes me in your eyes, it’s 

my right to do so. So if thousands or even 

millions of Dalits, who have been despised 

and ostracised for generations, choose to 

become Christian, Buddhist or Muslim, 

either to escape the discrimination of their 

Hindu faith or because some other has lured 

them with food and cash, it’s their right. 

Arguably you may believe you should ask 

them to reconsider, although I would call that 

interference, but you certainly have no duty 

or right to stop them. In fact, I doubt if you 

are morally correct in even seeking to place 

obstacles in their way. The so-called Freedom 

of Religion Acts, which aim to do just that, 

are, in fact, tantamount to obstruction of 

conversion laws and therefore, at the very 

least, questionable. 

However, what’s even worse is how the 

VHP responds to this matter. Periodically 

they resort to violence including outright 

murder. What happened to Graham Staines 

in Orissa was not unique. Last week it 

happened again. Apart from the utter and 

contemptible criminality of such behaviour, 

is this how we Hindus wish to behave? Is 

this how we want our faith defended? Is this 

how we want to be seen? I have no doubt the 

“ 

I’m sorry but 

when I read that the 

VHP has ransacked 

and killed I’m not just 

embarrassed, I feel 

ashamed. Never of 

being Hindu but of 

what some Hindus 

do in our shared 

faith’s name. 

” 

answer is no. An unequivocal, unchanging 

and ever-lasting NO! 

The only problem is it can’t be heard. And 

it needs to be. I therefore believe the time 

has come for the silent majority of Hindus - 

both those who ardently practice their faith 

as well as those who were born into it but 

may not be overtly religious or devout - to 

speak out. We cannot accept the desecration 

of churches, the burning to death of innocent 

caretakers of orphanages, the storming of 

Christian and Muslim hamlets even if these 

acts are allegedly done in defence of our 

faith. Indeed, they do not defend but shame 

Hinduism. That’s my central point. 

I’m sorry but when I read that the VHP has 

ransacked and killed I’m not just embarrassed, I 

feel ashamed. Never of being Hindu but of what 

some Hindus do in our shared faith’s name. 

This is why its incumbent on Naveen 

Patnaik, Orissa’s Chief Minister, to take 

tough, unremitting action against the VHP 

and its junior wing, the Bajrang Dal. This is 

a test not just of his governance, but of his 

character. And I know and accept this could 

affect his political survival. 

But when it’s a struggle between your 

commitment to your principles and your 

political convenience is there room for 

choice? For ordinary politicians, possibly, but 

for the Naveen I know, very definitely not. 

So let me end by saying: I’m waiting, 

Naveen. In fact, I want to say I’m not alone. 

There are hundreds of millions of Hindus, like 

you and me, waiting silently - but increasingly 

impatiently. Please act for all of us. 

Copyright HT Media Ltd. (Karan Thapar wrote 

for ‘Sunday Sentiments’ for Hindustan Times). 


[ EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW ] 

The Sangliana Saga: 

Technicolor Turncoatism 

“A number of BJP MPs had voted against their own party in favor of the Congress. 

Hmar Tlawmte Sangliana, Mizoram-bred but representing Bangalore North, was one of 

them, and also the most unexpected.” 

[ By INGRID ALBUqUERqUE ] 

I 

n recent times, politics in India has 

found politicians moving in all kinds 

of directions. Notwithstanding 

that, when Hmar Tlawmte Sangliana, 

a Mizoram MP from Bangalore North 

defied his Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) 

and cross-voted during the Congress’ 

historic trust vote in July 2008, people 

were stunned. The amazing fact is that 

after being expelled from his party for 

“bailing out” the UPA, the supercopturned-MP 

is being felicitated for his 

“courageous stand” all around the 

country. This is how somebody put it, 

“During times of universal deceit, it is 

as if the mere telling of truth becomes a 

revolutionary act.” 

Sangliana’s open defiance of the party 

deeply embarrassed the BJP which in 

any case was trying to purge its stables. 

Sangliana was immediately turfed out and 

his office and residence ransacked. He is 

now provided with “Z” security, the same 

provided to the President of India! 

Beyond all the flamboyance and drama, 

the truth is that there is an urgent need for a 

new political paradigm in India. The question 

is, can H.T. Sangliana set the regeneration 

ball rolling? Ingrid Albuquerque finds out 

during this exclusive interview. 

We live in a degenerating world and India is 

neither example nor exception. As a part of our 

society grows more affluent and figures high 

on Forbes’ list, there is a simultaneous increase 

in the pockets of grinding poverty and hunger. 

Compassion has become chic, and even the most 

H.T. Sangliana: India today has attained the reputation of 

superpower status for right or wrong reasons 

casual look around will reveal that majority of 

people are more keen about purchasing the 

latest electronic gadget than doing anything 

about those in need. 

Personal morals are now considered by 

many as quaintly antique and envy and 

common greed are today’s most pervasive 

social diseases. We can no longer overlook the 

destructive epidemic of crime and violence 

covering bomb blasts in city after city, bank 

scams and political corruption. 

In fact, politics reached a new low when 

on the day the ruling party had to prove its 

majority with a trust vote, three BJP MPs 

accused the Samajwadi party and Congress of 

bribing them, as they flagrantly waved bundles 

of currency allover the place and into the 

camera. In the process the accusers themselves 

have committed offences ranging from breach 

of privilege to breaching the Parliament’s 

security to even corruption charges. 

Just as the nation was hanging its head in 

shame came the next surprise. A number 

of BJP MPs had voted against their own 

party in favor of the Congress. Hmar 

Tlawmte Sangliana, Mizoram-bred but 

representing Bangalore North, was one 

of them, and also the most unexpected. 

What made Sangliana turn coat so to say? 

“My conscience,” says the maverick 

politician without preamble. “The Indo- 

Nuclear deal under fiery debate had been 

initiated by NDA (National Democratic 

Alliance) in which the BJP was the biggest 

stakeholder. It was only because of not being 

in power now and due to the fear that the UPA 

might take full credit for implementation 

of the deal, that the BJP wanted to have it 

redrafted so that the party could gain some 

political mileage to improve its image. This is 

impure politics which went against my inner 

grit and grain. It hurt my conscience. Undue 

delay of the agreement is likely to result in 

our missing the proverbial boat and we would 

have to start from the beginning again and 

will surely be much costlier. The motive and 

patriotism of the expert team working on 

the deal cannot be doubted by any, so where 

is the scope of questioning their integrity or 

pretending to be fearful that our sovereignty 

might be lost and trampled on.” 

TII: You are obviously in favor of the 

deal; what makes you so certain it is the 

best thing for India? 

HTS: India today has attained the reputation 

of superpower status for right or wrong reasons. 

In reality, we are not yet fully fit to be testified 

and certified a superpower for a variety of 

reasons of which acute power shortage is the 

64 


[ EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW ] 

most outstanding and crippling. We ought to 

welcome with open arms a deal that will give 

us free access to the Nuclear Suppliers Group 

– 45 of them! – from who we will be able to 

buy our nuclear fuel requirements. Such an 

understanding will give us the long awaited 

infrastructure building capacity to meet 

our present and future need of power so that 

the next generation will not blame us for not 

taking required steps to ensure availability of 

sufficient power for them. This is why I stood 

for immediate materialization of the deal. 

TII: You have a calling to be “the salt of 

the earth”. Does that not include a clear 

civic and professional obligation to submit 

yourself to the party (you belonged to) 

authority, especially in its hour of need? 

HTS: In a democracy, when you have a party 

system and have to obey and act according to 

the direction of the whip, you really don’t 

have a choice. That is true. But in my case 

when I felt there was no valid reason to 

blindly obey despite my inner conviction, or 

to oppose the treasury bench for the sake of 

opposition and shout or boo, I just don’t do it 

as I don’t want to belittle myself. 

TII: The BJP expelled you from the party 

as a result of your cross-voting. 

HTS: I knew them would, I expected them to. 

TII: What if they (the BJP high command) 

feel in retrospect that it was a knee-jerk 

reaction, and (considering you are one of 

the biggest vote-pullers in Karnataka) they 

revoke your suspension and call you back 

into the party – will you rejoin it? 

HTS: No. They are behaving in a childish 

manner which is unacceptable. We differ on 

basics. When I was inside Parliament I would 

pray to God for His presence within me so 

that my presence will be meaningful and 

respectable. My main desire when I entered 

Indian Parliament was to pronounce the name 

of Jesus Christ inside the Parliament for a good 

reason or cause so that it will be a part of the 

Parliament record. Despite belonging to the 

BJP, I distributed about 65 CDs on the life of 

Jesus Christ (instead of Christmas or New Year 

cards) to my colleagues on the eve of Christmas 

2006. I had also requested the Prime Minister 

of India to extend subsidy to Indian Christians 

for going to the Holy Land just like the subsidy 

given to Muslims for going to Mecca every 

year. My proposal is awaiting a final decision. 

I told senior BJP leaders to avoid Christian 

bashing and I led a rally on Mahatma Gandhi 

Road in Bangalore on 22nd February this year, 

to protest against atrocities on Christians in 

India. I reminded Mrs Sonia Gandhi when 

we met recently that she is our Esther in the 

Government of India. 

TII: Some people think that in cross-voting 

against your own party, you have committed 

suicide… 

HTS: Everyone is free to think what he or 

she chooses. I do not agree with them. Wait 

and watch. 

TII: After having been in it for the last half a 

dozen years, in your opinion what really ails 

politics and politicians of India? 

HTS: Too many regional parties have resulted 

in horse-trading to capture power both at the 

State level and at the Centre. The end result 

is perpetual instability resulting in selfishness 

and personal/family agendas. Politics has 

turned into a commercial industry where 

many politicians make money by resorting to 

malpractice. A parent encourages the offspring 

to enter the political arena (rather than pursue 

a profession and take up a job in keeping with 

the child’s skills) just to hold on to power. You 

will find the political arena crowded with these 

kind of people whose priority is not the welfare 

of people, but selfish ends. Because of this 

intent, corruption prospers and the poor continue 

to be poor; there is no respect for law or tradition. 

In fact, regional parties are the creation of such 

power-crazed individuals or else those disgruntled 

politicians who were not given tickets by mainline 

parties to stand in elections. 3000 years ago Aristotle 

said that a democracy consists mostly of illiterate 

people and that their standard of leadership or 

governance could not be high. That is exactly what 

we see in our country today apart from the small 

minority of intellectual and educated politicians. 

My main concern is corruption and absence 

of serious implementation of developmental 

programs. Oppositions and coalition partners 

are thwarting development just for the fear 

that the ruling party might get full credit for 

anything well done which might help it to 

become victorious in its own steam in the next 

election. So you see it is plot within a plot within 

a plot in the melting pot. 

TII: It’s becoming painfully apparent that 

man’s governing institutions almost always 

stray from God’s path, often in hideous ways. 

Is it impossible of politics and spirituality to 

co-exist? 

HMT: On the contrary. I would say politics and 

spirituality are twins. It is impossible for one to 

truly exist without the other. Those who say 

they are spiritual should know that they have 

a serious responsibility in the public square. 

There are political implications to professed 

faith and these can often be realized by getting 

into politics and acting prudentially. 

TII: What are your plans for the future? 

HTS: What He wills for me will become my 

plan. I will go where He wants me to go, do 

what He assigns me. I want to first of all set a 

clean and uncompromising example in austerity 

and personal lifestyle, and take measures to 

ensure that my colleagues do the same. There 

has got to be quality, speed and efficiency in 

work performance. Punctuality will be strictly 

enforced, and there will be an insistence on 

projects being completed in time. Corrupt 

individuals will be trapped, prosecuted and 

dismissed from government jobs. Poor standard 

of work will automatically disqualify a contractor 

from future projects, in fact he will be blacklisted. 

There will be strict quality control and 

check in all government operations. Vigilance 

commissions will be instituted to contain and 

eventually do away with corruption. There will 

be strong action against nepotism, favoritism, 

partiality and selfish acts. Churches, NGOs 

and NRIs will be invited to partner with the 

Government in overhauling the nation. 

TII: In your view, with so much of instability 

and national insecurity, is it a safe time for 

NRIs to return to or visit India? 

HTS: There is no danger or insecurity to make 

NRIs insecure. The police and other security 

officials are alert and active everywhere, 

and the place is as safe or as dangerous as 

any other part of the troubled globe. In fact, 

if ever there were a time when the country 

needed its NRIs, it is now. Bring in new ideas, 

new paradigms and make a clear-headed 

contribution to the land of your birth. 

Ingrid Albuquerque is the Content Editor and 

Website Manager of the Haggai Institute’s international 

website; and the Managing Director of Berean 

Bay Media House. She has edited many magazines 

and is an author of a few best-selling books. 


[ FROM CANADA ] 

Mixed Marriages 

“Foreign-born, first generation immigrants are more likely to have spouses of the 

same background. While the second generation begins to have mixed marriages, 

the third generation is the key to see who will intermarry.” 

[ By RUBINA JACOB ] 

Even as I sit down to write about 

mixed relationships or dating 

someone from another community 

I do so with mixed feelings. I’m currently 

in a relationship with a Caucasian, and 

the saying ‘love is enough’, is well it’s not 

entirely true. Don’t get me wrong I am 

very happy and content, but I must admit 

that being in a mixed relationship is not 

that simple. Indians are a unique race and 

however modern our thoughts maybe or 

how well traveled, there are certain traits 

that runs like a thread in us all, and that’s 

what makes dating someone from a different 

race complicated. 

It is no more unusual to bump into couples 

that are ‘mixed’ the world over especially 

in North America and specifically Canada. 

The novelty of seeing an Indian with 

someone of another race is gone. The 

phenomena of mixed couples, is more 

common. People of different backgrounds 

meet more easily now due to increased 

diversity in neighborhoods and workplaces, 

mixed raced couples are more accepted 

both by their families and by society, and 

“mixed raced” is more frequently and easily 

claimed as an identity. 

Prabhakar an entrepreneur living in San 

Diego recently married an Iranian girl in 

a multi racial ceremony. His parents had 

no objection to the match, the common 

statement nowadays being, ‘as long as they 

are happy’. “I’m sure in the back of their 

minds they would have preferred a girl 

from their own community, but didn’t say 

anything, at the end of the day they wanted 

their 35 year old son to be happy and 

married!” laughs Prabhakar. 

When I initially met my partner, we were 

drawn to each other by our mutual interests 

in travel, global issues, and beliefs. I also 

found him to be open-minded and nonjudgmental, 

unlike many Indian men I 

knew. The only difference was the color of 

our skins. And it’s not that big a challenge, 

but having said that everything is not as 

clean cut either. For most Indians, including 

myself, there is a need to seek approval and 

acceptance, and that constant need can be 

a strain because you feel you’re not fully 

accepted, not in the same way…. Basically, 

being in a multi racial relationship is not for 

the weak-hearted. 

According to Nagmeh Phelan an Iranian 

Rubina Jacob with her partner Christopher Way 

(from the UK) 

married to a white Canadian, “It’s as if we 

are on the verge of leaving the problems of 

racism, ethnic and cultural discrimination 

behind, as if some perfect post-racial 

society is just around the corner and this not 

necessarily the case.” But she concedes that 

interracial unions are a sign that “race is not 

as much of a factor in people’s decisions about 

who to have relationships with, in general.” 

But once the euphoria of being in love 

calms down, that’s when reality strikes for 

most mixed couples. “You realize that not 

everything is that simple or easy. Starting 

from basic things like food, you have to get 

used to eating blander cuisine and less of 

curries, and I learn to make do with a mish 

mash of curry and Yorkshire pie,” laughs 

Deepika Jacob, an IT professional living 

and working in Canada. 

Deepika dated a Caucasian for three 

years and it didn’t work out but the 

Prabakar Mahalingam at his wedding with Nadia 

Eskandari (originally from Iran) 

66 


[ FROM CANADA ] 

Jenni (half Indian half American) wedding with 

Michael Mariano (American) 

“ 

Imagine telling 

your conservative 

Indian parents you 

are going for a 

sleep over to your 

boyfriend’s house, or 

you will be out until 

2 am for a party. you 

may finally get the 

permission to stay 

out late but most 

westerners can’t 

understand why 

the fuss. 

” 

memories of some of the struggles still 

remain. “At first it was great, but I think 

the adjustments that we both had to make 

to overcome our cultural roadblocks got 

too much. Of course they weren’t the main 

factors. We fell out of love, but I’m sure 

being from different cultural backgrounds 

didn’t help.” Adjustments are not with 

food alone, often just getting used to the 

accent could be a drawback. And there 

are other subtle differences that show up. 

For instance, I thought it was a big deal 

when my partner met my folks for the 

first time. I insisted it be at a restaurant, 

that he should not wear jeans, but be more 

formally dressed. I instructed him to pick 

the tab, not drink. He on the other hand, 

couldn’t understand what the big deal was. 

He believed that a natural setting would 

be more appropriate, and even stated that 

when I meet his folks it would be different. 

It’s not that either race don’t respect our 

families, it’s just the way we interact with 

them is different. For us Indians, parental 

approval is paramount. Westerners don’t 

necessarily feel that way. 

General race stereotypes are also often 

true. Single Indians usually live with 

their parents (if their parents live in the 

same town) until they get married, unlike 

westerners who move out when they are 18 

years old. Imagine telling your conservative 

Indian parents you are going on sleep over 

at your boyfriend’s house, or you will be 

out till 2 am for a party. You may finally 

get the permission to stay out late but most 

westerners can’t understand why the fuss. 

Social interaction and the way we react 

to things are also different. “Westerners 

in particular are a lot more pragmatic, 

and polite whereas we as a race get more 

emotional, take too much to heart,” 

says Kiran Mahalingam, a management 

consultant who has dated women of 

different cultures. 

Rashmi Devadasan, a psychologist 

married to an American explains that 

foreign-born, first generation immigrants 

are more likely to have spouses of the same 

background. While the second generation 

begins to have mixed marriages, “The 

third generation is the key to see who will 

intermarry.” Among Asians in Canada, the 

third generation population is still small, as 

this number grows, so will mixed marriages. 

She notes that men are more likely to marry 

outside their race, and prestige could be a 

factor. She also says divorced men are more 

likely to enter into a mixed marriage. 

It’s more common to see Indians dating 

Caucasians, but not with someone of African 

origin and I wonder if we are more stuck 

up with prejudices and stereotypes. Indian 

parents are a lot more accepting of a white 

Caucasian partner, but god forbid if you get 

an African American or someone of African 

descent. Maybe some families can look 

beyond color but the general mentality is 

that in some way if you are white it’s ok but if 

you’re black you’ve sunk too low. 

Sarah Jesudian is married to an African 

American and lives in Detroit, “Initially 

my family was shocked, they thought I had 

married one of those rappers, that the color 

of his skin meant he was a lower caste. It was 

only later once they got to know him better 

and once they found out he was actually 

smart and a lawyer were they ok, but it took 

a while.” 

Breaking these general stereotypes can 

be a challenge. Often I have discovered 

people of other races and our own start out 

with the misconception that an Asian wife/ 

girlfriend will be meek and that she’ll cook 

and clean the house. But you quickly learn 

that this stereotype isn’t true. As tough 

as dating is to begin with, mixing races or 

cultures brings complications much tougher 

than introducing your date to flan or sweet 

potato. Novelty of something new or as 

some people call it “Jungle Fever” complex. 

A feeling of you and me against the world is 

a romantic notion. But what happens when 

the romance wears thin? 

My parents and his know about us being 

in a mixed relationship but like modern day 

families, are happy for us on the surface. 

But I always wonder what will happen 

when they do meet, will my Indian folks 

have a feeling of inferiority and be very 

subservient or completely snobbish. I 

wonder if people will stop giving us those 

sly glances when we walk the streets either 

with envy or anger. Hopefully one day they 

will look at us with indifference. 

Rubina Jacob is a free lance writer 

based in Canada. 


[ BOLLyWOOD PROFILE ] 

A Vocational Actor: 

Anupam Kher 

“I find that many acting schools have remained in a kind of traditional 

time-warp. Our lives and times have changed, as have our interests, our perspectives 

and outlook. Our way of expressing has changed. We Indians can be subtle and 

we can be exaggerated, so the style of acting must change too.” 

[ By AMITA SARWAL] 

In Singapore to stage Kuch Bhi Ho Sakta 

Hai (Anything Can Happen) after having 

performed over 200 shows globally, the 

actor talks about his play and his acting 

schools. Casually dressed in jeans, opencollared 

white shirt, light blue jacket, and 

sneakers – and his signature smile – he greets 

me warmly in the lobby of Holiday Inn Park 

View while heavy rain lashes the city under 

darkened late-morning skies. 

Bollywood’s Anupam Kher is the first actor 

in the world to monoact his autobiography 

on stage. In fact, he wrote to Guinness World 

Records to include him for this feat – but they 

said they had no such category [yet]. 

He recalls, “There was an offer first from 

Penguin, and then Harpers Collins, to 

write my autobiography. I started collecting 

material but you need a writer who vibes 

with you. Somewhere through my writing, 

because most of what was coming up was 

very visually oriented, it dawned on me that 

as I am an actor, I must ‘perform’ my life. 

“I am an optimist. I would initially narrate 

my life’s incidents in a drawing room of 10-20 

people. Most of the episodes were funny, even 

my disasters and failures because I found that 

takes the burden off the people that they are 

not supposed to laugh at failures. I perceived 

when a successful man talks about his failures 

it gives people courage to talk about their 

personal failures without the fear of failure. 

Anupam Kher: If I’m known more as an educationist than an 

actor, I’ll be very happy. 

“The theatre being a means of direct 

communication was where I had to perform. 

Yet the thought of acting in front of 500-600 

people repeatedly over a period of time was 

frightening. At that point I was going through 

a low phase in my life. But once I did my first 

show in 2003 the response was phenomenal 

and I discovered that though it was my story 

a lot of the audience could identify with it. 

The play talks about one’s dreams, fears and 

aspirations, and about love. The maximum 

audience I have performed for was in front of 

7,000–8,000 people outdoors at Goa during 

the 35th International Film Festival 2004.” 

The choice of director Feroze Khan (Tumhari 

Amrita) was natural as Anupam had worked 

with him in a previous play Saalgirah (2001). 

“There was a comfort level. Besides he is 

very talented and understands the medium of 

theatre very well. All these factors combined 

[to select him]. I could have directed the 

play myself but as it was my life I needed an 

objective point of view.” 

Part of the reason to perform was 

“certainly to get back to theatre. I did this 

play when I was not feeling very great about 

myself. I wanted to do a play which became 

my source of income because I had decided 

that I would only do certain kind of films 

henceforth. But it was equally important for 

me to continue with my standard of living. 

I did not think the play would be a great 

success but God was kind and it was well 

received by the audience.” 

Anupam continues, “Each episode is 

absolutely bang on because I am making fun of 

myself. It is brutally honest. Of course, to make 

it entertaining one has used a kind of flavour, 

but the incidents are absolutely true.” 

Ashok Patole and Feroze [Khan] did the 

re-writing and condensed eight tapes of 

conversations into a two-and-half-hour play 

and it had to have a format. The narrations 

start from his childhood and end on a certain 

note, after that the milestones in Anupam’s 

professional life are updated on a slide. 

Talk then turns to Anupam Kher’s 

Actor Prepares (www.actorprepares.net): 

When did he realise that there was a need 

for a good film acting school in India? “I 

always felt it. I am from a drama school so 

68 


[ BOLLyWOOD PROFILE ] 

I understand the importance of education 

in acting especially now that India is 

booming in the entertainment business. 

The audience is ready for disciplined, 

professional, educated actors. There are 

going to be less and less flukes [bad actors] 

in this profession. 

“I personally feel the death of the 

Bollywood style of acting has happened. 

It was a necessity to have that style earlier 

because in India films were the prime 

source of entertainment catering to a very 

diverse audience – Punjabis, Bengalis, 

Gujaratis, Tamilians, Maharashtrians et 

al. So the style, the overt gesticulating in 

a manner became clichéd to explain say a 

simple gesture in Hindi, so whatever was 

offered the public accepted it. 

“But now the moviegoer is more educated 

plus he has choices for his entertainment. He 

is not madly involved in movies. He is more 

relaxed as an observer. To hold the interest 

of this type of person, you on the screen 

have to be brilliant. If there are a thousand 

reasons for him applauding you, there are 

as many chances of him not liking you. He 

is more critical and you, the actor, have to 

make a special effort to be accepted.” 

The concept of Actor Prepares took 

shape about 10-12 years ago when Anupam 

did a three-week workshop in Mumbai with 

this young generation of upcoming actors – 

Hrithik Roshan, Abhishek Bachchan, Uday 

Chopra, Neil Mukesh and Sikander Kher. 

“I needed to have an acting school because 

I felt I am primarily a teacher. But more 

important, I wanted to break this myth that 

a Bollywood actor cannot run a reputable 

acting school of international standard. 

“In 2005, I started Actor Prepares from a 

small office. I also needed to space out my 

time which I could not do earlier as I was 

doing too many films. Now its almost four 

years old, is in a bigger place and having 

invested so much hard work in it that it has 

become an important institution,” he says. 

Anupam continues, “Today the longevity 

of an actor depends upon how good you are. 

The younger generation is taking acting 

as a profession very seriously. I personally 

don’t feel that “acting sikhane se nahin aati 

hai” (acting doesn’t come from being taught). 

This is an uneducated person’s point of view. 

Acting schools, according to me are like 

motor driving schools. You learn the rules 

of driving, to apply the brakes, shift gears, 

but you only learn driving by practicing 

driving. Similarly acting schools can teach 

you, give you directions on how to go about 

it but you improve with practice. It does help 

if the talent is inherent but in today’s time 

confidence is confused with acting. Today’s 

generation is more confident and the fear 

of the camera is not there. Everyone has a 

mobile, everyone can make a video clipping 

from it or take a still shot. So facing a camera, 

seeing your face on a mobile, a screen is no 

big deal. Being confident has nothing to 

do with acting. A very shy person can be a 

brilliant actor. It all depends upon how much 

you personally invest in it.” 

Having spent 23 years in the industry 

and with over 300 films to his credit, it is 

only expected that all that Anupam has 

learnt and imbibed he share with others. 

“You could say that I cannot ‘teach’ acting 

but my experience has formed a certain 

way of expressing which if I share with my 

students would make a difference to them.” 

Actor Prepares opened its first branch in 

Chandigarh with the government being a 

30 per cent partner. The first international 

branch will open in London in September. 

Durban is next on the agenda. “We have 

our partners but have not signed the official 

contract [at time of going to press in end- 

May]. We have done our homework, had 

our meetings and hopefully should open by 

end-2008,” he tells. 

Speaking of the monetary investments, 

Anupam reveals, “It is all my money. In 

Mumbai I am the owner. In Chandigarh the 

government provides the infrastructure and 

we bring in the expertise. In London our 

partners are Ealing Institute of Media and 

Heathrow City Partnership, a part of Ealing, 

Hammersmith and West London College. 

We are looking at a 50-50 partnership. 

They provide the infrastructure and we, the 

expertise. Sixty students will be admitted 

in the first year and fees have been set at 

£6,000 for a three-month course.” 

Intending to spend a week or more 

teaching each batch of students at each one 

of his schools, Anupam is positive that he 

will not go in for franchising. “Everyday 

I get calls from cities in India and around 

the world asking for a franchise. But this 

is not McDonald’s! This is an educational 

institution and my name is involved. I 

definitely want to be a partner in every 

school so that we can control the standard. 

And if 50 years hence I am known more as 

an educationist than an actor I will be very 

happy,” he smiles. 

Speaking of the curriculum, “Except for 

the dancing style of Bollywood the syllabus 

is the same [as other leading film acting 

schools]. Dance is within us Indians. We 

dance at any given pretext – marriages, 

festivals, religious celebrations. We express 

our joy by dancing. We Indians are larger 

than life. Our hearts are ‘bigger’ than those 

of normal people. That makes our joy, our 

celebrations and even our sorrows bigger. I 

find an Indian actor can do a salsa or a jive 

or a waltz, but a Hollywood actor will find 

it very difficult performing a Bollywood 

style dance. 

“I find many other acting schools, without 

wanting to criticise them, have remained 

in a kind of traditional time-warp. But our 

lives and times have changed, as have our 

interests, our perspectives and outlook. 

Our way of expressing has changed. 

We Indians can be subtle and we can be 

exaggerated, so the style of acting must 

change too,” he explains. And concludes 

– in all earnestness with what comes across 

as a trademark of the Anupam Kher sense 

of humour: “According to me anyone who 

can lie convincingly can act. Because lying 

is the first step towards acting.” 

Amita Sarwal is a freelance writer 

based in Singapore. 


[ FAMILy ] 

International Adoption: 

Raising Global Children 

“They were adopted as infants out of orphanages in New Delhi, Pune and Nagpur by 

British parents who had to move heaven and earth to get them. The family returned 

to India recently to reconnect with their roots and launch their book Three Indian 

Orphans Touched By Destiny which reveals in abundance how international adoption 

brings human beings together across national boundaries, a situation le plus desirable 

in the global society we now inhabit.” 

[ By INGRID ALBUqUERqUE ] 

Once they were orphans in three 

dilapidated orphanages in New 

Delhi, Pune and Nagpur. Today 

they are in a sense international Indians 

and true citizens of the world. Lovingly 

lifted out of their orphanages and put 

into the keen arms of British parents, 

Bina-Ruth, Rachita-Beth and Pratiksha- 

Kate have grown amazingly into young 

Indian women who have the world at their 

doorstep. In India they were unaware of 

one another’s existence. Then they met as 

sisters in Europe, grew up in the UK, have 

British passports, traveled the world and 

now live in the Alps in France. 

The parents… 

David John Lee is English and his wife 

Loralee is Canadian with Scottish roots. 

Their three daughters are Indian. Not flesh 

of their flesh, nor bone of their bone, but three 

wonderful girls, miraculously their own. 

The family moved from UK some years 

ago, to settle in the south of France and 

at some point in the future, plan to go to 

Canada. 

David who is an author, writer and regular 

David John Lee, Pratiksha-Kate, Bina-Ruth, MP H.T. Sangliana, Rachita-Beth and Loralee Lee at the book launch 

held at The Windsor in Bangalore 

contributor to international agencies like 

Saatchi and Saatchi, shares how his family 

came about: “My wife Loralee and I arrived 

rather late at the idea of having children. We 

could not go about this in the normal way, 

owing to a history of haemophilia in Loralee’s 

family.” However, what Loralee clung to 

and never forgot, was a dream she had as a 

teenager she firmly believes came from God. 

In the dream, she saw herself surrounded by 

Indian children. 

Men have their own down to earth way of 

70 


[ FAMILy ] 

looking at things. David says, “International 

adoption made sense to me in the same way 

as environmentalism made sense. Why bring 

another child into an already overcrowded 

world when there are so many children 

out there who need parents? It’s what the 

management gurus refer to as a win-win 

situation. Adults who want children; children 

who need mothers and fathers. What could 

be simpler?” 

When in the early 90s, David John Lee 

was on assignment in India, his wife Loralee 

accompanied him, and they shared their dream 

with a social worker, their jaws dropping and 

their heart stopping in amazement when the lady 

said quietly, “Well, it happens that a beautiful 

baby girl was left with me last week. Would you 

like to see her?” As the prophecy unfolded, what 

followed was almost surreal. Loralee describes 

her visit to the hospital in Delhi where the 

newborn child happened to be: 

“My eyes adjust slowly in a cool, unlit 

corridor. We are shown into a tiny dark room. 

There are maybe six cots arranged against 

two walls, with barely enough space to walk 

between them. A young nurse wearing a white 

sari smiles and I smile back. She bends over one 

of the cots and picks up a bundle. As she pulls 

the blanket back, I see a mass of curly black 

hair and a tiny sleeping face. What happens 

next takes me completely by surprise. As I 

lean forward slightly, my heart catches in my 

chest and I know, absolutely and terrifyingly, 

that I would lay down my life for this child. 

I have never felt or thought anything like this 

before, and it is a sign to me, in the long process 

that is to follow, that this child and I are meant 

to be together.” 

A few hours later, David and Loralee had 

become parents. However, they left for Scotland 

without their precious child because they had 

yet to go through the ‘paperwork’. This took 

an “agonizing” 14 months. Thereafter David 

flew back to India alone to collect Bina, to take 

her to their home in St. Andrews in Scotland. 

David explains: “Apart from the people who 

ran the local curry house, she was the only 

Indian within thirty miles.” 

They decided to keep the child’s Indian 

name and simply added an English name to 

it. Bina became Bina-Ruth. What were their 

early days together like? 

Loralee remembers: “She was not in very 

good health, having arrived with a terrible 

cold and running infections in both ears 

Rachita-Beth presents flowers to Queen Elizabeth II 

(Ultimately the child had to go through 

operations to get both ear drums replaced). 

It quickly became apparent that she had 

never been given solid food, and so didn’t 

know how to chew. Neither had she learned 

how to cuddle. Although she enjoyed being 

held and carried, Bina-Ruth wouldn’t initiate 

affection.” However, soon it was as though 

Bina-Ruth had always been with David and 

Loralee. They say, “We simply couldn’t 

imagine life without her.” 

Bina-Ruth had big brown eyes and a slightly 

bewildered look, and on many occasions 

elderly Scots ladies would stop the parents in 

the street to coo over their daughter. Almost 

every time, what they said was, “What a 

wonderful thing you’re doing.” 

Though it was meant as a compliment, 

David could never understand this reaction. He 

says, “We had not embarked on international 

adoption as an act of charity. We did not feel as 

though we had “rescued” Bina-Ruth. She wasn’t 

our adopted orphan; she was just our daughter.” 

The final stage – legally adopting the child 

– doesn’t happen until the child has been in 

the UK for at least twelve months. Prior to 

that, the focus is on gaining permission to 

bring the child into the country. For this 

the adoptive parents need three things: legal 

guardianship awarded by an Indian court, an 

Indian passport, and an entry visa stamped on 

the passport by the nearest British Embassy. 

And before you can do any of that, you need 

the document without which no adoption 

can proceed: the Home Study Report. 

Basically, the HSR is a series of visits from 

a social worker in the UK, whose task it was 

to decide if David and Loralee should be 

allowed to become parents. Apart from a 

cursory count of the bedrooms in their house, 

not much of it was about the home. The items 

under the microscope were the parents. David 

says wryly, “The irony at the heart of all this is 

that couples produce babies of their own every 

day without anyone asking if they have the 

appropriate skills, opinions or financial means. 

It’s not uncommon, then, for adoptive parents 

to feel discriminated against.” 

But their passion for parenting was so 

intense, David and Loralee went through it all 

with a stiff upper lip, their love for Bina-Ruth 

increasing each day, as hers did for her parents. 

Bina Ruth knows her origins and says simply, 

“I was born in the state of Uttar Pradesh in 

New Delhi. I was going to be living on the 

streets of India or even I was going to die 

because of infections in my ears but that was 

until my mother and father adopted me.” She 

became part of an international family that is 

spread all over the globe, and she has visited 

and met all of her uncles, aunts and cousins; 

loves her granny in Canada the most, has 

been bridesmaid at Auntie Melanie’s wedding 

and is now in College in Lycee in France. Of 

the dozens of countries she has been to, Italy, 

Greece and Maui are among her favourites. 

I love the way she puts the story of her life: 

“I started at nothing and discovered I could 

become anything.” 

Rachita-Beth, adopted from Nagpur some 

years later, was totally different from Bina- 

Ruth. Her mother Loralee says with a gleam 

in her eye, “In every crisis situation we have 

faced, my middle daughter could always be 

relied upon to be helpful and keep her cool. 

Not that she was always sensible and serious. 

At her children’s home in Nagpur, they used to 

laugh and call her a naughty baby. It was only 

when she went to school that we understood 

what they’d meant. 

Rachita-Beth tells it like it is… 

When Rachita-Beth started at Cathedral 

School nursery in England at the age of four, 

she was tiny. I couldn’t find a uniform to 

fit her, even the size three had to be folded 


[ FAMILy ] 

and rolled, and her navy blue stockings 

were always bunched up around her ankles. 

However, despite her size, she didn’t put 

up with any nonsense. If larger children 

bothered her, she hit them. As parents, David 

and I were secretly pleased to find she could 

look after herself in the playground, but of 

course the hitting had to stop.” 

Rachita-Beth has also turned out to be a 

computer whiz and spends the largest part 

of each day talking to her friends on MSN. 

She too has completed school and now goes 

to college in France and admits it has not 

been smooth sailing: “Three months after 

I joined school, the bullying started. Two 

sisters who had problems with all foreigners 

started calling me names and pushing me. At 

first I didn’t say anything, but after a couple 

of weeks I told my parents, and when they 

spoke to the teacher, she just shrugged it off 

and said, ‘Ah yes, we had the same problem 

last year with other foreign girls. They even 

left because it got so bad.” 

Rachita-Beth realized she would have to 

stand up for herself. “I knew they hated me 

so I kept out of their way. At the end of the 

year I was first in class and spoke ‘fluent’ 

French. Since I was as smart as them, I think 

I intimidated them and the bullying was 

tremendous. But the year went by without 

any major problems.” What the young lady 

discovered was to be near-excellent in all her 

endeavours, after which here colleagues had 

to accept her whatever may have been their 

other reservations. 

Pratiksha-Kate the youngest and most 

energetic of the three – no wonder her father 

calls her cannonball! – is unable to keep still for 

a minute and so it is left to her mother Loralee 

to tell us about her. “Our third daughter 

has afforded us surprise after surprise. We 

thought we were adopting a three-year-old 

but she was only two. When we adopted her, 

we thought she had slight hearing problems, 

but subsequently she was classified as deaf. 

Pratiksha-Kate’s powers of observation are 

keen. She often surprises us by pointing out 

tiny details, patterns, light and shadow Her 

love of the natural world, especially animals, is 

exceptional. She is enraptured by everything 

from the tiniest flower to the largest dog. 

“The biggest surprise has been Pratiksha- 

Kate’s aptitude and love of music. I know 

of few other eight-year-olds who spend so 

Rachita-Beth with her father David John Lee and Pratiksha-Kate with mother Loralee Lee as they do a 

Scottish dance at the book launch in Bangalore 

much time playing the violin. I know of no 

other children her age who avidly listen to 

opera. She works hard to keep up with the 

native French speaking children with normal 

hearing. She works hard with her music. And 

she does all of this without complaining. 

“Pratiksha-Kate’s intensity and 

cheerfulness is surprising. When I 

play the violin with my daughter, I am 

delighted by her joy and surprised by her 

concentration and ability. The combination 

of a willingness to work hard and talent are 

the hallmarks of an artist.” The family came 

to Bangalore for a few weeks to release their 

book Three Indian Orphans Touched By Destiny 

which was launched by The Windsor on 

30 July. It was an unusual book launch, and 

many hearts were stirred as each member of 

the family read out a portion from chapters 

they’d written in the book. To everybody’s 

delight, they did a Scottish dance which 

almost brought the house down, even as it 

showed the global merging of the human 

connection. During the Q&A session at the 

launch, when somebody from the audience 

asked them whether they ever planned to 

return to India on a permanent basis, each 

one had a different response: 

Pratiksha-Kate, the youngest, just nine 

years old, endeared herself to the audience 

when she said: “Of course I want to come 

back to India. I am going to become a famous 

violinist, marry a rich Indian man, and then 

come here and have babies.” 

Rachita-Beth, now all of 15, said she had 

not quite made up her mind. Bina-Ruth said 

with a quiet, shy smile, “I do not want to 

appear rude, but no, I would not like to live 

here. I would prefer to live in Canada with my 

mum’s family.” Their father David John Lee 

said there is nothing he would like better than 

to live in India, but looking at the way India 

is progressing economically, he doubted he 

would be able to afford it! 

All the three Indian children say that once 

they are settled in life they want to come 

back to India and adopt children themselves. 

In fact, during their visit to India, their most 

fulfilling day was a day spent in an orphanage 

with 149 children from abandoned and 

deprived backgrounds. The event was covered 

by CNN-ibn. Their entire visit was widely 

covered by the media, a fact that left them a 

little bewildered. 

“We’re just a normal family really,” were 

their parting words as they stepped into 

Bangalore’s new international airport to 

catch the return flight to France. 

Ingrid Albuquerque is the Content Editor and Website 

Manager of the Haggai Institute’s international 

website; and the Managing Director of Berean 

Bay Media House. She has edited many magazines 

and is an author of a few best-selling books. 

72 


[ BRAND IMAGE ] 

The Big, Bad 

Brand of Bollywood 

“There is really nothing wrong with the brand Bollywood, except that the 

Indian film industry has become far more powerful and far-reaching than anything 

else like this in any other country of the world and even larger than Hollywood.” 

[ By NASEEM JAVED ] 

In hindsight, decades ago, who in the right 

frame of mind would have picked up a 

blatant sidekick named “Bollywood” as a 

cheap copy of “Hollywood”, a theme that has 

already been further diluted and abused by 

hundreds of other adventurous film industry 

brands all over Asia, from “Ollywood” to 

“Jollywood”, creating confusion and ripping 

away the original centrality of the true brand? 

There is only one Silicon Valley, one Eiffel 

Tower, one Disneyland, one Wall Street, one 

Times Square and only one Piccadilly Circus; 

the other sound and or look-alikes are 

just desperate copycats. What India needs 

today is an all out war on all fronts to tackle 

these copycat problems, and accept higher 

grounds with global leadership mandates to 

create brand new original world-class, global 

potential iconic identities. 

Today, Walt Disney is only dancing in 

heaven, after seeing how Disneyland has created 

hundreds of similar copycats from few 

mega sites to hundreds of single flywheels 

with two guys in gorilla outfits, jumping 

around in similar named theme parks. What’s 

wrong with people, and why they prefer to go 

“There is no 

country with a film 

industry, with the 

size and dynamics of 

current Bollywood, 

which on a global 

scale, not only attracts 

a larger audience and 

more attention than 

any other force in the 

marketplace, but also 

carries the most global 

influence. 

” 

on their hands and knees, sneaking, picking, 

cutting and pasting from some one else’s well 

established original brand idea while patting 

themselves for their smartness and accepting 

this form of suicidal-branding, a kind of 

a self inflicting identity wound which never 

heals and never allows to becomes super icon. 

Surveys have proven that copying legendary 

icons only kills brilliant original ideas into 

obvious copies looking deadbeats and eventually 

ending up in oblivion. The black and 

white proof of this global phenomenon is already 

sitting on Google. 

Without a doubt, there is no country with 

a film industry, with the size and dynamics 

of current Bollywood, which on a global 

scale, not only attracts a larger audience and 

more attention than any other force in the 

marketplace, but also carries the most global 

influence. This six billion dollar industry 

will double again in size in few years, and is 

just trapped in a dumb brand identity with no 

direct connection to Mumbai, as the name 

Bombay is just passé. 

The real Hollywood on the other hand 

came about in 1887, when the founder Harvey 

Wilcox, Daeida’s husband, drew up a grid 

map for a town which he filed the county 


[ BRAND IMAGE ] 

recorder’s office on February 1, 1887, the first 

official appearance of the name ‘Hollywood’. 

He named it after the “Mass of the Holy 

Wood of the Cross”. 

During the last half-century, all over India 

and including Asia, the number one practice 

of branding has been based on picking up 

names from Western Yellow Pages, “just let 

the fingers do the branding tricks”. Hence, 

hundreds and thousands of Western Names 

are blatantly copied, which in turn, have kept 

beautiful and original local ideas buried as 

sidekicks to Western identities. 

In the course of human development, countries 

do come up with amazing and original 

ideas, like the invention of Silicon Valley, 

which not only incubated a global revolution 

of e-commerce and also, the demise of 

hundreds of copycats from silicon woods to 

jungles, rivers, roads and oceans. Watergate 

germinated “this-Gate” and “that-Gate”. Historically, 

it can be proven that any copycatting 

on any scale fails big time, and accidental 

naming invites accidental cost, creating 

injured name brands which cripple long-term 

marketing, eventually fading away. Open any 

old magazine and the proof is right there. 

The global complexity of billions of 

name images floating on e-commerce has 

turned this issue into a science, and the art 

of fondling a dictionary is now lost forever. 

It requires tactical understanding of corporate 

and business naming rules - trademark 

laws, global domain management systems 

and international marketing issues. It demands 

an in depth understanding of languages, 

translations, connotations, perceptions 

and human interactions with words 

– ‘memorability’, type-ability, ‘protectability’ 

and dozens of other related issues. 

Create an open dialogue, conduct in-depth 

audit, test the five star standard, available 

on the net, demand practitioners with all 

these skills in your boardroom otherwise 

your image and mega identity program will 

simply be doomed. 

The old mass-advertising model is dying, 

very fast and a new style of marketing and 

online access marketing offers extremely 

unique opportunities to become a successful 

brand with the smallest budget, in the shortest 

period of time with maximum impact. 

But once again, these sophisticated processes 

cannot be confused with general-logo-basedbranding 

as global icon building and name 

branding is a very special art. 

The Indian film industry has a bright future 

and will continue forward, but as the 

media blurs and the meltdown continues, 

the term Bollywood will diffuse into a lowtech 

brand perception of colourful-danceroutines-based-cinematography 

that has 

become the lead identifier, but hopefully the 

new leaders of the industry will re-establish 

brand new global iconic identities based on 

world-class standards. 

Naseem Javed has personally created global 

name identities. He founded ABC Namebank 

International in Toronto and New York 

over a quarter century ago. 

He can be contacted at nj@njabc.com 

74 


Voted the best 

“Personal Lines Broker of the Year in 2008” at the Middle East Insurance Awards 

The judges assessed Nexus in how they responded to the demands of consumers 

for products relevant to their needs coupled with top-quality service. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Corporate Insurance 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

”We thank all our clients and product providers for their continued trust and support” 

Mahmoud Nodjoumi, Chief Executive Officer, Nexus Group of Companies 

Dubai +971 4 397 7779 Abu Dhabi +971 2 626 6669 Kingdom of Bahrain +973 1 751 1777 and +973 1 771 1355 

www.nexusadvice.com

[ MONEyWISE ] 

Employee Benefits and their 

Impact on our Financial Plans 

“Recruitment runs hand in hand with retention – after all why spend a great deal 

of money recruiting the best of the best only to lose them to your competitor inside a 

couple of years. Hence the growth in the Employee Benefits Industry 

and the growth in the product ranges on offer.” 

[ By BOB PARKER ] 

No longer should the 

expatriate worker have to 

rely on his own good sense 

and financial acumen to achieve his 

financial goals if they have a forward 

thinking employer! 

In the West, for many years now, 

the extra ‘employee benefits’ are as 

much a part of the ‘take home’ as the 

salary itself. I can distinctly remember 

my first company car – a bright yellow 

four door job with a 1.3 litre engine – 

but it didn’t matter that I looked like I 

was driving a canary - at only 24 years 

of age I had a brand new car! The fact 

that I looked like all travelling salesmen, 

didn’t deter my enthusiasm one bit! 

Throughout the 70s and 80s as I gained 

various promotions and company moves, I 

was spurred on with the promises of bigger 

and better cars – the salary was secondary!! 

Eventually I aspired to the company 

boardroom and the ultimate prize of a top of 

the range Jaguar XJ – mid life but still highly 

motivated by the company car benefit. 

Employee benefits are today a very 

sophisticated industry and like all things in 

working life we have moved on from simply 

giving a company motor car to dreaming up 

highly sophisticated packages designed to 

assist in recruiting, retaining and motivating 

the best people in the marketplace. 

Recruitment runs hand in hand with 

retention – after all why spend a great deal 

of money recruiting the best of the best 

only to lose them to your competitor inside 

a couple of years. Hence the growth in the 

Employee Benefits Industry and the growth 

in the product ranges on offer: 

Golden Hello’s, Stock Options, Share 

Purchase schemes, Group Medical, Group 

Retirement Plans, Group Life, Group 

Critical Illness, Motor Cars, Barter Deals, 

Luncheon Vouchers, Voluntary Deals, the 

list goes on and on. 

Cars probably still top the list of visible 

goodies – at a company meeting you really 

would rather be driving up next to your 

colleagues in a Mercedes Coupe rather 

than a Honda Civic. 

Fleet management allows employers 

to offer company cars to employees in 

different forms thus being able to incentivise 

and reward through choice. If employees 

choose not to go with a traditional 

company car there is always the option 

to give staff this perk as a cash 

allowance which they can then use 

to lease, purchase or hire a vehicle. 

Employers need to choose the most 

appropriate solution for drivers, 

whether that is an employee car 

ownership scheme or traditional 

company car, or a combination of 

schemes to meet various needs. It 

is a decision that is complicated by 

maintenance management, as well 

as health issues such as corporate 

manslaughter and fleet risk. Issues 

around health and safety are 

usually associated with the cash 

allowance scheme because here 

the employee has the freedom to 

choose his or her own vehicle, and their 

choice may not necessarily be a correct fit 

for the job in hand – do you want your top 

salesman driving a high profile flash sports 

car for instance? Cars are a very emotive 

issue and many staff have left companies 

simply to get a better car! 

Although health insurance isn’t as 

motivational as a company car, the day 

is soon coming when all expatriates will 

need some form of health insurance. The 

institutions competing for this business will 

often hack their rates to get the deal but 

companies who choose their Group Health 

scheme on rates alone at their peril. 

Many employees leave companies because 

their family is not covered adequately on 

the company scheme. You can have the best 

management in the world – managing and 

motivating your staff, but if and when the 

76 


[ MONEyWISE ] 

staff member gets home, all that happens, 

is continuous grief over little Johnnies poor 

medical assistance in a foreign company, all 

because the company scheme doesn’t cover 

pre existing conditions or doesn’t provide 

cover in the best hospitals and your staff 

retention is immediately under threat. 

However medical and cars aside, what 

about the actual money rewards? Clearly 

salary must be positioned right and must 

meet the competition in the marketplace, 

however a salary on its own does not 

motivate key staff to stay with a company 

or to increase performance. 

In the GCC expatriate market there 

are mandatory gratuity schemes in place 

as an end of service bonus based on salary 

and years served. In many countries 

these gratuities as they are based on 

basic salary lead to the management of 

companies splitting salaries into a range 

of remuneration to deliberately keep the 

gratuity payments down, so a $10,000 

salary may be shown in the countries labour 

departments as only $4,000 salary and the 

rest is made up in housing and education 

allowances plus guaranteed bonus. This 

misguided approach to gratuity payments 

is not conducive to staff retention. 

More and more companies are now 

looking to manage their gratuity payments 

with formal retirement schemes provided 

either by international insurance companies 

like Zurich and Friends Provident or 

bespoke systems put together by professional 

employee benefit companies. 

One of the largest companies in the Gulf, 

Emirates Airline, has for many years run its 

own retirement scheme via an Employee 

Benefit Trust with the management of the 

employees assets contracted out to world 

class fund managers like Fidelity and 

Merrill Lynch. 

The Hotel industry for one is finding 

staff retention a great challenge – Jumeirah 

International, for instance, has recently 

introduced a Group Retirement plan, and 

one assumes a key driver would have been 

to assist in retention. However when it 

comes to retention there is no better way 

than locking people into employee share 

schemes, which are becoming more popular 

as staff retention becomes a major issue. 

There are a number of different ways 

to create share savings such as share save 

plan or share incentive plan managed in an 

employee benefit trust held in one of the 

world’s offshore financial centers such as 

Jersey. Similar arrangements can be made 

through executive share option plans for 

very senior employees. 

Some companies include the added perk 

of personal debt management, which can 

help to reduce employees’ stress levels 

and so indirectly contribute to improved 

performance. Many believe that financial 

education is going to become more common 

in the workplace as organisations want their 

staff to get to grips with making their own 

investment decisions. 

Research conducted in the US by 

Dr E Thomas Garman, president of the 

Personal Finance Employee Education 

Foundation, demonstrates the positive 

impact of financial education on employee 

productivity levels. Dr Thomas asked a 

C 

number of financial advisory companies what 

were their attitudes of employees to offering 

M 

financial education in the workplace? 

Y 

Their answers were as follows (% in brackets) 

CM 

1. It increases appreciation of the value of 

benefits 83% 

MY 

2. It increases retirement plan take-up and/ 

CY 

or plan contributions 50% 

CMY 

3. It should be essential in all workplaces 39% 

4. It will help employees resolve a retirement 

K 

savings crisis 32% 

5. It increases share scheme take up 21% 

6. It is not the employer’s responsibility 17% 

Dr Thomas then asked the employees 

what proportion of respondents think 

employers should give staff access to 

financial education and financial advice? 

1. Yes, to both financial education and 

financial advice 54% 

2. Yes, to only financial education 35% 

3. No, to both financial education and 

financial advice 7% 

4. Yes, to only financial advice 4% 

While the overall organisation’s quality of 

management is the key driver of motivation, 

employers can use employee benefits as a 

major weapon in staff retention. 

Bob Parker is a seasoned UK qualified 

Independent Financial Adviser. He formed 

Holborn Assets in 1999, which is now a 

pre-eminent financial advisory service with over 

35 qualified advisers and staff. 

Email: robert@holbornassets.com 

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[ BUzz WORD ] 

NEXUS: Property Insurance Emphasised at Cityscape 2008 

Insurance plays a key role in 

protecting what is typically 

an individual’s largest single 

asset” explained Michael Walton, 

Director for General Insurance 

at Nexus. Homeowners 

need to realise the importance 

of purchasing appropriate insurance 

before opening the door to 

a new property.” 

The UAE’s non life sector saw 

a dramatic growth over the past 

18 months with premiums for 

property insurance rising from 

AED 8.7 billion in 2006 to AED 

11.9 billion in 2007, accounting 

Michael Walton, Director for General 

Insurance, Nexus. 

for as increase rate of 38 percent 

according to a report by The 

Insurance Authority (TIA). 

“With the construction market 

growing apace, contractors 

increasingly understand the 

need to insure these projects 

against defect and delay. There 

is a growing trend towards 

buying “Owner Controlled 

Insurance Programs” which are 

an effective way to improve the 

safety of construction operations 

and reduce the cost of insurance 

on large projects” said Walton. 

“OCIPs will cover the owner, 

contractor and subcontractors 

and also may include design 

professionals. The coverage 

can include general liability 

(CGL), builder’s risk, worker’s 

compensation, design errors 

and omissions as well as excess, 

umbrella and other special 

coverages. Such comprehensive 

coverage is essential for 

developers undertaking multbillion 

investments” 

“It is a sure sign of a maturing 

market when dedicated trade 

exhibitions focus on educating 

people on better wealth and 

asset protection practices,” 

concluded Walton. 

www.nexusadvice.com 

Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces 

appoints Helmuth H. Meckelburg 

as Regional Director Middle East 

and North Africa 

With the Taj Group 

now for almost eight 

years, Helmuth H. 

Meckelburg worked as the area 

director of the Goa Region in 

India and was also the general 

manager for the Taj Exotica, 

Resort and Spa in Goa. During 

his term in India, the Taj Exotica 

Goa transformed into India’s 

best known luxury resort winning 

numerous national and international 

awards. 

With regards to future 

expansion, Helmut says 

Helmuth Meckelburg , Regional Director 

Middle East and North Africa 

summarizes, “The Taj Group is currently in a very exiting phase of 

its expansion in the Middle East. Over the next 36 months we will 

add new properties to our Deluxe Portofolio starting with the Taj 

Exotica Resort and Spa on Jumeirah Palm Island, followed by other 

properties in Abu Dhabi and Ras Al Khaiman. Further expansion will 

happen in Qatar, Bahrain, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt 

and Morocco. Our expansion is moving forward full steam, but it 

is not our intention to have too many hotels within any destination. 

We are establishing our presence in key cities around the world and 

choose very carefully were we want to be in the near future.” 

Eros launches Samsung 

Omnia in the region 

The all-in-one maxi-phone 

is fully loaded with 

top-of-the line multimedia 

enhanced smartphone 

Eros Group, the sole distributor of 

world-renowned brands – Samsung, 

Hitachi & Taurus – and 

one of the leading players in consumer 

electronics, telecom and allied multiproducts 

in the Middle East region 

announced the launch of the Samsung 

Omnia (model name: SGH-i900). 

Omnia, meaning ‘everything’ in Latin 

and ‘wish’ in Arabic, goes beyond the 

current top-of-the-line features available 

in today’s mobile phones. The Samsung The Samsung Omnia is 

Omnia presents Samsung’s leadership in priced at AED 3,499 

design. It features an ultra-slim 12.5-mm 

profile and a platinum-look finish that fits snugly in the palm of the 

user’s hand. With the Vivid, lively multimedia experience Samsung 

Omnia promises to deliver the ultimate in digital entertainment 

thanks to a wide 3.2-inch WQVGA LCD. 

Samsung Omnia also comes with a five-megapixel CMOS 

camera with the latest value-added features, which include autofocus 

(AF), face and smile detection and auto-panorama shot. It 

offers GPS, including navigation and geo-tagging capabilities, so 

users can get their bearings wherever work or life takes them. 

78 


[ BUzz WORD ] 

LIALI introduces a new 

jewellery collection line 

LIALI JEWELLERY: So exclusive, 

that no two pieces of jewellery in the 

new collection are identical! 

Imagine creating a diamond-set from a 

collection of special cut diamonds where 

no two diamonds are identical. Each is a 

unique gem! 

Needless to say, that each piece in this 

new collection is unique - you will never 

find someone else wearing an identical 

piece. Then again, that is the hallmark 

of Liali: to satisfy every customer 

requirement. Be it for exclusivity - through 

custom created jewellery, to producing 

the finest jewels in the market, Liali 

goes out of their way to exceed customer 

expectation in every imaginable way. 

An endeavour that has manifested 

through the success of the chain that started 

with one outlet in 1999, and has grown 

into an awe-inspiring 20 in its tenth year 

since inception. Today, Liali is present in 

practically every prestigious landmark in 

the city. 

And with the launch of this unique new 

collection, which has been timed with the 

festive season, every Laili outlet in the city 

is going to witness a glittering response. 

Areeq 

MAEER’S MIT Group of Institutions 

Dr Sunil Karad, Executive Director, MIT Group 

MAEER is today an 

umbrella organization of 

55 premier institutions 

catering to more than 50,000 

students. 

Our courses balance 

individual needs for successful 

careers with our nation’s need 

for highly educated technocrats, 

doctors, management experts 

Vishwashanti Gurukul 

offers holistic education 

In 2005, we ventured deeper into school education with the development of Vishwashanti 

Gurukul, a school in the ‘Guru-Shishya Parampara’ at the sprawling 

green complex at Loni-Kalbhor in Pune. 

This residential school takes a holistic view of education and trains students under 

the IB/IGCSE/CBSE curriculum. 

The school is designed for all-round development of students in a stimulating 

environment and equipped with highly sophisticated teaching tools including IT 

programmes specially designed by Hon’ble Padmashree Dr. Vijay Bhatkar, eminent 

computer scientist and Director of India International Multiversity. The school draws 

students from all parts of India as well as international students. 

etc. We also balance the need 

for a commercial orientation 

in a competitive scenario with 

understanding of spirituality and 

religious philosophies that have 

given stability to our society 

through centuries. 

MAEER’S AREAS OF 

EXCELLENCE 

• Engineering 

• Medicine 

• Management 

• School Education 

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[ FUTURE qUEST ] 

The Times They Are Changing... 

The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, and the public debt should be reduced. The arrogance of officialdom 

should be tempered and controlled. And the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest we become bankrupt. - Cicero, 63 B.C. 

There are signs throughout our economy of an impending earthquake. The tremors we have felt so far are just a little venting of steam, not 

an indication of how violent the blow-off can be. - Larry Burkett (1991) The Coming Economic Earthquake 

America exports its sin, by the most sophisticated means, hastening the moral destruction of every nation on earth. - Bill Bright and 

John N. Damoose in Red Sky In The Morning 

And the world is passing away, and the lust of it. - 1 John 2: 17 

[ By FRANK RAJ ] 

Reviewing major 20th century events of 

the last three decades, the following 

come to mind: The US Watergate 

scandal in 1972; the Aids virus in 1981; the fall 

of the Berlin Wall in 1989; the 1991 collapse of 

Communism and dismantling of Apartheid in 

South Africa the same year; The 1991 Gulf war; 

the exponential growth of the Internet in 1993; 

Nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998; and 

the 2003 US led invasion of Iraq. Apart from 

the US still mired in Iraq, most of these events 

have had little impact on people in countries not 

directly affected by them. 

The 21st century however has just presented 

us with a life altering global financial crisis that 

could be a harbinger of other things to come. 

My radar is always alert for potential upheavals 

to examine in this column. I am continuing to 

keep an eye on what maybe still to come (not 

necessarily in any particular order): Inevitable 

consequences of the rise of Hindutva in India; the 

dreaded California earthquake; a serious China- 

Russia-US confrontation; another Indo-Pak war; 

Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities; a nuclear 

terrorist incident, and yes I often wondered about 

the outcome of America’s incredible national debt 

in excess of 10 trillion dollars. I also figure that 

a day of reckoning can be expected for the total 

depravity of man, the extermination of innocents 

through abortion, mass murder in the name of 

religion, exploitation of women and children, 

destruction of the environment etc. Something is 

afoot, for all the signs around us seem to point to 

a culmination of something dormant. 

A cartoon once published in a New York City 

newspaper pictured the Titanic leaving port. Only 

the ship was renamed The U.S. Economy. A caption 

above it read: “Not even God can sink this ship!” 

Although the American dream is now the American 

nightmare, the fact is many Indians probably share 

the views of a majority of Americans who had 

concluded only success counts, morals don’t - as 

Bollywood flicks increasingly depict and the rise 

of fascism in India clearly indicates. The general 

view is our politicians and business leaders can do 

as they please as long as our economy is growing 

- all that matters is prosperity! The reality could 

be that we are staring into the face of a storm of 

apocalyptic proportions. 

Seventeen years ago author Larry Burkett 

published The Coming Economic Earthquake 

exposing how the US government was hooked 

on Keynesian economic policies with their 

explicit license for continuing federal deficits 

and their implicit preference for higher levels 

of consumption, reduced saving, and a larger 

role for government in the economy. When 

mainstream economists since World War II, 

declared they were the means to continued, 

depression-proof prosperity, Burkett insisted 

they were a prescription for disaster but to 

no avail. Even the 1986 Nobel prize winning 

economist James Buchanan, whose critique 

of applied Keynesian theory set off a storm of 

protest in liberal academic circles could not 

change America’s Keynesian policy addiction. 

Will India escape the global financial carnage? 

Giving reasons for the relatively mild impact on 

India of the ongoing financial turmoil, Oliver 

Blanchard, Economic Counselor and Director of 

International Monetary Fund (IMF) Research 

Department in Washington noted that, “India is 

still largely a closed economy, has strong internal 

growth dynamics, from rapid productive growth, 

from its process of integration into the global 

economy that is still continuing. We are projecting 

that the growth in India will come down from eight 

per cent in 2008 to seven per cent in 2009. But seven 

per cent is still a strong rate of growth,” the IMF 

official pointed out. 

That is what you call expert opinion and a 

superpower like America too had its share of 

optimistic experts who never saw the writing on 

the wall. Perhaps if financial analysis was all that 

mattered we could rest easy and gloat that now it’s 

our turn because the centre of gravity has shifted 

from America and Europe to Asia. Also if man is 

a God like some folks genuinely believe we could 

surely turn things around with a mantra or a 

philosophy or with the help of the planets to usher 

in the much longed for age of Aquarius. Somehow 

we have been deluded into believing man holds the 

keys to all knowledge and science. 

However Professor Joyce A. Little perceptively 

observes: “Unwilling to be God’s image in the world 

and unable, whatever claims some may make to the 

contrary, to become God in any serious sense of the 

word, modern man seeks high and low for something, 

almost anything, to give him an identity; the cosmic 

consciousness of the New Age, the magic and 

witchcraft of goddess mythology, the archetypes 

of Jungian psychology, Joseph Campbell’s hero of 

a thousand faces, Carl Sagan’s voyage through the 

Cosmos, the cults of Elvis, Marilyn and Madonna, 

Robin Leach’s visits with the rich and famous, 1900’s 

psychic counselors and personal astrologers, even 

in alarming numbers the demonic powers promised 

by satanic cults. Virtually no stone is left unturned 

in this frenetic search for some hint or clue as to 

where to go from here.” 

We have finally come to a period and place in 

history when the spiritual foundations of our lives 

will be tested like never before and it’s time to take 

stock. Czechoslovakia’s former President, Vaclav 

Havel once spoke of a revolution in the sphere of 

human consciousness, noting, “We are still incapable 

of understanding that the only genuine backbone 

of all our actions, if they are moral, is responsibility 

– responsibility to something higher than my 

family, my country, my company, my success.” 

Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, Futurequest 

is a search for the truth in our times. Frank Raj 

is the founding editor of The International Indian. 

80 


Possibilities 

Value 

Innovation 

Family 

Empowerment 

Ideas 

Global vision. 

Universal values. 

Transparency 

Teamwork 

Honesty 

Tolerance 

Integrity 

Superiority 

Responsibility 

Strength 

At ETA Ascon Star Group, we’re inspired by our values. The three pillars on which the Group stands. A family of over 73,000 people. 

A dynamic multidimensional multinational with a global vision. Made possible by our enduring, universal values. 

Contracting & Engineering Trading Shipping Manufacturing & Assembly 

Facilities Management & Environment Automobile Real Estate Retail Services 

Travel & Leisure Health Care Aviation Learning & Education Insurance Hospitality Oil & Natural Gas 

ETA ASCON STAR GROUP 

Corporate Office: P. O. Box 5239, Ascon House, Salahuddin Road, Deira, Dubai, UAE 

Tel: +971 4 271 3333 • Fax: + 971 4 272 9863 • E-mail: corpcomm@etaascon.com • Website: www.etaascon.com

THE BUSINESS OF EDUCATION - International Indian

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