Bricks in the Wall (Street)...

Everyone's talking or writing about it. The jeremiahs are having a field day. Every fear suddenly appears justified. Every news looks like bad news. Words like "moral hazard", "too big to fail", "bail-out" are now becoming as common as that one word which started it all -- "subprime". 

And the US Treasury is certainly caught between the scylla and charybdis of tax-payers' money and the state of economy. If they don't help the biggies, then the after-effects will be disturbingly widespread. And if it does, then it's certainly taxpayers money going down the drain.

And what is hurting the US citizens currently is that their money is simply saving the asses of those rapacious financial chiefs who should actually be publicly lynched. They saw it coming. They all did. And yet, inspite of (or perhaps because of) their deep understanding of the markets, they kept quiet, all the while shouting out slogans such as "we will ride the storm, we have done it before". True, they had definitely survived tsunamis earlier, but this one was different. This one was the result of all dangerous explosives put together underneath a fuel tank. There were ego-boosting cries of "American dream" by Mr. Greenspan, resulting in 1% FRR and loans handed out of trucks and trailers. There were the regulators who just looked the other way when the shit was inching it's way up to the fan, there were rating agencies who were doling out AAAs faster than AAA batteries, there were real estate players who were making everyone believe that when it came to house prices, Mr. Newton was wrong, and then there was greed, the desire to make more and more money at clearly a huge cost to those who had no idea what trap they were getting into...

Even then, as they say, hope is a good thing, perhaps the best of things. 

And so everybody is hoping that the bottom is reached (but we know it hasn't). Everyone is hoping that the cancer doesn't spread any further. Everyone is hoping that the falling bricks on the wall street find their way back...

Dances with wolves...

They say you can throw a man out of a dance bar, but you can't throw the dance bar out of the man...

Perhaps the recent, extremely shameful incident at Lonavala is just a proof of that. A bunch of really old men (median age was 45+) had gathered to watch dancing girls who are of the same age as their respective, respectable daughters. It would still be considered ok if it were limited to normal girls, wearing normal clothes, dancing to normal songs and then everybody going back to their own respective, respectable homes. But this get-together of custom officers was conveniently converted into an event which was as raunchy as a bachelor party, which is perhaps an indication that these officers were perhaps facing the 20 year itch in their marriage.

Good husbands these were, you would say. And doting fathers too perhaps. And God-fearing, Rakhi-tying brothers as well, you might add. Fucking schizophrenics, is what I would label them
though.

What is more disturbing is not that these men committed this strange act. But the fact that thousands of such sick people, with multiple personality disorders, are running loose. The ones who are instituted in mental asylums, or undergoing neuro therapy, are just a minor fraction of those that actually need a mind-changing treatment. They are out there, your relatives and loved ones, the human avatars of your five-in-one electronic gadgets. The father, the brother, the rapist, the lier and the crook, all rolled into one neat, laundry-fresh package...

Perhaps it is time to realize that the apple of your eye, might be nothing more than a safe home for worms...

Distance...

We don't always measure time in units of seconds and hours. Sometimes we inadvertently collide the dimensions of space and time and calculate the elapsed period in terms of miles. I have been counting my separation from alcohol in perhaps the same terms these days.

We were friends (indeed, in need as well as in deed). Good friends. A relationship that was mostly "on the rocks". Always through "thick", never thinned by adulteration of any kind. But it's not that we were drifting apart. Perhaps we needed our own space, our own precious distance.

In terms of time though, it's close to a couple of months now. Certainly our maximum separation in the last thirteen odd years of a rather close acquaintance. Today it sits still inside it's bottle. Ageing itself. Waiting perhaps, for those secrets to start pouring out, at almost the same rate at which the drops flow.

There are withdrawal symptoms as well. Though I don't know what those symptoms are, but I am sure I can attribute a few stomach cramps to my abstention policy. But just like all such side-effects, these too shall subside as the distance between us grows further...

Frankly, I don't know if it's really over, but one thing's for sure --- the hangover still remains...

Puzzled pieces...

My mind went wandering back to this whole Big Picture thing... That we are entities within the whole system having our own purpose which is in line with the purpose of this "system". That we are little souls which are parts of that One great soul which is God. That we are that one litre of water in the ocean of Oneness... Lots of similar theories, each having basically the same outlook, content and message.

The aspect to which I got stuck today, was the viewpoint of these little pieces. "Our" viewpoint (as individual humans) is what I am referring to here. If I were to think of us as pieces of this huge jigsaw puzzle, it is true that when we all kind of gather together, we do solve this puzzle. The problem is -- do each of these jigsaw pieces know how this picture (which they have solved) looks like? The "outsider" view, so to say, is missing. No wonder that each puzzle piece is so fuckin' confused. Fat pieces, thin pieces, long pieces, short pieces, some jagged at the edges, some smoothened at their corners, some colorful, some shades of grey, all of them equally unclear about the collage that emerges when the Big Picture tries to assemble itself. Unclear about the result of their activities. A lot of higher-than-normal spiritual beings have often indicated that the purpose of our existence is to complete this picture...

Perhaps a glimpse of that picture would have been helpful...

The Great Indian dream...

...We are a strong nation. Strong in beliefs. So strong that we are always on the edge (and mostly on the other side) of obstinacy. And we are optimistic. Sometimes, hopelessly so. And a lot of this hope stems from our amazing forgetfulness. "The old gives away, making way for the new..." is a perpetual belief we hold. Sometimes that good for us. But sometimes, it can hurt.

Consider the fact that we have latched on to the India Shining dream for quite some time now. Till January 2008 we were actually thriving on dreams. Just like everyone else in the world. Every single analyst out there had touted that this dream run would continue. Pigs were flying, and we were all clapping, making money and making merry. Then reality punctured our inflated pigs, and we stood gaping at the skies. "It's a temporary phase, the market fundamentals are intact", and similar words were now the main content of every analyst speech and report. That we still had P/Es of 35-40 for almost every industry, was still not cause enough to be worried. The "decoupling" theories were falling apart. That we are very much a part of this economic world was now slowly becoming clear. Till the subprime shit hit the fan, and there was stink all over...

But we obviously have too many other things to keep us occupied. Our strange political system, for instance. The Indian Parliament has been converted into a zoo-cum-circus, where all animals are happily feeding upon the growing tax collections. We have jokers (this one is obvious), and "horses" being traded freely, and ring masters, and lions and sheep, and of course, in abundant quantities - wolves. But the market was happy. 800+ points happy. Here is one decoupling which is really obvious -- The market is only concerned with the end, and never with the means to that end.

And we too, perhaps out of our hope of the market turning bullish again, or perhaps out of forgetting the fading images of MPs waving big bundles of thousand rupee notes, will focus again on the rising share prices. I am not saying we should not. Inflation (along with the oil prices) needs to come down. Home loans certainly need to be back within human limits. But just a wish (and nothing more) that in some way we should build within our system a Morality Index (Mordex, if you please...) that does not allow our nation to even briefly forget the nonsense which our leaders are perpetrating. A big soul mirror, which does not allow the means to run a different course from the end that they lead to. A system which will force us to take note of (and remember, till the next voting date) the dangers of a fake democracy. I believe that a benchmark of this nature, would some day, hopefully, guide to us a more realistic, well-rounded, and equitable Indian Dream...