From Bhaigiri To Gandhigiri...

About 10-12 years ago, a young boy living in Bombay who idolized Dawood Ibrahim. Doing the early years of his adolescence, he wanted to become a 'Bhai'. If Dawood could run his D-Company from Dubai, then Dhawal wanted one as well and he had chosen Detroit and Dallas. Detroit, for Dhawal loved Ford and Dallas for being the BIG-D in the US. And that was not all. He had selected his very own Chota Rajan and Shakeel( his friends Rahul and Sunny were the chosen ones!!!!). His favorite toy was the air gun that he had got for his 11th birthday. From then on every year on the 11th of Dec, he added a new weapon to his arsenal. He had selected a handful of his other cronies to be his future henchmen. He had also adapted very well to the Bambiya Hindi language that the underworld used, where 'Hum' became 'Apan' and 'Tum' became ' Tupun'. Friends and relatives feared for his future and were constantly worried about the path that he was about to choose.

Psychologists tried to track the origins of this strange and antisocial personality that this young kid had developed. How many of us have seen children who dedicate themselves to achieve notoriety and try to get into the most-wanted list? Perhaps it was the 'Most-Wanted' thing that had captured his imagination. The only reason that they could suggest was the fact that the happenings of 1993 had left a deep impact on the young child's memory. Perhaps it was the gunshots that he had heard while living in the midst of the radical Hindu-Muslim populace, where young Muslim men saw the Hindus as their prey and where the Muslims were at the mercy of Allah when the police attacked them. Where gunshots were more frequently heard than temple bells, where the wails of the young children were much more louder than the 5 time Azaan. Perhaps 1993 was never like 1993 again.

But then 11th Sept 2001 changed a lot of things. Dhawal had been at the World Trade Center in Bombay only a few days before Terror Tuesday. He had told his parents that one day he would undertake a race and visit all the 90 odd WTCs in the world in the shortest possible time. And when all that remained of the 2 towers was dust and rubble, that was the moment the boy changed for ever. He came back to his senses. That was the day life in that ordinary Bombay household changed forever.

to be contd....

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Let the Words Flow

To begin with, this post could have been under 'Gandhigiri', 'Regionalism', 'True Love' or 'Technovating India' until something weird happened 'Last Night'. Google got a few complains about hacked G-Mail servers from Chinese human rights activists. Though this had not happened for the first time, yet this time the internet giant decided to do something. Google has not been able to tame this ‘Hungarian Horntail’ and has been heavily criticized for buckling under the republic governments' censorship. On the flip side, the dragon has shown a staggering growth rate, from having 10 million people with Internet a decade ago; this number has gone upto 340 million. And Google only has a share of around 30% in China (as compared to Microsoft with 1 % :P) that gets it $600m, hence it has a lot of potential to grow.

This is where Google seems to have lost it. It is ignoring 'the Elephant for a Dragon' that does have a golden egg a la Harry Potter. Only time will tell whether this egg will also scream like a banshee. Until then most global businesses feel it would be better off in the longer term looking at India, rather than targeting short-sighted revenue in the "people's republic".

How can someone who has always been in favor of the free market and against monopoly and censorship even agree to stay in a market like China and that to at the cost of neglecting its extremely liberal yet stable neighbour?How can someone who has always advocated freedom of speech and expression over the internet allow itself to be subjected to such insulting scrutiny by people who claim to be the People's representatives? And since Google has been trying to focus on Android and NexusOne, there is no better place to launch these than in the fastest growing cellphone market in the world.

So while we see images of the 'Tank Man' for the first time on Google China, i would like to end this (most probably the first for ‘Blogomania-2010’) post with a certain phrase about the Elephant- "India: the fastest growing, free market democracy". I rest India’s case. But maybe it is time we once again fall in love with the ever witty Bing. "Remember Bing, Chandler Bing." Till then someone go tell Google, the Real Indian Elephant and not the Mythical Chinese dragon is the FUTURE.

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