Here is to spring time!

On my way to the university library, this guy lay dead in the remains of the harsh winds and rains of last night.

When I came home later, I found this sprouting out of my lovely cactus. I had no idea it was the flowering kind!

Big Bad Wolves.

A while ago, a friend of mine and I had quite a heated argument about the companies we patronise, support and give our business to. She insisted that a pair of pants I bought for a much lesser price than a similar one she bought for almost double the rate still made more sense. It was a very politically correct thing for her to pay the higher price as she knew the other company I bought my pants from got their products made in third world countries at a cheaper rate and thus could afford the lower retail tags. So naturally I asked her if the company she bought her pants from, didn’t? She didn’t know the answer but assumed that since the price for the same pair of pants was higher they must have paid euro prices for the manufacturing!!!

This thinking is absolutely not uncommon among many people I talk to here. I have a feeling that the shrewd marketing strategies of some very savvy companies are now playing the ball with the same goal-post but with a few changes in the rules.

These companies (let’s called them the Nouveau-post-modern-The Thinking Customer-pleasing-companies) are absolutely aware of the media hype about the third world country sweatshop phenomenon. They know that if they are projected as people who ignore human rights of the third world residing populations, where most of their manufacturing takes place, then their sales in countries like Britain will take a big beating.
The average customer here sees documentaries of people working long hours in very small spaces, getting wages in a month that is less than what they make in a day, with no basic benefits such as health insurance or pensions etc. There is very little they do about the emotions that arise from such stark realities, and thus the one place they can perhaps purge a bit of their second-hand acquired guilt is by declaring a few corporations as 'The Big Bad Wolf'.

So what does the big bad wolf do now? It very intelligently kills two birds with a single stone (to be extremely clichéd, but exact). They keep the prices high, giving a false impression that it is so; since their manufacturing is not as cheap as their exploitative competitors. In the bargain they also make some extra dough which the other companies are passing on to their customers. Of course they spend on brand imaging and a few extra on "social responsibility" projects! But the sales figures point in the right direction.

Why do people refuse to see that no company that can afford the high street mall rent is still manufacturing anything locally? Why are people basing their ethical and political faiths by reading the RRP tags rather than the company documents that they can avail under the freedom of information act? Perhaps we are spending too much time on documentary watching. We are the pseudo aware. We the educated that can mobilise societies on the whole, choose the shortcut to information and the only people who seem to be benefiting are the ones that need to be put under check.

Why we don't have any 'Blue' Food.

If I ask you to come up with a Blue food item, the only thing that you will probably come up with is 'Blueberries'. But apart from that where is blue food?

we have lovely red tomatoes, green broccoli, yellow pumpkins and orange oranges but nothing for blue! Blue cheese is not even really blue.... so dont give me that one. Oh, and any one eating those GM peppers, that by now probably come in vibgyor is automatically disqualified to answer my question.

So, is there something here for the biologists, enviormentalists and theologists (I will get to this one in a minute), people who earn their bread answering such questions? Did nature on some grand secret purpose clearly leave out blue colour from our food? Probably not. Just as there is an evil hand of mankind in all things gone wrong on our planet, maybe this one too has secrets buried in history.

People who eat a lot of pigments from any food source tend to show a tinge of that pigment in their skin... like if you get a lot of beta carotene from your diet (generally due to some soil condition in which your carrots grow) you would begin to look a bit orangish. No really, I am not making this up. Its called 'carotenodermia'.

Indian mythology has pictures depicting gods in shades of blue, sort of a pictoral representation for thier royal blood perhaps. But I am thinking, maybe that was like this 'carotenodermia' disease of today; a pigment disease of those days. So people who ate blue food were worshiped. Maybe due to some geographical or climatic advantage. On realising the potentials of being gods; and to keep their 'blue pigmented skin' as a secret they went out and ate all the blue food to extinction. Blue berries didnt grow in the tropical Indian subcontinent so it probably survived. Since everything else in those days grew only in the non icicled places, there is now nothing to show for blue coloured food to our generations.

So lets just not blame this generation X or Y or Z? (I am sure they are havoc creating teenagers by now, aren't they?) for screwing with this planet. Generation 'A' was the one who started it all. It probably is in our genes.

P.S. - 28th May2006 - I found this link, which happens to be on Douglas Adam's pet project web site H2G2. First, I think it is interesting to have some real science to the gibberish I have been writing. Secondly, they have not managed to list 'REAL' blue food, even though they have come up with an interesting list. Oh and I had almost forgotton about Bridget Jones! ( Cheers, Mu Beta).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3403928

An Outsider's Perspective.

I am an outsider here. I have perspectives that dont belong to this place. I see things were there is nothing and miss the subtleness in things that you experience only with years of observations. I have lived most of my life in India, interspaced with study and travel to a few countries. India is mad, you dont understand how things go around, but they sure do! Probably thats where my bizzare and random ideas link together.
I moved to the UK a few months ago to pursue my Ph.D. Everyday is a sort of a mental compare and contrast with my ideas of society, relationships, markets and structure. Sometimes, like this weekend two interesting alien things happen to me and its a very weird sense of 'Eureka'. I havent dicovered anything new like 'displacement' but somehow another piece in the jigsaw just fits.
These are my very early days of driving in the UK and last saturday as I left to get my weekly groceries I saw the air pressure in my front tyres needing attention. I stopped over at a gas station and hung around the air meter trying to figure out what I am supposed to do. People back home just stood with long air hoses and went about checking your tyres. They said 'its done madam', you tipped them and zoomed away. Here, I was fiddling with something that didnt even look high tech, just plain dumb. As I was about this tin box, a very old lady somehow figured that I could do with some help; explained, that I need to put in a 20p coin in it to bring it to life. Hmmm interesting, I did just that, checked the air, thanked the lady and zoomed away. My thoughts still hovering around the air meter. So, you actually pay to get air in this country. Super!
The art of supermarket shopping is now more visual than thoughtful. As my hands picked the required things and dropped it in my cart, I went on a quick holiday to some place sunny ( yeah its one of the things people in the north west have in common. We are all on a holiday some place sunny until someone speaks to us). I was still in my bikini when I noticed the till point lady very dutifully filling my purchases in plastic carry bags. That was precisely when I snapped back to present tense and politley declined, as I always carry my backpack that fits food enough for me. That was it. My Eureka moment. So, you dont pay for plastic carry bags in this country ( well, atleast not overtly). Super!
Seems like I am adamant to not get to my point. Here it is then. We cant stop talking about the enviornment, global warming, the planet etc etc. All day on the radio, television, blogs thats all there seems to be out there. We even do our bits individually for the sake of our kids perhaps. We seperate our thrash, we bike to work, no longer buy 4x4's. But, we dont give a moments notice about our plastic carry bags. We are very happy about the 3 arrow circle on our cola cans and then merrily ask the shop keeper to double the bag to bear the weight of those same cola cans. Why cant we make it mandatory to buy plastic bags? Well, I see why corporates don't want to seperate the cost and want to make you pay implicitly, so that you carry their advertisement for free as you sashay along the high street holding them. Interestingly, These are the same business houses who love to scream from rooftops when 0.02% of your bill goes to a charity.
So what grand structure is this to pay to get air and not to pollute the enviornment?

When are we really going to stop making the media spoon feed us on what they assume is the right conduct, a common sensical point, the obviously deducable? All we need to do is rethink the strategies we as a collective endorse rather than doing little bits on our own. I dont disagree that every small gesture counts, but something as obvious as 'sell carry bags' so that people stop and think before they consume more than they should rather than go all the way round by just recycling them.
The one thing that would have prevented a lot of people from dying in the floods that hit maharashtra state in India in july 2005; where more than a 1500 people died, was if our sewege was not blocked with plastic carry bags. But, perhaps I am an outsider in this country.... well, all I know is that I am not an outsider on this planet.