Flying to Europe (Part 1: CDG)
Aug 6, 2009

For the average Indian (yours truly) who has grown up watching Indian films; BigB and Rekha creating magic walking across the Dutch Tulips in Silsila, Rahul traveling to Switzerland in Darr, Guddu and Raj bonding in London in K3G, Raj romancing Simran in DDLJ all across Europe; For him, America may be the land of opportunities but Europe is where any Indian would love to live, for it is the land of dreams to him!

The chaos and excitement (for the most part Chaos really, I had less than 45days to prepare for this!) that I had built up for this trip made me believe I would have that "Ooooooooh" moment the minute I land in Europe.

So I took the 10hour flight from Benguluru International Airport and landed in Paris. Charles De Gaulle airport is a synonym for Chaos! My first experience off Europe is people running around like madmen. Curses in French, some babbling in Afrikaan, weird looking sheiks from the Middle East, some Israelis, a Polish family that looked like they were escaping a Nazi camp, hundreds of backpackers sitting under every pillar of the terminal! Oh my God! Amidst all this I walk past all queues (I was a privileged business class traveler :-) ) straight to the business lounge. A quick nap later I walked across the terminal hoping to try the premiere degree in French that I got 6 years ago! "Bon Jour Mademeoiselle, comment allez-vous?" was replied with a curt bon jour and I am guessing a scorned look on her face! Oh yeah, the French are xenophobic. I found a computer with internet and struggled with the french keyboard for 1hour before finally giving up.

I walked up to the terminal from where my connecting flight was to take off to Amsterdam. I was totally surprised by the number of Indonesians, South Americans and Africans who were traveling to Amsterdam. Apparently their Dutch connections from the Imperial era still continues.

I walk in and sit in my flight to Amsterdam and realise that I had spent 5hours in Europe and felt nothing different from being in Rajiv gandhi airport of India. Maybe it was that overhyping the Europe experience, maybe all airports are the same, probably France is not a good place to start from, or even worse, maybe it is not that awesome after all! Brooding over these thoughts I sit in my flight preparing for takeoff.

And then....



"OOooooooh Eiffel tower!!!!!"

Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 12:02 AM 0 comments  

The future belongs to India
Jun 11, 2009

In preparing for a much publicised debate in London on the motion ‘The future belongs to India, not China’, I was reminded of a conversation with my mother. She had asked, what is the difference between China growing at a rate of 10% and India at 8%? I replied that the difference was, indeed, very significant. If we were to grow at 10% we could save twenty years. This is almost a generation. We could lift a whole generation into the middle class twenty years sooner. She thought for a while and then said gently, ‘we have waited 3000 years for this moment. Why don’t we wait another twenty and do it the Indian way?’

She had understood that the cost of democracy is the price the poor pay in the delay of their entry into the middle class. She did not elaborate the ‘Indian way’ but it must include taking a holiday on half a dozen New Years Days! It is easy to get mesmerized by China’s amazing progress and feel frustrated by India’s chaotic democracy, but I think she had expressed the sentiments of most Indians who will not trade off democracy for two per cent higher growth.

In referring to the ‘Indian way’, my mother meant that a nation must be true to itself. Democracy comes easily to us because India has historically ‘accumulated’ its diverse groups who retain their distinctiveness while identifying themselves as Indian. China has ‘assimilated’ its people into a common, homogeneous Confucian society. China is a melting pot in which differences disappear while India is a salad bowl in which the constituents retain their identity. Hence, China has always been governed by a hierarchical, centralized state-a tradition that has carried into the present era of reform communism. China resembles a business corporation today. Each mayor and party secretary has objectives relating to investment, output and growth, which are aligned to national goals. Those who exceed their goals rise quickly. The main problem in running a country as a business is that many people get left out.

India, on the other hand, can only manage itself by accommodating vocal and varied interest groups in its salad bowl. This leads to a million negotiations daily and we call this system ‘democracy’. It slows us down–we take five years to build a highway versus one in China. Those who are disgruntled go to court. But our politicians are forced to worry about abuses of human rights, whereas my search on Google on ‘human rights abuses in China’ yielded 47.8 million entries in 13 seconds! Democracies have a safety valve-it allows the disgruntled to let off steam before slowly co-opting them.

Both India and China have accepted the capitalist road to prosperity. But capitalism is more comfortable in a democracy, which fosters entrepreneurs naturally. A state enterprise can never be as innovative or nimble and this is why the Chinese envy some of our private companies. Democracy respects property rights. As both nations urbanize, peasants in India are able to sell or borrow against their land, but the Chinese peasants are at the mercy of local party bosses. Because India has the rule of law, entrepreneurs can enforce contracts. If someone takes away your property in China, you have no recourse. Hence, it is the party bosses who are accumulating wealth in China. The rule of law slows us down but it also protects us (and our environment, as the NGOs have discovered).

We take freedom for granted in India but it was not always so. When General Reginald Dyer opened fire in 1919 in Jallianwala Bagh killing 379 people, Indians realised they could only have dignity when they were free from British rule. The massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989, where 300 students were killed, was China’s Jallianwala Bagh. China today may have become richer than India but the poorest Chinese yearns for the same freedom.

Because the Indian state is inefficient, millions of entrepreneurs have stepped into the vacuum. When government schools fail, people start private schools in the slums, and the result is millions of ’slumdog millionaires’. You cannot do this in China. Our free society forces us to solve our own problems, making us self-reliant. Hence, the Indian way is likely to be more enduring because the people have scripted India’s success while China’s state has crafted its success. This worries China’s leaders who ask, if India can become the world’s second fastest economy despite the state, what will happen when the Indian state begins to perform? India’s path may be slower but it is surer, and the Indian way of life is also more likely to survive. This is why when I am reborn I would prefer it to be in India.

—-
The writer is speaking in a debate in London on 12 May 2009 in support of the motion ‘ The future belongs to India, not China’. The original post can be read here
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Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 9:21 PM 1 comments  

My 3POD!
May 19, 2009


Oh, yeah! I finally got a tripod, a good one year after I bought my camera!
Better late than never I say. :)

Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 7:11 PM 0 comments  

The Journey
Apr 17, 2009

Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 5:50 PM 0 comments  

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Tibetan Flavour in Karnataka
Mar 31, 2009

I finally get over my 140 character limitation

The greatest wonder about Bylakuppe is not that a place like this exists but where it exists. Thousands of miles from Tibet, the last thing you would expect in a nondescript interior Karnataka village is to find the largest Tibetan settlement outside of Tibet!

Hemant is a great chap and shares by passion for travel. The destination is for the tourist. For travelers like me and hemant, its the journey that matters. Thus on new year's day, me and Hemant set out on a journey in pursuit of peace and tranquility in times of uncertainty. We boarded a Kushalnagar bound bus at Kempegowda bus stand and at 250 bucks for both of us we were well in sync with the economy! After a nice bumpy ride in the back seat of Karnataka Sarige for five interesting hours of travel/china/adult art/Tibet/religion/honchos at shell/doomed politicians/photography we got off at Koppa.

Soaring inflation seems to have given this village a miss. 8km auto ride cost us 30INR. 5 minutes into the ride the landscape changed abruptly. Roadside hawkers, cows, garbage, and ramshackle huts disappeared. These were replaced by prayer flags, stupas and monasteries of the Sakhya, Kagyur, Nyingmapa and the yellow-hat Gelguppa sects of Vajrayana Buddhism. The statutory Kannada sign boards were replaced by prayer signs in Tibetan. It was as if both of us were teleported into a foreign territory.

We reached our first stop, Sera Jey Health Care Committee (SJHCC) guest house, a small and beautiful location. The monk in the reception was happy to see us. It was already late in the evening. Thus, after a quick chowmien we decided to wander around in the bylanes. Just as we stepped onto the road, a sea of burgundy robed monks swamped the route. Like the Ganges gushing through a delta, the monks came in from all sides onto the main road. It was unbelievable to watch 4000 monks fill in the voids between the buildings.


We followed them to the Sera Jey University for Adavnced Buddhist Studies. and obsereved them for quite some time, puzzled and bewildered at the constant jumping and clapping they were doing. An elderly monk from the examination board explained to us that they were actually debating. The monk who was sitting was asking questions and the monk standing would answer, always ending it with a clap!




Day 2 started with yet another hot chowmien. We realised after a quick chat with the monks that there were bigger treasures hidden behind the rustic buildings of the Sera Jey village, territory usually left unexplored by the banal tourists! We meandered through the unusually clean village gallis and landed in front of Sera Mey University for Monastic Studies. The Sera monastery was originally founded in 1419 in Tibet. Historical records indicate that the Monastery's total population of monks in 1959 before the communist Chinese troops destruction & persecution of Monastery & monks,was around 5629 monks! The event of 1959, that witnessed the invasion of Tibet by the communist China, was the darkest period in the History of Tibet and its religious faith - Buddhism. It brought the near end of centuries old Monastic Culture and Practice, by the indiscriminate destruction of monasteries and persecution of monks. Sera Mey Monastery was one of the most severely affected from this spiritual & cultural genocide. The Tibetan government in exile then re-instituted this holy institution in Bylakuppe.

After a breezy clicking session and prayer we decided to visit the golden temple, the biggest monastery in the region and also the most visited by tourists. It is quite some distance away from Sera village and we were lucky to be offered a lift by an army major and his wife driving by a car en route Mysore. They were pleasantly surprised to find two young engineers spending an extended weekend in a Buddhist Monastery of all places. The old man was very curious to know our last names! The old lady generously gave us some fruits and they dropped us off a km away from the Golden Temple.

If you think a Buddhist temple would be filled with smoke, reeking of butter, throbbing with the chants of the monks and perhaps a gong or two sound in the distance, think again! The entrance to the main temple comprised of two gigantic red doors with handles and carvings in gold, intricate murals based on Tantric Buddhism adorn the walls. A profusion of color hits you once you eneter the temple. Silly tourists asking their companions to pose in myriad dance forms, despite a board stating "this is a temple and a religious place"! Three larger than life giant statues, once again gold plated, took centre stage; these were placed on a platform. Buddha around 60 feet tall held prominent place, flanked by Guru Padmasambhava and Amitayush.
It was here that we came to know that Penor Rinpoche, The former head of the oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism, breathed his last at his residence the previous night. The monks held a condolence ceremony followed by prayer for the holy departed soul. After a whole day of clicking and peace in the temple, we made our way back to Sera Jey to sit and observe the debating session.

Day 3 began with the best pooris I ever had (Best because it was the cheapest!!!). I topped it up with some original momos from the Tibetan Kitchen. Most of the shops were closed as a mark of respect to the Rinpoche. We were initially disappointed, but later saw this as an opportunity to explore the entire settlement. We walked around aimlessly, clicking randomly, windmills, basketball courts, future Tibetan rebels. Monks carrying mobile phones, wearing Reebok shoes, or even sipping Pepsi did not surprise us now. After all, as Thomas Friedman said, "The world is flat". Unfortunately we couldn't find any monks who were putting up their Ferraris on sale!

After a really tiring walk back to SJHCC, we packed our bags and headed towards Kushalnagar where we boarded a bus to Bangalore, thus ending a really fruitful weekend.

Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 7:55 PM 10 comments  

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Soltitude
Nov 25, 2008


Angkor Wat
Originally uploaded by Sandeep R Sekharamantri

Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 7:05 PM 0 comments  

Putrajaya
Nov 6, 2008

Wikipedia says that Putrajaya is the federal capital of Malaysia, the hub of all administration activity, the center of politics in thiHoping to bump into some famous and powerful malaysians, me rashi and rohit took the long drive out of KL one weekend. The prime motivation was to witness the Malaysian International Fireworks Competitoin (MIFC08)!

The buildings were huge and mighty at Putrajaya, and they are all mostly government offices. They look new, design was nice, roads were spacious, lamppost and traffic lights had new designs too. Cool! I shall not however mention how much each lamppost cost….as to what i heard about it.

But once you get over the awe of looking at eye-popping designs of bridges (there are 9 bridges built over an artifical lake thats 600acres) and start looking around you feel a sense of eeriness. The federal capital has no population on a weekend!!!.

Yes, for a town that was designed to hold 5million people, only 50000 stay there.

Posted bySandeep Sekharamantri at 6:17 PM 0 comments  

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