Namaste: A Greeting Gone Wrong

Namaste everyone,

When you travel in the western world and tell people that you come from India or when you meet someone who has got some introduction into yoga, they often say 'Namaste' at the end of the conversation just like they would say 'goodbye'. I have tried to ignore it for a very long time but now I have decided to put an end to this misconception about the term and its use.

Namaste, which is also called Namaskar or Namaskaram, is a greating performed when you are meeting someone, or written at the beginning of a letter while addressing the person.  The spoken word is always accompanied by the folding of the palms. You always say 'Namaste' when you meet a person but you do not need to say it at the end - just a simple 'goodbye' with the folded-palm gesture is sufficient.

Through the use of this term you show respect to the better nature of the person concerned or to the divine spirit inside him. Hindu philosophy believes that every human being has a divine spirit inside them, and 'namaste' is the term with which we show respect or bow to that spirit. Mostly younger people say it first to an older person while a host says it first when meeting a guest.

The folding of the palms is done by joining the palms together with fingers pointing upwards, placed in front of your chest. This always accompanies a 'Namaste'. A simple folding of palms without the spoken word also means 'Namaste' but just saying the word 'Namaste' without the folded palms means nothing at all. So most people in the Indian culture say 'namaste' when they meet each other and just fold their palms and say a 'goodbye' when they part. This folding of palms also shows respect for the other person and the higher you place your palms from your chest, the more respect you are trying to show. Thus, many a times while praying to god you put your palms together above your head as high as you can go, to show respect and devotion.

People I meet here who do not know the Indian culture so well shakes my hand and says a 'hello' and at the end of the conversation says a 'namaste' or they write 'namaste' at the end of their email. I do appreciate their effort at trying to know the Indian culture and using it in their daily life - as I believe that 'namaste' is a very beautiful thing to say to a person whom you meet - but this consistent wrong usage does sometimes bother me.

So I request everyone out there who want to use this term, use this term in the right way, the way it is meant to be used - as a greeting when you meet and not only when you say a 'goodbye'.

P.S.: It is surprising that when I searched Google for images related to 'Namaste' most of the images are of women greeting and rarely did I come across the image of a man greeting. Obviously both men and women greet and say 'Namaste' in the same fashion, but somehow there is a lack of images of men greeting on Google. The feminists out there might have something to say about that.

[Image courtsey: Google search]

The Pink Explosion: A Friday Night in Berlin

Friday nights are nights when the whole of Berlin is outside going to pubs and clubs. I join in the crowd sometimes and do enjoy my time out there. Yesterday, like any other Friday night, I went out with a friend of mine to try out some different bars than what we usually go to.

Our first target was the area around Warschauer Strasse. We roamed around in the streets a bit trying to find a bar that we liked. We found two but they were so crowded that we decided to go somewhere else. So our next choice was to go down to the Kottbusser Tor area as the bar scene is quite good here.

There are so many bars at Kottbusser Tor that anyone would get confused which one to go into. As we roamed around aimlessly - still without any beer and it was already an hour since we had left the house - every bar seemed to call out to us. But then we were looking for something that neither of us could explain. We stood in front of every bar we passed, checked out the place from outside, looked at each other, shook our heads and walked on.

As we were heading down Oranienstrasse, on the verge of deciding to just go into some shop and grab a beer, we came across this strange doorway. The wall outside was quite gawdily designed and you could not see inside. There was also the image of a rose hanging on top of the door. Now this was very different from any of the bars we had come across and the whole setting increased our curiosity. We decided to go in for a drink - but had no idea what awaited us inside.

The moment I pushed open the door and entered, there was an explosion of pink! The whole place was pink in colour and disco balls sent spots of lights flying all over. The bar was right in front of me and the place was crowded with so many people. The walls and ceilings of this bar was covered in pink fur, there were disco balls everywhere, and it did not take me too long to figure out that it was a gay bar. Never having been at a gay bar before I was not sure whether there were any rules or not. Both of us decided that we would stay for a drink and check the place out for a while.

Rose - this is the name of the bar that I later came to know - seemed like any other bar when it came to the people. There were people of all ages, but mostly young people, quite a few tourists, and quite a few straight people too. The beer collection here is not that great but they have a good collection of whisky and other hard drinks. The place stretched in behind the bar, where there were tables to sit and a large wall portrait of Madonna and someone else dressed as Marilyn Monroe. The music was especially good. I am not a fan of techno but I enjoyed the tracks they were playing - mind you, I was still on my first bottle of beer so I was quite sober and still I enjoyed it! The bartender, Gabriella, is a really cool woman. She was dancing to the tracks behind the counter and passing funny comments here and there. The atmosphere all around was very friendly and jovial.

After a while, I started to really like this place so we decided to stay at Rose for the rest of the time. We had four beers; and two shots on the house. We also met a Taiwanese guy who has been living in Berlin for the past 6 years and he gave us a quick info on all the gay bars and clubs in Berlin. Overall, it was quite fun being there. If you ever come to Berlin, just walk down to Rose and check it out. You may not like it, but it is worth a visit, just to get that pink explosion when you walk in.

Tabu: A Talent Less Known

I have been watching movies ever since I was a child, but over these years I have come across very few talented actresses. The main reason for this perhaps is that women hardly play the lead character in a movie or have ample coverage of their character that would require a good quality of acting. This is more so in Bollywood I believe, where the actress is there just to look pretty and be saved by the hero. But among all the actresses I have come across, I have found Tabu one of the best actresses in Bollywood. She is not only pretty, but her talented acting makes these movies come alive. But not many people talk about Tabu these days and she seems to have been pushed to the side.

Tabu, whose real name is Tabassum Hashmi, has won the National Film Award twice (Maachis and Chandni Bar) and holds the record for most wins of Filmfare's Critics Award for the Best Female Performer with four. The best film I love of her is Maachis (Matchstick). She does a stunning performance in that movie. Another movie I find very good is Cheeni Kum (Less Sugar). Most people I meet are not very familiar with her performance so I thought it would be a good idea to introduce such a talented actress to the world. There are more movies scheduled to come out in the near future starring Tabu and I look forward to watching Tabu perform again and keep me spellbound for the whole time.

[Photos: Internet Image search :) ]

Beyond The Hills / Dupa dealuri (2012)

Religious superstition is a part and parcel of everyday life in any and every society around the world. Despite economic growth, despite the wide use of technology, and despite the global enthusiasm to study ‘science’ and medicine, we still believe in religious superstition. This is especially strong in Indian societies. Even though Indian parents, who are engineers or doctors or IT professionals, want their children to pursue a career in science and medicine, they still put the odd flower petal from the foot of the gods and goddesses into their pockets before any exam. Religious superstition is still a part of our life even though we fail to notice them.

Beyond The Hills draws our attention to such religious superstitions. Narrating the story of two girls’ encounter with religion and religious superstition, which leads to the death of one, it makes us more sensitive to our society. Deaths caused due to religious superstition are not unique to Romanian society but is widely prevalent in almost every society – just that they are not that widely publicized. In India, people in the rural areas, and sometimes even in the urban areas, are often drawn to religion to provide solution to their problems and these solutions often lead to death or serious health hazards. Religious godmen are quite prevalent in Indian societies, who look upon any illness or misfortune as an act of a spirit! They perform various rituals, some barbaric, that often leads to death, maiming or serious health hazard. One of the very common methods of getting rid of illness, as used by these godmen, is to sprinkle the person with boiling oil and thrashing him/her with a stick!

When I saw this movie, I could easily associate myself with the narrative and the characters. It seemed that I was seeing my own society being depicted on the screen – just in a different language! This brilliant movie deals with a real social issue – a controversial issue as most societies suppress such deaths to protect their image, to show that they are developed. Christian Mungiu has cleverly portrayed this issue without directly attacking religion or religious belief, but has focused our attention solely on the issue of religious superstition. Without any sub-plots to distract our attention and with a simple and strong narrative, the movie touches our hearts, irrespective of geographical location. Cosmina Stratus and Christina Flutur, two fresh faces, deliver a powerful acting that brings the story to life and they deserve the Best Actress award they received at the Cannes Film Festival.

Though many call this movie disturbing, this movie has made me think. This movie makes me feel that my society is not the only one that suffers from the ill effects of religious superstition in this age of technology but there are others. This gives us courage to accept these social evils and address them at a public level instead of just shoving them beneath the carpet just to look modern. Beyond The Hills has a massive international appeal and is a movie that I would ask everyone to watch.

The Barings Bank: The British Economy at Play

[Not many people are interested in going into the depths of economic issues as they are always shrouded in terrifying terminologies and a maze of numbers. But I have attempted to take a very important issue out of this confusion and put it in simple terms so that it is abundantly clear what goes on behind the scenes.]

Nick Leeson in his heydays.

In 1995 one of the biggest banking houses of Britain, the Barings House collapsed due to the reckless activities of a single ‘Rogue Trader’, Nick Leeson. This spectacular collapse has been blamed on several factors – the lack of a proper hierarchy of command and control, a lack of proper risk management systems, greed on the part of Nick Leeson and the officials at Barings, and on the ignorance of the upper management about the securities market. Even though all these factors influenced what was to become the most catastrophic collapse of a financial institution in Britain in the twentieth century, to understand the collapse it is necessary to understand the economic condition of Britain during the first half of the 1990s, as it was the prevailing economic conditions that influenced decisions being taken at the Barings Bank and at the National level that would ultimately lead to the collapse.

The Barings Bank, which was the oldest merchant bank in Britain and boasted as its clients, the Queen, had an office in Singapore called the Baring Securities (Singapore) Limited (BSS) that was trading on the SIMEX (today’s Singapore Exchange). Nick Leeson, who was working in the back office in the Barings Bank was made the general manager of BSS and was also given responsibility of the back office in 1992. He passed the necessary exams and also became the head trader in the Singapore branch. He began to carry out unauthorized speculations in the futures “linked to the Nikkei 225 and Japanese government bonds (JGB) as well as options on the Nikkei”. The Barings Bank did not allow its traders to invest its own capital in the market but rather to invest its customers’ capital at their behest. Nick Leeson began to speculate in the market using the capital of the bank using an anonymous client as an excuse. All the losses he incurred was hidden in the error account 88888. By the end of 1993 the account was losing 23 million pounds and by the end of 1994 this had increased to 208 million pounds. With his control over the back office he was able to subvert the losses and show only profits which made him a star trader of the Barings Bank. As his losses in the 88888 account mounted, he asked more and more money from the London office, which was provided to him without much questions. The disaster came to the notice of the Barings management only on the 23^rd of February 1995, when Nick Leeson went on the run and did not come to office – the error account now showed a loss of 875 million pounds. By the end of February the Barings Bank had been declared bankrupt and sold off to the Dutch company, ING, for the value of one pound. Nick Leeson was arrested for fraud and imprisoned. 

It is beyond doubt that it was the speculations of Nick Leeson that caused the collapse, it is what allowed him to do so that has interested us. Official investigations and academic research into this collapse of the Barings Bank have brought to light many reasons behind this. It has been pointed out that there was an absence of proper checks and balances in the workings of the bank that allowed Leeson to trade and manage the accounts in the back office at the same time. Also, there was a lot of ambiguity in the command structure that made it unclear who Leeson had to report to. Since there was more than one person who was responsible for parts of his duties, he was able to play one against the other to his advantage. The greed of the management has also been regarded as a factor behind allowing Leeson to continue trading even while asking for huge sums of money to be transferred from London. He was showing huge profits to the company, based on which the employees were getting their bonuses – no one seemed to have any reason to question this unbelievable profits, putting them down to Leeson’s better knowledge of the securities trade and his ability as a trader.

The above mentioned reasons were definitely responsible for the collapse of the oldest bank in Britain but I believe that we have looked at this issue from a very narrow perspective, focusing only on the circumstances of the bank. To understand the reason behind why the bank reacted to Nick Leeson and his trading in such a way, it is necessary to take a much broader look. We need to look at the British economy at that time.

The beginning of the 1990s saw a severe recession in Britain and a steady rise in inflation from 1993 to 1995. Added to this was the humiliating exit of the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 that made matters worse. The positive outlook that had prevailed over the last decade seemed to have come to an end. There was also large scale unemployment. The Bank of England was still under the government and was charged with controlling inflation. In this economic turmoil the profits that the Barings Bank was making through Nick Leeson’s trading in Singapore came as a blessing. The high profitability of the investment of the bank in the growing markets of the East provided a beacon of hope. The Bank of England also refrained from intervening into the financial matters of the bank and gave the managers an open field. Being the only sector making such huge rofits during 1993-1994, no one questioned the authenticity of the presented profits or the risks involved. The management also became complacent and let matters stand as they were.

Investigations and research into the collapse of the Barings Bank have not at all regarded the economic environment of Britain during this time. There is a need to understand how the economic climate of a nation influences business decisions across organizations – in this case, how it influenced the Bank of England’s and the Barings Bank’s management decisions that allowed them to be so complacent. There was definitely a lack of financial risk management mechanisms, management control and human ego and greed involved in the financial fraud that led to the collapse of the bank, but it would be an error to omit looking at the influence that the British economy had on the decisions taken by the management of the organizations. Such a broader perspective, coupled with the narrower perspectives will help us understand the issue in a more holistic way, and may even provide us ways to better understand economic decision making.

[Image source: http://www.deadgoodbooks.co.uk/index.php/on-this-day-in-history-march-2nd-1995-rogue-trader-nick-leeson-arrested-for-fraud/ and http://www.arbitrarytweets.com/nick-leeson/]

A Long Break

It has been a long time since I have published anything here on my blog. It is really a shame but I got caught up in things that are not that important and yet keep you tied down. In these past two years, many changes have affected my life and the life of others. I have shifted my base from India to Berlin to study and then have visited various areas of Europe, and now struggling to finish what I have started.

Many people might look at this as a struggle and sometimes even I am driven towards looking at life as a constant struggle. But then I realise that this is all an adventure, with its innumerable ups and downs and defeats and victories. I want to see this adventure through with the same sprite and joy in my heart as when I started it. Many adventures await me and many experiences to gain. I shall tell you all and try and make you a part of this amazing, simple adventure.