Pic: courtesy Bing/Mercedes-Benz

A conversation between our 6-year old (A) and his mom. I was just a fly on the wall.

A: When I grow up I’ll buy a Mercedes.

MOM: Why Mercedes?

A: Because its your favorite car.

MOM: (gives him a sentimental hug and replies practically) Then you have to study VERY hard in school and college, get a REALLY good job, save money for SEVERAL years and then you may be able to afford a Mercedes.

A: Then I’ll buy a cheap car.

MOM: (looked at him disapprovingly for shirking hard work).

A:  But I want to buy a car as soon as possible.

MOM: Ok, so when you get a job, buy a nice used car and keep saving until you have enough for a Mercedes.

A: Thank you Mama, I really DO want to buy a Mercedes for you.

Bertrand Russell’s Skeptical Essays was a volume I picked up at one of the annual Bangalore book fairs in Palace Grounds. As you can imagine, it’s not easy reading but compared to other philosophy works, several essays are lucid enough. I found the eleventh essay, The Need for Political Skepticism, particularly educational and relevant to put in perspective the struggling and bumbling democracy that is India. Remember that this essay was delivered as a a presidential address to the Students Union of London School of Economics and Political Science in 1923!

On political parties

One of the peculiarities of the English-speaking world is its immense interest and belief in political parties. A very large percentage of English-speaking people really believe that the ills from which they suffer would be cured if a certain political party were in power. That is a reason for the swing of the pendulum. A man votes for one party and remains miserable; he concludes that it is the other party that was to bring the millennium. By the time he is disenchanted with all parties, he is an old man on the verge of death; his sons retain the belief of his youth, and the see-saw goes on.

I want to suggest that, if we are to do any good in politics, we must view political questions in a different way. A party which is to obtain power must, in a democracy, make an appeal to which a majority of the nation responds. For reasons which will appear in the course of the argument, an appeal which is widely successful, with the existing democracy, can hardly fail to be harmful. Therefore no important political party is likely to have a useful programme, and if useful measures are to be passed, it must be by means of some other machinery than party government. How to combine any such machinery with democracy is one of the most urgent problems of our time.

On specialists in party politics

There are at present two very different kinds of specialists in political questions. On the one hand there are the practical politicians of all parties; on the other hand there are the experts, mainly civil servants, but also economists, financiers, scientific medical men, etc. Each of these two classes has a special kind of skill. The skill of the politician consists in guessing what people can be brought to think advantageous to themselves; the skill of the expert consists in calculating what really is advantageous, provided people can be brought to think so. (The proviso is essential, because measures which arouse serious resentment are seldom advantageous, whatever merits they have otherwise.) The power of the politician, in a democracy, depends upon his adopting the opinions which seem right to the average man. It is useless to urge that politicians ought to be high-handed enough to advocate what enlightened opinion considers good, because if they do they are swept aside for others. Moreover, the intuitive skill that they require in forecasting opinion does not imply any skill whatever in forming their own opinions, so that many of the ablest (from a party-political point of view) will be in a position to advocate, quite honestly, measures which the majority think good, but which experts know to be bad. There is therefore no point in moral exhortations to politicians to be disinterested, except in the crude sense of not taking bribes.

On politicians

Wherever party politics exist, the appeal of a politician is primarily to a section, while his opponents appeal to an opposite section. His success depends upon turning his section into a majority. A measure which appeals to all sections equally will presumably be common ground between the parties, and will therefore be useless to the party politician. Consequently he concentrates attention upon those measures which are disliked by the section that forms the nucleus of his opponents’ supporters. Moreover, a measure, however admirable, is useless to a politician unless he can give reasons for it which will appear convincing to the average man when set forth in a platform speech. We have thus two conditions which must be fulfilled by the measures on which party politicians lay stress: (1) They must seem to favour the needs of a section of the nation; (2) the arguments for them must be of the utmost simplicity. Of course this does not apply to a time of war, because then the party conflict is suspended in favour of conflict with the external enemy. In war, the arts of the politician are expended in neutrals, who correspond to the doubtful voter in ordinary politics. The late war showed that, as we should have expected, democracy affords an admirable training for the business of appealing to neutrals. That was one of the main reasons why democracy won the war. It is true it lost the peace; but that is another question.

There are more nuggets of beauty in this essay so I’ll likely post a part 2 in the future.

The T-shirt they gave to the finishers of Silicon Valley Marathon 2002

In 2002, I ran my first marathon – the Silicon Valley Marathon in San Jose. Finished in a respectable time of 4:32. After a 6-year hiatus, I resumed running after our return to India in August 2008. I had struck an optimistic note in Asthma, Bangalore and me… but deep in my heart I feared that my asthma would return, a case of when rather than if.

With the sword of Damocles hanging perilously close to my lungs in our first 100 days in Bangalore, was trying really hard to squeeze in a few runs every week. During one of those perambulating-around-the-apartment-complex runs, I was ‘spotted’ by ace Bangalore marathoner Ashok Nath. I say ‘spotted’ because he knew right away that:

• I had it in me to be a distance runner
• My form could use some improvement – my hands were open like a sprinter, instead of the lightly closed fist of a distance runner

After that chance encounter, Ashok persuaded me to register for the Bangalore Midnight Half-Marathon, a mere month away. With the most threadbare of training, I completed the Half-Marathon. A side effect of the half-marathon was my hooking up with an entire cast of rabid marathoners in Koramangala. The rest was history. Eight months later, I ran my second full marathon (and my first in India) in Srirangapatnam. It was an emotionally painful, slow and grinding marathon. However, the experience compelled me to return to Kaveri Trail in 2010 to make amends. The period between the two Kaveri Trail Marathons was quite eventful – a creditable showing at the Mumbai Marathon in Jan 2010 followed a month later by an un-ignorable case of “moderate” slipped disc.

Techies of the world: respect the L5-S1 disc!!!

Contrary to popular perceptions, “slipped disc” does not signal the end of an active and adventurous lifestyle. Slipped discs are neither caused by, nor are they exacerbated by, running. But they are to be respected and one does need to make adjustments to one’s life. The good orthopedist Dr. Srinivasan (of Malleswaram fame) assured me that if I religiously did a set of three exercises twice daily (before breakfast and dinner) I could continue with my worship of the running gods. Having stuck to this regimen 90% of the time in the past 21 months, I’m pleased to report that I’ve had only one episode of back pain (lasting around 4 days). Then there’s was also the little matter of resisting macho urges when it comes to lugging suitcases. For the other, more important, matter of resisting paternal urges to pick up the darling kiddos, a creative workaround thankfully presented itself.

I ended 2010 with four full marathons under my belt. In the next calendar year, I had doubled the count to eight, in the process logging a mileage of 2000 km for 2011.

My wife, in describing my last marathon of 2011, had this to say “Vishy just crossed the line from being plain-old-crazy to ultra-crazy”. Can’t really argue with that characterization but is there more to the story than mere craziness? Did I have a master plan? Had I become an endorphin-snorting marathon addict? How did I fare in those four marathons and what had I learnt? Stay tuned for the next post in this series – answers to those questions and some more.

Pic: courtesy summerscurry.blogspot.com

Last Saturday, our 3rd grader had his annual school sports day. Since he had qualified for the heats in two categories (75 meter and 30 meter sprints), he was tickled pink and excited for weeks leading up to this event. Sadly, it was a low-key event with parents not being invited. When I went to pick him up, the first thing I noticed was that he was barefoot. As the sports meet was not over yet I was looking for body language clues on how he had fared. Besides flashing his usual gorgeous smile, there was to be no indication (I made a mental note that we need to play Charades more often).

As the line of 3rd graders walked towards the waiting parents, one of the kids turned to my younger son with “Your brother came first!” A few minutes later, a beaming S walks in to the frame and jubilantly announced that he had won the 75 meter sprint and came second in the 30 meter sprint. In one fell swoop, S had won more sports medals at school than the last few generations of Kurugantis combined.

For last year’s sports meet, S had trained for his runs with “spike shoes”. In a strange anti-climax, he ran his races in his regular canvas shoes because he “didn’t get time to change.” This year I advised him to just run in his canvas shoes since he had not trained with the spike shoes.

S couldn’t wait to tell us about his adventures in barefoot running. The story came out in breathless bursts on the drive home as he (and his brother) chomped down on 5-Star victory bars.

S: “I ran the first qualifying race with the canvas shoes. Came fifth but still qualified for next stage.”

Me: “Hmm…”

S: “I noticed a few of my friends running barefoot so I thought let me give it a try for the next race. I ran barefoot in the ‘semi-final’ race and came first. So I decided to run barefoot for the rest of the races.”

Me: “Interesting. So how was it running barefoot, S?”

S: “I LOVED it! I could grip the ground soooo much better, especially with all my toes! I’m going to run barefoot next year too. Can I run barefoot for the next 5k race too?

Me: (Clearing throat) “We’ll talk about your next 5k race later.”

S (chuckling a bit): “You know the best part about winning the 75m dash? …(continues) Beating AM, who was even wearing spikes!”

(AM is a good friend of S and they share a friendly running rivalry. Last year, AM had beaten S quite comfortably. On a coincidental note, AM’s father and I were classmates in Timpany School, Vizag circa mid-1980′s).

Back in November 2011, after reading The Once and Future Way to Run (by the legendary Christopher McDougall), I started giving serious consideration to barefoot running. Perhaps in the 2012 season, I thought to myself. Turns out my 8 year old has beaten me to it.

Pic: courtesy amazon.co.uk (New hardcover edition to be released in Mar 2012)

Ephraim Trout is a highly competent lawyer and one of the founding members of Bachelors Anonymous – a Los Angeles-based circle of luminaries whose charter is to ensure that men remain bachelors. Earlier in the story, Trout argues ardently against marriage. A mere day later, after an unexpected encounter with a woman, Trout falls in love. In the passage below, Trout’s transformation (from allergic-to-marriage to family-man) is complete. Trout has just answered a call from Vera Dalrymple and has confirmed (on Igor Llewelleyn’s behalf) that he will be dining with Vera. And then he launches into a paean for the institution of marriage.

‘And you couldn’t do better,’ said Mr. Trout heartily. ‘I have not had the pleasure of meeting her, but I assume that she is charming, and the thing that matters is to get married. Who was it described bachelors as wild asses of the desert? I forget, but he was right, and what future is there for a wild ass? Practically none. It just goes on being a wild ass until something happens to end its aimless existence, and nobody gives a damn when it’s gone. You’re crazy if you intend to go on being a lonely bachelor, not that I suppose one could actually call you a bachelor. Marriage is the only road to contentment and happiness. Think of the quiet home evenings, she busy knitting the tiny garments, you in the old armchair with your crossword puzzle. Think of the companionship, the feeling that you are never going to be alone again. Get married, I.L. Give this Dalrymple dinner tomorrow and over the meal attach yourself to her little hand and ask her to be yours. Excuse me,’ said Mr. Trout. ‘I must be going. I have to get a shampoo and manicure in addition to the hair-trim.’

The effect of this eloquence on Mr. Llewellyn was to add to the emotions of the Lady of Shalott those of Julius Caesar when stabbed by Brutus. We can put up with the knavish tricks of enemies — we may not like them, but we can endure them — but when we are betrayed by a friend we drain the bitter cup and no heel taps. The one thing Mr. Llewellyn had been sure he could rely on was the stability of the Trout doctrine. Whoever else might fail him, Trout was a solid rock. And here he was, mouthing these dreadful sentiments without, apparently, a qualm. He could not have been more horrified and in the depths if he had been a Tory member of Parliament and had heard his leader expressing the opinion that there was a lot of sound sense in the works of Karl Marx, and the Communists were not such bad chaps if you got to know them.

In order to fully appreciate I.L.’s (Igor Llewellyn) sentiments at this stage, you need to know that Trout has helped I.L. negotiate all five of his previous divorces. Trout has also voluntarily offered his services (as the founding member of Bachelors Anonymous) to ensure that there’s no sixth divorce for I.L. to worry about.

‘Yes, Pickering, you are well out of it,’ said Mr. Trout. ‘You have had a most merciful escape. Have you ever considered what marriage means? I do not refer to the ghastly ordeal of the actual service, with its bishops and assistant clergy, its bridesmaids and the influx of all the relations you have been trying to avoid for years, but to what comes after. And when I say that, I am not thinking of the speech you would be compelled to make at the wedding breakfast. That and the service that preceded it are merely temporary agonies, and a strong man can fortify himself with the thought that they will soon be linked for life, with someone who comes down to breakfast, puts her hands over your eyes and says “Guess Who”? From what you were saying about the dimple on this girl’s left cheek I gather that she is not without physical allure, but can she drive a car? Somebody has got to drive the car and do the shopping while you are playing golf. Somebody has got to be able to fix a flat tyre. Letters, too. What guarantee have you that she will attend to the family correspondence, particularly the Christmas cards? Like so many young men,’ said Mr. Trout, ‘you have allowed yourself to be ensnared by a pretty face, never asking yourself if the person you are hoping to marry is capable of making out your income tax return and can be relied on to shovel snow while you are curled up beside the fire with a novel of suspense. Yes,’ said Mr. Trout, warming to his subject, ‘you are one of the lucky ones. If, as you say, she refuses to see or speak to you, you ought to be dancing sarabands and congratulating yourself on –’

…

The conversation (more like a monologue as Trout discovers) is rudely interrupted as Pickering, whose full attention is on the cab in front of them (the cab which is carrying away his beloved Sally Fitch to an indeterminate location) betrays the fact that he’s not been listening to Trout. Undaunted and with more than a touch of the never-say-die spirit which animated all members of Bachelors Anonymous, Trout continues.

‘May I resume my remarks?’ he said. ‘I touched briefly on the more obvious objections to marriage, and later I will go into them again, but at the moment what I would like to stress is what I may call the family peril inseparable from the wedded state. Most girls have families, and why should the object of your devotion be any exception? I very much doubt that you have bestowed your affection on an orphan with no brothers or uncles. You speak enthusiastically of the dimple in her left cheek, but are you aware that statistics show that eighty-seven point six of girls with dimples also have brothers who are always out of a job and have to be supported? And if not brothers, uncles. In practically every home, if you examine closely, you will find an Uncle George or an Uncle Willie, with a taste for whisky and a distaste for work, whose expenses the young husband is compelled to defray. In the vast majority of cases the man who allows himself to be entrapped into matrimony is not so much settling down with the girl he loves as founding a Haven of Rest for the unemployed.’

Next post in this series – In which the very same Ephraim Trout waxes eloquent on marriage.

Dr. Verghese Kurien (Pic courtesy: iLoveIndia.com)

[Editor's Note: In light of the Madhya Pradesh (BJP) government's ban on consumption of beef,  it's relevant for us to understand RSS's original reasons for evangelizing the cow protection movement in the 1960's. Verghese Kurien's autobiography (I too had a dream) casts unique light on this subject, through a burgeoning friendship that developed between Kurien and Golwalkar during their 12-year association on the committee.]

In 1967, as Chairman of NDDB, I was asked to be a member of a high-powered committee, set up by the Government of India, to look into cow protection. It was a collection of rather individualistic and interesting personages. Justice Sarkar, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was appointed its Chairman. Among the other members of this committee were Ashok Mitra, who was then Chairman of the Agricultural Prices Commission, the Shankaracharya of Puri, H.A.B. Parpia, Director of the Central Food Technological Research Institute in Mysore and M.S. Golwalkar ‘Guruji’, the head of the RSS, the organization which had launched the entire cow protection movement.

…

Incredible as it might seem, this committee met regularly for twelve years. We interviewed scores of experts from all fields to get opinions of all shades on cow slaughter. It was a tedious and time-consuming process. My brief was to prevent any ban on cow slaughter. It was important for us in the dairy business to keep weeding out the unhealthy cows so that available resources could be utilized for healthy and productive cattle. I was prepared to go as far as to allow that no useful cow should be killed. This was the point on which the Shankaracharya and I invariably locked horns and got into heated arguments. I constantly asked him, ‘Your Holiness, are you going to take all the useless cows which are not producing anything and look after them and feed them till they die? You know that cannot work.’ He never had any answer to my query.

For twelve years the Government of India paid the committee members to travel to Delhi and attend the meetings. We continued like this and it was only when Morarji Desai became Prime Minister that I received a little slip of paper, which said, ‘The cow protection committee is hereby abolished.’ We were never even asked to submit a report.

Shri Golwalkar Guruji, RSS's 2nd Sarasanghachalak (Pic courtesy: golwalkarguruji.org)

However, one rather unusual and unexpected development during our regular committee meetings was that during that time, Golwalkar and I became close friends. People were absolutely amazed to see that we had become so close that whenever he saw me walk into the room he would rush to embrace me. He would take me aside and try to pacify me after our meetings, ‘Why do you keep losing your temper with the Shankaracharya? I agree with you about him. But don’t let the man rile you. Just ignore him.’

Golwalkar was a very small man — barely five feet — but when he got angry fire spewed out of his eyes. What impressed me most about him was that he was an intensely patriotic Indian. You could argue that he was going about preaching his brand of nationalism in a totally wrong way but nobody could question his sincerity. One day after one of our meetings when he had argued passionately for banning cow slaughter, he came to me and asked, ‘Kurien, shall I tell you why I’m making an issue of this cow slaughter business?’

I said to him, ‘Yes, please explain to me because otherwise you are a very intelligent man. Why are you doing this?’

‘I started a petition to ban cow slaughter actually to embarrass the government,’ he began explaining to me in private. ‘I decided to collect a million signatures for this to submit to the Rashtrapati. In connection with this work I travelled across the country to see how the campaign was progressing. My travels once took me to a village in UP. There I saw in one house, a woman, who having fed and sent off her husband to work and her two children to school, took this petition and went from house to house to collect signatures in that blazing summer sun. I wondered to myself why this woman should take such pains. She was not crazy to be doing this. This is when I realized that the woman was actually doing it for her cow, which was her bread and butter, and I realized how much potential the cow has.

‘Look at what our country has become. What is good is foreign: what is bad is Indian. Who is a good Indian? It’s the fellow who wears a suit and a tie and puts on a hat. Who is a bad Indian? The fellow who wears a dhoti. If this nation does not take pride in what it is and merely imitates other nations, how can it amount to anything? Then I saw that the cow has potential to unify the country – she symbolizes the culture of Bharat. So I tell you what, Kurien, you agree with me to ban cow slaughter on this committee and I promise you, five years from that date, I will have united the country. What I’m trying to tell you is that I’m not a fool, I’m not a fanatic. I’m just cold-blooded about this. I want to use the cow to bring out our Indianness, So please cooperate with me on this.’

Of course neither did I concur with him on this nor did I support his argument for banning cow slaughter on the committee. However, I was convinced that in his own way he was trying to instil a pride across our country about our being Indian. This side of his personality greatly appealed to me. That was the Golwalkar I knew. They had accused him of plotting the murder of Mahatma Gandhi but somehow I could never believe it. To me he came across as an honest and outspoken man and I always thought that if he were the Hindu fanatic that he was made out to be, he would never have been my friend.

I assured the Prime Minister that all his observations were absolutely correct but that there was one difference, which he had failed to notice. The solitary difference was that Amul dairy was owned by the farmers themselves. The elected representatives from among the farmers managed it. These elected representatives had employed me as a professional manager to run their dairy. I was an employee of the farmers.

In this dairy that was owned by the farmers, therefore, my job as a Manager was to satisfy the farmers who supplied milk to the dairy. I had to provide the infrastructure to the farmers to help them increase production. I had to ensure increased production so that they benefited. I could never refuse to collect the milk they supplied. This was a dairy that was sensitive to the needs of farmers and responsive to their demands. I explained to the Prime Minister that just as in Anand, in all advanced dairying countries, the dairies were owned by farmers. I pointed out to Shastriji that all we had done at Anand was to prove that what was true for New Zealand, Denmark, Holland and even the US, was also true for India.

They employed me, a professional who, in their judgement, was capable and honest. They were satisfied with my trustworthiness, competence and honesty. They left me free to run the cooperative as I thought best. What is more, they had protected and supported me during the initial stages until I found my feet and did not allow anyone to interfere with my work.

The Cooperative Societies Act of India is a stagnant act. It does not encourage the creation of truly democratic institutions. It is nothing but an appendage of the cooperative department of the government. But the Kaira Cooperative – Amul – in spite of such an act was a true and functioning cooperative because of the efforts of its Chairman, Tribhuvandas Patel, who was selected by Sardar Patel, and the farmers had complete trust in him. I explained all this, at great length, to our Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister, who had been listening to me avidly, looked excited and said, ‘Kurien, this means that we can have many Anands. There are no special reasons to have an Anand only in Gujarat.’

I nodded my head in agreement.

‘So then, Kurien,’ he continued, ‘from tomorrow you shall make it your business to work not just for Anand, not just for Gujarat, but for the whole of India. The Government of India will give you a blank cheque, it will create any body, any structure you want, provided you head it. Please replicate Anand throughout India. Make that your mission and whatever you need for it, the government will provide.’

I heard him out and then told him that before I could agree to his request, I had certain conditions. The first was that I would remain an employee of farmers. I would not be an employee of the government. I would not accept a single paisa from the government. When Shastriji wanted to know the reason for the condition I told him that an employee of the government inevitably has to please his superiors; an employee of farmers has to please only the farmers.

My second condition was that the new body, responsible for replicating Anand throughout the country, should not be located in Delhi. ‘People in Delhi think about many things but they hardly ever think about farmers,’ I reasoned. ‘In Anand, we think of nothing else other than farmers, agriculture and dairying. We have no other interests. So whatever body the government creates must be located at Anand. I refuse to move to Delhi.’

The Prime Minister agreed to both these conditions.

Apple's 1st line of Intel-powered (Core Duo) MacBooks (Courtesy: EveryMac.com)

When I turned my back on a corporate career and embarked upon a protracted stint as a full-time blogger, I knew I had to make some adjustments. I was mentally prepared for the 12-18 months of cash flow impact but that was only the first adjustment.

I reached into my inner ‘Indian middle class’ roots for inspiration. My wife was convinced that those roots were long dried up. She fully expected me to outfit myself with the latest MacBook Pro (I’ve been a Mac user since 2003) and the latest smartphone before I hit Publish on my first blog post.

As it turned out, I surprised myself as much as I did my wife. I dusted off my 2006 MacBook (heavily used for its first two years, lightly used for the next three) and my 2007 Nokia N75 (then one of the ‘leading lights’ among camera phones), bought new batteries and got to work. Nine months later, these antiquated bad boys haven’t made me feel like I belong in the twentieth century. Eschewing a smartphone and sticking with the N75 has been a game changer but…that’s a story for another day (this one’s about my MacBook – MB).

As I subjected the venerable MB to a daily regimen of two browser windows (with a gazillion open tabs), Word, Excel and an occasional iPhoto, it started creaking, whining and groaning (literally and figuratively)! The creaks were tended to easily enough with a judicious use of scotch tape. The whining and groaning? MB was not getting any younger and it was still running Tiger (Mac OS 10.4) so… A few weeks after Apple fanboys were urgently upgrading to Lion (the latest latest version), I finally upgraded MB to Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6). Boy! what a difference that upgrade made. Everything became significantly faster – booting up, shutting down, application loading and context switching!

What didn’t change was the cooling fan behavior. Perhaps my usage of MB changed after the Snow Leopard upgrade… I suppose I had started running more applications simultaneously and since Google Chrome was a heck of a lot more stable than Firefox, I was possibly using more tabs than before? I started noticing that once the cooling fan came on, it would just not switch off until MB went to sleep mode or shut down. Since there were so many open tabs (with so many half-read articles), to preserve my blessed “context”, I found myself doing less and less shutdowns – my procrastination was reaching the level of an art form.

A few weeks ago, MB started speaking up. Above the regular whirring of the fan, I would occasionally hear other sounds – sudden high pitched wails lasting a few minutes to irregular tap-taps that sounded like a hard drive in distress. I was alarmed of course. My backup frequency changed from weekly to daily. I also started getting selective about which applications remained open throughout the day. The number of open tabs on the Chrome browser perceptibly reduced.

Then 2 days ago, in the midst of a rather innocuous work session, MB abruptly shutdown. This had NEVER happened in MB’s 5 years and 6 months of existence (application and system hanging – yes! but not this!). After a 1-hour break, I booted up MB again – it worked fine for the rest of the day (non-continuous usage though).

The next day, abrupt shutdowns happened twice. It now increasingly appeared that MB’s days might be numbered. A few hours after the last shutdown, it suddenly dawned on me that I was no longer hearing the whirring of the cooling fan. The fan must have got fried and the overheated circuitry was probably triggering emergency shutdowns! A few Bing searches later, my speculation had turned into a real hypothesis. So what next? In a few days I’ll be taking MB to an Apple care center and will find out if my hypothesis is right.

In the last few days of MB’s unpredictable behavior, my usage of MB changed rather significantly. Since the abrupt shutdown could happen anytime after an hour of continuous usage, I found myself being a lot more deliberate about my ‘next hour of computer time’. Did I really need to start that second browser window? If I clicked on an interesting Twitter link, I would either finish reading the article (if it sustained interest) or would close the new tab (if not interesting). Since the first hour of computer time was more deterministic than subsequent sessions, it made more ROI sense to work on the most important tasks (making progress on a blog post instead of catching up on Twitter-verse).

MB’s abrupt shutdown behavior has presented me with “what would I do if I had only one hour of connected computer time available”. One hour at a time, with some R&R breaks thrown in between the hourly sessions. The real test starts after MB returns from the Apple service center. Would I return to my old ADD-context-switching ways or accept that the next computing hour could well be the last…before an expensive and context-switching reboot?

(circa 2007: one of my few successful DIY moments — replacing memory modules on a MacBook)

Update (Jan 1, 2012): A trip to the Apple Customer Care yielded mixed results. They ran the basic diagnostic utility (Apple Server Tools) which gave a clean-chit to MB. Uh – what? “Not possible. The cooling fan ain’t coming on.” I told the technician. The technician allowed for the possibility that something was wrong but…running the next-level (more elaborate) diagnostic check would cost 1,500 INR. There was one catch though…the technician pointed me to the “VIN” prefix against MB’s serial number on her console. “VIN” = vintage which means that even if they determined that the cooling fan was indeed busted, Apple was no longer carrying the parts. Yikes! I suppose with all the iPhone frenzy in the market, a 5-year old MacBook certainly warrants the ‘vintage’ tag. Crestfallen, I returned home.

Update (Jan 3, 2012): I wasn’t giving up so easy. If not Apple, there must be some resellers still carrying replacement parts, right? I wasn’t in a terrible hurry since I had commandeered my wife’s personal laptop… Today, I fired up MB and lo and behold! the cooling fan switches on within 15 minutes! Uh – what? The plot thickens.. To be continued.

He visited the huts of Harijans in the village. He sat with them and talked to them. He visited the Muslim families in the village. Till two o’clock in the morning, he was busy talking to the farmers and their families about their lives and their problems. The Home Secretary had to remind him about his next day’s programme, which was to begin at seven a.m. He was forced to retire for the night.

The next morning the Prime Minister visited the village milk cooperative society run by the elected representatives of the village. I met him there for the first time and explained to him the working of the cooperative. Only after this did he come to Anand and to my house. Later, he declared open the cattle-feed compounding factory and addressed the gathering with an inspiring speech. Then we returned to my house.

At home, he sat me down and told me something extremely interesting. He said, ‘Under the Second and Third Five Year Plans, we have built so many dairies. All of them owned and run by the government. All of them were unmitigated disasters, running at a loss. But I heard Amul dairy and its products are liked throughout the country. It’s available throughout the country and has an extremely high growth rate every year. I want to know why this particular dairy is a success when all the others have failed That is why I decided that I would stay here and find out. And that is why I spent a night with the villagers, trying to fathom the reasons for the success of Anand’s Amul dairy. But I am sorry to say, Kurien, that I have failed.

‘I looked at the soil. Good soil, but not as good as the Indo-Gangetic plains. I asked about the climate here. Cold in winter, very hot in summer, I was told. So it is in most of India. Nothing special. I enquired about the rainfall. Thirty inches of rain for three months of the year during the monsoon – much like the rest of the country. I had expected to see the entire landscape green, with cattle grazing contentedly, but the whole place is brown, just like the rest of India. I did not find any abundant availability of fodder and feed here. I looked at your buffaloes and don’t mind my saying this, Kurien, but they are not as good as the buffaloes in my home state of Uttar Pradesh. Those buffaloes are certainly better and even give more milk. Lastly, I looked at your farmers. They’re good people – farmers are always good people – but they are not as hardworking as the farmers of Punjab. I can’t find a single reason why Anand is such a great success. Now, can you please tell me what is the secret of its success?

… to be continued.. [In Part 3, Verghese Kurien's answer and the genesis for NDDB.]