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Curiosity of curiosities

I have seen many things in life but this one surpassed all the curiosities I have had the pleasure of encountering. The setting was the familiar cricket maidan at Churchgate, the Oval - a place infested by a great many enthusiastic albeit amateur cricketers on any given weekend day. Side-by-side the stumps are laid for as far as one can see through the thicket of the crowd. In front of one such set of stumps stood a frail lad holding the bat as if imitating a hunchback, one leg of his trousers split along the seam and the other rolled up to the knee. For a moment I wondered if the glares made it more difficult for him to see the ball, which was at this very moment, in the hands of a gentleman in a light brown shirt (buttoned sleeves), which in turn was tucked into (or was meant to stay tucked in) the slightly darker trousers. Under the trousers were a flashy pair of floaters matched to the belt around the ample waist. As I stood pondering over the sights, the ball was delivered, an appeal to the umpire made and denied swiftly, a credit to the umpire's reflexes more than anything else and a fracas ensued."Aawat aahe re chidku saalya", still hung in the air when another gentleman, made by the Maker in the image of the laughing Buddha, intervened and slammed a Rs. 101 fine on the fielding side for, apparently, bringing disrepute to the gentleman's game right in front of the Mumbai High Court and the University and for setting a bad precedent for all the uninterested students walking by. Amazingly, the fielding side apologized to the umpire and the and the match referee (he was no laughing Buddha) and got on with the game. I pondered more until enlightenment streamed through my consciousness and spread along the lips. In a cricket-crazy nation of ours, many "differently-athletic" people had for too long been consigned to being arm-chair critics. Well, not anymore. Now there are role-plays for one and all.

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A flash trip - Ajanta and Ellora

I had planned a trip to Ajanta and Ellora on numerous occasions only to defer it on each occassion. I was not going to let another opportunity pass by at any cost. So when a discussion ensued on the topic, a flash trip was the outcome.&;

A flash trip means there is little time for arranging logistics and researching the destination. We ended up boarding a train to Jalgaon in dying hours of Friday (May 4) without reserved seats. Before that, we had scanned almost all the charts on this train, whose final destination was Patna, a trifle over 28 hours away, in an effort to identify vacant seats upto some inter-mediate station on our relatively short 7 hour journey. We found 2 seats that were free upto Manmad ( a stop and 2 hours before Jalgaon) and made our way to those, only to find 4 people sitting there. "We have reservations. 69 and 70", said I to them, a bit hesitantly, and they quickly created space for us to sit. I knew, then, how Ali Baba would have felt when the door gave way on his utterance of the spell - Khul ja, sim sim! For a change I was gladdened by the fact that India isn't a high literacy country, Bihar being particularly lacking in that regard, and that even if the the quartet who had occupied those 2 seats were literate, they hadn't applied their skills and senses in reading the charts. So the battle was won without any resistance and we had berths to sleep on for 4 hours!

The quartet that had ceded the seats to us without a trace of suspicion were pleased with us for we had let them stay seated there, however uncomfortably and they made every effort to remain in our good books. When we decided to get some sleep, they slept on the floor of the coach, happy that we would let them be! When I looked around the coach, as far as I could from the middle berth, I saw people sleeping on the floor and there was no way one could make his or her way to the toilet on either end of the coach without trampling upon a few souls. Some rough math revealed that there were around a 150 people sleeping in the coach meant to accomodate 72! Some would say we were lucky to get the berths without reserving them but I would argue that we made our own luck. In a country where there are 150 candidates for 72 spots, only the sly secures one!

We stepped out onto the street in Jalgaon at 6 in the morning and saw Ranbir Kapoor, in a larger than life poster, promoting a tea brand that I had never heard of before and whose name I have already forgotten. This made Saurabh want a cup, which he wasted no time in procuring and devouring, and we walked away to the bus stop. After having enquired about the bus to Ajanta, we sat down to have a glass of sugarcane juice each. The juice never arrived and the bus did. Saurabh made his way to the rear end of the bus, a choice we regretted as soon as the bus pulled out of the depot, and we arrived a bit shaken up at the T-junction in about an hour's time. We proceeded towards the buses that were dedicated to transporting people between the outer and the inner entrances of the Ajanta caves, paying amenities, having a brunch, buying the bus tickets and the enrtry fee on the way.

The Ajanta caves (Ajintha Leni in Marathi) are basically a cluster of 30 rock-cut caves, dating from 2nd century BC to 600 AD that include paintings and sculptures considered to be masterpieces of Buddhist religious art. The Ajanta caves were declared a UNESCO world heritage even before I was born and located at 59 kms and 104 kms from Jalgaon and Aurangabad respectively. Lost to the world for a number of years and serving as home to birds and animals, the caves were accidentally discovered by a British officer for the Madras Presidency on 28th April, 1819. Since then, a lot of scholarly work and research has taken place on each aspect of Ajanta and scores of books have been produced and I have nothing to add on the subject that is not already covered by atleast a dozen books. Suffice is to say that when one gives a thought to what one sees within the caves coupled with the knowledge of the time period in which this work was produced, one is overcame with awe and can only sing odes to the human spirit and its achievements.

Having conferred our share of admiration to Ajanta, we headed out to the T-junction, the same way as we had come in and in no time had boarded the bus to Aurangabad. What happened during the course of the journey is mostly lost on me and Saurabh, for we had dozed away the two and half hours that the bus took on the smelter of the road to complete the journey. However, we opened our eyes at the right time, as the bus entered the Aurangabad. We passed a number of medieval gates (it is known as the city of gates) as well as the Baby Taj ( a monument dedicated to Aurangzeb's wife by their son, the Mughal emperor Shah Alam and built in the image of Taj) before getting off at the bus stop and being confronted by a rickshaw driver-cum-hotel agent. The meeting resulted in us checking into a less-than-ideal hotel, with seedy spelled all over it. Saurabh discovered a few things under the bed and I dared not take a look for myself. We were tired and needed some sleep but the desire to check out was the dominant thought in our heads that day. We checked out early next morning, way before the 24 hour check out time and never turned back. Ellora (Verul in Marathi) was our next destination.&;

Having warded off all the rickshaw drivers, not without traces of contempt, that offered to show us Ellora alongwith 6 other monuments, including the Daulatabad fort and Aurangzeb's tomb, we boarded a bus that dropped us just outside the entrance to this another group of world heritage caves. Having bought the entrance, we entered the enclosure and headed a km south to cave no 1 and began our excursion from there. While the relatively cramped Ajanta is renowned for painting and the miniature art, Ellora's awes one with size and sculptures. Another key difference with Ajanta is that Ellora has not just Buddhist caves, but its tally of 34 is made up of Hindu and Jain caves as well. The work of monk-artists of three different beliefs in such vicinity gives a fair idea of liberal nature of the society that this place once was.

These caves are actually structures excavated out of the vertical face of the Charanandri hills. The masterpiece is the Kailasa temple (cave no 16), the largest monolithic structure in the world. It is a huge temple by any standard but the fact that it was carved out a single rock makes it unique. Imagine, if you will, the master architect conceiving the plan to sculpt a hill itself into a temple. One has to be there to understand this achievement of the human spirit and it is beyond me to produce words to describe this wonder of wonders! Again, as with Ajanta, lot of scholarly work is available on Ellora and I shall resist the urge to add more to this great body of work.

Having spent 7 hours at Ellora, and still feeling that we couldnt do full justice to Kailasa, we gave into the limitations of time and headed out towards the Daulatabad fort, which is midway on the road to Aurangabad. We climbed and climbed, passing the Durga temple and a mosque with a huge minaret, which must have served as watch tower, going through bat-infested dark passages and yet couldnt make it to the top before the sunset. We were a few feet below the apex when the sun began to set and the fort is evacuated at that time. We descended the same way, clicking a few pictures of the largest cannon in the world among other thing on the way, and stood outside waiting for a bus to Aurangabad.

A vehicle with three seating sections (similar to Tata Sumo) and painted in the tazi colors of black and yellow came to a halt besides us. I saw through the window on our side and could see out through the windows on the other side. There were 19 people inside it, if my counting ability is to be trusted and the driver asked us to get onboard. I ignored his invitation as a lame joke but he was dead serious. "How in the world!" I exclaimed. "These people are gettng off at Chavni, the nearby village and then the vehicle is vacant there on. So just tag along at the rear until then you should have seats", he answered without batting an eyelid. Saurabh and I exchanged a glance and we were soon hanging at the rear end of the vehicle, the door kept open for our convenience, alongwith 2 more "co-hangers". True to his word, the driver offloaded 4 people at the next village and the four of us at the back got the middle seats. We realized that a burqa-clad lady was sitting in the lap of a man in the front and that the driver himself had one for company on his own seat. A true Swadesh experience this! We reached Aurangabad safely and well in time for dinner and our train journey back.&;

We boarded the train, happy with the way the trip had turned out, and started scavenging for seats as we were without reservation again. The lady luck did not smile on us this time and we spent the whole night, tired and without sleep. Saurabh took out the newspaper from my bag to spread it out on the floor and fell on it like a gunny bag filled with coal. We arrived home somehow and resolved not to travel overnight without reservation ever again!

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Uttaranchal tour diary - Part three

16th August, 2011

I was up a bit before time and that is never a good thing. With a few minutes of sleep still left to be utilised, I sunked back in the bed trusting my body clock to work out when the 10 minutes were over. it was not so bad that my body clock was off by 15 minutes, for the worse part was that no one else would get up until I woke them up and that took a few more minutes. Thus, we hit the path about 30 minutes late and arrived at the Govindghat gurudwara for despositing our luggage. The service provided by the gurudwara is god sent for the trekkers and I wouldn't have mind paying for it had it not been free. I inquired about the possibility of making a donation and was told to buy 'prasad' at Hemkunt Sahib. As we were heading out, after having placed the bags in one of the iron racks, the old, affable,smiling Sikh at the desk asked us, "Kis desk se aaye ho?" and was amused by our reply, "Hum India ke hi hai." I wonder what it was that made him think so!

Feeling unburdened, we backtracked a few steps, toward the hotel, and bought big plastic bags to 'water-proof' our small bags that we had decided to carry with us, deeming them sufficient to hold all the stuff that would be needed in the next 3 days. The bags contained clothes and cameras, water bottles and chocolate bars, socks and slippers and all of these needed to be guarded against the elements. Satisfied with the patchwork, we moved forward again with a distinctive spring in our steps. Over the wooden bridge on the Alaknanda, against the clear sky, we turned back to look at the gurudwara and Govindghat knowing well that we would be back in 3 days. A few clicks of the shutters symbolised the start of the trek and we were underway.

At the first bend were a number of mules (i called them horses, someone from thr group called them donkeys) ready to carry us all the way upto Ghangria and that was not what we had travelled so far for. Avoiding through indifference the pleas of the horse keepers and with greater dexterity the strong, raised hind legs of the mules on the narrow path, we moved past them and the smell of the horse-dung. A few minutes into the trek, when we had left Alaknanda and its water behind, we were coasting along happily and yet carefully so as to avoid piercing anyone's toes with the metal end of our trekking poles, thanking our stars for the clear weather. Then it came disguised in the form of a light drizzle, and then, like a great river that emerges in droplets from an icy glacier, the water from above began falling down upon us in a steady pattern. The cameras were packed in for good and all we could do was to walk, keeping our eyes down on the slippery path, at many places on which a slip could turn to be one's last, in the face of the torrent that was being spit by the skies with great gusto. So our eyes and cameras were deprived of sights of this amazing landscape for long. 

The downpour slighted a bit and we found ourselves walking on our own through the slippery patch whose protective fence had fallen in the gorge a while back. We prodded on further as we sighted a few Sikh pilgrims on the same path in front of us and caught up with them as they came to a stop. The path had disappeared from there and re-emerged on the other side of a divide, this divide being the fresh work of a landslide. Dejected and fearing the worst, we turned back only to find another path at a fork that we had earlier overlooked. The Alaknanada was back besides us, giving us company and at one of its prettiest side, a beach of pebbles, we got down to get even closer. At that point in time, it had stopped drizzling and our cameras got a fresh breath of air. Only after a 30 minute photography session on the pebbles and besides the river, we realized that we had slowed down terribly and would need to do our best to reach the base camp before the sunset. We hurried the cameras back into the bags and wrapped the bags in plastic again, possibly not very well, and lumbered along.

After a couple of refreshment breaks along the route, negotiating steep descents in places, crossing the gushing river streams, avoiding the marching mules for the fear of being kicked into the gorge and exhausting ourselves, we reahed the place outside Ghangria where the helipad is located and realisation dawned upon us - our bags could have been smaller!. It was mid afternoon but the light was not great owing to the cloud cover and we quickly got into the act of  finding a place to sleep. It was cold and dark by the time we found a place which was supposed to be a hotel room. I had realised a while back that nothing of the clothes in my bag had remained dry and that it would take more than 3 days in this cold, damp weather for them to lose half of the mositure that they had so smartly acquired. Luckily, the camera was all good.

We took an inventory on checking in. Of the things missing from the room were fans (none was needed in this freezing cold, electricty-less place) and water (one would have had to be brave to ask for more water after our 7 hour bath-trek). The things that were available in the room were - i.) a one leg wide walking space between the three conjoined, horizontally laid beds and the one vertically laid bed that connected the room's door to the toilet's door, ii) a two feet space on each side on three, conjoined beds for us to lay down our bags and cameras, iii) a few hangers to hang our undriable clothes, iv) walls and a ceiling and beds and blankets. But the most striking part of the inventory lied just outside the door, like an unexpected bonus or a surprise lottery - the unadulterated view of the snow-capped Nandadevi, that appeared to be rising all the while above the menacing clouds and in the process, raising our spirits, the spirits that had taken a battering not as much because of the steep 13km trek that we had endured to reach there but because of the news of closure of the valley of flowers owing to a landslide.

Sleep took us in her lap before we could lay our heads down. 

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Uttaranchal tour diary - Part two

15th August, 2011

Independence Day! Not that we realized it when we got up and ready to walk over the Laxman Jhula again at an hour which was scarcely better than the previous night for crossing this suspension bridge but there were people taking bikes over to the other bank and we reached the spot, the Shiva-murthy or Shiva's statue, where the driver was supposed to be waiting for us with the SUV. As is always the case with early morning appointments when you reach on time, the other party got delayed for reasons not explained well to us when we called the agent on his cell phone. When the vehicle did not arrive, with or without the driver, after making a number of calls to the agent, to a guy named Lucky and the driver himself, we began to worry and wonder if the plan would hold or go awry. We had known that cars are not allowed to run after sunset in the mountains and that this 270 km journey took 10 hours of travel provided there was no major landslide stoppage enroute. I was gratified to learn in the morning that there had been no rainfall during the course of the night and that all the thunderous noise that is so typical of a heavy monsoon downpour in places like Mumbai was actually the roar of the river. For the plan to hold, we had to be in Govindghat by the end of the day so that we could dig into the trekking leg of the trip the following morning. After another 15 minutes, I began to worry about having been duped as we had already paid some amount as an advance. We eyed every vehicle that came in through the bend on the far side expectantly and stretched our ears in anticipation each time we heard as much as a small noise of a running engine only to either watch the vehicles siphon away other groups of travellers or to see a motor-cycle come through the bend. And just when I was on the verge of killing myself through hypertension, in came the car with a driver and a navigator (so it seemed to me) sending my blood pressure plummeting down to the ground level in a steep fall not different from what one may experience in person on jumping from one of the snow-capped peaks of Garwhal.

We put the luggage in through the back door in the rear of the car and got ourselves rushing in through the side door in the middle and front for the last person standing outside was condemned to the rear in the company of the luggage. And the scenic journey had begun or so we thought until we came to a halt within 5 minutes of starting at a petrol pump. The vehicle was not tanked up as we had expected but our wallets were made lighter by the way of the payment of the rest of the car rent to the guy named Lucky, his turban not betraying the fact that Lucky was his pet name. I remembered I had to pop a pill of Domstal and I did. Finally, we were ready to go. But there was another twist in the story. The driver and the navigator got out and another gentleman took the seat at the steering.

It seemed to me that we were always going upriver as indeed we were and up not just any other river but the holy Ganges itself which was to our right as we passed the High Bank area of Rishikesh with its inviting Swiss cottage. The transition from the plains to the mountains but short and smooth and we were moving along the winding national highway (NH58), flanked by mountains on one side and emptying, in a rather steep manner, into the holy Ganges on other. For the first few minutes, we were enamored with the scenic route but the thoughts of what would become of us if the car were to skid and plummet soon occupied our minds in totality. If they ever end up having a Formula One race in the mountains, the bloke who was driving us would have blanked one and all. Not only did he liked to believe that the horsepower of the car was provided for a good reason and that he, as a driver, was ordained to use all of it, he also seemed to have a firm conviction that the steering wheel ought to be used for the purpose it was created and wherever it could be used and a space between the gorge about half a tyre's width away on one side and a fellow car another half of a tyre's width away on the side was good enough a definition of that 'wherever'. So we went, lording over the highway, overtaking every vehicle we spotted and the driver, on sensing that we were in a state of anxiety for some reason, placated us by saying, "Why are you so worried?" as if there indeed was no reason to worry. We had passed Shivpuri, a place famous as the starting point of the long, white water rafting course that stretched all the way to Rishikesh, and Kaudiala and were moving towards our first scheduled stop at the Devparayag when I could take it no longer and pleaded the driver to bring the car to a halt. I hurried out of the car and threw out the Domstal pill and even while everyone made it a point to laugh at me, I found no humor in it. The tea-mongers, all except me, would not let the opportunity pass by and were soon gossiping over their cuppas even though I had recovered and was requesting them to hurry and reminding them the need to reach the destination by the end of the day.

Then we were at Devprayag, literally the God's confluence, which we were told is considered the holiest of all confluences in Garwhal. This is where the two visibly distinct rivers, Alaknanda and Bhagirathi, confluence to form the Ganges and one could argue that it is this place and not Gangotri that is the origin of India's holiest river. But we had to move on and we soon reached Srinagar, which was nothing less than a paradise, and whiled away a lot more time than we had intended for the lovely mist that had fallen on the place gave it an ethereal quality. Then we passed other major confluences at Rudraprayag, Karnaprayag and Nandprayag having grown fond of the driver's driving skill and saw nothing wrong with his delicate maneuvers at a good clip. We found time to stop for nourishment at a roadside dhaba serving fresh parathas with a variety of stuffing and we feasted upon them. The driver, meanwhile, downed as many parathas as the rest of us had collectively.

The first time we were forced to go slow was near Chamoli where the mountains were spitting solid rocks as fast as gravity would permit and thanks to the bend in the road, we could see the long line of traffic on both sides of the sliding land. Thankfully, it did not last long and slowly, very slowly, we crossed over to the other side, with our hearts in our mouths, on the slippery, rocky patch of dump that the national highway had been turned into by the wrath of the mountains in that particular segment. A few kilometers down the road and still outside Pipalkoti, there was another unscheduled pit-stop that lasted for about an hour allowing us enough time to buy some apples, which weren't fully ripe, at a fruit stall. We jerk-started again as the traffic was opened to much relief of all the passengers and we passed Joshimath shortly on the last motor-able stretch of the trip. We were stopped, as it seems is a custom, by representatives of the armed forces, who command a significant strength in these regions perilously close to the border. On the same stretch somewhere, we had entered into the Nandadevi Biosphere Reserve and in another hour, we were at the melting point of Sikhs from all over India - Govindghat. That it was more of a freezing pit than a melting point dawned upon us only when we stepped out of the car to look for a hotel and I very much regretted the choice of dressing in shorts and a thin t-shirt. We checked into a hotel, the name was Sapna, which afforded us the facility of a jump straight into the middle of the bellowing Alaknanda from outside our rooms. We ate in a while at a small shack on the opposite side which sold samosas and chaat and found out from the Gurudwara the time for depositing the luggage that we intended not to carry on the trek. After a bath in a bucket of supposedly warm water delivered into the rooms at the rate of Rs. 50 a bucket, and after a few phone calls from everybody home (there was no cellular network) to inform that all of us would be in a phone-less, wireless zone for 3 days, we retired for the night. We had bought ponchos and trekking poles and set the alarms before that.

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Uttaranchal tour diary - First Look

14th August, 2011

It was at 10 AM that the wait for the rest of the party that was coming from Chennai begun. Our train from Bandra Terminus in Mumbai had arrived on time and it had been a largely uneventful journey. The only incident of note, if one could call it an incident, was the attempt on our lives by the Indian Railways by the means of the air-conditioning that took the temperature down to an inhuman level. Then a host of touts approached us on the station offering deals too incredible to be true. Thankfully, we survived the air-conditioning and the touts to tell the tale that follows.

Hazrat Nizamuddin is a fair way away from the airport and the train to Haridwar was scheduled to leave from there in about an hour's time. A fear of delayed flight and the infamous Delhi traffic kept us on the edge. I had expected it to be touch-and-go and was pleasantly surprised to see the party arrive around 30 minutes past 10. The fact that it was a Sunday and the Independence Day Eve (which made the weekend an extended one) had helped the cause but whatever headstart we had on the train's departure time was soon wiped off thanks to an accident of a small scale and the unproportionately loud wince that accompanied it. Siddharth (Sid, one of the three who came from Chennai) had suffered a smallest of finger cuts and made us try a number of bandages from the first-aid kit that was at our disposal. The ruckus lasted, if I recall correctly, about a 20 mins and ended up quashing all the hopes of a small lunch as well as that of a brief visit to the Humayun's Tomb that lay at a walking distance from the station. All we had had in the travel from Mumbai to Delhi were some biscuits - Hide & Seek and Oreo to be specific and some hot, fried snack in Gujarat. With 10 minutes left to the train's departure, Santosh and Vivek (the other two from the Chennai party) expressed their desire to take a stroll (thats what guys say when they want a discrete smoke) outside Hazrat Nizamuddin and I took the opportunity to ask them to bring something to eat. They brought back two packets of the worst Biryani I had ever sampled and we dipped 5 plastic spoons simultaneously in the first, opened packet as the Indore-Dehradun Express lumbered out of the station.

After stopping at and then passing Ghaziabad Jn., Meerut City Jn., Muzzafarnagar, Deoband, while a number of bicycle peddlars in a number of places on a number of roads that ran parallel to the railway tracks overtook us, we reached Saharanpur Jn., the last of the stations from Uttar Pradesh on the route where the train was supposed to halt for 35 minutes originally to allow for a number of things, 30 minutes before time. As a matter of rule as much that of common sense, a train never departs the station before its scheduled departure time no matter how early it pulls in and so we ended up having a full hours halt there, a halt which I suppose would have been enough to allow us a good look at this small town. The long halt was not as annoying as it would have been at other times for two reason - one, the fat lady without reservation, who sat on one of our reserved window seats with a queen-like pomp extending her legs and placing them on the seats on the opposite side on which I had the privelege of sitting in a cramped manner, as might be required of a servant in front of the queen, had got off when the train had stopped at a signal just before the platform. She had not as much asked as ordered us to bring her luggage to the door and Santosh had obeyed without a murmur of dissent for the happy thought of seeing her off far outdid the less-than-ideal emotions of playing a coolie to a lady despite being without a reservation had occupied out reserved window seat with a queen-like pomp. The second reason was the availability of smoking hot Samosas dressed with a tamarind-based, red sauce which I wouldn't have dared touch under other circumstances. So after the hour's halt, the train as well as us got out of Saharanpur well-nourished. In another hour or so, after passing Roorkee, we were glad to get down at Haridwar. The sun was about to set when we managed to convince an auto rickshaw driver to take us to Rishikesh for Rs. 500 and sat contently inside, gazing outside and clicking some pictures. under the impression that we would be having a good, warm bath in another hour's time. Fate had other plans in store and on the Haridwar-Rishikesh road, it dawned upon us that we were not the only smart ones who had found a good use for this long weekend. As we sat talking inside a sesile rickshaw, the driver gleefully informed us of the vehicle's failings in the darkness. After another half an hour or so, the driver, who was kindness personified, managed to arrange another rickshaw for us at a small premium, which spat us out at Rishikesh on the wrong side of the Laxman Jhula. We called a hotel - Hotel Divya, which was thankfully vacant in the low season, and were directed to cross the river to reach it. The idea of crossing the suspension bridge that Laxman Jhula is over the raging, monsoon Ganges was less than enticing in the dark and the experience of doing it was outright scary. We found the hotel on the opposite bank and retired to rest and refresh for a while.

After a shower, which was lovely for reasons more than one, we were overcame by the pleas of our poor stomachs and took to the streets to dine. While we were trying to find, unsuccesfully, a joint to eat in at this hour, we entered a travel agents office and asked for a car on hire to take us to Joshimath the next day and concluded a deal after which he gave us the directions to the Chotiwala's restaurant which was about a mile's walk down river near the Ram Jhula and we bid a farewell of mutual satisfaction. Chotiwala's is a name of repute and we had a fine dinner there and digested it with a glass of lassi apiece (Santosh, the curd-phobic excluded) and turned back towards the hotel. The road upriver was as devoid of humans and activity as it was when we were going down river and a few feet to our left was the river, separated from the road only by air in most places, and making noise as to scare us off. But we were not scared, for we trusted in everyone else's bravery as much as we silently doubted our own and we kept walking as quickly as our legs would permit. There was an incident with a couple of bikers trying to do what all rowdies do and we, with the Bisleri Mountain mineral water's bottle in one person's hand, tried to report them to three policemen whom we came face to face with as they were walking downriver. They reeked of the filthiest hooch and we knew better than to engage them for long. We arrived back in the hotel and set our alarms for 4.30 AM before retiring for the wonderful night. Though we did not talk of our dreams later, I am sure we all dreamt of being in the Valley of Flowers soon for it was what most of us had been dreaming for many days. In fact, for me and Sid, it was an year old dream, a dream on the threshold of being realized.

&;

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Ambling and musing

I love to amble around. Specially so in such localities as the one that stretches between Dadar and Matunga on the east of the Central railway line. The place is one of those rare oasis of tranquility in the desert of franticness that the rest of Mumbai is. There are houses of ancestry and there are new skyscrapers there, and yet there is also a sense of camaraderie between these structures bearing allegiance to different architectural styles - a kind that indicates gradual, organic development, a process similar to the intermingling of people of different cultural backgrounds in the history of India. The streets are wide and the clatter in these streets low; an array of colleges adds a dash of adventure to this sleepy place.

Another charm of this locality is the number of South Indian eateries that dot it. One of my personal favorites is the Arya Bhavan which proclaims proudly on its name board - Managed by Muthuswamy. One would be forgiven to think of Muthuswamy as the avatar of Lord Vishnu himself in its greatest manifestation instead of a manager of a joint selling idlis and dosas, and why not for the place is itself called the Hindu Colony. Nonetheless, the coin idlis, soft as they come, topped with a mixture of spices and served with a couple of varieties of coconut chutney and hot sambar are truly divine.

Then there is another joint that is equally popular with the locals and whose name escapes me. In fact, its so popular that it doesn't even require its name to be remembered. The waiter, in a lungi or a mundu or whatever that piece of cloth, that can be used as a variety of things such as bedsheet among others and that which can substitute for mercury for it rises along the legs of those wearing it with a rise in the temperature (and is of course constrained by the maximum level to which it can rise), is called, asks for your order without handing you a menu card. If you ask for a menu card, he points at the portion of the wall painted black and chalked upon in two columns, to see which you have to turn a full 180 degrees. You play it safe and, still looking at the menu board, order a plate of steamed idlis and before you turn your head back to the table, the waiter drops your order on the table, as if in a kind of competition. But this is the only aspect in and around this eatery, that affects the overall harmony and rhythm of the life and upsets its speed. Once the plate and the small bowls are on the table, life comes back to the pace at which cows graze the grass - for the sambar is too hot for some or the chutneys too spicy for others.

The name of the locality, Hindu colony, makes me curious. It certainly has to be a name of antiquity for in today's India, it would be a direct threat to our secular fabric. Its rather bullying on the part of the community that comprises about 80% of the population to claim localities by naming them such. For India to remain secular, such show of strength on the part of the majority community should be restrained. The secular credentials would get a further shot in the arm if the places were named or renamed as Jain Housing Society, Muslim neighborhood, Parsi colony and such.

Then there is this breezy patch of green called the Matunga Gymkhana, on the tiled walls of which sit a lot of people with time to kill or those who have no time to spare. The first set of people includes those who used to study in the colleges on the opposite side and have graduated some time back; the second set is that of the students who have their examinations scheduled in another 15 minutes. I can empathize with both the sets for I am a graduate and I have no more time to spare. Best of both worlds did you say!

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Its a summer day of that sort

Its a summer day of that sortThat makes you want to slow down and stopLaze on a bouncy, village cotThink of things and reflect a lot

  The heat aids rememberingBreeds memories and makes one nostalgicYOu start to see yourself playingMany a parts in the timeless epic

  You are the bird singing in the distanceAnd the kid playing in the streetAs you are the hollow resistanceThat one offers to a coveted treat

  You are the tenderness of a new loveAs you are the persistence of an exam-studyAnd the meaninglessness that is part ofThe remorseless games, high and bloody.

  You travel far as if on a missionUpto the oldest past and the darkest spotTo rationalize things with reasonAnd illuminate them with details lostThe day just stretches alongLonger than the longest songIts that sort of a summer dayIts a summer day of that sort

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The young prodigy

And so goes this lovely anecdote that I heard sometime in the middle of 2007 in Chennai. A student in elementary school was asked, as a punishment, to calculate the sum of the first 100 numbers (i.e. 1+2+..+100). The young charge came back to the teacher with the answer (5050) in a matter of seconds. The teacher, convinced that there was foul play at work, asked him to calculate the sum of first 500 numbers. The young prodigy came back again in a few seconds to the teacher's astonishment. The teacher's curiosity was piqued and she asked the student how he had managed to get the answer so quickly. The kid began the ridiculously simple explanation.

"I wrote the numbers 1 to 100 in sequence in the first row. Then I wrote the numbers in the reverse sequence in the next row under the first one such that 100 came below 1, 99 below 2 and so on. when I added all the respective terms, the answer was 101 for all of them. Since, there were 100 terms, the sum was 101*100 = 10100. But I had added the numbers twice.So the actual sum was half of it, that is to 5050."

The teacher was stunned.Thus was the result for the sum of first N natural numbers stated - (N * (N+1))/2The young kid was Carl Friedrich Gauss.

  Mathematical explanation

        1 + 2 + 3 + .. + 100  = required sum(Add) 100+99 +98 + .. + 1    = required sum       

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Muslims and quotas

The cold weather notwithstanding, heat of the battle in Uttar Pradesh is not lost on anyone. The pitch for the Muslim sub-quota has been raised again, never mind if it is by the law minister who does not understand or does not care for the spirit of the election code of conduct, and a demand has been made to deny Salman Rushdie visa to visit the country of his birth. The game being played should be obvious to any self-respecting duffer. The importance of the outcome of this battle will have a huge bearing on the war in a couple of years time.

  Coming to the core issue of quotas, they seem nothing more than an instrument of manipulation and misleadings. The fact that the initial announcement was of a 4.5% sub-quota, the subsequent promise of a 9% sub-quota makes one wonder, if Congress real intention was to uplift the backward Muslims, then why the 9% quota was not implemented. Had that been implemented, the Congress wouldn't have been able to leverage it in the election campaigns.

  Now some (Digvijay Singh might be one of those) may claim that a 4.5% sub-quota is better than no sub-quota. From whatever reading I have done on the subject, it appears to me that the backward Muslims managed a share greater than 4.5% even before the quota was announced. So it does not guarantee them anything more than they ever had. It can, however, have a negative impact and the Muslims may well be restricted to the quota limit of 4.5%. The sub-quota would, in all likelihood, make the non-Muslim backward classes turn hostile towards their Muslim counterparts. Moreover, it will also distance these quota-aided Muslim from the upper classes within their community (a scenario not unlike the one that exists between the two ends of the Hindu society). In effect, the lower spectrum of the Muslim community would be alienated from all sides and at the same time not gain anything.

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Twilight

And the sun threathens to revoke the light it has been graciously providing for, roughly, the past twelve hours, mirroring a flickering candle about to die. To witness this is unusual enough an event for people like me whose days begin and end not with the sunrise and the sunset. To experience this alone is an extreme oddity.

Normally, this is the time when one looks back at the events of the day, analyzes the details, chuckles at the mini victories conjured, rues the lost opportunities, summarizes the day and plans ahead for the next. Thus the pluses and minuses of the days are settled and only the balance of summary is carried forward to the next day. For someone deprived of this time for an extended period, contemplation and retrospection stretches back a long way in time. As a result, one is left to ruminate over the memories, the recollection of which is greatly shaped by our prejudice, and to interpolate between the old causes and the recent effects.

The memories come back one by one, steadily turning into a trickle and then they rush out through the opened floodgates, accompanied by questions, exclamations and wishful thinking. 'Was I wrong then?', 'Why did I do that!', 'What wretched bit of luck was that!', 'If only..', 'I wish I had not behaved is such a manner..', 'How badly was I manipulated!' and so on and soon regret makes its presence felt rather profoundly. The imperfection of a human-being is amplified by the perfect hindsight, in light of which seldom does the self-esteem not crumble. On a crowded city street, there is neither the beauty of sight nor the fear of unknown to distract one from this destructive bout of retrospection.

Once the self-esteem has crumbled to the trench-levels, some people respond, maybe subconsciously, to arrest a further freefall, just like a well-designed SMPS with an over-current protection circuit responds when the current exceeds a pre-defined level. This results into a tempoarary shutdown preventing further damage. Some need a bit of external prodding, that comes in many forms of distraction, to prevent a further downward slide. And then there are some who have no protection or safety mechanism, internal or external, a bit like some of our hospitals, and these continue to slide to depths deeper than what is imaginable and are lost in the abyss of no return.

The twilight begins to seem less like a period of summarizing and planning and more like a pre-cursor to the end, the end of the day,  the end of actionable moments, the end of light and the beginning of dark, the end of hope. I hate twilight when alone.

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At the base camp

It had been a strenous toil. All along the path, it seemed there were two rivers - one flowing along down south all the way to the Bay of Bengal and another being emptied from above on the marching and riding humans below. The Alaknanda would, of course, absorb the Dhauliganga at Vishnuprayag, the Nandakini at Nandaprayag, the Pindar at Karnaprayag, the Mandakini at Rudraprayag and then finally, after a journey of 190 km from its glacial source, be absorbed alongwith the Bhagirathi into the Ganges at Devprayag. Then there were blocked trails, missing fences, rocky river banks, chanting Sikh pilgrims, amateur trekkers and nature lovers like us with their trekking poles, opportunist food stall owners selling mineral water priced Rs.15 at Rs.40 (not minding the fact that the river running along had sweeter and purer water to offer for free), ponies and their dung and its smell, raincoats and ponchos. And there were the Himalayas lording over everything else as far as one could see..

The climb from Govindghat to Ghangria was steep and seven hours long as per our observation. We had started early morning, although later than what we had decided upon the night before, and reached mid-afternoon. Our well-covered cameras and not-so-well-covered backpacks were weighing us down and finding a place to relieve our backs was the sensible priority. We walked on the solitary path, the trunk road of Ghangria, inquiring with all the hotels along it for a vacant patch, until we found a royal room with 4 beds. We took an inventory on checking in. Of the things missing from the room were fans (none was needed in this freezing cold, electricity-less place) and water (one would have had to be brave to ask for more water there). The things that were available in the room were - i) a one leg wide walking space between the three conjoined, horizontally laid beds and the one vertically laid bed that connected the room's door to the toilet's door, ii) a two feet space on each side on three, conjoined beds for us to lay down our bags and cameras, iii) a few hangers to hang our un-dry-able clothes, iv) walls and a ceiling and beds and blankets. But the most striking part of the inventory lied just outside the door, like an unexpected bonus or an un-dreamt lottery - the unadulterated view of the snow-capped Nandadevi, that appeared to be rising all the while above the menacing clouds and in the process, raising our spirits, the spirits that had taken a battering not as much because of the steep 13km trek that we had endured to reach there but because of the news of closure of the valley of flowers owing to a landslide. We had come to see the valley of flowers (another trek on the following day) and we had seen the Nandadevi.

Sleep took us in her lap before we could lay our heads down. Like the crowd on a train at Dadar pushing out a person wishing to alight before he could contemplate alighting. I dreamt of Valley of Flowers, a dream that was already one year old. Maybe others did as well.

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The siege of Jaisalmer

That fateful day in the year 1294 is still fresh in the local ballads of Jaisalmer. The rulers of Jaisalmer, the Bhatti Rajputs, had defended Jaisalmer for 8 years by applying the scorched earth policy since Allaudin Khilji had laid a siege. The siege had been provoked by the Bhattis' raid on Khilji's huge treasure caravan. During those eight years, Rawal Jethsi, who had sent the children, elderly and sick people to refuge in the surrounding desert area, had died and had been succeeded by his son Rawal Mulraj II who, with his men, was pushed into the Jaisalmer fort, surrounded by Khilji's forces. A commander from the front line of the fort rushed to the Rawal.

"Maharawal sa, the enemy shows no sign of receding and is becoming more and more relentless. Our provisions will not last more than 2 days." the commander continued with his head down "The fort is about to fall."

Rawal Mulraj II looked lost, remniscing the golden days of the golden kingdom. This was the fort in whose narrow lanes the Rawal had played accompanied by the royal guards. This was the place where his coronation had taken place. His kingdom was a key center on the camel caravan routes which connected northern India and central Asia with the ports of Gujarat on the Arabian Sea coast of India and hence on to Persia and Arabia and Egypt. Now the dynsasty founded by Rawal Jaisal was on the verge of annihilation. His voice, clear and unemotional, ordered, "Prepare for the Jauhar!".

More than 20000 funeral pyres were set up and the Rajput women waited, many among them hoping to receive the good news of the enemy's retreat at the eleventh hour, nearby. The hope of survival was crushed when they heard the Rawal. "Jump! The pride of Bhattis will outlive the humanity!" The first queen stepped ahead, touched the Rawal's feet, spoke her last words and jumped into the pyre. "May the Maharawal sa be victorius. I shall wait for your highness in the heaven" were her last words. Then the women swarmed into the pyres and the procession continued until the pyres were exhausted. The remaining women were killed by the swords of their male relatives, who slitted their throats open. 24000 women had committed suicide and now only the men were left, left to fight, in the true Rajputana tradition of Saka, till the last breath. The men, bearing Kesariya bana (safrron coloured dress) and probably high on opium, laid the fort gates open and rode out to attack the enemy and to their deaths. From then, Jaisalmer remained abandoned for many years before the surviving Bhattis reoccupied it. 

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The song of the Valley of Flowers

I just want to be there Away from the vehicles where Our feet will be our only transport With the Himalays in the backdrop Nearly touching the sun floating low With flowers blooming in the valley below

I just want to be there To feel and smell the land where The great sages and scholars trod Which is the Lord's abode Overlooked by peaks covered in snow With flowers blooming in the valley below

I just want to be there To drink from the hole from where The great, mother-rivers emerge To merge, converge and diverge And to cleanse all that is in the way of its flow With flowers blooming in the valley below

I just want to be there To be with myself where The silence screams the holy hymns The swollen heart dreams  The happy dreams and fills up the inner hollow With flowers blooming in the valley below

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Poems that have had a profound impact on me

By the time I was in the ninth standard, I had read a number of English poems in the standard text books and only two, Daffodils by Wordsworth and To Daffodils by Herrick, had had some kind of impact on me. But in the ninth standard, I was exposed to these three poems that have made me a thinker over the years.  The first was Lord Alfred Tennyson's 'A Farewell'. "Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea, Thy tribute wave deliver: No more by thee my steps shall be, For ever and for ever. Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea, A rivulet then a river: Nowhere by thee my steps shall be For ever and for ever. But here will sigh thine alder tree And here thine aspen shiver; And here by thee will hum the bee, For ever and for ever. A thousand suns will stream on thee, A thousand moons will quiver; But not by thee my steps shall be, For ever and for ever. " The poet was asking the small rivulet flowing by to carry on in its course and do its job as always. He stressed that he won't be there forever to overlook the rivulet.  It made me think more of our mortal nature and the relative immortality of the nature around us. I recall spending many nights weeping under the pillow. The second was James Shirley's 'Death The Leveller'. "THE glories of our blood and state  Are shadows, not substantial things;  There is no armour against Fate;  Death lays his icy hand on kings:  Sceptre and Crown  Must tumble down,  And in the dust be equal made  With the poor crooked scythe and spade.  Some men with swords may reap the field,  And plant fresh laurels where they kill:  But their strong nerves at last must yield;  They tame but one another still:  Early or late  They stoop to fate,  And must give up their murmuring breath  When they, pale captives, creep to death.  The garlands wither on your brow,  Then boast no more your mighty deeds!  Upon Death's purple altar now  See where the victor-victim bleeds.  Your heads must come  To the cold tomb:  Only the actions of the just  Smell sweet and blossom in their dust. " The poem spoke of death as the great leveller that treated the kings and peasants alike; a mighty force in face of which every body, weak and strong, rich and poor, stood helpless.  This was one way of looking at death and the one that had seemed to magnify the dread that death brought a hundred times. The third was John Donne's 'Deat Be Not Proud' "Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe, For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow, Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee. From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee, Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee doe goe, Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie. Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell, And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well, And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then? One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die." The poem, unlike the previous two, challenged death's ultimate powers. It argued that death does nothing that poppy or some other charm couldn't do and at best, death causes a sleep that only leads to an eternal awakening; and once death has had its way with all, it was death that would die the ultimate death. :)

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The drive from Bhinmal to Ahmedabad

The drive from Marwar Bhinmal to Ahmedabad took longer than expected. The Rajasthani leg of this journey was bumpy and kept the driver on his toes. We were greeted by the lovely Gujarat state highway 41 (GJ SH41) at Palanpur in North Gujarat. 

The SH41 is flanked by commercial establishments on both sides all along its 125km stretch upto Ahmedabad. There are blocks full of oil refineries in some places, blocks of dairies as well as those of pharmaceutical factories. All this bustle that reinforces Gujarat's economic story is easy to miss when one is in a vehicle that is monotonously racing away on the spotless highway. We also came a cross the sign that read 'The tropic of cancer is passing through this place'.

The monotony proved dangerous as our sleep-deprived driver started to snooze while at the wheels. I glanced to my right and saw the driver's eyes closed while the car moved along at a pretty good clip. Fearing for the lives of all in the car excluding myself, I tapped the then snoring sir on his shoulder. The tap ended up being a bit more forceful than I had intended it to be and this stirred him into action (which was verbal and indirect thankfully).

He started complaining about his lack of sleep over the week and how he had almost refused to drive us to Ahmedabad that night but only agreed because we had a 4 AM flight to catch (of course money was no motivation for him!). Then his eyes twinkled as if he had discovered or spotted a magic potion over my shoulders. I turned around and saw a roadside eating joint and realised that the bloke needed some tea. He excused himself while I stood by the car speaking to my uncle. We discussed the perils of driving and recounted the accidents we had met with on the same stretch of the road near Mahesana and we ultimately concluded that the driver was sleepy because of the heavy dinner at Palanpur for which we had paid. "These blokes don't ever let freebies go by. The guy had eaten more than us two combined at the dhaba" remarked my uncle.

The driver came back smiling and announced to all of us, raising an arm holding a bottle up for us to see, that he had found the cure for his sleep. Uncle and I looked at each other wondering what the bottle could contain as visibility on the highway past midnight was not great.

"I have found the cure for sleep"

"What is it?"

"Soda!"

"Soda?"

"Yes, I will wash my face with soda and that will keep me awake"

"Really?"

"Yes, there was a time when I used to drive 24 hours a day for the whole fortnight and I used to carry you know how many .. (stumbling to conjure up a number to support what I perceived as an exaggeration that in turn was needed to support his anecdote which seemed to have been conjured on fly) err 5.. 5 bottles of soda with me"

"OK, go ahead and wash your face. Hopefully it wont blind you"

"I am not going to keep my eyes open"

"While?"

"While washing my face with soda!"

"You weren't keeping them open while driving either"

After this episode that consumed our precious 20 minutes, we resumed the journey. The driver kept awake for a while and we got within 50 kms of Ahmedabad. The next 50 kms saw us stop another 4 times (would have been more had the soda not been exhausted) before we alighted at the huge airport complex in Ahmedabad. 

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The legendary European Union

The recent European Union outcry against the Libyan dictatorship might appear to quite a few as the cry of their clear conscience. EU, the champion of democracy, the ringleader of liberty, the pioneer of equality and human rights might have done something that was expected of it given the perception it has built around itself. But take a look at the following numbers and decide for yoursellf.

There is no presentation so powerful as one laced with the power of numbers and figures.

Some numbers from the Swedish center, SIPRI:

France sold 100 MILAN model anti-tank missiles to Gaddafi in 2009 for 168 million Euros

Italy sold 10 A-109K helicopters for border patrols (6 of which have been delivered) for 80 million Euros

96 Kh-35 Uran missiles sold by Russia 

Some numbers based on the EU report on arms export

In 2008, Europe sold arms worth 215 million Euros to Libya

In 2009, the figure rose to 344 million euros

Arms sale made by some EU countries to Libya (2008-2009 combined)

taly - 205 million Dollars

Malta - 80 million Euros 

France - 143 million Euros

Germany - 57 million Euros

United Kingdom - 53 million Euros

Portugal - 21 million Euros

Spain - 4 million Euros (sanctioned but not delivered)

Dear EU, before bombing the dictators, stop selling arms to them! Stop having this 'holier than thou' attitude.

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Of an organization and its quest for innovation

"Guys, lets innovate!" 

"Innovation is the key!" 

"We need to innovate more!"

"Our focus has to be innovation!"

Chances are that most of you who work in a service-oriented organization have heard one or many variants of the above statements at your work-place quite often. Most of the time you would have forced yourself to act interested in one of these meetings but somewhere deep down in your heart you know that there is no substance to this in most cases. 

Take for instance the case of this typical organization driven by a top-down strategic management wherein all the decisions are made at the executive level, chiselled into a policy document, which is classified using a number of labels with 'CONFIDENTIAL' being the fim favourite and expected to be followed by the rest of the organization without knowing it fully (leave alone the scope of questioning the rationale). Moreover, the organization is led in manner an accountant maintains his books. The typical approach is to decide the targets for the next year, identifying the areas of optimization, setting up the required optimization targets in the areas identified to meet the overall targets and to leverage the excellent operational model to achieve this targets. Fairly innovative, no?

The focus of the top brass is not innovation per se but innovation in optimization and in acheiving greater efficiency. Some of the ways include hiring from non-traditional resource base and paying 'differentiated' salaries, clamping down on employee promotion cycles, cutting down on learning and development perks as well as stopping the use of tissue papers in the washrooms.

Now lets add two and two. The organization follows a top-down organizational approach with the focus being optimization. So when the lower level managers sing the innovation tune, it is no surprise that it is not met with much conviction from the staff. 

First reason is that even if the lower level management is committed to innovation, the top-down organizational structure makes it nearly impossible for them to drive this. A small step may need a long chain of approval.

Secondly, optimization and innovation don't go hand in hand except when the innovation is aimed at optimation. Innovation doesn't come at $15 an hour or by working 3 additional hours a day. But operational efficiency and optimization as well as customer goodwill, which is the biggest asset in the slavery service industry, do. 

Third, since innovation is not the focus there is no provision for rewarding innovators - for instance your degree puts a bound on you for the rest of your career (Now thats some way of encouraging the employees with 'differentiated' pay from the non-traditional resource bases to innovate!) and even if you prove to be a greater asset for the organization, its against the company's policy that pays an average performer with certain type of degrees more than an outstanding performer with certain other types.

Now having added two and two you would think that in a long run, organizations with such optimization and efficiency-driven policies will end up eroding the good talent they have acquired from the non-traditional resource bases to discrimination and competition alike. Also, the outstanding ones from the traditional resource bases would be lost due to lack of differentiation with the average ones from similar backgrounds. This would lead to it being an organization that manages to retain average performers and lose good performers.

Well that maybe true for organizations in countries with limited resource pools. In India, talent is being spun out at the rate of noughts enabling organizations with this kind of focus to do well in terms of efficiency and optimization and will enable them to do so for a foreseeable future. But this kind of organizations should not utter the word 'innovation'. Thats blasphemous!