Back from Mexico

I have just been back from a business trip to Mexico city - in 3 words I would describe the city as 'warm people', 'beautiful city outskirts' but 'polluted city centre'. The pollution in the heart of Mexico City really bothered me for the initial few days - red eyes and struggling nose. Air pollution is generally such a predicament, nothing is visible (as in you do not see a layer of black smoke or anything similar around) but the sensitive eyes and nose find it difficult to cope with change of atmospheric cleanliness.

Mexico carries with it a beautiful history, a history of the Aztec warriors who were invaded and conquered by the Spaniards. Over the weekend, on Saturday, I went for a trip to the beautiful pyramids of Teotihuacan. It was a spell-binding experience.



It is a day trip from Mexico city and I took a guided tour from the hotel. Given taxi drivers do not know any English and only speak Spanish (very strange for a city with such a proximity to the US), as a lone female traveller I could only trust my hotel booked tours. The day was well spent in the company of some other tourists mainly from South America and a knowledgable guide who portrayed the city's history as somebody who has lived there since ages and seen it all himself. The fluctuations in his voice added that extra thrill in every story he told about his great country.

I also drank the water from a Cactus plant called agabe, which after fermentation results in the famous Mexican drink Tequilla.



On Sunday I went to a small town of Cuernavaca to see a very ancient and famous cathedral followed by a trip to the Silver City Taxco. Taxco is a sweet little town with lots of silver jewellery on sale. With Mexico claiming to be largest producer of silver, you would expect the prices of silver in this silver city to be lower than anywhere else in the world, but actually that is not the case. On asked why so, 'we have to buy silver from the Government and this way they stabilise the prices and maintain its market price globally', a Silver jewellery manufacturer informed me. The city is on a hill, but the superior quality of mountain roads impressed me a lot.



Overall it was a good experience to visit Mexico. Next time I visit the place again, I will not forget to carry a pollution mask and with me a small vocabulary of Spanish words to communicate with the taxi drivers. Do share with me if you have been to Mexico and shared any similar experiences as mine or anything else that you may want to share! Gracias!

Back with house cleaning

I am back, back with a bang! I know every few months I rise like a phoenix only to get buried again by time constraints. Apologies, but I have been immensely busy with things. However, I suppose never will have enough time or thoughts to blog everyday. I can only say hats off to Amitabh Bachchan who always manages to find time and thoughts to blog even though his schedule is 10 times busier than mine. I will try to follow his foot steps. Just as in my previous resurrections, I have made a few changes to the look and feel of the blog including managing to get approval for the AdSense advertisement feature.

Apart from work which is defined as a job which keeps me quantitatively sound, something more closer to heart and interesting that I have been busy with is my charity work. A blogpost is due where I would like to update you on how 2010 was for the charity along with the recent developments of 2011.

2010 also saw some memorable trips around Europe, to be continued in 2011. The more I see different places in the world, the more convinced I feel that India is a miniature version of the world. It is the most fascinating country which contains the flavour of every possible geographical contour you can find around the world. If you disagree, then please forgive me as I am still in the process of validating the statement by visiting more places. The only thing that we need to work on to really make it a world class place for everybody is cleaning. Cleaning of not only the physical dirt, but also of the convoluted minds! I see the Adarsh Nagar scam on News channels and feel disgusted on the way in which the so called ‘rich’ people do whatever possible to snatch away from those who rightfully deserve things. This is unacceptable. Honesty and integrity in any profession is not too much to expect from anybody, therefore it is high time that we all clean ourselves up.

One thing that scares me when I am travelling in India, which is totally in contrast to travelling in European countries, is the quest of finding clean toilets. Can those who are in public services and reading this blog ensure that there are clean public toilets in your area? There was a point when I really wanted to take UPSC and become an Indian civil servant just so that I can ensure that there are cleaner public toilets than what are available. That dint materialise, but with growing economy in the country, I don’t think this is going to a major investment exercise for the government provided all the money is used for the cause instead of making its ways into the deep pockets.

Some food for thought for you here and some motivation so that you can kick off a cleaning drive in your area; may be the governments should keep awards for nominations of the cleanest state or the cleanest city in the country. Let’s not only have a Green India, but also a Clean India!

The Indian Growth Story

Every time I fly back home, India amazes me in a positive way. This time I am coming down India within less than four months, and the development brings a smile to my face - the kind of smile I have while coming out of a job interview knowing that I have hit the bulls eye with my answers, a quiet sense of delight. A pleasure I don’t share with anyone until the final glorious outcome. I feel the same right now while seated besides a gentleman coming from a very modest background. His cap is dirty and wet with sweat, his clothes showing off the hard labour he is putting in to save enough to fly back to his home town. I feel this is an achievement. In the past I have really longed that some day I would sit beside an Indian farmer in domestic flights, and it seems like I am getting closer to that dream becoming a reality. The sense of quite pleasure is because I would like to wait until all the poor Indian farmers can make this as their lifestyle choice.

Contrary to this, on my international flight from London to Delhi I met a young Indian entrepreneur. He is only 23 years old and he is heading the technical team in his father’s company. I had a long conversation about the work he is doing so as to assure myself that the position is not a gift of silver spoon but something he has earned. And the young chap did manage to impress me with his knowledge in the sector he is working on. However, like most Indians, he doesn’t appreciate everything that is Indian. Purdue university graduate he feels life is much better in the West and that India has no future. This irked me and what started off thereafter was a long conversation where I broke all his myths about western life style from my experience of living the past three years in London. When the system works there, all is fine, the moment things break down; they take painfully long in rectification.

India is growing and it will be a success story. If only all of us can be a little honest to ourselves and our nation. Commonwealth Games 2010 has exposed corruption to the extent one could not even believe, and I would like to see all those guilty accused.

The Origin of Agarwals

Once upon a time there used to live a king called Maharaja Agrasen in an ancient state of India called Agroha. He appeased a beautiful princess called Madhavi in a swayambar her father King Nagaraj organised for her. Swayambar was a practice in ancient Hindu culture where the father would organise massive social gatherings by inviting many agile and able prospective suitors to win the heart of his daughter. In that gathering she is expected to put a garland on one of the men as an indication of her choice and marry him during that event. She chose King Agrasen over all the other able and equally competitive prospective suitors. It is believed that the Agarwal clans originated from King Agrasen and the 18 children he had with Queen Madhavi gave the names to the 18 gotras in the Agarwal clan. I am a Mittal gotra married into a Garg gotra family. In Agarwals, marriage within the same gotra is prohibited as they are considered as siblings. However marriage of Agarwal with another Agarwal is allowed and preferred as long as the two belong to different gotras out of the 18 gotras.

King Agrasen with his dedicated meditation pleased Goddess Mahalakshmi (the Goddess of wealth and prosperity in Hindu religion). She blessed him and asked him to give up knighthood (the Kshatriya tradition) and become a Vaishya (i.e. follow the tradition of business) for the sake of prosperity of his people. She asked him to establish a new kingdom and promised that she would bless his descendants with prosperity and wealth.

The reason I started digging into the history of my origin is precisely here. Sometimes when I feel lost in this fast paced world, I ask myself the questions of who I am and what I am. More often than not, I have found answers to such questions burried in history. Being a descendant of Maharaja Agrasen, I hail from a family who has never known what working for somebody means. From my knowledge of my great grandfather to my father, all have been businessmen. They have traded goods, employed people and created wealth for themselves and the society. During my growing up days, I have assisted the family in doing so. My generation across most of the Agarwal families, if I may say so, is trying to break this family tradition and do something different on their own. They are trying to create a mark in the service sector instead of taking up business. To challenge yourself by doing something which is not a proven path can mystify you at times.

My digging the history also comes timely when the big verdict on Ayodhya has just been declared by the High Court in India. I have heard the youth in India saying that there are bigger problems to take care of, let’s keep history behind and move on. Does it really matter whether there was a temple or a mosque or does it really matter if there now should be a temple or a mosque in that place? I agree that this does not matter. But what matters is that this problem exists in the society and just like any other problem it needs to be taken care of. Ignoring a problem cannot be a solution to it.

I have been so irregular with my blogging in the recent times that I can imagine to have lost the regulars. However, for those who still have been checking my blogs once in a while, hope you have liked the new look.

Source: Wikipedia for information on the origin of Agarwals.

A letter to myself

You know dear, there used to be a time in my life where I would just not care about earning money. I did not want to earn money as I used to think that it is not money which brings happiness but love. A lady in a stock trading training presentation said that people are shy about earning money; they feel that it is evil to earn a lot of money – it actually was true for me. I actually was somebody who used to feel that earning lot of money changes people and they become unsocial. Their perspective towards life change, therefore their priorities. That was the reason I joined the NGO for street kids as a teacher because I thought earning money and giving them money is not going to help – rather teaching them and interacting with them is going to.

Those days while I was teaching them, I was also lecturing at St. Stephen’s. I would wear very simple clothes when I would go to teach – a cotton kurti with churidaar, a pair of chappals and a little hand bag, that’s it. No ostentation. I was getting Government scholarship for PhD and some money from Stephen’s teaching, and that was more than enough for me to live an adequate life.

Dear, I believed that teaching is the best job to do as you are enlightening people with your knowledge. It’s a noble job. While I was teaching the SBT kids, I realised that I was helping them dream. Can you imagine such a big responsibility that is? It can hurt them so much if I showed them dreams they will not be able to achieve, so I had to be very careful in everything I said. They shared with me how they ran away from their families. I felt like crying. They were so talented but with no resources to do anything with their talent. It was summers when I was teaching them, and the room where I would teach them hardly had one fan. It used to be hot. I used to enjoy eating a lot of mangoes during summers and one day I felt like buying lots of mangoes for everybody at SBT. That was the first time when I realised that I was not earning enough to be able to do so freely. I had to think twice before I could do something like this on my own.

This is the point where the enlightenment came to me that if I have the opportunities and the talent to earn money, I should do that. Not everybody gets such opportunities just like those kids. And this way I will be able to help them achieve their dreams and not just give them some knowledge about some examination subject. That day I told myself that earning money is not a bad thing. Those who are earning money are creating wealth in the economy which in turn helps everybody.

Today when I look back, I feel I have come a long way. The person I am today, I was not so a few years back. I don’t know if this transition is for my own good or bad, but I can definitely see that it will help me achieve the goal of helping those kids better this way than merely teaching Mathematics to five Class-X students at the shelter home in a big hot room with one fan. My charity here acts as Friends of SBT and helps raise funds and awareness for various projects that SBT undertakes to facilitate the kids in getting closer to their dreams in whatever way possible.

Every little that we do really helps.

My sports diary

I have never been a sportsperson in my life- the only times I remember playing sports formally was in seventh grade in school annual sports day (I won second prize in some event I can't remember) and the last time as a post-graduate student (I won a second prize again, in shot-put). Unofficially I used to play terrace-cricket with my younger brother as a kid and he would invariably bowl me out on the first ball to my utter diaappointment.

Nevertheless, I have always thoroughly enjoyed watching sports. Sitting in my relaxed couch watching people sweat it out probably gave me a lot of pleasure-more than actually going and doing it myself.

Probably like any other Indian kid and specially any other Bengali kid, I grew up watching lots of cricket. Be it exams or the earth quake, nothing could me from watching it (exception being the amazing 2002 world cup where I promised myself to study harder than ever. It paid off well as I got the best marks, but it was the toughest sacrifice given than India reached so close to the dream). I wrote in my earlier post the overwhelming experience I had the day I visited Oval (and Lords thereafter) for the 2020 world cup cricket matchs.

The sporting experience in the UK is not complete without some tryst with football and this encouraged me to go for an Arsenal match(I was living at a five minutes walk from the stadium, so can call it my 'home team'). It was the most exciting match I had experienced, so much of energy - both on field and on the stands. I then also got an opportunity to see another England's football match with a guest appearance play from David Beckam (that's what he does in matches - comes and goes, wonder how he affords to be so stylish with such performances).

One other thing that I have grown up watching has been lawn tennis. Childhood was spent in the era of Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras and my youth is enjoying the thrills of watching Roger Federrer and Rafael Nadal. I am excited that I have managed to secure the live match tickets of the ATP world tour final match which I am hoping would be between the two of them!

That's it! This is all that I have done in my sports life yet. A small blogpost is all that is required to cover it. Some dog racing and horse racing here and there to add some bit of spice. I am however anticipating some marathons, treks or hiking this year or the following years. My relaxed life on the couch or on the stadium stands will now get replaced by running around the shops to buy running shoes / trekking shoes. Am I excited? Sure I am.