Posts from — September 2009

The Jacksonville, Florida newspaper runs a column called “Dare to Ask”, where readers can ask uncomfortable or politically incorrect questions. Now when I teach my “Business with India” workshop at Caltech and elsewhere, I alway tell my executive attendees to open up and ask me ANYTHING, without fear of offending me or others. People have asked me about arranged marriage, about cremation, about corruption, about how India can tolerate the British after 200 years of rule, how Indians can play a game like cricket. They have asked about the value of life (and death), about street beggars, about how the land of the Kamasutra is now so apparently conservative and more. I’ve been asked why Indian motels smell too of spice? I’ve been asked if  Indians are mostly doctors, engineers and 7-11 employees.  I do my best to provide nuanced, sensitive answers that bridge the gap between East and West.

So I was not offended, when Philip Milano asked me to help answer a question from Tatyana in Illinois, “Why does it seem that people from  India are always trying to return things to get a better deal, re-use   their coupons, or use coupons and disounts fraudulently? It is way more often Indian people  who are trying to barter or put one over on me to get money.”

Here is the final column as it appeared this week.

Some Indians may ask why I choose to answer such potentially controversial questions.  I firmly believe that we different people can understand each other better, both similarities and differences, we will learn to deal with each other more effectively and have far less stress, wars, and wasted efforts. We can smile, laugh and celebrate our differences, nothing wrong with that.  But staying quiet, simple allows misunderstanding to harden and become prejudice.

Yesterday AP reported that President Obama had decided to host an “Official State Dinner” for the first time in his Presidency and that the chosen occasion was the impending visit of India’s Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. Within hours, the announcement was published on over  500 news outlets (85% of them Indian).  Acceptance of this means a lot to Indian readers. Even the Los Angeles Times, my home town paper carried the story

Do you know exactly what a State Dinner is and how it is different from any regular dinner that the President may host. I didn’t , most Americans don’t and I am sure virtually all  Indians didn’t until yesterday (mental note to Gunjan: research further). But hey whatever it is, “this is yet another sign that India has arrived on the US scene”. That calls for a celebration .

BTW, here are links to a State Dinner held by Michelle Obama and the President in February 2009.  And here’s my home town paper the very same LA Times, talking about the very same event, months ago.

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, regardless of the country.  India is the flavor of the decade.

Sony’s Columbia Pictures will distribute Eat, Pray, Love a feature film to be released in 2011.  Based on Elizabeth Gilbert’s book of the same name, the movie stars Oscar-winner Julia Roberts. The Los Angeles Times reported that shooting in Naples has just been completed and the next stop is India.

Indian media is working itself into a bit of a frenzy, not seen since Angelina Jolie (and husband Brad Pitt) spent time in Pune, for the shooting of A Mighty Heart.

Here’s a story about Indian-American religious leaders giving her advice and here’s another on a similar theme. The Indian Express had a more positive story here.

Lunar crater on dark side, image on right shows water traces

NASA scientists working closely with the India’s space researchers have discovered water molecules in the polar regions of the moon.

Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, launched in October 2008 carried the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, M3 designed specifically to look for water.   M3 was designed and built by a NASA team at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. India carrried M3 and one other American instrument to lunar orbit at no charge to NASA in return for sharing in the date found by the spectrometer.

“Water ice on the moon has been something of a holy grail for lunar scientists for a very long time,” said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This surprising finding has come about through the ingenuity, perseverance and international cooperation between NASA and the India Space Research Organization.”

From its perch in lunar orbit, M3′s state-of-the-art spectrometer measured light reflecting off the moon’s surface at infrared wavelengths, splitting the spectral colors of the lunar surface into small enough bits to reveal a new level of detail in surface composition. When the M3 science team analyzed data from the instrument, they found the wavelengths of light being absorbed were consistent with the absorption patterns for water molecules and hydroxyl.

For the definitive news release, see the Jet Propulsion Lab site and Science Magazine, which talks about a whiff of water. And here is a balanced story on the Indian side from the Indian Space Research Organization. But the media has had a field day with this story.

For American hype about the story here is the New York Times, and here is the Los Angeles Time view. The imaginative journalists at India Today have converted that “whiff” into “large amounts”.  See this.  And the nationalist Indian Express reports it as a purely Indian find in the headline.  Truth is the first casualty, not only of war but also of scientific discoveries in this day and age.  And even a usually reliable source such as the BBC would have us believe the (imaginary) role played by Twitter.  I wonder what Isaac Newton or Louis Pasteur would have to put up had modern media been around during their times.

When President Obama visited Wakefield High School, in Arlington, Virginia earlier today for his speech to school kids, he also opened the floor to questions from students.  Here is a transcript from the White House site.

Mohandas K Gandhi

“Let’s get a young lady in here. Go ahead.”

STUDENT: Hi. I’m Lilly. And if you could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be? (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Dinner with anyone dead or alive? Well, you know, dead or alive, that’s a pretty big list. (Laughter.) You know, I think that it might be Gandhi, who is a real hero of mine. Now, it would probably be a really small meal because — (laughter) — he didn’t eat a lot. But he’s somebody who I find a lot of inspiration in. He inspired Dr. King, so if it hadn’t been for the non-violent movement in India, you might not have seen the same non-violent movement for civil rights here in the United States. He inspired César Chávez, and he — and what was interesting was that he ended up doing so much and changing the world just by the power of his ethics, by his ability to change how people saw each other and saw themselves — and help people who thought they had no power realize that they had power, and then help people who had a lot of power realize that if all they’re doing is oppressing people, then that’s not a really good exercise of power.

So I’m always interested in people who are able to bring about change, not through violence, not through money, but through the force of their personality and their ethical and moral stances. And that’s somebody that I’d love to sit down and talk to.