Holy Ghats And Your Demi Gods

Apple has withdrawn its campaign featuring
Dalai Lama, citing the reason that few people would recognize Dalai Lama and has
substituted aviator Amelia Earhart with the Tibetan monk-chief. Frog was upset, not
because Apple withdrew Dalai Lama, but decided to feature Earhart. Frog believes that more
than Dalai Lama, and Earhart, she would be recognized more. Frog does concede that either
she or Earhart would easily be better known than Dalai Lama. "You mean you don’t know
EARHART! Screamed Frog….Why…she spluttered…she is the second-most well known person
in Asia. Who knows Dalai Lama?" she snorted. "Yeah but he got the Nobel
Prize…." "Nobel, what!" said the Frog. I bet Steve knows all about it,
after that is his Job….Frog was just leaving when the question came form the back of the
room, "you never said who was the first, most well known person in Asia?" Frog
glared piteously and stalked out of the room. Imagine the cheek.

At the other end, Frog was extremely
pleased with NASSCOM Chief Dewang Mehta. In this cacophony of voices of Cassandra, Mehta’s
is one sane voice. Mehta has said that seven cities in UP (yes, Uttar Pradesh) have not
only the infrastructure, like manpower and capita, but are also markets for IT products.
That should gladden many an NRI heart. Quit looking at Delhi and Mumbai, or even Bangalore
and Calcutta…Mehta wants to create cyber cities in Kanpur, Varanasi, Lucknow, and
Dehradun….The Frog can actually see Shiv Nadar, Ashok Soota, and FC Kohli, standing in
the queue to buy tickets for Varanasi to set up their new STPs….Frog can also almost see
the next Nasscom seminar and exhibition in Dehradun, advertised as ‘the most idyllic
place’ to have your convention…and have fun (who wants to do business anyway?). All over
the country, software businessmen are crying hoarse about the shortage of software
manpower, and it had to be the great Mehta of Nasscom to discover the hidden treasures of
manpower pool that IBM, CA, and TCS did not even know existed, and neither did the
Pandeyji of Varanasi, who thought softwear was something that you wore under your dhoti.
Thank you Mehta, we still hope to see you in the Parliament as a minister, never mind the
party….

Frog met Manu Parpia, the MAIT Chief, when
he was busy emplanning for Delhi for his briefing sessions with the press.
"Congrats," said the Frog. You were justifiably mystified, but as the rightful
owner of any good news he said "thanks." "That was superb"…Manu
wouldn’t, just wouldn’t dare, ask what was. Frog continued unmindful, "you gave it to
them right." If Taiwan thinks that they are better than us at Design, they better
watch out, here comes our mate. Frog was in a feisty mood. "Nothing better than
socking a few Taiwanese, they think they are better than us in everything….wait till we
hit them with this design thing…and then with the manufacturing thing." First we
design, then because it is our design, we will manufacture it…right Manu? Who cares, if
the Taiwanese have been designing for the last few years stuff that we only write about.
We have also designed printers and other things… Yeah Okay Okay, but mate, tell me,
whatever happened to something called manufacturing-because-we-were-cheaper (ask Tandon)
or even better still whatever happened to NII….Or have they become such stupendous
successes that we mates have to get into next levels of strategizing….IAC, we mates are
damned good at drawing strategies for the country…so good that we have actually got
three such strategies in the last three years….Check Mate.