Beg your pardon

The picture here was clicked by Dr. Sanjay Garude, a good friend and one of the best knee and shoulder arthroscopy surgeons in this part of the world. In fact, if you go weak in the knees often (despite not being a teenager looking at pretty women), or if you are the types whose shoulders are constantly drooping, you should stop reading this right now and visit his web site. I hope you have internet access while you are recuperating from surgery and will return to read this blog.

Great. Nice to see you back on your knees again and/or able to shrug your shoulders nonchalantly (a word coined either by writers trying to describe the walk of cowboys in the Wild West or by James Hadley Chase to describe his heroes doing everything from walking to having a glass of milk. Why? What did you think they were having?).

Finally to get around to the subject of this post: The photo on top. It’s not just a photo, it’s also a coincidence. Recently, a couple visiting from the USA mentioned their surprise at seeing people who could barely afford a pair of clothes suddenly whipping out mobile phones from their pockets.

I am dreading the day when my children grow up and I have to get them mobile phones. Their bills and frequent upgrades to latest handsets are going to make me look like one of those guys – no money to spend on clothes after settling the cellular expenses. Did you know that the feared prison set up by the British on the Andaman Islands for those serving a life sentence was called the Cellular Jail? The British had foresight. You have to give them that.

The couple, William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand, are some of the nicest people you can meet. So are their children, Malcolm and Fiona. They, William and Jessica, have a web site called Design Observer and they are single-handedly, or rather, couple-handedly creating one of the most comprehensive on-line resources of design. Do visit the website and get to know all the work they are doing. It is worth the trip; even if you are not in Design.

Why am I so all over the place today? To be honest, recently I received an invitation to syndicate my blog posts on a web site. I accepted. However they just don’t accept posts unless they contain a lot of words. There, it’s off my chest. Now to get to the subject of this post:

There are no beggars in Mumbai city. Or rather, the beggars we see all around us are employees of some big conglomerate called something like, ‘Beggars India Limited - A Misfortune 500 Company'. Slogan: Just take it.

Either that or they are members of PGCCU (Parents of Grown-up Children with Cellphones Unlimited).