Analyze This, That & Them

Stocks have been soaring up & down as they please leaving all of us in turmoil. Hey, I am no Economist, but where is the world economy heading? Automotive manufacturing is going through the toughest times ever. Once it was a pride & joy to work, drive & live the Ford way. Today, Ford stock got listed as low as $6! This is grave, also an insult to one of the biggest manufacturer of the world. May be all this has a deeper meaning & things will get better. After all, it’s not always as bad as I think it is. Norms have changed socially & politically across the world & generations have got smaller. May be our generation has witnessed one of the most important transitions of the world in terms of globalization & industrialization.

Lee Iacoca published his new book, “ Where have the good leaders gone?” or something on similar lines. It is so true for the political scenario across the world right now. Americans are still not in a mental state to accept Hillary (female candidate) or Obama (Colored candidate) as their leader. Of course there is this vacuum where there is no hope to have another Gandhiji or Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela. I think on so many fronts; Indian politics may be corrupt, unstable, primitive but is lot ahead socially than American system. Even us Indians think far progressively than my American colleagues who could not digest the fact that I kept my maiden name after I got married. We accepted our leader in Indira Gandhi in 1960s & yes they have not had a Jhansi ki Rani yet for the record!

Roots

As a teenager, I always tried to make sense out of Alex Haley’s book “Roots” which my dad passed on to me for killing time on one summer vacation. My age & lack of experience prevented me from understanding the crux of Haley’s experience. I mean what’s the point of going through the entire heck to discover where your forefathers belong? I also noted it as a kid that my dad harnessed immense importance to his “Roots” or the place where our family actually belonged to in Madhya Pradesh. My only visit to our ancestral small town in MP was as a reluctant teenager & the only reason I visited the place was to make my dad happy. For me, my roots have always been in Nagpur. Place where I was born, grew up, made friends & spent the most valuable period of my life. No matter where I go in India or abroad, my heart calls only this place home. The more I traveled, the more I realized that as my life traces most of its attributes to my family; which again traces roots to MP, Nagpur, My mom’s side, My grandma’s side. So “Me” actually is a maze of all these places with whom I had this subtle connection that I was not aware of consciously. This is a theory, which applies to us all, & now Alex Haley’s hard work makes sense completely.