Why Steve Jobs Was Not A Genius

A lot has been written about Steve Jobs and how he revolutionized multiple industries by thinking differently, sticking to his gut instinct and not following analytical advice. I broke down some of his achievements and concluded what made Steve Jobs great is not that he eschewed formulae but that he stuck to them so rigorously. I cite here two specific examples: Steve the strategist, helping Apple achieve the highest market capitalization of all its peers, constantly outwitting the competition. Second, his legendary sales skills which emanated from charisma, as were evident during his release presentations.


The first lesson from Steve Jobs is from his triumphant return as Apple's CEO. Apple had recently been pulverized in the press, with Michael Dell famously suggesting it be sold. Steve Jobs' success emanated not from liquidating those assets but then defining what those assets were and directing them correctly. He realized that Apple had unique assets but lacked focus. In that very speech, he mentions Apple's immensely motivated employees who could produce great design but had engineers who were about as good as the next best competitor. The lesson from business school - play to your strengths. Target a customer who loves what is good about you, does not mind what is bad about you and is poorly served competitively.

This textbook strategy led Jobs to consistently target brand conscious customers who loved Apple's aesthetics, were confused by clumsy mobile phones and laptops and did not currently have a solution to turn to. A critical case in point, the launch of the iPod and the iTunes in response to youth of the early 2000s being hounded by copyright violations for downloading pirated songs through networking sites such as Kazaa and Napster. While he did not do market research that resulted in reams of ungainly numbers, he did his market research through observing the world around him- or technically speaking - ethnography. In hindsight, this formula, when applied repeatedly gave the world the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.

When you are playing in a commodity market, how do you maximize profits? You could cut costs and lower prices. But business sense and foresight does tell you that price wars are always a bad idea, particularly against competitors who are equally well endowed with marketing power. Jobs decided his only way to survive was to expand the category Apple played in. When faced with Windows monopolizing the software world in the late '90s, Steve Jobs responded by focusing on a macro market that was a superset of Microsoft's target - that of consumer electronics. Similarly, Google and MySpace became successful by focusing on specific niches which Apple could have done too. It was since Jobs realized Apple's strength was design, not better software code.

When the going is tough, play to your strengths. When the going gets good, develop other strengths. And that is what Apple followed by starting off with great design and then quickly setting up a world class supply chain process that included hiring the now famous, Tim Cook. It was this textbook decision that further consolidated Apple's cash coffers and keeps them ringing to this day, even in the middle of global financial gloom. Steve Jobs genius lay not in waving a wand to create industries but truly understanding the formulae to the problems he was solving, breaking it down to brass tacks and then executing flawlessly.

I come to the second celebrated talent attributed to Steve Jobs, that of being a great salesman. I came across a YouTube video on presentation and compared it to Steve Jobs' style. It was astounding how accurately Jobs followed the recommended suggestions. He setup his themes early on, he used slides merely as a visual aid, he always tied all his points to the major theme and most impressively, kept the audience engaged by transitioning well between the ideas, almost like the author of a gripping novel. Clearly, he adjusted his vocabulary to suit his layman audience. Watch any video of a Steve Jobs presentation, and you will realize it is not the work of a genius but of one who practiced rigorously and executed repeatedly.

Roger Federer might be called a genius but he is also known to possess an acquired technique that has been honed close to being perfect. Freeze any of Pele's plays and you would be hard pressed to see structural flaws. No wonder they are each at the top of their games. I think what is surprising is not that these men are such geniuses but why there are not so many more of them? Maybe genius lies not in being gifted but in perfecting the right method. Why do businesses fail repeatedly fail to choose the right strategies? Even so, why does execution fail? What creates success? Working hard and finding the right formulae or being gifted by god with the exact skills?

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea

Jules Verne is history’s least credited clairvoyant. Way back in 19th century France, he accurately described the mechanics of nuclear submarines in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, set the precedents for world travel in his epic Around the World in Eighty Days, and foresaw man landing on the moon with From the Earth to the Moon. In a way, his writings also envisaged a much more global world, albeit fraught with superpower rivalry, in that all his books have protagonists with different nationalities. From the British Phileas Fogg, the Indian Captain Nemo to the adventures of the German duo of Prof Von Hardwigg and his nephew in penetrating to the center of the earth through the lava tube of an extinct volcano in Iceland. It is this avant-garde world conjured up that keeps his works contemporary for eternity.


While most of the predictions in his book eerily came true within a century, a journey to the center of the Earth remains one of mankind’s unfinished tasks. Reading his book however, the reader is carried away into a world of unflinching scientific reason where the boundaries of human thought are continuously extended. In Jules Verne’s world, every phenomenon has an explanation, every land has its rules and the world moves around with clockwork predictability. What distinguishes Verne however from the best thinkers of the era is how lucidly his language captures the imagination of a layman audience. Today, most of his books, all involving advanced scientific theories, are prescribed even to children.

The Journey to the Center of the Earth narrates a subterranean expedition to trace the footsteps of a fictional 12th century Icelandic explorer, Arne Saknussemm, whose encrypted manuscripts are discovered by the German professor and his nephew. The journey starts with an accurate description of the Icelandic landscape that is today known to be the composed of extensive lava flows, geysers and geological formations endemic to that island alone. This is incredible since all Jules Verne had was academic knowledge without ever having visited that remote country. The crater of the extinct volcano Snaeffels is the start of the descent into the bowels of the Earth, where scientific observation literally gives way to the vivid imagination of Jules Verne.

The downward voyage exposes the travelers to innumerable adventures including an array of steep caverns, a subterranean river of steam, acoustic phenomena that allows voices to travel miles at once, a netherworld ocean with prehistoric creatures that have long been extinct from the surface. While, Verne’s scientific predictions in this particular novel, have since been refuted by the real world and the Earth’s interior is now known to be too hot for such an expedition, Verne does vindicate himself with some accurate geology that describes the eras of the earth peeling away as the journey cuts through the crust, with the scientists periodically finding fossils of animals and plants from progressively older times as they descend towards the center.

To cut the story to the chase, the practical impossibility of reaching the center is also made evident when they encounter a volcano at the final stages of the journey whose untimely eruption carries them back to the surface, only to become the travelers who have penetrated the deepest depths of the sphere but not quite made it to the center.

Of all Jules Verne’s classics, the Journey to the Center of the Earth is as relevant today as it was when it was first written. Today, scientists from the western world are working tirelessly in Chile to rescue coal-miners who have been trapped five miles below the surface. While using equipment to photograph their lives down under, NASA finds that even in those depths, it is possible to sustain existence for months on end. In the backdrop of this crucial rescue operation which is surprisingly being led by scientists and not the military, spare a thought for the sage who thought all this was possible a hundred and fifty years ago.

A Turkish Delight for Christmas Time

If the story of human civilization were ever to be dramatized, Turkey would appear in every act. From the genesis of modern society in Mesopotamia to the ensuing advances of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Turkey has a history that reads like a capstone of all worldly knowledge. Needless to say, god created the world and decided Turkey would have pride of place at the very center.

Being in the perpetual limelight eventually made it the most vaunted prize for all leading empires across the eras. The Hittites from Sumer made it their home before fleeing underground during the Phoenician conquest from today’s Israel and the Hellenistic invasions by Alexander of Macedonia. The Roman Empire took reins thereafter, building an eastern contender to Rome that they came to call Byzantium.

Byzantium became the leading light of the world, continuing to prosper after Rome’s decline. It was the passageway between East and West, the western tail of the Silk Route to China and later became the Eastern terminus of the Orient Express. It served as the beacon for Christianity starting with Emperor Constantine and evolved through the course of the Crusades into the Ottoman Caliphate of Islam by which time it had come to be known as Constantinople. And then in 1930, like an artist turning over a new canvas, Istanbul was born.

Having changed hands so often, Istanbul developed a delicate taste in food, music and the fine arts, galvanizing the best flavors from around the world. Epitomizing this is the Haghia Sophia, that was originally envisioned by Holy Roman Emperor Justinian as a leading church of the times, that became a mosque under Mehmet the Conqueror and now functions as one of the world’s finest monuments to religious unity.

Istanbul often went one up on its imported concoctions. The Sultanahmet Mosque was designed to exceed the splendor of the Haghia Sophia. Built with six minarets, which at that time were only allowed in Mecca, today the Blue Mosque of Sultanahmet imperiously towers over the lanes of Istanbul that have cradled humanity throughout its existence. The muezzin’s cry to prayer pierces the sky five times a day, as the devout hastily perform their ablutions and run in to offer namaz on a satin carpet amidst dazzling ornate Ottoman chandeliers that hang from the blue tiles that give the mosque its sobriquet.

In the days of the Caliphate, aristocratic Istanbul prayed at the Blue Mosque and headed off to the Topkapi Palace to pay their homage to the Sultan. En route, plebian Istanbul was populated by a variety of hawkers plying their trade, artists waiting for a scene to etch and lovelorn couples who wanted the artists to immortalize their affections. Today is no different. Hawkers dressed in costumes roast chestnuts while their neighbors sell the heavenly orchid milk drink Sahlep.

Signs of the west though are hard to miss. Trams ply their way through cobblestoned alleys climbing and descending undulating terrain reminiscent of Western Europe. Neon lights light up the sky. A steamer trumpets its way across the Bosphorous bringing in tidings from the other continent. The railway station at Sirkeci has erased memories of the Orient Express but for the very gothic exterior. Everything is written in the Latin script and the Turks have taken to ham and eggs for breakfast.

Typical of this schizophrenic shift to the west is Taksim square with its artery Istiklal Caddesi consisting of bars, bistrots and sweet shops lined in an orderly fashion. And then, it is the weekend crowd, the ensuing traffic jams, the blaring horns and the ensuing delightful interchanges that bring the traveler back to Asia. If you ever look up at the skyline, you see not skyscrapers but the uniquely enchanting pencil ends of the myriad Ottoman minarets, silhouetted against an amber sky, that buttress the devout Islamic soul of the city.

This soul grows more enchanting in the interior. Cappadocia, a vast plain sculpted into a Martian landscape of conical rocks made possible through the erosion of softer bottom sedimentary rock while keeping intact the harder upper lava crust. Besides the natural history of the giant volcanic eruption, Cappadocia also reads like an epic lifeline of mankind where the visitor can peel away the layers of modernity and step into a sepia tinted age that is all too forgotten today.

The vast underground cave city of Derinkuyu with seven self sufficient subterranean layers bears tell tale markings from the Sumerians starting 1500 BC, Jews and Christians thereafter. The cave churches in Goreme contain early Christian iconography from the sixth century and ornate images of Christ from the tenth. And unsurprisingly, that lifeline of history is still being uncovered. The Roman ruins at Sobesos were chanced upon in 2008 and unearthed the oldest complete mosaic art work anywhere in the world.

The Roman mosaics in time evolved into Ottoman carpets that have since become warmly evocative of Middle Eastern charm. To this day, tiny shops spill out their carpets on to the streets enticing the passerby to peep in to see how such a tiny place could possibly look so opulent. If thus trapped, the passerby would certainly partake of well sweetened Turkish tea and a few hours thereafter walk out with a few supposedly antique rugs that he or she had no intention of buying originally.

The Turks, call upon their Asian faculties to drive a bargain and often top it off with European sophistication. While an Iranian vendor at the Spice Bazaar wistfully told me that Turkey had no birthright to have named Turquoise after itself, he gleefully suggested I buy a pinch of the world’s costliest saffron that came from Iran. Seeing me unmoved, he suggested the cheapest alternative, which was the Indian version. Knowing well how Indian saffron looked, I realized he was selling turmeric for about the price of the rarest Kashmiri fragrance.

The cuisine of Turkey, more than anything else, represents the eternal dilemma of facing both Europe and Asia. The ubiquitous Turkish Delight is both quintessentially Asian in appearance and European in content. Kunefe looks like it was passed across the spice route from India, but along the way picked up an Italian cheese filling. Turkish coffee would pass off as a thick black soup if in Europe with only the cloying aftertaste reminding you of its very Asian essences. Africa, by the way, has never been too far away either.

Being at the center of the globe had made the Turkish indispensable allies and worthy foes at all times. To this day, the Turks identify equally with the Iranians to the east as much as with the Bulgarians to the west. Turkey’s past as the crown jewel of the Islamic world makes it an avuncular weeping shoulder for distressed Iraqis and Afghans. Its economy if allowed into the European Union could eclipse that of Germany while balancing the western world with a moderately Islamic heavyweight. Either way, if history is anything to go by, Turkey tends to choose sides and rapidly shinny up to the top.

China Paranoia is Irrelevant

China's recent overtaking of Japan as the world's second biggest economy, immediately begs two questions – if and when China will surpass the United States as a superpower, and who can gatecrash China's party. In this two part series I argue that both questions are relatively unwarranted for sometime more to come.



I do feel for now that China is unlikely to surpass the United States as anything more than a much more populous, larger market. The United States, today accounts for much of the world's innovations and holds unmatched progress in negotiating the internet, which it invented and which has become world currency now. It's dominance in research is far too overwhelming, with a system that both encourages government funding and intercourses with the marketplace through corporate involvement. The consumer is far more a participant in American research than being a student. China's research potentials are restrictive, minimal and reminiscent of the Soviet utilitarianism. More often than not, Chinese research has resulted in creating pastiches of American progress and duplicating them cheaper. Chinese progress, although commendable are restricted to a few fields, while the United States is today the Earth's representative country in outer space. Its healthcare system, though straddled with a confounding polity, is still fundamentally avant-garde from the rest of the world. Its military prowess need not be advertised. Furthermore, the United States has often revolutionized industry, often creating new ones in the process, thus enabling jobs to be created all over the world – the Indian outsourcing industry being a prime example. China, is still a competitor to most countries in their industries.



In education, the United States has roughly fifty institutions, each which attract quality brains not just from within but from all over the world. It can be well postulated that the world's experts on most subjects from maternity to nanotechnology have at some point of time, been educated in America. More fittingly, the United States has created a selection system for these institutions that focuses merely not on academic prowess but on readiness to lead the world in change, as evinced by its interview and recommendation based evaluation. China, meanwhile is filling its universities with entrance examination winners, focusing on skimming away its top academics into the government. As a result, while China can lead effective think-tanks, it is only when they come out, that the thoughts are put to progressive and creative economic use.



The United States of America gains from the remnants of the English speaking erstwhile British Empire. The soft power of the United States is all too easily assimilated by the world's people compared to an almost incomprehensible, shadowy China. In world business, the United States is far more likely to befriend an alien culture than the People's Republic can hope to for some time. It is perhaps for that very reason that such a mass of highly skilled immigrants flock to the United States to settle down in the current era's definitive culture. The Chinese are yet an enigma, a country too homogenous and supposedly restrictive for intellectual osmosis to seep in.



Finally, in my opinion, China's place as the world's second biggest economy is only rightful as being the world's biggest marketplace. It's chief advantage in enforcing rapid growth has been a focused unchallenged leadership. However, as with the Soviet Union, Colonial Japan and with reservations, pre-war Germany (all of which were eerily second biggest economies), such alarming unidirectional growth only means an equally alarming disenfranchised lot that are barred from participating. As with dissident gulags in the USSR, Koreans and the Chinese under the Japanese to the rest of Europe under Germany, China with its singularly resonating march, hides a nation with seething discontent. China has to contend for the day this suppressed subcutaneous maelstrom can undo all its economic progress.



In today's world, the United States has been the showpiece of the Earth to the outside Universe. It is a veritable museum of many cultures, existing for the most part in harmony with each other. It leads the world's collective thought. Though it does not always do right, it remains ensconced in public imagination, enough to be the nation that matters most. In the distant past, China has played similar roles, advancing far ahead of the rest of the world. The Chinese civilization traces the longest years in continuous existence. China has a profound heritage that has cradled the rest of the world in its infancy. But from today, China will have to wait a long while and endear itself to many more people if one day, all roads are to lead to Beijing.

The Best Comedy Show

Much of my life has been spent watching sitcoms. In some ways, they have influenced a lot of what became of my life. My daily dose of Friends and Seinfeld in late school years kept me away from my books for long enough to reflect in my persistently mediocre marks. Later on, after a hard day pretending to work, there was nothing that satisfied the idle mind than an hour watching How I Met Your Mother, Arrested Development or Two and a Half Men. I have always wanted to pen which I think is the best show of them all.

Two and a Half Men is disqualified as the top horse almost immediately. While, initial seasons were quite funny, the show failed to keep up with the aging of Jake from mischievous boy who innocently partook in adult humor beyond his age. As the seasons passed, the womanizing Charlie Sheen playing Uncle Charlie, often transgressed the lines between humorous and obnoxious with Jake clearly having outgrown his likeability.

The ending of Friends in the early 2000s left audiences gasping for more. Of all the clones that came out about late twenty-somethings stumbling through life in New York City, How I Met Your Mother early on crafted itself a perfect pitch with its next door characters in Ted, Lily, Marshall and Robin, and struck a home run with a dash of flamboyance in the enigmatic, overconfident Barney Stinson. Things seemed headed for legen-wait for it-dary fame when in season four, the producers seemed to have forgotten their title implying a search for the narrator’s wife and needlessly wove the audience into yarns that now seem impossible to untangle. Somewhere along the line, the producers of How I Met Your Mother simply gave away that almost their entire show was getting to be a predictable pastiche of Friends.

Seinfeld against Friends is a tough argument. Friends, for many, was the proverbial dinner time family unifier, that generations together would come together to watch. Children gleefully regaled the antics of Joey and Phoebe as much as matrons sympathized with the excessively finicky Monica. Ross and Rachel became the enduring symbol for a generation of strained amorous relationships while Chandler inspired many a socially inept man.

Seinfeld pioneered the idea that the common man as a theme could be more fascinating than anyone gifted with special prowess. If for nothing else, Seinfeld deserves all its critical acclaim for having stuck to its unassuming, quotidian humor that makes it all at once so realistic that we could actually think that the show was a live act. It does not attempt to pontificate. It almost self depreciatingly portrays its characters as elements of base instincts. While it may be easy to call George Constanza a self centered sloth, the show often capitalizes on his sheer humanity and never forces us to either cheer him on or ridicule him. Not all of Jerry’s jokes make us laugh and Kramer does get annoying at times. But we all are left thinking this is exactly how a live act should really be. The show’s one falling- a very steep fall in standards at its fag end. Jerry Seinfeld probably realized that his game was up with its final episode ending in all the four ending up in prison.

For my favorite all time however, I will have to stick with Friends. From all the failings of its characters, it taught many of us that life was scarcely intended to be perfect. It taught us to empathize even with the most unlikely of situations, such as Joey’s wishing to be friends with an eight year old. It made us twitch with anticipation, each time Monica yelled or Rachel sighed. Friends, for most of us was really about family, and taking heart even in the most desperate situation. Little wonder that, despite having watched it end to end a million times, it gives me great pleasure each time to be able to complete its dialogs. How you doin’?

A Feisty Teen

Rio de Janeiro greeted us warmly, both with an exuberant sun and with characteristic traffic snarls onthe highways. Our large bus would periodically seek refuge in narrow lanes, with the frequent outcomeof getting stuck, obstructing other passers and eventually spreading the chaos of the roads to otherwisequiet localities. While repeatedly extricating ourselves from these knots, I got to see Brazil up close fromthe inside.

Brazil is the quintessential teenager. It often goes to bed at absurd hours and springs up buoyantlyprepared to exceed the previous night’s bacchanalian festivities. It has an overwhelming appetitefor meat, packing its churrascarias, specialized steakhouses serving different parts of the cow, oftenuntil midnight. It is also quick to forget its woes, drowning them amidst endless glasses of caipirinha,shaking to samba beats and spreading free love to all of humanity. It is both elegant, when it wishes anddelightfully chaotic while being itself. Brazil is all at once bold, wildly appreciative of the eccentric andwhimsically changing flavors to keep up with the times.

Daytimes in Brazil are slower than nights, not in the least represented by the traffic. These jams areoften lively affairs, sometimes the result of riots over the arrest of “innocents” as we experienced inRecife or the green light of a signal being stolen for someone’s private use. Alternately, these long waitsare a perfect excuse for acrobatic displays such as a back-flip over knives in mid traffic or a team ofpassionate skaters practicing on one side of the road.

Passion fills soccer stadiums as Brazilians voice their appreciation for the goalkeeper or disgruntlementwith the referee with equal ferocity. Passion fills supermarkets as couples embrace each other obliviousto oncoming shopping carts. Passion, once again brims over the beaches, feverishly rising with thetide, seamlessly blending the Brazilian artistry in football and volleyball to inspire hybrid games such asfootvolley (akin to beach volleyball played with feet) and fresco ball (beach tennis). The seafront quiteapparently is set for the Olympic spotlight. The other areas are making up their explanations.

Brazil gets away with explanations that would be quite unusual in other places. When suddenly facedwith a flat tire on an empty road, the driver blamed it on a stray bullet. A bar owner sensing an invasionby international students decided to turn it into a highly profitable hostage situation by charging aprincely per capita ransom of a hundred dollars ‘exit fee.’ With the Olympics coming visiting to Rio, theiconic Christ the Redeemer was busy being spruced up resulting in scaffolding obscuring the normallymajestic sight. A cheerful Brazilian explanation however was offered, “It is not every day that you see Jesus Christ being bathed.”

Brazil is vaguely aware of India but is unsure of what connotations to associate with it. A samba showput on for foreigners invited people from each country on stage to perform with them. Upon mycomplaining that India was conspicuously left out, the host of the show then told me it was the firsttime, he had ever seen an Indian tourist. When I told him, India had just about the same traffic jams, thesame disparity and the same neighborhood coffee shops as Brazil, he looked at me quite disbelievinglyand asked, “But why are Indians then known for discipline.”

That discipline was to earn me quite some embarrassment one day when I was dining with some EastAsians. As I walked up to pay my bill, an old Brazilian woman accosted me and asked me if I was Indianand vegetarian. When I responded in the affirmative, she then turned to my Oriental friends who weredeeply proud of their meat based diets and said sternly. “Indians are blessed souls since they do not killanimals while all of you will die of pain.” Needless to say, the rest of the evening was not very pleasant.

Brazil’s feistiness characteristically spills into the office. A certain Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, once pricked his thumb and refused to work ever since, preferring to go on strike indefinitely. In Brazil, they electedhim President. David Neeleman, the former CEO of JetBlue Airlines who now runs its Brazilian clone,Azul, invited us students to start up competing low cost airlines in Brazil and then served a warningsaying “I will then kick you all the way down hill”.

The hillsides of urban Brazil are frequently inhabited by the favela or shantytown dwellers. Thesesquatter settlements, much like slums in India have often been blamed for Brazil’s violent crime rate.However, most inhabitants of the favelas participate in daily Brazilian life, driving buses and washingclothes, being integral cogs enabling the richer class to function. Most importantly, that tucked away,misunderstood Brazil often exports the finest football wizardry and samba artistes known to humanity.

The outlandish is in vogue throughout. When we collectively decided to disrobe and change into business formals in full public view of an otherwise uneventful neighborhood, people came by to curiously ask us where we were from but took no offense at our absurd choice of changing rooms. Instead, people on the road, would invite us to their house parties to teach us how to party. If we saw a particularly raucous celebration going on, we tourists would be pulled in by the locals and forced to dance and drench ourselves in wildly colored cocktails. Whether by the pool, beach or lake, we salsa-ed in Brazil, only to find ourselves bettered everytime. After all, it was Brazil at its best.

On the Camel Trail

She is clearly perhaps one of the most desirable members of a dream Hollywood cast. David Lean, often garbed her as Arabia, Ridley Scott used her in Gladiator, playing Ancient Rome. As Egypt, she terrified Brendan Fraser in ‘The Mummy’ and she plays motherland to Jesus as Palestine almost by default. She also played a generous host to Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart in her famous autobiography Casablanca.

I had recently crossed two oceans to start life afresh at the Kellogg School of Management, and within a day faced the prospect of leaving behind India, skipping across Europe, with a bunch of twenty five future classmates to a faraway corner of Arab Africa for a week of cultural sensitization. Meanwhile, Kellogg had imposed upon us a strict rule of silence about matters concerning our origins and career interests, topics that hitherto I had felt were typical prerequisites to any conversation.

The Mohammed V Airport in Casablanca fits rather well, as a white Arabesque castle in the vast emptiness surrounding it. It is an hour’s drive to Casablanca and is connected through well laid, empty roads. As our bus rumbled into Casablanca, I noticed a well ordered, city with an apparent grid network of roads, palm lined boulevards, an occasional French advertisement and numerous apartment complexes with manicured lawns and high separating walls. “It’s all the benevolence of our King.” Our guide Ishmael would say. “He has never done anything wrong.”
The beachfront, or La Corniche as the French named it, is a windy well laid spot made to resemble the French Riviera. An American McDonald’s, a French bistro and numerous Spanish taverns serve the urban elite who often drive down in their Cadillacs from their white mansions, not too far away, which give the whole city its name, Casa-Blanca or white house. Nightclubs abound till the wee hours of the night, where suited men and their ladies in waiting, make idle chatter clouded by smoke from the hookah. Every table gets its bellydancer, who will often climb up to show off her incredible skills to the Arabic music. Almost every dance ends with a back arching dancer finishing off in a gravity defying pose upon which the audience starts applauding to a beat.

Meanwhile, plebian Morocco wakes up to the muezzin call from the Hassan II mosque that punctuates the skyline as a lone skyscraper overlooking the entire city. The majestic mosque when empty seems like an ocean of opulence, with marble and granite floors, Venetian glass chandeliers all opening upto a massive courtyard that could, if necessary, house whole neighborhoods during prayer. The King has his own entrance, through a gilded door leading straight to the pulpit, from where he would deliver a Ramadan sermon to his subjects.
Below the prayer chamber lie the ablution rooms, which contain both water fountains for perfunctory rituals and for more elaborate cleansing, Hammams, which are shallow sauna baths sunk between marble pillars, in which baths are had in a community. The prayer hall meanwhile, opens up to the Atlantic Ocean and it is said, that if you fly straight enough, you would eventually sight land at New York City.

It is on the road to Marrakech that the hourglass turns back. The white of Casablanca is gradually replaced by a desert red, eventually culminating in a terracotta like hue, ordained by law that has since defined Marrakech. The roads become more slender, the houses become more dispersed, the walls get higher and palm trees give way to shrubs and cacti of the desert. As we move into the city, the smell of horse dung permeates. All of a sudden, the bus slows down to a crawl as it starts to wade through the rambunctious crowds, of men in jelabas and kaftans, women in abayas, holding screaming kids. The occasional pre teen pulls a long one at the bus, another chases it down in a mock charge. All roads from here can only lead to the souk.

The souk of Marrakech is so famous that it is almost an adjective in cultural lexicon. All smells, colors and sounds imaginable congregate at this square of souvenir salesmen, coffee houses, fortune tellers, circus performers and animal tamers. It is not uncommon for the occasional snake to be put around your neck by a snake charmer and then you being charged for the privilege of being able to scream due to having a reptile around you. The only scarier prospect is having a monkey run away with your passport and you having to negotiate it back from its owner, on whose open wallet, your passport has found its new home.

The souk also is home to mounds of spices, heaped up in cones, fruit hawkers, fortune tellers, one of whom told me that my life would improve considerably, which quite obviously he told everyone else. Antique sellers, among these are the most interesting since among all salesmen, they seem to have the most modern goods to sell. What they lack in age however, they make up for in tardiness. Most of these shops are ramshackle stalls which have been propped up by the odd Moroccan carpet or two strung together apparently by cobwebs.

Now and then, someone mistook me for a Muslim and wished me a Holy Ramadan. A man, who I had got substantial discounts from earlier, with a well orchestrated lie about fasting, caught me gulping down a coffee and glared at my blasphemy. “May Allah take pity on you” I am sure he said which to me was more credible than the predictions of the fortune teller.

The narrow by lanes flanking the souk, have often remained unchanged for many centuries. The antique shops here, despite being equally tardy, actually sell antiques. Also to be found are spice shops which proclaim remedies for all ailments, including, customized specifically to the foreign tourist, inability to find girlfriends. Carpet shops abound, often occupying pride of place, due to the large tourist traffic generated by them. These carpets are typically hand woven by teenage women of marriageable age, and tell stories of their families, their tribes and their plaintive longing for the perfect husband. In Moroccan, tradition, it is customary for a carpet to be offered as dowry by the woman to the man, who will in exchange provide the bride’s family with a few hundred camels.

For the record, one of my Kellogg classmates we found out would have earned at least ten thousand camels. Clearly, MBA’s had value in this part of the world. Also famous in Marrakech are Fantasia shows such as Chez Ali, which are themed restaurants, housed in typically Moroccan sets, with bellydancers, musicians and horsemen setup to entertain sybarite tourists. Horsemen perform acrobatics that include jumping between horses, riding them upside down and fire swallowing, to recollect the skill and valor of Berber nomads of the ancient days.

Marrakech, though, is among the richer cities of Morocco. It is as we went towards Zagora, that the real Morocco emerged. Despite Ishmael’s claims of free education, free healthcare and the overall benevolence of the King, Morocco did appear a nation of poverty. In many parts, electricity was scarce, economic activity was tough and sparse. The Atlas mountains, hardly saw a shrub growing and yet the occasional cottage would emerge every kilometer which made me wonder where they got their sustenance from. I noticed that most farmers here would have to practice shifting agriculture, which in itself was quite unsustainable in such a fragile ecosystem.
Meanwhile, given Morocco’s relative peace, it was a haven for tourists. Locations such as Ait Benhaddou were used every year to play Arabia to foster Hollywood imagination. Locals typically earned their wages as spot boys for the elite of Los Angeles and hence depended heavily on whether western tastes of the day demanded more dramatization of the Arab world. The last few years have not disappointed. Ait Benhaddou clearly lived up to the western stereotype of a Bedouin village, as a series of mudbrick cottages, rising up a hill, surrounded by the vast Sahara, as if a civilization clinging to the precipice of one of the world’s most daunting environments. In reality however, no one lived there. Over years, it had become a virtual Hollywood set waiting for the next movie to be shot.

To the east of Ait Benhaddou, lies the queen of all deserts - The Sahara. Bracing myself for a rough night, I was astounded to find that the Moroccans had constructed us an entire locality out of their carpets. Replete with toilets, beds and showers, it was clearly opulence in the middle of the desert. I often strayed away from the camp to soak up the Sahara night, climbed up the sand dunes and lay down on top of them, to look up at the most stars I have ever seen in a night sky.

A larger than usual moon and stars twinkling that could be grouped together to form any shape imaginable. The sky above lit the ground below of sand so bereft of humidity that it fell apart away like gold dust once I got up. I sunk myself into the most comfortable bed I have ever found, without ever needing a pillow, and fell asleep for a minute under the blanket of the Sahara night sky. That was until some howling wild dogs woke me up.

The next morning, I woke up to see a camel looking at me disdainfully as if disapproving of my late rising habits. A berber nomad bade us sit on top of it to take us right into the desert. Timbouctou, they said, was 52 days away on this very camel route. Even to this day, it surprised me that Timbouctou was a popular marketplace among desert dwellers. To this day, camel caravans plied the route that on an Atlas would read Morocco, Mauritania and Mali, but to these Berbers meant as much business as the ocean did to the seafaring merchant. Unfortunately, my trip lasted all of 52 minutes and brought us back to base camp. The Sahara, meanwhile, did not deserve a good bye since in Berber tradition, one never turned their back on the revered goddess. Instead, we all said Insha allah Maa Salaama Sahara or "Allah willing, until next time Sahara." Something told me as I bid adieu, that of all the comfortable places in the world, all humanity found a true motherland in that most inhospitable ocean of sand. It was almost as if the Sahara knew that I would one day return to pay homage to it again.

Back in Casablanca, sipping tea at the Rick’s Café, of Ingrid Bergman fame. I realized that despite not being allowed to reveal backgrounds, we had had no dearth of conversation topics. Over scooping tajine with msilamen bread, for lack of anything better, we talked about how the Sarbanes Oxley act should be incorporated into the Koran, how Ishmael had conned us into eating Tajine every single meal and in also guessing what the costs would be of constructing the Hassan mosque.

Meanwhile, in the next room, where the movie that made this café famous was being played, in a strangely familiar tongue Ingrid Bergman exclaimed. “Play it again, Sam. For old time’s sake.” I wondered, how many people in this country understood English, and then, in one of the farthest corners of the world, curiously in a posh restaurant surrounded by glittering cutlery and the idle chatter of the intellectual elite of the world, about to embark on a succesful career , I thought, how did it even matter? More appropriately, I recalled the Disney song from Aladdin,

Oh I come from a land
A faraway place
Where the caravan camels roam
Where it's flat and immense and the heat is intense
It's barbaric, but hey, it's home

Where the wind's from the east and the sun's from the west
and the sand in the glasspiece is right
Come on down, stop on by
hop on a carpet and fly
to Another Arabian Night!

Phnom Penh - Definitely not India

History has not been kind to it, quite treating it as an illegitimate offspring of France and China. While Vietnam won a glorious war, Laos volunteered into monasteries and Thailand made itself available on world shelves, Cambodia was clearly the neighborhood’s sorrow. When I landed, I expected a struggling nation; its psyche devastated, its limbs torn asunder by its landmines, a country on crutches, being helped walk again by the United Nations.

I was quite right about the United Nations, which for once has played an immense role in reshaping Cambodia’s destiny making it a country safe for a tourist. The Pochentong Airport at Phnom Penh was quite posh dotted with Starbucks and McDonald’s, the parking lot seemed brimming with Land Cruisers. A peaceful traffic jam ensued as I made my exit, my Toyota Corolla inching its way through a scrupulously tidy road. On yonder horizon, rose a brilliantly decorated temple, glittering against the noon sun in gold and scarlet.

A few turns later, on the footpaths, shabbily dressed men sat drinking coffee, a few women in shorts ran around carrying screaming babies. A series of hastily parked tuk tuks completed the scene with the drivers indulging in a gossip session in nearby tea stalls. This marketplace, of butchers, vegetable vendors and the occasionally air conditioned supermarket ran for a few kilometers, reminding me of India, albeit with cleaner roads.

The central part of the city, majestically decorated, seemed a pastiche of Lutyens New Delhi. Immense Boulevards were flanked by massive government buildings, most of them built to dazzle and inspire awe. The Prime Minister’s house occupied pride of place, right at the city center, perhaps engineered by a highly qualified western architect. The Grand Palace of Phnom Penh gleamed in its golden attire, as if it was being repainted everyday. It probably was.

Inside the Grand Palace, lies a tribute to the Buddha lavish in scales unimaginable to such a poor country. A series of cottage pagodas populate a lush garden, with innumerable sidewalks where tourists and Cambodians alike loiter free from the beggars outside. At length, a policeman yawns in the distance seated beneath a tree. Here and there, a monk passes by, hurriedly pointing at your feet, beckoning you remove your footwear before you go into see the many Buddhas. Serene music is heard in the air as you walk into the Silver Pagoda that looks inside like a rich medieval emperor’s sanctum. In this meditative atmosphere, I reflected that Cambodia had quite left its past behind.

While the main roads were left to the local government and embassies, many posh bylanes were quite the privilege of the United Nations and other Developmental Organizations. Tina Mahler, a German girl I met on the flight, told me her government sent scores of undergraduates every year to aid senior Cambodian government officials on public policy. While no doubt, this was an excellent line on a teenage resume, I was not too sure if Cambodia gained in anyway from adolescent advice.

As the sun sank into the Mekong, I sat at the riverside Foreign Correspondents Club which during the war years had captured Cambodia’s past for posterity. Today, it was a retiring museum for old Cambodians and older tourists, who came to discuss politics and bemoan the meddling Americans. Joseph, my Indian friend who worked in the ILO, told me that the Cambodians were cousins to the South Indians. The Mekong saw yearly Snake Boat races, at a much more lavish scale than Kerala. They celebrated their New Year quite similarly to Vishu.. To my queries on whether Cambodia was the mythical Kamboja, Joseph shook his head and pointed out that the Khmer language, though cognate in many ways to Sanskrit, quite could not have been the parent since linguists had concluded that the Indian Paramadharma could have evolved into the Khmer Pamadamri, but not possibly the other way around. So, for most experts, India remains the home of the Ramayana.

Cambodia looked happy, as far as I could see. Not so much, warned Joseph again. It really was a country where people believed in an immutable fate. They accepted what was given to them without raising an eyebrow. It was in this emotionless lack of material attachment that citizens lined up to work for the Khmer Rouge as a preordained tryst with destiny. Most of them, in the 1970s taught their children that death was best for them. When I looked around, I noticed for once, that an entire age group was missing from the streets.

Adolescent advice suddenly did not seem too inappropriate. Half the country was still in childhood, their parents having, at best, reached their late thirties. On the other extreme were old people, most with disabilities, the few who had survived the last thirty years. The rest, had either been responsible for the crimes and got away, or had been bred outside and had returned with the normalcy. It was perhaps for this very reason, that Cambodia does not seem very interested in pursuing its war criminals. At some point in their lives, everyone had sinned.

On a narrow lane that could pass off in India as a busy market road, lies a decrepit school. Outside the stenches of seafood mix with the aroma of flowers, a legless landmine victim salutes you asking for a dollar and a few street children hawk souvenirs, guessing Delhi as my capital and astounding me with some Tamil words. They pursue you relentlessly until you are forced to oblige, one. And then you are smothered. ‘Well, it happens in India too.’ I said to myself as I stepped into the school.

The school could easily have found itself a respectable clientele in India. It had a large overgrown playground, large spacious classrooms with narrow corridors and narrower staircases where you could imagine rambunctious little ones skating and skidding, screaming their lungs out in their best years. You could quite imagine the tiny spots beneath the trees where puppy love would have expressed itself, relationships cemented, giggles and gossip ruled supreme. Then your heart sank as you realized that the Khmer Rouge had it turned into the largest torture camp of their regime.

As you walked through the corridors, you feel those corridors have seen true extremities of life. The joyous laughter of children seems eerily drowned by the moans and laments of the hundred of victims who were kept in conditions that were last heard of during the Nazi holocaust. With each storey, new stories are told. A woman had smashed her head desperately against the wall; a man had dared to ask for more food in his last breath, a series of three feet cubicles, wooden ones for the fortunate, brick ones for those with ‘special’ needs. A barbed wire encloses the corridors to prevent the suicidal ones from liberating themselves.

Those who survived Tuol Sleng, were transported to Choeung Ek, an airy Chinese Orchard 20 km from Phnom Penh. Thirty years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, I took the drive, not in a prison van but a Toyota Corolla. From outside, it seemed like a war memorial set in an expansive lawn. Footpaths meandered their way around golf like dug outs, into which children jumped in and out in glee, roosters pecked their way and dogs had their afternoon siesta. In the middle was a concrete monument that looked like a shabby watchtower.

It is inside that watchtower that the sturdiest of human hearts can crumble as row upon row of carelessly strewn human skulls glare at you. Some are replete, most having been damaged while their owners were still alive. All these skulls belonged to sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, friends and sweethearts. Each skull once held a dream, once had desires, had cried, smiled and had known human emotions. To see this end to such a large number is shattering. Rather instinctively, as if in prayer, my camera went back into its pouch to give these souls a dignity in death.

Outside the assault on the emotions continues as the golf like depressions which could handle seven or eight people at best are revealed to have been mass graves of hundreds. A harmless looking tree once had babies smashed against it by parents who had been coerced to do so, another tree had heard the screams of men and women as they got vivisected, a branch was used as a gallows among other things, that are hard to put in words.

That evening, I took a flight to Siem Reap, much of during which, I could neither eat nor sleep, haunted by my experience, and given to pondering about the baseness of human nature. The megalomania of Pol Pot and the willingness of those under him to betray their dearest ones, not out of greed but out of faith. And then in a trance, an Indian life came back to me, with its myriad relationships, smiles, dejections, backbiting and loyalty. Above all, the trust in god, which was unshakeable but still discriminating. I thought to myself, ‘This is not India.’

Happiness Above All Else

Happiness Above All Else

Large Hearted People in a Small Country

‘Taxis available at the tea stall outside Paro airport.’ Declared our Lonely Planet guidebook as our Druk Air meandered through the Eastern Himalaya and came to land on a jarring concrete strip amidst lush green foliage. A couple of wooden huts greeted us as we landed, as did an unsteady Himalayan breeze which rankled our hair as we walked down the tarmac to a structure, perhaps the lodging of a moderately successful businessman in India. Outside, true to our guidebook, was a nondescript stall with a congregation of men in traditionally Bhutanese gho each sipping besides carelessly strewn Maruti Vans, bantering on current Dzongkha movies and the last Archery contests.

We considered ourselves lucky when one such individual accosted us with an effusive Hindi, which we did not know was a de facto second language for any Bhutanese connected with tourists. When one engaged us in English, we hopped on. “To Thimphu” we said. “To collect our permits to the interior country.” With us came Amar, a nature enthusiast and his wife, whose name we never found out. While the man wished to photograph rare wildlife, the wife had accompanied him with the sole motive of shopping, relaxing and ruining her husband’s pleasure.

The government offices in Thimphu were neatly arranged like festival stalls on a single side of a main thoroughfare. A tiny square blue plate hung above each door, proclaiming the building as the office of a particular department. On each door was stuck a page torn from a notebook saying ‘Please dress in formal wear.’ Each door opened to a portrait of His Majesty the King of Bhutan and his father, beyond which sat two or three sleepy people who ran that department. RC, our driver, strode in majestically, and in an hour, got us permits.

‘No corruption in Bhutan’ said RC, en route back to Paro. ‘However, to get you permits on a holiday, RC needs to do some corruption. RC knows all government officials’ he triumphantly completed. Subsequently, RC also treated us to Tibetan butter tea which we reciprocated with a meal of Ema Datse, the ubiquitous Bhutanese delicacy of red chilies steamed in cheese sauce. ‘My wife has married four times’ beamed RC, taking pride in her accomplishment, ‘I was her second.’

Now and then, RC would doff his hat at policemen, who would sternly nod in return. He would park at off limit zones and even skipped the only traffic signal in Bhutan winking at the peeved constable. While speeding through the empty but narrow mountain highways, RC would periodically slow down near bypassing women and offer them rides in our car – none of which were accepted thankfully. When we learnt that our five hundred rupee notes were not acceptable in Bhutan, he gladly accepted them instead. His behavior, though clearly brazen was quite amusing to us.

Paro consisted essentially of two parallel streets, flanked on either side by ‘General’ Stores, each specializing in different groceries. A hotel or two was thrown in between, a saloon or bank would occupy the remainder. The Paro Dzong situated on a hill overlooked the entire township. In between snaked the Paro river, with crystal clear water. On its banks were men in gho practicing archery. The women of the family, bedecked in khira would be squatting safely nearby, brewing liquor, tea and gossip for their warriors. At length, we would pass monks, scurrying up and down steps to and from the Dzong where they lived. They quite seemed the only people in any sort of hurry since they anyway ran the country.

Of The Tiger’s Nest

It was at night, over the meal of Ema Datse and a cup of unique Red Panda beer that we realized that all RC’s claims of knowing everyone else, could be made by just about anyone in such a small city. Our five hundred rupee notes were not legal, but quite acceptable. And that nearly every one spoke English. In fact, at many places, though the permit was legally required, it could easily be substituted for by sheepish smiles and obsequious apology, as we found out at Taktsang.

Taktsang is to Bhutan what the Taj Mahal is to India. It liberally garnishes its physical splendor with fantastic legends. The local tale has it that Guru Rimpoche, who preached Buddhism to most of Bhutan, flew on the back of a tigress to subdue a powerful diety, giving it the name Taktsang meaning Tiger’s Nest. Since then Taktsang has been served well by a line of monks completely interred within its complex, a steep stairway for pilgrims on one side and a sheer cliff on the other.

At the foothill, that is simply named, ‘The End of the Road’, modernity concedes to nature as cars, restrooms and water stalls cease to exist. Occasionally, during the grueling ascent, the monastery peeps out, through the trees and Buddhist Prayer Flags. But for most of the time, the destination is forgotten and life is lived in the present tense. It is easy to overestimate your physical prowess and run up the hill. It is after the first half an hour, that you feel the weight of every step you take. It is when a Bhutanese toddler and his apparently pregnant mother overtake you that you gloomily decide to prod along.

‘How much more to go’ I would ask almost everyone I saw coming down. ‘An hour and a half,’ some Japanese pensioners would say. ‘You are young and can do it in one, it is really worth it.’

‘Two, then.’ I would think to myself feeling my energy seeping away.

Over half an hour, while my cousin Ajit had long vanished ahead of me, I found that I had scarcely covered a hundred feet. I then decided to aim at the halfway point instead, a solitary tea stall that provided the best view of the cliff and the monastery atop it. It also served the hottest Ema Datse, burning you just when your entrails needed some fire inside. My cousin, ashamed at my absolute lack of fitness had been waiting there for eternity.

‘I took many photos, and wanted to enjoy the scenery.’ I lied like an indignant child caught stealing jam.

Instead of jam, however, I gulped down some biscuits and suza. The tea stall also is a place where trekkers meet each other. As we went up, we met the family of Sonam Tharcheng, consisting of an impish four year old son, an exasperated wife trying to make her son wear his sweater and his two teenage nephews who had studied in Coimbatore. They were evidently setting up for a hill top picnic and upon meeting us, decided to let us partake of it. While coming down, we also met a trio, one of whose husbands was a waiter in New York, and another who proclaimed a crush on Ajit and promptly gifted him a bear hug.

It is indeed a proud moment when the trek ends and you reach the top of the hill. Taktsang, which hitherto looked as big as a pea, now covers your entire vision. You then wish you could just jump across the ravine, hug Taktsang and finish this journey. ‘Not so fast’, the monastery says. ‘First a steep gorge 200 metres down and up again. I have made it a trifle easier for you; the whole path has steps - a few thousand of them.’ From the other side, my cousin, having reached, was getting exasperated watching me pull myself up each step, four feet high and broad enough to keep half my foot. It was also getting eerily close to lunch, and Taktsang would close. Thankfully, I made it. To drive home the point, I made the same voyage back again – not that I had much choice. As the aged Japanese had sagaciously claimed, it was worth every bit.

Of The Top Gear Escape

It was perhaps a wise move to leave RC out of our subsequent scheme of things. Consequently, we had to give the slip to our Bengali friends too, who had been ensnared. For one, we would be much the fleet footed without RC’s machinations. To add to that, Kaka Tshering simply gave us a better deal. A deal of ten thousand rupees earned us a Honda Santa Fe four wheeled drive for four days, to use as we please. Punakha, Phobhjikha and Trongsa opened out to us.

Kaka Tshering was a burly archery enthusiast with rock star locks, betel nut stained teeth and a predilection towards the raunchy lyrics of Akon. While RC claimed acquaintance to Bhutan and made a huge show of it, Kaka never bragged that most of the country consisted of his cousins. At every restaurant, he would vanish behind the kitchen. He would materialize miraculously just as we wound up claiming to have eaten his due. His relatives would often peep into our car, stopped in the middle of the road, merely to ask us where we were from.

‘My wife lives far away.’ He grinned to us. ‘I need to go through Assam every six months to go visit her.’

The Punakha Dzong lies at the confluence of two rivers, named the Mother and the Father, to neutralize the bad effects of such a confluence, according to Bhutanese belief. The two courtyards house each the government offices and the monastic body. In the middle is the stupa or chorten of the highest stature, to be prayed in by the Chief Lama. Its towering whitewashed walls, elaborately decorated with woods in red and gold provide an artistic sight with the sun peeping from between the rooftops. Within the vast courtyards, monk children play, oblivious to the harsh and regimented life that awaits them. Elder monks shooed us as we tried peering into the sanctums. They motioned their hands, hushing us if we got too inquisitive.

Of The Lair of the Black Necked Crane

We climbed up the mountains to 3500 meters, at the end of which we were rewarded by a clear sky at Pele La pass, which is rare in any given year. At that height, Western Bhutan spectacularly made way to Central Bhutan with a breathtaking sight of an entire mountain range stretching across the visible spectrum. Jhumolhari( 7314m), Jichu Drakye (6989m) and several others appear like white capped students in a vast classroom. From that vantage point, our Honda sleighed downhill to Phobhjikha.

The snow that we had avoided thus far, hit us with full force as we trudged our way to Phobhjikha. A ghastly gale started blowing and we decided that it would be prudent to stop for some suza at a lone cottage. We walked in to find that we were clearly not respecting business hours and the family was watching its share of post dinner television around the fireplace. A baby was suckling its mother, a grandmother was knitting just as another daughter was fanning the embers of Bukhara. We, however, were most welcome. We not only got our fill of suza or butter tea, but also got choices of some traditional Bhutanese cookies and savories. We were politely asked not to pay saying we had come as guests and not customers. We promised them to come back for lunch – and pay, the next day.

All Phobhjikha has is a couple of farmhouses and badly equipped hotels to stay in. Being the haunt of the Black Necked Cranes from Siberia, electricity is not encouraged in Phobhjikha. Most activity happens thus in candlelight. For us it meant, sleeping without a heater, with a Bukhara that would certainly not last the entire night. It also meant bathing in freezing water since the water became cold by the time you removed your clothes and got ready for your ablutions. To add to that misery, the quilts in the beds themselves were frigid from the inside. You essentially had to grittily bear the cold and wait for your body heat to transfer, before the blanket offered you protection. For once, the bed was not very inviting. Conversely, it took courage, in the morning, to step out of your blanket and be frozen before you got to your sweater. It was as authentic as Bhutan got.

The valley of Phobhjikha is a vast yellow field, the size of twenty cricket fields punctuated by a few ramshackle cottages. The grass grows to knee level, the cranes fly at a distance, altogether avoiding our cameras. The field occasionally gives way to marshland. The hills surrounding us contain an impressive catalog of fauna that includes Red Panda, Black Bear and Sambhar Deer. Most memorably, in that biting cold, the caretaker of the local museum bathed merrily in stream water.

Of a Journey Through the Looking Glass

As we drove into Trongsa, civilization reappeared. It was a town the size of a morning walk, where Kaka gleefully let us alone to go meet everyone else in the city. We ambled around the city outskirts, observing an otherwise sleepy city, getting ready to celebrate its annual tsechu. The Trongza Dzong characteristically towers over the city. Above lies the Trongsa Tower which also has a museum. In the Land of the Thunderbolt, just as we reached the summit of the tower, we had to retreat, threatened by some flashes in the sky. As we descended, a fleet footed apparition robed in monkish attire rushed up to greet us. Lama Lopen Loday, the Deputy Curator of the Trongsa Museum greeted us as guests from the country he had studied in. “Many of my Indian friends from Gaya cannot make it to Bhutan, so I make it a point to help out Indians,” he said.

A discussion on politics ensued, where the Lama crossed his fingers that Bhutan is the most peaceful country in the subcontinent. He ominously predicted the fall of Bihar. “You cannot trust anyone there.” He said, then adding that the South, Chennai and Bangalore, were a lot better. Democracy he said had made Bhutan a lot more acceptable, although, it quite had not solved any problem. The Monarchy, he said had perhaps been singularly responsible for maintaining stability in Bhutan, through its excellent relationship with India. “India protects us, gives us food, access to ports and lends us electricity.” He added

It was the same electricity, imported from India that failed us again, when we finally decided to take up the Lama’s offer and visit the Museum. Bhutanese hospitality was once again on display when the guides treated us to an hour of tea and biscuits and then agreed to take us in candle-light after opening hours. Once we finally lit the candle, the lights came on. Dorji Zongma, who had studied college in Coimbatore, took us through a timeline of the Bhutanese monarchy.

Bhutanese education does not stop with factual history. Though the achievements of the monarchy are stressed upon, there is significant religious bias inculcated in the schools. The monarchy is mentioned as an effect of religion. The Shabdrung, who founded the Trongsa Dzong is revered next only to Guru Rinpoche, who is considered an incarnation of the Buddha. On a daily basis however, no one is quite as beloved, as the Kings, Jigme Singye Wangchuck and his young, bachelor son, Jigme Khesar Namgyal.

No article on Bhutan is perhaps complete without a mention of the benign dictatorship of Wangchuk dynasty for the last 100 years. The Bhutanese in turn, treat their kings as Messengers of God and show genuine regard for them. A portrait of the King greets you into most shops and each citizen wears a badge with the picture of the present King. The concept of Gross National Happiness, preached by the Bhutanese Monarchy postulates that happiness in spirit, religion and environment means more than material comfort. The King Jigme Singye Wangchuk also set a historical precedent by ushering in parlimentary democracy, allowing a two thirds majority, if ever, to depose the Monarchy. It is perhaps highly likely that by the end of his years, he will be hailed as one of the greatest kings to have ever lived.

The chief purpose of our entire visit was the Trongsa tsechu or festival, which Lama Loday took us through rather enthusiastically. “You are very lucky to see this.” He told us repeatedly, reliving his years when he used to participate as one of the dancers. The tsechu is held in each district once a year. It is considered an annual necessity to attend at least one of these. Predictably, the entire region, surrounding towns and villages tend to crowd the Dzong in full grandeur to witness a rendition of Bhutan’s Buddhist past. We even saw the baby, replete with family, in whose house we had had the most welcome glass of tea ever.

The Black Hat dance, Dance of the Zodiacs, the arrival of Guru Rimpoche and the capturing of the Imperial Throne by Ugyen Wangchuk trace the Bhutan of two thousand years weaving together mythology and history seamlessly. While monks perform the key roles, women contribute as singers filling in and village men, dress up as clowns to exhort the youngest section of the audience. These clowns had enormous significance, as the Lama pointed out, since amidst their jestering, they were also responsible for arranging the elaborate dresses of the performers and acting as prompters to those who missed their steps.

It was a five day affair, of which we could spend barely one. With a woeful countenance, we bid adieu to Lama Lopen Loday, who gingerly posed for a photograph and took the arduous drive back to Paro. If there is one thing we could take back from Bhutan, it is about the powerlessness of money towards happiness. The next evening, when we tipped Kaka, he handed it back to us saying that he would not accept it from his friends. The least we could do was to take down his email address and promise to mail him all the photographs. So far, we have not kept our promise.

Shanghai - Of Pearl Towers and Opium Dens

The typical Shanghai stereotype conjures up an image of opium dens and of streets lit up at night with paper lanterns, through whose cobble stoned alleyways, malnourished rickshaw pullers run barefoot with a pipe smoking businessman toting whips. Pigtailed men scamper about in pyjamas rapping on wooden doors to be opened by grubby handed children and long faced women. The HuangPu River is an assortment of meat, insects, fish and vegetables being rowed by old peasant women from PuDong across the bank. Those were the days when Nanjing Street was an infamous thoroughfare where peasants, businessmen, thieves and nobility converged, in no particular order and where the uninitiated would have little chance of coming back unscathed.

A mere twenty years ago, Shanghai would have lived up to that expectation. Pudong was still farmland and the river that separated it from PuXi was a slimy mass of agricultural waste on which boats functioned as marketplaces. Today, however, Shanghai is leading the biggest economic boom in human history. Our first trip from the airport to the city typified this. From our Magnetic Levitation train, we watched in awe as the farmlands gave way to factories and factories merged into high rise apartments at the breakneck speed of 450 kmph. It was a cinema of development in fast forward mode. The panorama from our hotel room reinforced this fact. On the left was a market, not more than two storeys high, built of red brick in 1923. A horse cart had stopped to unload. On the right, emerged an array of skyscrapers with flyovers snaking between them. From one end to the other, braving an incessant drizzle, an endless line of people walked briskly to their workplaces, while old people exercised rigorously in the park below.

Nanjing Street is still the commercial centre today, but replacing the shantytowns of yore, is a swanky neon-lit pedestrian boulevard flanked by eateries and malls. The street vendors have long since graduated from sitting down in the pavement and yelling out their bargains. It is now done on rollerblades. A girl skates viciously on collision track with you, and stops just as you take evasive action. She then takes out her catalogue promising you ‘authentic’ luxury brands for a tenth of the cost. By the time you are done refusing one, you are accosted by the next.

On one end of Nanjing Street is the Bund, the riverbank of the HuangPu where the Europeans built their financial centre in the early twentieth century. Much of it still remains untouched, but for the flag of Red China now flying over all those colonial buildings. Look across yonder horizon, and there rises the jaw dropping skyline of PuDong, with the Oriental Pearl Tower living up to its name and illuminating the night sky. Plying the river today, are luxury yachts and cruisers, looking more like mobile amusements parks than their vegetable boat ancestors.

From the other end of Nanjing Street, a short walk away lies Renmin Square, the political and business district of the metropolis. One would imagine a newly wealthy city to look like a concrete monstrosity but at Renmin Square, high rise skyscrapers lie garnished in generous amounts by lush green lawns and wide footpaths. The ubiquitous aged, add to the scene taking evening walks and smiling at passers by.

Despite its commendable economic progress, Shanghai has cultivated its past, if not to preserve it, purely to maintain tourist interest. The heritage villages of Qibao and Zhaozhuang lie close by and offer a peep into a Shanghai that could have been true just yesterday. However, since you are already aware that they are settings, all the oriental charm is lost on you. Similar is the case with Yuyuan market, where you feel like you have walked into a Western Mall bedecked in an Oriental theme. However, there is a Shanghai tucked away beneath, which still has its insect markets and lantern drug peddlers skunking away in alleyways where the foreign tourist would have little chance of being comprehended.

At the foot of the Oriental Pearl Tower, lies an exhibition of Shanghai down the Ages. One relives the years, beginning from the Opium Wars in the middle 19^th century, through Shanghai’s colonial legacy on to its significant role in the People’s Revolution. In Renmin Square, lies a post modern building where the grand plans for a future Shanghai are made. The fact that the Chinese government down the ages has remained steadfast to their plans has helped Shanghai in no uncertain amount. It is the latest great city in the World’s Oldest Civilization, today, the gateway to the greatest enigma of our times – China.