e-Nagar

I started blogging way back in 2005 with a simple aim to improve my English. English is not my mother tongue and more often than I was stumbling for the right words. This is probably the reason why almost all the posts are in as good English as possible free from any spelling or grammatical errors.

Like the Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, over the years, I moved from the need to be able to write correct English, to the need to be able to crystallize one’s thoughts and express my ideas and viewpoints. Now this blog often serves as a vehicle where I can store my opinion. Over the past 5 years I have seen my viewpoints being changed. What is even better is that more often than not the regular reader or someone who stumbles into the website will contribute his view points and either refine or totally change them. So this place has become a kind of a melting pot. As far as possible I try to reference the source and make the facts discussed in the blog to be as accurate as possible. There have been many instances where my view took a complete U-Turn after these researches and comments from the viewers.

E-Nagar is a team blog and every person in the team has a different reason to be here and of course a different viewpoint. We don’t advertize on the blog or derive any revenue from it. On the contrary we pay quite a sum every year for the domain name and the hosting of the website.

A lot of people blog to generate traffic, however I could not get myself into doing that. Also my writing style is not engaging enough that I can retain my viewer’s attention. However I feel that the quality has improved dramatically over the years. I try to have as much variety in the blog as possible and usually restrict the length to 200-400 words so that it is not too long and torturous.

This post is to celebrate over 8000 user comments and nearly 1400 blog posts over nearly 5 years.

After watching Capitalism- A love story, I got into a heated debate with a few of my classmates. They were really sad that the airline pilots were having a hand to mouth existence, while high school dropouts who were promoted to the managers of fast food or supermarket chains were earning many times more. They believed that it was exploitation and this should be corrected. One of them went to the level that government should install strata, via regulation, in the payscale. This way there will be clearcut demarcation of how much should someone earn based on the number of years of schooling he/she has done.

My assertion was:
a. The store managers are earning more because they are good at their job and their skills are more valuable than others. It is not that the tax payer’s money is being used to pay an incompetent public servant, these high school drop outs receive a share of the profit they make for their establishments.

b. Not all pilots are having a hand to mouth existence. We are probably comparing the worst pilots with the best highschool drop outs. It must be noted that most high school drop do not get promoted.

c. The moral ground that since I have spent more hours at school and college, I should be paid more is also not valid. In most universities the students have a more leisure lifestyle allowing them to party, have a part time job and long vacations. While working in a sweatshop Is far more straining.

d. The moral assertion is further weakened by the fact that often it’s the society and not the individual that bears the cost of education. The wages of the professors, the scholarships, tuition fee grants/waivers, support for living expenses, subsidized accommodation and travel all comes from the taxpayers.

e. Lastly it should not be forgotten that many people forego their university degree. This could be because the employer might think that they are too overqualified for the job or because their degree has no relation with the job they are applying for. As a result the surveys are never able to correctly capture their statistics.

Many good English writers have been accredited with the invention of phrases used in day to day life. I am presently reading The Odyssey by Homer (translator – Robert Fagles), written in the eight century B.C. I came across a couple of lines which may have inspired these famous English writers.

Modern Phrase
i Slow and steady wins the race
ii Between the devil and the deep blue sea

What The Odyssey has to offer
i …Slow outstrips the Swift!
ii Scylla to starboard, dreaded Charybdis off to port

Will keep updating this post as I come across newer ones…

I just completed the celebrated work of Geoffrey Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales. When I picked it up, I did not go through my usual routine of book buying. I did not bother to check it’s plot or anything in general. It was a Chaucer, and that was good enough for me. I was under the perception that a fourteenth century classic novel would provide me with some classic humour, apart from the knowledge of the prevalent English at the time. Boy, was I far from it!
The novel revolves around the tales told about some of the common characters found in the middle ages, including a reeves, miller and a pardoner. Except for a few, the tales are outrageously raunchy and crudely comic in nature. Don’t believe me? Go through The Miller’s Tale or The Merchant’s Tale.
If something of this sort was written today, it would have been cast aside as a cheap and dirty book, but since it is something from the ages beyond, people take pride in telling that they read Chaucer. I don’t understand the people of today in general, or am I the only one?

Public sector banks have come a long way to compete head on with the various private and international banks. Yesterday, I had the pleasure to visit the Gomti Nagar Branch of SBI. Its situated right in the center of one of the busiest malls in the capital. I must say the deco was eye catching. There was a luxurious lounge with a view, a plasma tv where you can surf the latest channels, a foot massager, all customers were greeted with a cup of hot coffee, etc etc. To add to my delight, the branch is open till 9pm. Need I say more.
Even though, I had no intention to bank/open the account, but as I was window shopping I could not stop but step into it. The best part is that SBI will make you their premium account holder if you just maintain 25,000/- rupees. (As compared to 3 Million required by Citi and other international banks, and 1-5 Lakhs required by ICICI Bank). Also SBI has branches in almost all the nook and cornor of the country. I wonder how can anybody compete against them?

PS: I wanted to open an account in this branch, but was told this branch exclusively serves female customers.