Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Bhalki Machan, Burdwan - 2006


We went to Bhalki Machan,Burdwan with the same group with whom we went to Mandar Moni.
A long drive away from the city, this getaway on the edge of a deciduous forest, is the perfect spot to laze around for a day or two.

I was busy in my office because of Singur related work (Tata Motors Project). Somehow I manged to come here with the help of my senior colleague (although Our MD forbed me to go there because of urgent work !!)

Going

By car:

Take a car via the Durgapur Expressway and take a diversion near Galsi.

By train:

Alternatively, take a train from Howrah , preferably the Black Diamond, 6.15 am, and get down at Mankar station. You’ll get buses and other transport to Bhalkimachan.

CodeStation NameArrives Departs Halt Day KmSpeed ElevZone Address
HWH»Kolkata Howrah Junction»06:1510 7mERHOWRAH, West Bengal
SHESeoraphuli06:3806:391m123 6011mERBaidyabati, West Bengal
BDCBandel Junction07:0007:022m140 4914mERBandel, West Bengal
BWNBarddhaman Junction08:0008:033m1107 6934mERBardhaman, West Bengal
MNAEMankar08:2908:301m1145 8865mERMankur, West Bengal
PANPanagarh 08:3908:401m1155 6770mERKaksa, West Bengal
DGRDurgapur08:5508:572m1171 6471mERDurgapur, West Bengal

However we went there by train to Burdwan and from Burwan we hired a Tata Sumo to reach Bhalkimachan.

Within minutes of the car crossing Burdwan, a billboard by the Aushgram panchayat will welcome you to Aranya Sundari Bhalkimachan.

A freshly tarred road across the rice bowl of Bengal leads to Bhalkimachan, believed to be the favourite bear hunting spot of the erstwhile rajas of Burdwan. The ruins of a tower or machan overlook a small waterhole where the unsuspecting animals were shot by the royalty. Perhaps in memory of the bears that lost their lives, the panchayat has erected a concrete model of a Indian sloth bear close to the pond. According to a legend, a tunnel beneath the machan leads straight to a secret passage opening at the Rajbari in Burdwan, about 25km away.

Staying

You can stay either at the resort from West Bengal Fisheries development corporation and a resort from Local Panchayat is there. The Bhalki Machan resort maintained by the panchayat (03452-212056) or the State Fisheries Development Corporation resort at Jamunadighi (03452-45300/9474787643.)


We stayed at the Bhalki Machan resort .

.

Our group members dancing to Rabindra sangeet tunes

To cater to the picnic crowd the waterhole has been “beautified” by the panchayat and deodars. It has even put a couple of paddle boats in the water body for revellers and built a two-storey resort with 20 beds and a restaurant.

But the real fun lies beyond the confines of the resort amid the deep sal forest . The pristine forest stretches beyond the borders of Birbhum into the Santhal Parganas in Jharkhand. A walk through the woods is very pleasant with sunlight forming patterns on the ground through the foliage. We saw the ruins of a tower or machan, overlooking a small waterhole where the unsuspecting animals were shot by the royalty.

Although the forest used to be infested with bears, now one can find just some wild cats, foxes and monkeys. A few years ago, elephants from the interconnected Dalma forests had strayed into Bhalkimachan.

If you decide to stay overnight, a resort developed by the State Fisheries Development Corporation at Jamunadighi-Amrapali barely 3km from Bhalkimachan, would probably be the best option. The tourist complex is inside a fish seed farm run by the state government. Air-conditioned rooms are available here. The embankments between rows of fish ponds have been converted to mango orchards (or amrapali) with bamboo and concrete benches strewn around. However we did not stay here.


After reaching Bhalki machan before lunch, we had our lunch and had a walk through the woods after lunch which is very pleasant. I even found a dead skin of a snake! In the evening as usual we had a musical soiree.

Next day early in the morning we went for sight seeing by hiring van rickshaws.

Subirda




There is a Santal village nearby. We went there and had a talk with them.







Santal village




In the evening we arranged some Santal dance in front of the resort. Some of the members of our group joined the frenzy and started dancing




Santal dance



Santal dance



In the evening we started our journey by Tata Sumo and went to Burdwan to catch train, to go back home.

(some of the inputs are from http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100110/jsp/calcutta/story_11965865.jsp )


For more pics please see

Monday, October 31, 2005

INTERESTING ARTICLES AND INTERVIEWS

'We will never see another Warren Buffett'



Mohnish Pabrai currently manages Pabrai Investment Funds, which he founded in 1999. The fund has around half a billion dollars in assets under management. Pabrai went to the US in 1982 to do his undergrad in computer engineering. After that, he worked with Tellabs in Chicago. In 1990, he started his own company TransTech, an IT services/system integration business and ran that for around ten years, before starting Pabrai Investment Funds. He has written a book on investing, The Dhandho Investor: The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns. Excerpts from an interview:



How did you get into investing business from information technology?
Around 1994 I heard about Warren Buffett for the first time accidentally. The first couple of biographies about him had just been published a year or two before that. I read those books and I was quite blown away by some data points that were coming out about him and the industry and so on. I didn't have any experience or even education in the investment business. But I was very intrigued by it.

I started to invest in the public equity markets using Buffett's model in 1994 and basically did extremely well, north of 70% a year, till about 1999. I was getting more and more interested in investment research and securities analysis and made a decision to leave my company. I brought in an outside CEO and decided that I would spend more time on investing and at the same time some friends of mine wanted me to manage their money for them. It started as a hobby in 1999 with about a million dollars from eight people. About a year later the business (TransTech) actually got sold, I wasn't running it anyway, but I was completely cashed out. And then I thought that let's make my hobby a real business, try to scale it up and get investors. We now manage about $500 million -- ten years later.


How did you narrow down on Warren Bufett and value investing?Basically in 1994, when I read about Buffett, there were two things that stood out. One was that he had compounded money at a very high rate. If you are compounding at a high rate, even if you have a small amount of money -- let's say a million dollars -- in thirty years you could have a billion dollars. So the idea of compounding at a rate above the market rate is an extremely fine notion because it can lead to enormous wealth creation. That was the first thing.
The second thing was that the way Buffett was compounding money at a rate higher than the market was based on a core wisdom which he stood for. If you are physicist, whether you believe in gravity or not, it will always impact you. Just like there are laws of physics, laws of gravity, there are laws of investing.
I noticed in 1994 that the mutual fund business had two things: one, they did not follow the laws of investing, and two, their results were affected by the fact that they did not follow the laws of investing.
For example, a basic law of investing is that you make very few bets, you don't buy a hundred companies because you are not going to have an understanding of business. But if you look at mutual funds, that is not the way they operate.
So essentially, what you are saying is that investors should make fewer bets?
So you make few bets, you make big bets, infrequent bets and you only make bets when the odds are heavily in your favour. What I found very funny was that here is a guy (Buffett) who is telling you very much the approach to investing he follows, and this is like Newton telling you the laws of physics. The second thing is that the investment industry does not care about these laws, and their results reflect it.

The third conclusion I came to is, I said, OK, if what I am saying is right, what it means is that a person like myself, who has no experience in this industry, could come in and apply Buffett's rules and do better than all these managers running all these funds. So I said, well, that hypothesis means nothing until you test it out. I had an asset sale take place of a part of my business in 1994, and I had about million dollars in cash, sitting with me for which I did not have any need for.
I decided I am going to take this million and put this on a twenty or thirty-year compounding engine. I was about 30 years old, I wanted to see if by the age of sixty I had my billion dollars. I started playing this thirty-year game in 1994, and basically I found that first of all, it was very enjoyable and second, that it's been fifteen years now and the original hypothesis I had is absolutely correct -- which is that the industry doesn't get it, they still haven't changed their ways, and there results reflect that.
What are the factors you look at before deciding to invest in a company? Can you give us an example?The first thing you got to look at is, "I am not buying a stock, but I am buying a business." And you only buy the business if you were willing to buy the entire business if you had money for it. So, for example, if Reliance Industries has a market cap of $100 billion and you had a $300 billion, the question you would ask yourself is, would I buy the entire business for a $100 billion?
The first thing is that you are not buying pieces of paper, but you are buying an entire business. The second is that you ask yourself, do I understand the business? Do I truly understand how it will work, how it makes money, how will it do in the future?
Then the third thing is, if Reliance produces$3 billion a year cash flow and it trades for $100 billion, I have no intention of buying it at 33 times cash flow. It is like I have no interest in putting money in an account that pays 3% interest.

So I love Reliance, maybe, if the fair value of business is 15 times cash flow, which is $45 billion. And since I am cheapskate, I don't want to buy it for more than half its fair value, so I just say to myself, that if it goes below $20 billion in value -- or one-fifth the current price -- then I will look at it again. In fact, that is the way to look at the Indian Sensex. You take all the Reliances, the Wipros and Infosyses of the world, chop their price by four, and that's your entry price.


What has been your most successful stockpick till date?
You know that's a very funny question. The most successful company I ever invested in is Satyam. I invested in 1995, and I was completely out by 2000. When I invested the stock was at Rs 40, and Satyam's earnings at that time were about at Rs 12 a share, so you were buying a business for three-and-a-half times earnings. And the more interesting thing for me was that property the company had in Hyderabad exceeded the market capitalisation as it was carried at a value that was bought a long time ago.
The only reason I knew about Satyam was because I was in the IT services space. These guys had actually visited us to see if they could do business together. And I had been pretty impressed by the way the business operated and the people I had met.
I looked at it from my investment point of view after was amazed that such a business could trade at such a price. So I invested in Satyam. In 2000, it was trading at Rs 7,000, that is about a 150 times the price I bought it at. This was in the days before demat, and actually when I bought the stock with an account through Kotak that I had in Mumbai, I was given physical delivery of these shares that looked like tattered pieces of paper that were falling apart.
Satyam from less than a PE of 3 to more than PE of 100. I just said I am out of it because now I owned a bubble stock even though I did not buy it at bubble price. I sold my entire position within 5% of the peak. Within six months it had dropped from Rs 7,000 to Rs 1,000, and continued on the sidelines for a while. That was the best deal that I ever made.
I also happened to read somewhere that you wear shorts to work and do not as a matter of habit short stocks?
Well, I am wearing shorts right now ... the math for for shorting is really bad. When you are long on a stock, as it goes down in price, the position is going against you and it becomes a smaller portion of your portfolio. In shorting, it is the other way around: if the short goes against you, it is going to become a larger position of your portfolio. When you short a stock, your loss potential is infinite; the maximum you can gain is double your value. So why will you take a bet where the maximum upside is a double and the maximum downside bankruptcy?

Also, any time you short a stock, you are hooked to a (stock price) quote machine for life support because you have to watch what is happening all the time. Many a times, when I am travelling in India, it could be several days when I don't have a quote for any positions that I hold. So I don't want to be a in a situation where I have an umbilical cord linked to some quote machine ... and blood pressure going up and down.
Do you have investments in emerging markets like India and China or do you stick to the stocks in the US market?
I would say that most times a very large portion of our portfolio has a lot of exposure to the global market. I have (shares in) several companies in Canada. I own (shares in) one Chinese company and an Egyptian company, I don't own any Indian companies right now, but I use to own Satyam. Also Pabrai Funds use to own Dr Reddy's.

You have said in the past that investment ideas come to you by reading a lot...
An investor should think of himself as a gentleman of leisure. Don't think that you are in some profession. You just think that you are a person who is focused on enjoying and living life well. If you focus on yourself as a gentleman of leisure what is going to happen is that you do not feel any compelling reason to act. It has been several months since I have bought any new stock. And that is not a problem because we went through a period in December when we bought ten stocks. The first thing is that we are in a profession were you don't pay for activity, you get paid for being right. So there should be no compelling reason to act. Basically, the thing you do is you take out the reason to act.
The second thing you do is you focus on acquiring worldly wisdom. I read an enormous amount of stuff and relate to what different investment managers who I respect are saying. So, at times, things become no-brainers.

In the fourth quarter of last year, when everything was going to hell, one part of the market that went to extreme hell was commodity-related stocks. Commodity-related stocks absolutely got crushed. 95% down. 90% down. And if you simply keep in mind that you look at the growth rates of India and China, you can get an insight.
Through our foundation Dakshina I spend a good amount of time in rural India. I can see nuances about India, that most people would not see. You can see that the pressure on the few commodities in the earth's crust is tremendous.
China has severe problems with fresh water and you really have big problems with agriculture with those type of water issues. When you have growth rates of 7-8%, people will want to eat the best. Generally it is proven that protein consumption climbs very high when economies do well. It is absolutely a given that 10 years from now the amount of agriculture and protein needed will be much higher from today. And getting there will not be easy.

So the thing is there are certain businesses that serve as toll bridges in that space. For example, one toll bridge is if you look at Latin America. It has a lot of land and it is flooded with fresh water rivers. South America can basically take that land and convert it into producing corn and soybean or whatever and export the hell out of it to China. And that is exactly what will end up happening. Latin American agricultural companies with large land holdings today are not excessively priced, they are very cheap. But there is absolutely no way for India and China to satisfy the consumption demand that is coming without going to Latin America. So we will just own the toll bridges and wait.
How much of Warren Buffett's success can be attributed to his investment prowess and how much to the fact that he is Warren Bufett?

Well the thing is you could have invested even after Buffett had invested and you could have made six times the money out of it.
In fact there are a couple of professors in Ohio, who studied any stock that Warren Buffett bought, if you bought on the last day of the month, when it was public that he owned that stock, and you sold it after it was public that he had started selling it, you would have generated north of 20% annual rate of return.
I would say that we will never see another Warren Buffett. Just like we will never see any Albert Einstein or another Mahatma Gandhi. Buffett is a very unique individual. His skillsets outside of investment are phenomenal but they get dwarfed by his investing skills. The main thing that makes Warren Buffett Warren Buffett is that he is a learning machine who has worked really hard for, let's us say seventy years, and is continuously learning every day.
So the thing is if you want to be like Buffett, there is no short cut. First of all, you have to be deeply interested in investing and you have to be very willing spending tens of hours, hundreds of hours, reading the minutiae. There is a very famous value investor called Seth Klarman. He is into horse racing. And his famous horse is called Read the Footnotes.




We often talk about profit margins on this site. Analyzing the profit margins of a company can help you determine its profitability relative to its competitors. For example, if two competitors have equal net incomes but one has twice the profit margin of the other, then over time we may see the more efficient company steal market share and grow at a faster rate. (This can happen for several reasons, one being that it can simply lower its prices until its competitors are no longer profitable, thus dominating the market.)

One type of profit margin is a company's gross profit margin, which is its gross profit divided by its revenue. Gross profit gives a pretty good indication of a company's pricing power versus its product costs. In a previous post, we saw that Coke has a gross profit margin of 64%, indicating
people are willing to pay quite a bit more for Coke's products than it costs Coke to produce them.

While Coke has been able to sustain a strong margin for a long period of time, for most companies, attractive margins don't last long. This is because competitors are attracted to industries where profitability is high. To illustrate this, consider the net profit margins of the industries depicted below as they were in 2005:

Notice the high profitability of financial and energy companies. This high profitability in the finance industry is likely one reason that all sorts of new financial products and structures came into being: profits were high, and therefore the industry grew by pushing product proliferation to new heights. In the energy sector, the strong profits depicted above helped spur new oil exploration and new investment in alternative energies. In the past, this has led to increased oil supplies and reductions in the cost of energy, though these changes have taken time. While it remains to be seen if this process will occur once more in the next few years, it remains a distinct possibility.

When analyzing a company, be sure not only to consider its net income, but also the profit margins that contribute to that income. Compare the margins to competitors, and consider whether the company has a "moat" that can protect its margins from the competition. While margins are important, note that they are not the end-all be-all when it comes to profitability, as they don't consider asset utilization. A company able to generate revenue and income on fewer assets is preferable to one that constantly needs capital infusions to grow.


A Quote from Seth Klarman


“So if the entire country became securities analysts, memorized Benjamin Graham’s Intelligent Investor and regularly attended Warren Buffett’s annual shareholder meetings, most people would, nevertheless, find themselves irresistibly drawn to hot initial public offerings, momentum strategies and investment fads. People would still find it tempting to day-trade and perform technical analysis of stockcharts. A country of security analysts would still overreact. In short, even the best-trained investors would make the same mistakes that investors have been making forever, and for the same immutable reason – that they cannot help it.” – Seth Klarman


One of the most important factors in determining whether a company is worth an investment is the quality of its management. Unfortunately, this assessment can at times be highly subjective. Reading interviews or comments from management can often be of little value. After all, management may have great communication or oratory skills, but that doesn't necessarily translate into good business execution. In fact, many value investors even prefer not to meet managements to avoid being influenced by factors unrelated to execution.

So how then to evaluate management? One way is to simply evaluate the financial results of their companies. Unfortunately, certain factors which manifest themselves in the financials may be out of management control. For example, competition in an industry and/or time period might be fierce, or a company may be at a brand disadvantage - not necessarily the fault of current management, so how do we differentiate across managements?

One method analysts like to use is to evaluate the number of days inventory a company has on hand. The lower the number, the more efficient management is (as cash is freed for other purposes, like paying shareholders)...as long as there are no stock-outs hurting revenues! The number of days of inventory a company has on hand can be estimated with the following formula:

inventory * 365 / COGS = days of inventory on hand

This number can be compared to that of competitors or the industry, with the caveat that differences in product mix must be taken into account. Below are average days of inventory for several industries as per the IRS:

A high days inventory doesn't necessarily mean bad management, however. But this concept can be extended to a company's days receivable and days payable. This can offer a clue as to how effective management is at running an efficient operation, which can translate into other facets of the business.



It turns out that value investing is something that is in your blood. There are people who just don’t have the patience and discipline to do it, and there are people who do. So it leads me to think it’s genetic. – Seth Klarman
Markets go up and down. It’s unavoidable, but how do you handle it?
Over the past couple of weeks, one aspect of investing that has frequently come up in my discussions has been related to price but ultimately it all leads to volatility.

Value Investor’s Guide to Volatility

  • The higher the beta, the more chances you get to pick up stocks at cheaper prices and the quicker you can realize the intrinsic value of your stock.
  • Volatility is just another day. Focus on the business. The taste of a Coca-cola doesn’t change every second as it tries to follow its stock price.
  • Price is useless on its own. Compare it to intrinsic value.
  • Volatility reveals how focused and confident you really are.
  • Conquer volatility and it will make you a better investor.
Even if all of the above is attributed to genetics as Klarman states, it’s nothing that can’t be trained.


On Investing

  1. “Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.”
  2. “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”
  3. “Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”
  4. “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”
  5. “Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful”.”

On Success

  1. “Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.”
  2. “The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.”
  3. “You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.”
  4. “Can you really explain to a fish what it’s like to walk on land? One day on land is worth a thousand years of talking about it, and one day running a business has exactly the same kind of value.”
  5. “You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.”

On Helping Others

  1. “If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”
  2. “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
  3. “I don’t have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It’s like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don’t do that though. I don’t use very many of those claim checks. There’s nothing material I want very much. And I’m going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die.”
  4. “It’s class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn’t be.”
  5. “My family won’t receive huge amounts of my net worth. That doesn’t mean they’ll get nothing. My children have already received some money from me and Susie and will receive more. I still believe in the philosophy – FORTUNE quoted me saying this 20 years ago – that a very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.”

On Life

  1. “Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”
  2. “We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.”
  3. “You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”
  4. “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
  5. “A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.”

Funny Ones

  1. “A girl in a convertible is worth five in the phonebook.”
  2. “When they open that envelope, the first instruction is to take my pulse again.”
  3. “We believe that according the name ‘investors’ to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a ‘romantic.’”
  4. “When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.”
  5. “In the insurance business, there is no statute of limitation on stupidity.”

Saturday, July 30, 2005

Sermons on the idiot box - Zakir Naik on Borkha

The learned Dr Zakir Naik (Quran TV) was holding forth on the importance of sporting beards and moustaches. He quoted the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) to the effect that men should grow beards as long as they wanted, but clip their moustaches. Dr Naik wears a short goatee, clips his moustache above his upper lip and sports a white, perforated skull-cap. He believes everyone should carry their community identification on their person. Though he declares English to be his mother tongue (he is Konkanese), he pronounces the word label in Lucknawi andaaz as "lay bill".

He tells us of the many advantages of wearing community labels. For instance, you are looking for a mosque in a crowded bazaar. You can't ask any aira gaira the way to it; but as soon as you spot a man with a skull-cap and a beard, you know he is a fellow Muslim and ask him, "Bhai sahib, which is the way to the nearest masjid?". He?ll tell you. You may be hungry and looking for eateries where they serve only halaal (kosher) food. Whom do you ask? Obviously a man with a skull-cap and a beard. There are good chances that the man may invite you: "Bhai sahib, why spend money in a restaurant? You are a fellow Muslim, come and eat with me in my home."

He also recommends that Muslim homes should be identifiable. If your name does not clearly indicate your community, eg Patel, Shah, Naik, Malik etc, etc can be Hindu, Christian as well as Muslim, have something like Bismillah or Rehman, Rahim on your door. You can even get a bell which rings Salam Valaikum.

Muslim women are advised to be in hijab (veil) when stepping out of their homes, to save them from being ogled at by lecherous males. Both men and women must abstain from wearing emblems of other communities like crosses, teekas or bindis on their foreheads or sindoor in the parting of their hair. He quotes "scholars" who hold different opinions on such subjects. Have they nothing better to think of?

My grievance against Muslims like Zakir Naik and those who listen to him with rapt attention is that they are trivializing Islam. Muslims have many hurdles to cross before they catch up with other communities: beards, moustaches or how to greet others are not of the slightest importance. Most advanced Muslims will agree with me that the abolition of the hijab (burqa) should be their top priority. Muslim women of most advanced countries, including Pakistan, do not veil themselves and work in offices, shops, police and defence services. Besides Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, the hijab is on the way out in the Muslim world. In not one family of my innumerable Muslim friends do women observe purdah. Dr Zakir Naik and his ilk do their best to put the clock back. They should not be allowed to do so.

Being and nothingness

Some readers have written to me saying that of late I have been writing too much about dying and death. It should not surprise them since I am in my 91st year and well aware that my day of reckoning is not far away. I have also recently published a book on the subject, Death at my Doorstep. Being a rationalist I do not accept the views of different religions on the subject. I have also no reason to believe in the Day of Judgment, heaven and hell as spelt out by Christianity and Islam, or in the unending cycle of births, deaths and re-births as enunciated by Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism and Sikhism.

There are many people who agree with me; amongst them is J.M. Rishi, an industrialist from Jalandhar. He writes:

"Regarding your question ,Why does God make the person's exit from life so painful?" I wouldn't relate such a question to God, which is a matter of faith and speculation. To me, painful or painless death is all a matter of chance. The philosophy of Punar Janmaor present life as the result of good or bad past "karma" should have been initiated by some wise men ages back to motivate an average person, not so enlightened, to good actions to be rewarded of a good life here or hereafter. Practically, a number of saintly persons have died a painful death and evil-doers have had a quiet departure. So, God or Luck has nothing to do with it. It is all a matter of just chance, whether the exit is peaceful or painful.?

With his letter Rishi attached an excerpt from a letter by the Roman stoic philosopher Seneca (4 BC to 65 AD), who was adviser to Emperor Nero, fell out of favour with him and was forced to commit suicide. Seneca suffered from asthma and often had to gasp for breath, not knowing which would be his last; he described it as "rehearsing death". He also described death as "just not being".

He wrote to his friend Lucilius:

"Even as I fought for breath, though, I never ceased to find comfort in cheerful and courageous reflections. What's this? I said. So death is having all these tries at me, is he? Let him, then! I had a try at him a long while ago myself."

"When was this?" You?ll say.

Before I was born. Death is just not being what...I know already. It will be the same after me as it was before me. If there is any torment in the later state, there must also have been torment in the period before we saw the light of day: yet we never felt conscious of any distress then. I ask you, wouldn't you say that anyone who took the view that a lamp was worse off when it was put out than it was before it was lit was an utter idiot? We, too, are lit and put out. We suffer somewhat in the intervening period, but at either end of it there is a deep tranquillity. For, unless I'm mistaken, we are wrong, my dear Lucilius, in holding that death follows after, when in fact it precedes as well as succeeds. Death is all that was before us. What does it matter, after all, whether you cease to be or never begin, when the result of either is that you do not exist?"

I admit I was taken in by Seneca's line of argument about death meaning the same thing as not being. But on second thoughts, I regarded it as a spurious play on words. Agreed that before you are born you are not in being; but the problem is how to face the prospect of death (not being) when you are actually in being?

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Friday, August 20, 2004

Siliguri 2004-2005



After being transferred to Howrah (in West Bengal) office of NSIC in 2002 , I joined my new company(ARDB) in Kolkata in 2003.

I was transferred to Siliguri in 2004. First few months in Siliguri was horrendous .I had breathing problem after staying in a damp house at Hakimpara. In fact I was treated in Kolkata after that incident . Jayashree Ghosh who used to work in my bank helped me a lot during those difficult times.

Later I was shifted to Kashinath Dey's house in Hakimpara.He used to supply stationery to our office. It was much better. I stayed in Roof top. But during rainy season used it used to leak.

There I met Anindya Bagchi , owner of one of the biggest Cyber cafes in Siliguri .We became good friends very first. I gave him the name Monsieur Verdoux for obvious seasons. I saw a very interesting thing in Siliguri , since there is hardly any park in the city (It is an extremely unplanned city with open drains , much like Bijoygarh of Calcutta) , couples go to cyber cafes for meeeting , chatting and making love!!! All the rooms in the cafe were having high walled partition with curtains. Once i went to his cafe for some urgent work. Since all the rooms were busy i was chatting with Subir (Anindya's employee - who looks after the shop) , until one of the couples came out. When I entered the vacant room/kiosk i found there is no net connection. On enquiry i found out (although music was coming out from most of the rooms) there is no net connection for quite some time!!!!

After meeting with me Anindya joined Shriram Finance (where Mohua used to work) and changed his career forever(update: ultimately he sold the cyber cafe in 2008, since with cheap computer and Internet, customers got reduced gradually.). How he got through the interview, how his resume was prepared that was a long story..........

In his cafe i also met his friend, philosopher and guide Tukuda (Pradip Sarkar). One day i went to his house to see a European football match final late at night. Anindya and Tukuda insisted me to shift to Tukuda’s house after seeing the leaking roof. Tukuda stays alone. I finally shifted to Tukuda's house.

The life became very easy after that. Tukuda was a man of very high principle and very courageous. He is a very good poet, Sitarist....... I met Charu Majumdar’s (famous Naxal leader) son Abhi with them. After meeting them, my perception of Siliguri changed remarkably.


We regularly used to have Adda session with lot of intellectuals coming to his house regularly. I stayed in Tukuda's house for 4-5 months,before I got a job in Kolkata. Tukuda is from Banarhat (Dooars) .We once went to Banarhat from Siliguri by inter city train. The train route is one of the finest route I have ever seen in my life.

In Banarhat Mithuda (elder brother) stays with his family. He is a Govt empanelled contractor. We went to Bhutan border and in fact went to Bhutan for few minutes. It is 30 minutes journey from their Banarhat house. Behind Tukuda's house in Banarhat there is Goodricke tea garden, which starts just from his backyards.

Another interesting fact of Banarhat is there is no water in that area due to peculiarity of soil of that area. Waters are to be brought from other places. I have been told when tea industry was booming Banarhat was lively town . Now it seems as though the whole town is under steroid. You can feel people suffering due to lack of opportunities.

We went to some of the friend's houses of Tukuda. One of them is Tapan.They were originally from Kolkata. They came here during booming times of tea industry, like gold rush and had the largest departmental stores in the town. Now it is still there , but it is more of a decrepit store.

My 4-5 months in Siliguri at Tukuda's house was quite memorable.

A typical day in Siliguri would be come back from office . Go to the Bidhan market with Tukuda to buy Royal Stag whiskey and come back. Tukuda will start with his glass of whisky and I will start with my Druk orange squash (only Rs 32 in Siliguri if it is illegally imported from Druk factory, compared to Rs 50 price tag) ,with a punch of whisky in it (very small quantity). Quite often artist Dipankarda (or sometimes his naxal day friend Rupak) will come with his share of booze. In the mean time Anindya will join for FOC (i.e phokot ie free of cost!) booze.Then Tukuda will start reading his poetry or Dipankarda will read one of his poetries. At the end they will fight (ie argue ) with each other and end the day.
On every Thursday Mashtar-moshai used to come to teach him Sitar. Tukuda used to learn Raga Malkauns. Before that he learnt Raga Bhairavi.

Anindya used to call Tukuda Tuku matal.I shortened his name as TM. We refer him as TM among ourselves!! However after coming back from Banarhat I have him a new name BKB or Banar(monkey) King of Banarhat!!! He was a well known name in Banarhat for various reasons.

I also met father’s friend Manas Das Gupta. They were really nice and were like breath of fresh air for me.

Once i went to Mirik on my own . I liked the journey a lot. During 2005 Kali puja we went to Phansidewa for Kali puja organized by WBSEB staffs. Since he was senior Super intendent of WBSEB he had to work even during Puja holidays. Even during pujas he used to catch hold of hookers of electriciyt lines and fined them instantly.

One can refer to Anindya's blog on tourism: http://ethicaltours.blogspot.com/. Anindya and Tukuda know the place very well.

For official purpose i used to go to Darjeeling and Kalimpong regularly.

Once I went to Tindharia (toy trains workshop in the hills) with Anindya's bike.
Anindya near Tindharia

Thursday, August 19, 2004

Incredible Kolkata



Kolkata was founded by Job Charnok in 1690. It was formed by amalgamtion of three villages called Govindapur (near Fort William), Kalikata (near Dalhousie Square) and Sutanuti (near Sovabazar).



Why I love Calcutta?


Kolkata is the home of India's Nobel Laureates: "Rabindranath Tagore", "Mother Teresa "and "Amartya Sen". All others are connected to Kolkata one way or other.


* Kolkata is the "Third largest city" in the country, with a population of 5,080,519 and world's 8th largest metropolitan area as defined by the United Nations.

* Kolkata has the second largest cricket stadium in the world, "The Eden Gardens", the biggest in Asia.

* It has the world's third highest capacity football stadium and the biggest football stadium in Asia, "The Salt Lake Stadium".

* The "Cricket and Football Club - CCFC" in Kolkata is the second oldest cricket club in the world.
* It boasts of having the very first "Metro" in India, that too at a time when the very thought of having metro trains in India were impossible.

* The one and only home of the "Trams" in India.


* Kolkata has the largest open park, "The Maidan", third in the world after New york state park and the Hyde park in London.
* 75% of the players in the Indian "Football" team is from Kolkata and is the home of major leagues and tournaments, having the best football clubs in India along with the IFA-The Indian Football Association.Mohun Bagan Athletic Club -the National Club Of India is one o
f the Oldest Club in Asia, was established on 15th August 1889

* It is the home of India's Oscar winner "Satyajit Ray", considered by many film makers, Western and Eastern alike, to be among the four greatest directors of film history.

* Kolkata is the home of India's only Olympic medal winner in Tennis, "Leander Paes"

* The "Royal Calcutta Golf Club (RCGC)" is the second oldest golf club in the world, which was established in 1829 in Kolkata.

* Kolkata is the main business, commercial and financial hub of eastern India and the northeastern states. It is home to the "Calcutta Stock Exchange" - India's second-largest bourse.

* Kolkata houses "The Asiatic Society", "The Indian Statistical Institute", "The Indian Institute of Management", "The Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics" and the first IIT of India nearby.

* The first post office was established by East India Company in Calcutta in 1727. This was shifted to the Court House building in 1762. This makes the Calcutta GPO the oldest post office in India.


* Kolkata has one of the grandest colonial architectures in the form of Victoria memorial.


* Kolkata used to be called the city of palaces and was considered the 2nd capital of England after London
* Kolkata high court used to be called the (first) Supreme court of India.
* Kolkata has long been known for its literary, artistic and revolutionary heritage. As the former capital of India, Kolkata was the birthplace of modern Indian literary and artistic thought. Kolkatans tend to have a special appreciation for art and literature; its tradition of welcoming new tal
ent has made it a "city of furious creative energy". The city also has a tradition of dramas in the form of jatra(a kind of folk-theatre), theatres and group theaters.

* The "Indian Museum" in Kolkata is the oldest museum in Asia.

* Kolkata houses the "National Library of India" which is India's largest library.

* Kolkata has an eminent place in the history of American diplomacy as one of the oldest "American Consulates" anywhere in the world, and the oldest in India.

* The "Indian Botanical Gardens" is home of the world's largest banyan tree (the banyan tree with the biggest girth), which is around 240 years old.

* "The Kolkata Book Fair" is the world's largest non-trade book fair, Asia's largest book fair and the most attended book fair in the world. It is the world's third largest annual conglomeration of books after the Frankfurt Book Fair and the London Book Fair.

* "Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay" was one of the earliest Bengali novelists and is popularly known as the author of India's first national song, "Bande Mātarom" (pronounced in Hindi "Vanderam").

* Calcutta University has been termed as the first modern university in the Indian subcontinent.

* The Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur is the second oldest engineering university in India, although it is not directly in kolkata, but it's root is in kolkata.

* "Medical College", Kolkata is one of India's oldest medical institutions.

* The first college for women in India, the "Bethune College" was set up in 1879 in Kolkata.

* The "Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management (IISWBM)" was set up in 1953 as the country's first management institute.

* It is also the hometown of India' s first Miss Universe title holder, "Susmita Sen".

* Home of the First Indian Woman to swim across the English Channel "Miss Arati Saha" and First Indian Man to swim across the English Channel "Mihir Sen".

* Kolkata the largest and the biggest selling outlet of Music World.

* And who could forget that despite all the shortcomings, the difficulties and the pain, the people of kolkata always manage to put a smile of their face. That is why the city is named as "The City of Joy". The people of this city are also known for their helpfulness, their hospitality and their honesty!!

* Kolkata is THE MOST LIBERAL CITY IN INDIA WITH MOST MODERN OUTLOOK TOWARDS LIFE.

* Kolkata is home to the probably the largest number of little magazines in the world. Little magazine is a non commercial magazine which people bring out of passion - without thinking of monetary benefits - breaking their life savings. The life of little magazine is normally 5 yrs.


* Kolkata has the highest concentration of artists and litterateurs in India.
* College Street has one of the largest collection of book shops in Aisa.



* Kumartuli is probably the most interesting and has the higest concentration of potters anywhere in the world.













* Kolkata is home of the greatest magicians in India P C Sorcar(Sr.)


* Kolkata is the hometown of one the greatest musicians of India Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan.


Chronological order

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