Cleanliness: What the Hell!

(Disclaimer: All of this is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead is pure coincidental. Especially, it has nothing to do with me or my wife. I hope I have made it very clear at the onset and hope to live after this).


I think this would appeal to all the guys. Those who are “married” would very well relate with this and those who are still “happy” might get scared and try and have all the fun in whatever time they have.
So, all the bachelors in this world….Beware!!! Friends, comrades, guys…just chill, take it easy, because one day you will get married!!!!!!!
Like any other happy-go-lucky, careless guy, I was also not very fanatical with the virtue called “Cleanliness”. Now, I have completely left it to Mayuri (my other and better half!!)
Let’s make one thing very clear, most bachelors lead a very clean lifestyle. They brush their teeth once a week, take bath on Sundays, and wear washed clothes for parties and what not (what else do u want for Christ sake!!! “bachche ki jaan loge kya?”). But once they marry, it all goes for a toss.
If you are a woman and are reading this, chances are you would not agree (some of you might think that I am a jerk..some of you might even want to squeeze the life out of me and strangle me to death). But read on and I am sure you would be convinced. If you are married, I request you to turn a new leaf and stop harassing your husband about his cleanliness.
As I was saying, after marriage wives start finding fault with their husband’s lifestyle. I can give an example here of my friend Ajay (name changed due to obvious reasons). His wife starts complaining as early as 3 a.m. The guy is sleepy and could not care less for cleanliness but she wakes him up and says that his saliva is spoiling the pillow cover. She forces him to place a folded towel on the pillow and he gets back to sleep. She wakes him up at 6 a.m. – and that’s an unearthly hour too – and says: “Look, you have spoiled the towel also!”
Bathrooms are a horror. Here are some of the sentences guys get to hear…

“Come on…I told you not to take the newspaper inside the bathroom?”
(For God sake, I can’t understand why she hates him taking the newspaper when he goes to the loo. She hates it so much that she does not read the paper. Or is it her excuse?)

“Hey, you left the toilet seat up again!”
(So what, put it down again! Of course, guys don’t say it in as many words.)

“The walls are all soap. Can’t you pour some water, or be careful while taking bath?”
The walls are all soap? Good…we don’t need to buy soap for another two years. And anyways what am I supposed to do? Lie down on the floor and take bath?)

“Did you notice the soap box? It is full of water!”
(Yeah right, I was just trying save water for a dry day. Or was I trying to make some liquid soap?)

So the “bathroom bashing” is done and the guy is in the dressing room getting ready. By his misfortune, he has left his wet towel on the bed. Boy..end of the world..you bet!!!! Is it like the towel cannot dry on the bed, or the bed once wet (just a bit though) would be wet forever and would chills to her in the night when she sleeps on it???
And when he is trying his new CharagDin shirt when she barges in and says: “Just look at your wardrobe.”
He turns around and looks at his wardrobe.
“Yeah, I saw…what is wrong?” He asks.
“Now, look at mine. Everything is washed, ironed and kept properly,” she says.
“Yeah,” He grudgingly agrees. More because, he is late for office and he also need to squeeze in that smoke that she does not know about.

Now we move on to the breakfast table, he gets scolded for being generous enough to drop a cereal for the ants that have formed a cantonment in his house. He also get berated for not keeping his helmet clean, for not washing the dishes he uses, for leaving the water bottle un-capped. Anything he does in his house needs to be done in another way – the supposedly cleaner way.
Now, he is all dressed up and ready to leave. He is pleased that he can be himself for another 9 hours – that’s the time he spend in his office. When he close the door behind him, he hear her shout:”Look at the mess your shoes have done to the floor?”
He grinds his teeth, promising himself that he will also make her life hell, and walk into the sunset….
p.s: I want to repeat what I started with: Disclaimer: All of this is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead is pure coincidental. Especially, it has nothing to do with me or my wife. I hope I have made it very clear at the onset and hope to live after this.


Cheers!!!!!

Swine Fl(u)ew??

"Swine Flu is like Rakhi Sawant. It hasn’t really done much, but everyone has heard of it."
Why am I talking about swine flu now? No one else talks about it, not even our 24- hours news hungry TV channels. Well, apologies for being late. By the time you read this blog, it might not even be chic to discuss Swine Flu…but I was having my handicaps. There were not enough jokes/blogs on Swine flu available on the internet/newspaper/TV which I could have copied.

Earlier when girls used to call me PIG; I thanked them for calling me a Pretty Indian Guy. But now times have changed and the same retort doesn’t hold good. Girls have started calling me a SWINE.

There are several theories on the spread of swine flu. The best of the lot which I read on the net was that the Swine Flu is an achievement of someone called Mr. Osama Bin Laden. His sleeper agents in England & France started getting active in 1994 and by March 1996 the British Beef was banned and the Mad Cow Disease epidemic was born. Osama’s plan didn’t go as he would have wanted and the US, one of the major consumers of steak, didn’t get affected much. So, he got worried and then asked his agents in Hong Kong to start sleeping with Hens & their husbands (the roosters)…which resulted in the bird flu transferring to the Humans. What common folks like you don’t know is that of the 14 deaths that happened due to Bird Flu in Hong Kong in 2001, 10 were Osama’s sleeper agents. Five years & and ten deaths later…Osama Bin Laden would rue the day China stated Bird Flu Emergency…while US just laughed away unscathed.

Osama did make one last attempt to create havoc in US through the bird flu – he tried to murder Donald Duck and pass it off as a case of Bird Flu. Unfortunately, when Osama’s agents kidnapped Donald Duck from Disney Land and tried to strangle him…a well built but naked man came out of Donald Duck’s clothes and ran away. I remember reading somewhere that Osama was surprised & shocked to know that Donald Duck isn’t a real bird.

After the Mad Cow disease failed to work, and Bird Flu refused to fly…Osama had to think of Swine Flu….and this time he has asked his sleeper agents in Mexico to sleep with Pigs.
Since the US had smartened after Osama’s biological warfare on US, Osama had to import the pigs in spare parts from different parts of the World and get them assembled in Mexico. Something similar to what Abdul Qadeer Khan, Father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb did, to build his nuclear bomb. When I tried to reach Abdul Qadeer Khan for his comments, all he had to say was: “I am upset with what my country has given in return…look at what India has given its Father of the Nuclear Bomb – APJ Abdul Kalam"

I don’t know if you guys have seen people walking around in public places wearing stupid looking surgical masks. I have and I found that pathetic…with so many deaths from so many other diseases…why spread the panic that’s as ordinary as common cold? Now a day’s people are fearful of girls with a plaited pigtail and would immediately take her to the doctor…asking him if it was a Swine Flu symptom.

Ghulam Nabi Azad, Minister of Health & Family Welfare of the Government of India is a very smart man. He has come up with a very smart plan to handle Swine Flu…his 9-word plan is: “Stop eating bacon and pork…buy fish instead.” I wouldn’t really mind if he had stuck to his 9-word plan….but now he has also banned Mexican Waves from all sporting events. “We will ban anything that’s Mexican,” he said in a press conference. Our own maverick IPL commissioner Lalit Modi did try to get special permission for Mexican Waves in his IPL tournaments, citing public interest as the reason…but failed. When last heard he was in Hawaii popularizing a similar wave…just re-naming it as the Hawaiian wave.

As if his rule banning Mexican waves wasn’t enough Ghulam Nabi Azad also appeared on TV to say that swine flu was dangerous for every single person in India. Thank you mister minister for the awarenesss..thanks but no thanks..we’ll get out of it ourselves.

My rendezvous with the south of India!!!

Hello people…this blog was pending for a real long time…better late than never…I would not say sorry cos its not written in any SOP that I have to write a blog regularly J….moreover, no one reads my blog, so its OK!!!!
This would contemplate on my life in south India..I have been living in Hyderabad for more than 2 years now…and I think it’s a civilized place. As a north Indian, at the outset, it was tricky for me to get accustomed to this place….i mean who expects grated coconut and curry leaves on his spicy “aloo chat”, who can eat rice throughout the day, who wears a black, leather jacket in the middle of the summer afternoon (benefit of doubt..may be the guy had malaria and was feeling the chill), who would appreciate discriminating parents who name their daughters jahnwi, tejaswini (sweet names..hai na)…and their sons Parthsarthi Nallagangul (Paratha for short..worst still “nalla”) etc etc.
Anyways, the time to brood is over and I think I have adjusted (my southie friends would say..yeah…right!!!). I have understood now that to differentiate between two cultures, there can be countless differences used to divide them, but the real tough part is to find harmony and appreciate the differences.
So lets have some light hearted fun and not take anything to heart...
India is a great and huge country and we have divided it into 5 parts: North, South, East, West, and Central. The general impression is that: The North always fight and is rude, the South does the work and has all the brains, the East has a huge vocabulary and likes to use it lock, stock and barrel (a subtle way to say that they talk a lot), the West which makes all the money, and Central goes everywhere to make money!!
Lets dig a bit more and see some differences (plz do not take it to heart..i would again reiterate that these are general/typical examples):

North Indian: Speaks Hindi, eats Roti/Sabji
South Indian: Speaks either Tamil/Malayalam/Telugu/Kannada and relies on Rice/Curry


North Indian: Drinks Tea in its avatar called "Chai"
South Indian: Drinks Coffee in its avatar called "Filter Kapi"

North Indian: Always uses words in rhymes...Pizza/Vizza, Picture/Victure, Khanna/Vanna, Chai/Vai, OK you get the picture/victure right..
South Indian: Always uses words like Saar/Garu/Raa/Daa/Super...

North Indian: Abuses directed at your Poor Sister typically.. she will probably commit suicide, if she hears that...
South Indian: Abuses directed at your lineage typically..Anyway most of them are dead by that time..

North Indian: Believes that all Indians should speak Hindi compulsorily
South Indian: Believes that there is no need for Hindi


North Indian: Goes Crazy about Amitabh/Sharukh and goes crazy about Punjabi Songs
South Indian: Goes Crazy about Rajnikanth/Chiru and chiru’s songs (here in Hyderabad) with high pitched Whistling

North Indian: Believes that Pakistan is the ultimate enemy (go to Mohali if u want to believe)
South Indian: Will give a standing ovation to a Pakistani team that beats India in Cricket..

North Indian: Never Seen or Been to South India..Mostly relies on words of other people like him to stereotype Southies..
South Indian: Never Seen or Been to North India..Mostly relies on words of other people like him to stereotype Northies..

North Indian: Better Built because the local Cow gets to eat good quality grass and delivers 9% Fat Content Milk
South Indian: Thin and lanky because the local Cow gets to eat only hay and all the milk inside gets dehydrated because of the sun..The Buffalo gets even more heated because of the black hide..

North Indian: Has seen Summer and Winter and Spring and Rains
South Indian: Has seen Hotter Summer and Warm Winter

North Indian: Wants to woo a girl by money, 6 packs, chivalry
South Indian: Wants to woo a girl by explaining how non-linear differential equations of 3rd order can be used to model the human locomotion!

North Indian: Name their sons Bobby, Vicky, Rahul, etc..
South Indian: Name their sons Goundamani, Ponnalagusamy, etc..

North Indian: Believes that Ganga/Yamuna and other rivers are holy but never bothers to keep them clean..
South Indian: Fight over the Kaveri..forget the holy/clean part about it..

North Indian: Master at Bureaucracy and politics/In Fighting
South Indian: Master at being a good committed worker under someone else

North Indian: Makes Fun of the South Indian
South Indian: Makes Fun of the North Indian

There is never enough time for Dividing People. We have people who are doing this job and spending all their life in finding reasons to divide (those F----- politicians), instead lets acknowledge that there are differences all around us and let’s try and appreciate them and look for common grounds..
Hope you had a good laugh…let’s get on with it friends!

Big pharma companies acquiring smaller biotech/pharma units: The good, the bad, the and the ugly?

Before discussing the merger and acquisition (M & A) happening in the pharma field, let’s look at some numbers:
· Last year, Teva acquired US generics major ivax for $ 7.4 bn, to become the world’s largest generics company.
· In 2004, Teva paid $3.4 bn for Sicor of the US
· Novartis had agreed to buy Speedel for about $880 milllion
· Sandoz bought Hexal and Eon Labs in Germany, Lek in Croatia, Sabex in Canada, Durascan in Denmark in 2004-2005

As they say, the data don’t blush, it always stare on your face and tell you the truth. The data tell us here, that M & A are happening, and happening big time..

Today, there is a global drift towards consolidation and going forward, as pressures on the pharmaceutical industry increases, this trend will continue. The lack of R & D productivity, expiring patents, generic competition and high profile product recalls are driving the M & A activity in the global pharmaceutical and biotech sector.

Let’s be just and fair, and look what lies in there for both the sides, i.e., the big pharma and smaller biotech companies..

Pharma sector is distinctive in the sense that it traverses across geographies as health has no boundaries, and this very boundary-less nature supports consolidation in this industry. With increased global interest in pharma and biotech, this sector has become an M & A favorite. Even, the largest pharmaceutical companies cannot diversify the underlying research and development-based investment risk. They must rely on a handful of flagship products for the majority of their sales, and the commercial life of a drug (from launch to patent expiry) is less than 7 years. Hence, major companies must develop a block-buster every 2-3 years, or face massive financial contraction.

I think without M & A, there would be no significant pharmaceutical industry-at least not in its current form. Also, I don’t see a significant generic industry-because few new drugs would be developed for the generic companies to copy. The reason is simple- companies would not be able to invest the huge amount of time and money it takes to develop a new drug, if they don’t have a sufficient opportunity to make a adequate return before generic companies copy and market the drug at a drastically reduced cost.

Now lets see, what is in it for the smaller companies..

Traditionally, the biotech companies develop their drugs through Phase 2 clinical trials, and then look out for a big pharma partner to assume responsibility for commercialization of the drug. Biotech companies rarely undertake the expense and risk of a major Phase 3 trial on their own (simply because it’s too costly), and failure to find a big pharma at that stage could be a red flag to its investors. So, Big pharma and biotech industry have established a model that allows biotechs to tap into the development, marketing and financial resources of big pharma, while giving pharmaceuticals a cost-effective, off-the-balance-sheet method for acquiring rights to promising drug candidates.

Another section which gets affected in this entire process of M & A is the workforce of the smaller company. The employees are the life line of any company and are the most vital resources. In 1974, USA enacted the “Employee Retirement Income Security Act”, also known as ERISA. It attaches supreme importance to the post-retirement schemes and welfare benefits as a part of corporate obligation. We all know that industries in India works under a controlled environment and it’s improbable that a company would not address the rights of the employee before going ahead with the M & A. Companies going for M & A strive to iron out the internal differences and work with the employee unions to maintain a level of employee satisfaction.

I would like to end this blog by quoting a phrase which I read somewhere:

“The economy is still bleeding, but the acquisitions indicate that the patient is no longer spurting blood all over the emergency room floor”

The debate is still on friends…..

Research in India

Friends..
It’s my first shot to write a blog..so don’t know what goes in a blog…
[Wifey told me that I can write about “….any damn thing under the sun”...that was assuring, especially coming from a moderately veteran blogger...so here I am trying my luck..by the way she only gave me the link]
I am a PhD in biochemistry from a not so branded university in India (pun intended with the use of “branded”)..just thought to write something about my experiences of doing PhD…I am sure many of you who would read it, would concur with me on certain issues..several of you won’t be in agreement with even a single word…but since this is my space (that too for free), I can write anything I want..without actually being compassionate for people’s emotions….
Guys, I don’t know what do u believe, but I very strongly feel that the research scene in India is not very rosy, specially the scientific research. A very significant proof is the number of good quality publications in high-quality peer reviewed scientific journals. Worldwide, we contribute for a microscopic percent of first-rate publications on PubMed. Indians are a rarity on the scene……so what do u think..where have we gone wrong?? I think it’s a food for thought, for everyone, especially the policy makers.
Do we really have scarcity of intelligent people who can think scientifically…I think the answer is an emphatic NO…so does the problem lies in the fact that our primary education system is not competent to give us world class brains? The answer is again a NO, since we have seen that there are so many Indians doing well for them and for our country coming from the same education system. So where exactly is the problem??
I think the problem is twofold, one; the charm of doing research in India is not very great, both monetarily and intellectually, and second, the government setup makes it very difficult for a talented scientist to grow in his/her future.
My own experience says, that it’s not very simple to motivate yourself daily to go to the lab and conduct experiments with limited resources (plz bear in mind that I am talking about the not so known university labs in the country, which gives a major chunk of PhD graduates in India). The bureaucracy, red tapes, babus in the system makes it a point to harass a young researcher to no end. I also think that the quality of people doing research is not very great; the reason could be lack of control. In my country, anyone who wants to pursue PhD gets a chance and ultimately a PhD degree. THERE IS NO CONTROL. So ultimately, we churn out so many doctorates in a year that it is difficult to imagine that India is considered a backward country as far as research scene is concerned. Also, the bright minds, who do well for themselves, aims for a post-doc in US, Britain, France, Germany etc…and finally settle for an assistant ship and ultimately a career overseas.
I strongly feel that this needs to be altered; there needs be more attraction for basic and applied research in my country. Our policy makers need to be more sensitive towards the young minds that wants make their name, in spite of all the adversaries. The hard earned money of the tax payer needs to be spent more astutely. The universities need to be supported a bit more. The scholarship and opportunities to work in reputed national labs needs to be greater than before.
This is not all…I also think that there should be a grilling entrance exam for all the aspirants who want to be future researchers. The exam could be on the lines of the entrance exam of armed forces, i.e. a written exam followed by an interview, and psychological test to check if the guy is ready for the battle field. This is however, just a suggestion…everyone has all the right to disagree.
The ideas can be stupid..but the vision is that my country should shine bright in research also!!!!
With the kind of mind and talent pool we have, it’s not impossible.
We just need to ask ourselves (just like the army slogan)… “DO YOU HAVE IT IN YOU”!!!!!