I think we should have a mini meet otherwise as you say, it may be May before we meet!

In the US the ‘intellectuals’ wouldn’t be caught dead hanging around in a mall and would never shop at a Wal Mart. As far as drinking coffee, again the intellectual wouldn’t be caught dead in a Starbucks (even though Seattle is its home) but would be in a mom and pop coffee shop which serves outrageously expensive coffee in real mugs.

Being a cheap Indian and not considering myself a part of the intellectual elite - I happily gulp down Starbucks coffee and quite like a wander down the mall (though I stay away from Wal Mart).

Just interesting to note the differences .

Am posting on the meet soon, don’t worry.

Now this may be just a prsonal experience and I should not use it to draw conclusions, but I think it is representative. My friends who are in India can all be broadly termed successful, young professionals. Having graduated from St. Xavier’s Mumbai, they all went on to get advanced degrees mostly in the MBA field and now all work for baks, investment agencies and MNCs. They all earn good money and when I was in India last I nticed that they thik nothing of going out and having a good time and don’t blink at the Rs. 1000 cover at the door to clubs and happily drop down Rs. 5000 for a single night of partying. All well and good though the one think I noticed was the rabble of malnourished urchins hanging aorund teh door of these clubs rubbing heir bellies and asking for Re. 1 to feed themselves. Of course I don’t expect my friends to not have fun and solve the problems of India but something struck me as wrong as I saw the long line of youngsters queuing up at the door and handing over Rs. 1000 just to get in while there were these malnoursihed people, stomachs bloated with parasites begging for a single rupee. No I am no starnger to poverty in India - I was born and raised in India and lived there for 21 years. There have always been vast inequalities but perhaps only now do I see the true scale of it.

Another illustrative example of the lack of compassion - after the tsunami hit, I sent $150 to my mother so she could contribute it to a tsunami fund. My firm here in Seattle sent $5000 to various charities involved in the tsunami relief. In conversations with my freinds I asked how much they had given and to which charities - the answer was zilch, nada, not one paise. Here is a firm in Seattle along with thousands of others send $5000 to a country 10,000 miles away for just one reason - comapssion and caring for a fellow human being. I sent what I could afford knowing that it was just a drop in the bucket. But here is teh pride of India who think nothing of dropping Rs. 6000 on a single night of merriment but can’t be bothered sending even 1/2 of that to their OWN countrymen who are suffering, in some cases a few hundred miles away.

To the Indian readers of Yazad’s blog - did any of you contribute in anyway. I am hoping to hear that my friends in Bombay just happen to be selfish bastards and the same cannot be said for the rest of the Indians.

Doesn’t stop us from meeting otherwise. Let mini-meets and blind dates flourish!