Summer Evenings - a short story

It's been twenty years since I wrote anything except poems so I thought I'd practice today. This one took about 3 hours of touch time.

SUMMER EVENINGS

Vir lowered his eyes to his watch. Yes, six fifteen already. Outside past these blind-covered windows the sun must be dwindling. Orange ink spilling into the western sky.

Man, that beauty outside seemed a world away. His collar felt awkward. His armpits were perspiring but he dared not take his jacket off because he had only ironed the front of his shirt. And anyway, it was all coming to an end, like water swirling around the sink one last time. Might as well keep the jacket on and go out looking good.

God knows how I’ll look like next month, don’t think I’ll ever get to put on a suit again.

The table was packed with people, mostly men. From time to time, someone would look at him then nervously look away. They all knew about his situation, of course. He started to avoid their eyes to spare them the discomfort.

He had known most of them for years – five, ten in some cases. He had even thought of them as friends once. When he had first encountered them, most had been pretty interesting - with eccentricities, secrets and dreams. Now they spoke only in stilted business jargon and looked like cardboard cutouts. There was no color to them, only the blue black of their frugal suits.

Talking of suits, what will I do with mine, I wonder? He looked down at the dull gray fabric with the thick weave. He hadn’t even opened the stitching on the pockets for God’s sake so as to keep it looking smart. And now his body would have no more use for it.

Difficult to give a used suit to someone who really wears suits. Bemused, Vir mulled over the irony; a suit was all about self-respect after all and one must buy that. Well, I suppose one of the janitors can get his son married in this. And then maybe a procession of people will get married in this suit, one by one. Wow, what a thought.

He brought his mind back to the meeting. Really, might as well go out looking good. Maybe I can chime into the conversation somewhere. He tried to concentrate and look for an opening but after a few minutes a haze crept over his mind and he gave up. The discussion was about some two-page form. Twenty people were sitting around arguing listlessly about changes to a goddamn form! Sometimes the stupidity of companies overcame him. Then he would remind himself it was only a game, a way to pass time… Our lives kept running out, tick tock tick tock, and if we had not had these charades to keep us occupied we’d just sit and wait in terror for the end to come. Much better this way.

But for him this diversion was now over. The rest of his life now lay plain before his eyes. The changes would come soon and rapidly. There was no knowing how he would take it. He felt a little shiver of fear.

He distracted himself with thoughts of the evening outside. Even without his watch he would have known the day was ending. He had this sixth sense about it. Evenings would make him feel empty inside and a little manic at the same time. It went back to when he was a child, perhaps it was even stronger back then. He’d have this urgent desire to rush outside and drink the evening in – fill up the emptiness with friends and games and with the loud chirping of the birds and three-abreast walks down evening paths. Then almost at once the trees would darken to black and the birds would go quiet and the sweet smell of night would rise unmistakably from the hedges. The children’s chatter would become conversations, the odd walking parent would be avoided on the empty streets, and for a while reality would be suspended as though by some magic spell.

Summer evenings used to be the best. They would be cool and comfortable and fragrant and would stretch out for so long that one would not feel cheated by the passing of the hours. There was enough time to play not just one sport but two or perhaps three. Yes, summer evenings were the best… particularly in the last days before the rains came. The suspense and the guessing games were well repaid by the thrill of the first downpour. Out of the blue would come the black of clouds and amongst the gently swirling dust and swirling doubts of “is this really it?” the sky would open up and drench them all, even the girls scurrying back to their homes but not really trying to move as fast as they could.

Not moving as fast as they could because it was beautiful to see the rain, it was a blessing to be caught in the water from the heavens, it was wonderful to be young and full of health splashed in the youthful monsoon that never aged.

“OK, see you all next week!” boomed the Vice President, the sonics pulling Vir’s mind back into the conference room. In one short moment that vivid world of his childhood disappeared wispily. That’s how worlds disappear, Vir thought, in the blink of an eye, like a dream evaporates when you wake up.

As everyone gathered their things, Vir looked wryly at the blank page on his own notebook. He had not taken any notes today and really, where he was going he wouldn’t need these notes.

His colleagues began to file out. They all made it a point to stop by him and shake his hand and tell him what a great guy he had been. “See you sometime” many said but he doubted he would see any of them ever again. This life was near its end. He felt a little weak.

Then the goodbyes were over and he walked down the stairs and out the door. He was surprised by the darkness and then he noticed the overcast sky. The wind was cool and even as he breathed it in, the first fine spray of water came down with a gust of wind and evaporated immediately on the road below. He felt some on his face and it lit up a wide smile. The monsoon was here. As always, it had kept its promise.

A clutch of twenty-somethings was waiting for their rides. Some of these guys had worked for him. One of them came up to where Vir was standing. His face was bright and his eyes were shining. And he was not wearing a suit.

“I heard you are leaving the company to become a novelist. All the very best, sir!”

Recommending an A2E duty

If I were President of the United States, I would push for an across-the-board customs levy that would be automatically triggered with rises in the unemployment rate (let's call it the ABCDE - Across the Board Customs Duty linked to Employment - or A2E for short).

So let's say we set the target unemployment rate at 5%. At this rate of unemployment, the A2E might be zero. If unemployment rose to 6%, the A2E levy on imports might automatically rise to 5%. If unemployment rose to 7%, it might automatically rise to 10%. If unemployment rose to 10%, it might grow to 25%. The mathematical function would be clearly defined up front. But in effect it would be a balancing factor trying to keep jobs in the US.

To minimize governmental bloating, it would be truly across the board, so that the push of special interests does not see this ballooning into the complexity of the tax code! Also to give business some time to adjust, this rise in the A2E levy would be for 6-12 months out. Probably closer to 6 is better.

Thus if unemployment rises in January, it would mean that an additional A2E would be levied on all imports - from yoga mats to software - in July. Simple and far-reaching.

Socialism collapsed some years ago - its modeling of man solely as a producer turned out to be flawed. Despite highly complex planning associated with socialism, even highly skilled engineers could not buy bread in the stores. Now we see what can only be called the partial collapse of capitalism which has proved the folly of the modeling of man solely as a consumer. Through and despite highly complex free market structures, you might own an iPhone but you might not have a job.

There has to be a middle path. By recognizing that more-or-less full employment must be a fundamental part of our economic goals, the Across-the-Board Customs Duty related to Employment may be a sharp tool for achieving this balance between production-oriented socialism and free-market capitalism.

Manufacturing and the trajectory of the United States

In 1994, I took a class in Manufacturing Strategy at Stanford. One of the articles we had to discuss was something along the lines of "Is manufacturing even pertinent for the USA?" I had elected to study manufacturing for my bachelor's and my master's - and then this was a manufacturing strategy course, right? - so I of course thought that the answer was self-evident.

But when the class started, student after student began dumping on manufacturing. There must have been 50-60 people in the class, about 20 spoke, and no one thought manufacturing was worthwhile. They all talked about how the "service economy" had made manufacturing redundant. Towards the end, I raised my hand and nervously blurted something about how abundant raw material, cheaper power and good infrastructure made the US attractive for manufacturing, and at the same time the rising hordes of Indian software programmers and advertising folks and bankers (leapfrogging straight into the service economy) meant that America should not take dominance in services for granted. But it was a spindly voice against a storm. Far more representative was a small energetic American girl who made the eloquent case that keeping manufacturing in the US was just a CYA (cover your *** - I was shell-shocked!) strategy which a bold leader would simply get rid of, and if she led a company she would have none of it.

At the end of the class, Prof. Carlson revealed the opinion of Intel's Andy Grove - that manufacturing would continue to be important for the United States. But he revealed it in a mild way, almost not taking sides, and the class hemmed and hawed, and accustomed as I was to the black-or-white method of teaching in India, I left the classroom feeling quite disturbed (in part, I admit, at my total inability to influence opinion even an iota). I remember that there was a German student, Johann something, who said a few words of encouragement to me as we trooped out. We were two of the three foreigners in that class. And the third guy was Chinese, who evidently did not need to say anything.

(Don't you see we'll catch up with you if you share technology with us? - I could not help wondering. My American friends seemed too complacent.)

The next year, I was reviewing a Harvard Business School case study on Kodak for the legendary Prof. Wheelwright. In the case study, Kodak had to decide between situating a factory in Thailand and situating it in the US. Labor cost was of course much lower in Thailand. A group of HBS students had supposedly built a big Excel model and had concluded that the overall cost was lower in the USA, even though this was not a "core competence" for Kodak. The analysis had been accepted by Kodak and the case study had been taught for some time. When I looked at the model minutely, however, I saw it blithely assumed that the low labor productivity of Thai society - in very different realms such as agriculture - was being assumed for a state-of-the-art factory identical to what would otherwise come up in the US. From my Asian point of view, this was quite insulting. (Prof. Wheelwright seemed to agree this was incorrect, btw he is quite a great guy.) To my mind, this was the other side of the US arrogance on manufacturing - "we are always more effective, it's just that we think that our time is better spent on 'brains-intensive' stuff". Perhaps, given this brief context, my conclusion might seem unwarranted and prickly, but these weren't isolated incidents - this was what the younger generation of business students genuinely appeared to believe. I found it much easier to relate to the professors and older folks in the schools, they seemed to be more in sync with my own beliefs.

Fast forward maybe 10 years to Portland, Oregon. The US had started to feel software services slip away to suddenly-important companies like Infosys and Wipro. Software too was boring for the American wunderkinds. They wanted to "find themselves" or "express themselves", a luxury we had little access to or time for. Bill Kayser, a highly-skilled software colleague with a dyed-in-the-wool computer science background, was lamenting America's future. No one wanted to study software any more. What would happen to America and people's ability to earn a living?

I remember saying, "Well the rupee will appreciate against the dollar, and it will bring back balance. I also think that the US will be forced to turn back to the riches of its commodities and perhaps back to manufacturing." In retrospect, the rupee did not appreciate - but Indian salaries did. Year-on-year salary increases in software have been staggering. The delta between US and Indian salaries is now quite low for senior people, quite definitely on purchasing-power-parity terms.

And US collegiate interest in software education is picking up, at long last. You may credit "The Social Network" but I think at least part of it has to do with the fact that on-campus hiring in other areas has hit rock bottom.

The US has not returned to commodities or manufacturing in a big way, but perhaps it should. Deep and lasting unemployment is breaking the country's spirit. It is psychologically perhaps better to earn a low wage than to be unemployed, right? I was sitting alone at dinner at Munich tonight, reading the NY Times (hard copy!) when I came across this article, "Does America Need Manufacturing?" Some thoughts and experiences of the last ten years came back to me, sharpened by the immediacy of the worries about the US economy and the US people.

The USA's "service economy" of the last decade or two has been built on Chinese credit. The chickens have come home to roost. What does the US have to sell to China?

Perhaps it's time to put up a few fabs.

The first elections to the Municipal Council of Gurgaon

Many of the candidates standing for the Gurgaon municipal council elections are women. That seems like a good thing and a sign of India's modernization. Until one digs a little deeper.

Our cook lives with her daughter in a one-room "quarter" in a building owned by a local power broker. The landlord's daughter-in-law is standing (being put up?) for election. The landlord's brother owns another such building where our domestic help lives. I think that brother's daughter-in-law is also in the fray.

Both buildings are illegal of course, and they may own several others. Almost all of the tenants are migrants who have left their villages to try to find a better life. Many of these migrants are women who work in the nearby middle-class houses.

The landlords strong-arm these poor migrants. For example, once in a while they take a month's rent and then a few days later ask for it again. Since no receipts are handed out, there is no way to contest that claim. The tenants somehow pay up again - digging into their meager savings or borrowing money - rather than risk the landlord's anger. As migrants, they often don't have their papers in order and are always at risk from the police so they have no recourse (remember the Commonwealth Games when they were mass-shipped out of the region?) Yes, this does sound like the serfdom we thought we had abolished in the villages, playing out in this urban form of zamindari.

(Incidentally and ironically, these poor migrants pay 50% more for cooking gas etc. than you and I do, because they don't have the papers to get a subsidized gas "connection" and have to buy gas from the black market. Then despite being ready to pay for power and water from the money they make from their hard work, they get yellow brackish water in buckets from a tanker and spend many hot summer nights without electricity in their rooms. I wonder how they are able to come to work each day.)

Anyway, coming back to these elections - on Friday, as the tenants stepped out to go to their jobs, they were stopped outside the building by the landlords and their henchmen. They were told that they would have to instead come with them on an electioneering march. Those that refused and went to work would have their belongings thrown out and their quarters locked. Most women complied. They marched in the hot sun for perhaps 10-15 kilometers, shouting slogans all the while. The next day their throats were so ruined they could barely speak.

One woman who defiantly went to work had left her child sleeping in the quarter. These guys pulled the child out along with her belongings and put their own lock on the room. The child had to go looking for its mother.

This is the real story behind the facade. This is how a lot of people are treated in India, like animals to be herded around. It is tragic that such situations are so complex and a product of myriad factors that we don't know how to address. Worse, when we see such a pugnacious and barbaric expression of naked power even we sometimes feel powerless in comparison.

High onion prices and income disparities

The New Year has been accompanied by record food inflation, especially in India where it crossed 18% this week!

I think a fundamental reason for this may be rising income disparity coupled with the unbranded nature of food. Let me explain my simple (over-simplistic?) thinking.

The proportion of rich and middle class people is growing and increasing the income disparity. This is much higher in certain parts of the country. For example, in Gurgaon, we appear to have a very high proportion of people working good white collar jobs (e.g. in IT and BPO companies or multinationals), or blue collar jobs in well-paying companies like Maruti Suzuki. If I were a groceries vendor in Gurgaon many years ago, I might have some well-heeled clients but a lot of my customers would have not made much money. As a groceries vendor today I may have as many "rich" clients as poor ones and many of them would be super-rich by Indian standards.

Now the rich customers of grocery stores are looking for high produce quality and freshness, more variety (e.g. imported fruit), a better shopping ambiance etc. and do not mind paying much more for it. I think this leads store owners to increase prices - sometimes increasing the money they take home but sometimes just adding more services such as refrigeration, air conditioning, accepting credit cards or free home delivery... or scandalously painting the fruit vegetables with wax or, even worse, injecting the produce with growth hormones like oxytocin!

In the long run, one would expect certain stores to cater exclusively to the poorer people, but this process takes time. Today all grocery stores in Gurgaon appear to be increasingly focused on the rich.

Think about it - it is also quite unlikely in practice for two stores in the same neighborhood to be selling the same product at two different prices, especially when there are no strong retail brands in play that accentuate the difference in their offerings. Even when strong retail brands are in play (e.g. premium Whole Foods vs. basic Wal-Mart in the US), the difference between the most expensive and least expensive groceries you can easily buy may be much lower than, say, the most expensive and least expensive electronics you can easily buy. After all, the product brands are mostly the same regardless of retail store - and owned by Mother Nature. At the risk of comparing, ahem, apples to oranges, it seems to me that it is pertinent that you can buy a Bose radio for several times the price of an unbranded Asian one that both fulfil essentially the same function, while an apple at Whole Foods is not that much more expensive than an apple at Wal-Mart. (I read somewhere that currently Wal-Mart's grocery prices are 12 percent lower than those of traditional grocers, while Whole Foods' prices are about 14 percent higher.)

Now, I have not come across much talk about this mechanism of income disparity increasing food prices. If you know of any articles on the subject, please let me know. Also, I am no economist, so I will be happy to be corrected by someone who knows more of that subject than I do (if that population is not still in hiding).

And of course there is another reason why income disparity might drive food inflation - the rich consume more food and waste a lot, and they consume more meat and poultry that are inefficient users of agricultural output. This I think has been well studied. But while this may be a big driver globally of rising food prices (as would be the corn-based ethanol production), in India around me I can see more basic factors at work.