The Birdman of India

Sahibi has become ingrained in us. I remember recently I had to take a gora to meet a GM of a large company in Mumbai. We sat and started talking. During the meeting suddenly the GM buzzed for a peon and asked him to pour him a glass of water. What shocked the gora was that the bottle of water was all the time on the table and all the GM had to do was to reach out open the bottle and pour himself some water rather than call someone to do it. Next the GM again buzzed, this time for his assistant, and asked him to dial so-and so, the assistant pisked up the mobile from the GM`s table dialled and when the connection was made he handed the phone for the GM to speak. The gora could not believe what he saw, no wonder, in the west they just do not have flunkeys like we do, there is no system of peons., evrybody does his own work, even closer home, in Iran in schools the Headmaster himself rings the bell at the end or beginning of a class unlike here.

Re: # 16

Yes, I agree with you Delhiwala: You are known to make very insightful and smart comments! Let us hear it!

You know censoring is done by automati searching for key words that imply profanity, curse words or whatever. But that kind of censoring does not work always. It is done to save time. It can even be stupid. So don`t worry. Have patience and drink your cup of tea.

Mr. Gill,

It`s refreshing to read an article on this topic.

As school kids we use to read a lot about him and discuss in schools about his work, especailly when he came and confirmed about Jerdon`s Courser bird, thought to be exticnt was spotted in AP in 1986. He took pains to educate the people about conserving the endangered bird. He took and preserved the lone specimen of Jerdon`s Courser in Bombay Natural History Society. The BNHS musuem in Bombay reflects the hard work done by Salim Ali. He was one of the inspring role models in pre-6/12 India.

#32
Interesting observation. We overemploy as a means to reducing unemployment - go to a bank or any organization where you need to get work done, we need to go from counter to counter getting papers stamped or new pieces of paper issued, etc. Why have one person do the job when five can share it? This idea in modern india is partly a tradition carried over from our obsession with castes and partly an import from the old Soviet Union where, again, the state created a lot of useless, bench-warming jobs as a way of keeping people employed. Employment was not about productivity, it was a welfare measure.

#35 soya, it is not caste or anything, its the angrez method ..this was the norm before automation in angrezistan too.

Nice artice.Ofcourse every educated Indian is aware of Salim Ali,he is a legend.
But not many know but his personal life.

Regards
Nandan