Don't even dare to question my patriotism after you read this coz I will send a jinx your way and you will develop ulcers in your nails. But pay attention.

If you read business magazines, there is this thing called the BRIC countries. Everyone is in awe of the great emerging economic might of BRIC countries. If you never heard of it, B=Brazil, R=Russia, I=India and C=China.

I just returned from China. Last year I was in Brazil and Russia. I have lived the better part of my life in India. My trip to China got me thinking about this exercise we had in 2nd standard. Did you have those games where they taught us pattern recognition? One of them was to POINT THE ODD MAN OUT. Example: Find the one item that doesn't belong to this list: Elephant, Tiger, Lion, Bollywood. Clearly, Bollywood is the odd item. The other three have many obvious things in common, the odd item is truly odd and it's not the same leaugue. I have another example? Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Can you name the odd country?

I will give you three clues:
- It's the one country in that list that has hardly any public infrastructure.
- It's the one country in that list whose cities are, how do I say it politely?, err, lacking in toilet facilities for its citizens.
- It's the one country in that list that has power cuts even in major cities.

After years of singing "hum honge kamyab" I must wonder if we are just delusional. Am I over-pessimistic? Can you share some of your optimism with me? Please elaborate on WHY you feel so optimistic.

By the way, China is amazing. Amazing! Did I say China is amazing! God bles them. Wait, they don't believe in God there. Well, God bless them anyway!

Valentine's Day has two distinct messages.

There is the one that says you must show love. Love, amor, pyar, prem, preet, muhabbat. No one could argue against this. Everyday should be Valentine's Day. Love your spouse. Show your fiancee you are lattoo, head over heels. Take them to dinner. Buy them gifts, sona, chandi, heere, moti. Spoil them. Shower affection. Heck, spice it up with your spouses. Nothing wrong with that. That is not only very Indian, it's universally human. To take a day off to celebrate that is not doing justice to it - we should have FIVE such Valentine's days.

But come on, there is another Valentine's Day. Who we kidding? There is the one that exacerbates the already high hormone level of every teenager. It passes off soft porn as image of love. Now, I am not very smart, but even I can tell someone is trying to pass their dirty agenda cloaked in something noble. Porno and love are not the same. If every time you mentioned love you flased a lingerie, I have a right to get concerned. Remember Pavlov's dog?

I understand every 4 year old boy should be taught to love, respect and honor the 3-yr old neighborhood girl. But then they should do so by drawing hearts on a lousy piece of paper? Hearts with Cupid's arrow through them? Kashala? To what consequence?

Every pervert makes a pass at every woman he can coz "it's valentine's day." Phlanderers get into high gear - ahem, coz it's Valentine's Day and "Nehru did it as did the great queens and gods in our mythology." Maaf karo, please try and sell me something else, coz this one I am not buying.

There are a lot of good things we can learn fom the West. But, it seems to me, Valentine's Day isn't one of them. Our culture and tradition are more sophisticated about showing love. It's more subtle. It's deep. Valentine's day is crass, it's superficial, it's a "market economy" version of something that should never be associated with the market.

Alas, Ia m afraid, the tide is building up and young Indians may realize this too late. I pray we preserve our sanskruti and our traditional disdain for crassness and commercialization and kep this "holiday" out of India.

If you love someone, do more than buying them candy and lingerie. And let's not set aside a day for love. and let's not expose young kids to ideas that belong in the domain of adulthood - romantic love is NOT for kids. There's nothing cute about 6yr olds making V-day cards for the little girl next door. You might as well give them some wine to celebrate it too - how appropriate would that be? On several issues, Western culture has lost its compass and this is one of them. No civilization is perfect. This is not a condemnation of the West. It's just a plea to be discriminating in what we adopt from there.

Love is an everyday, every moment thing. And love has nothing to do with sex as V-day has become. Our ancestors knew that. Let's preserve that.

Eat at any desi restaurant lately? Then you know what I am talking about. Good food, bad ambience, even worse service.

Researchers should look at our genes and find out what the problem is. Something must have gone wrong in the last few centuries. Desi restaurants have by far the best food in the world. But for some reason no one ever bothered to pay attention to serving nicely. I can't remember a resturant I ate at where the quality of service and ambience improved without compromising the desiness of the place.

"Nice" restaurants like New York's Tabla and Washington DC's "Bombay Club" are desi only for naam ke waste. They are as desi as Honda Civic is American. Tabla is annoying. Pseudo. Did I say pseudo? I mean they are such wannabe goras. Everything is fake and phony. Come on, let's see some real authentic desi food, that's the only reason I go there. To their credit, they present and serve well, are properly managed and clean. But in the process of becoming properly managed it appears that their desiness had to be sacrificed and the food became some weird "fusion" nonsense tasting more like McDonalds than Mughlai.

I went to Delhi Darbar in Mumbai (see photo). There, my mouth is watering just thinking about the food. But guess what? Third class service, second rate ambience, poor presentation, no attention to detail.

Am I the only person who feels that way? Honestly, anyone else feel that they can't get authentic desi cuisine served nicely?

So I visited Mumbai recently. I go there often. I was there in 2006. Things looked up. New buildings. America style construction. Friends said I should buy a house there coz "everyone's coming back." I was optimistic.

A year later, I am not so sure. Not only have things not improved, they are getting worse. Yes, there are a few nice buildings being built. But what about public infrastructure? Mumbai is a city ABANDONED by its leaders. Sala nobody cares a damn. Tata launches lakh rupee car. Hello people, where will they drive them? All the cars have poured on to the roads and the mess has gotten messier. I think unless something radical is done, Mumbai is in a spiral of death. It's the city with best people and worst leaders. I have seen many third world cities, Mumbai is THE WORST of them and getting even worse by the hour.

One more thing. Shame on all you Mumbaikars for putting up with this Sh*%. Any self-respecting people would rebel. India's top city looks like a little better than a gutter. Every corner of it! Shame on you all again! Me no coming back, thanks for the invitation.

What say you?