Editorial of December 2009

This year September, I had written a book called The Wordsmith Sutras  - a collection of 200 word essays each, on the themes of our lives like Education, Sex, Fitness, Media and Debt. In Debt, I wrote  Debt is an addiction. It is addictive only when there are too many people offering debt. Be aware of debt. In the smoke and mirror show called this world, this easy credit (=debt) may dry up leaving you in addiction and also to pay interest for previous addictive sessions.

Debt on Money has ruined men, nations and civilizations. Be aware of debt. I could not anticipate that within 60 days, Dubai meltdown would take place and a soverign country (or nation-state) would suspend its payment. Yes, debt has ruined many.

Now, consider these 2 pictures below – of the same street
 
Dubai in 1990                                             Dubai in 2004
[Courtesy: http://suddendebt.blogspot.com/2009/11/dubais-shut-up-finance.html ]
Where did all these debt go? In many extravagenza which can be rightly told to be hubristic. Who paid? The greediest with the purse to match the greed. Who allowed? An oligrachy. And blood built it, wealth enjoyed it.

The hubris was seen to be believed. In these 30 years, all achievement was for the eye or ear or skin or taste or smell. There was not a single edifice which could have anything to do with something of the mind, of the intellect. It was strange. This whole Dubai saga  – the real estate boom, the hedonism always made me realize the fact that there lies something, something very valuable for humanity that could not choose to make a Parthenon ten times bigger or Taj Mahal some 900 metre high. It was not only about getting cheap labour, technology, easy money – it was about a sense of proportion and message.

A huge population from Kerala (Malabar) – where I spent a decade of my youth will be severely impacted. So will be Bangladesh and other South Asian countries whose blood built these hubristic extravagenza.
As the Dubai oligarchs stride in high hubris with their dream and vision and as I hear (from media) that UK banks feature heavily in the list of lenders, I would remembered what an Englishman, some two hundred years back told something so compellingly about hubris – of a relic in stone in some desert, may be in the desert of Arabia

Ozymandias – Percy Byshe Shelley [1791 -1822 ]
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said —”Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert… Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear :
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Our young, humble, debt-free Pentasect will see another new year next month. All regular features remain with news of a New Venture: Embrace the Leadership
Rest all regular features.

Best wishes,

Pritam Bhattacharyya
Editor-at-Large

editor@pentasect.com

December 2009