It is an interesting life when they throw an opportunity to go fly in Brasil, there isn't a question of saying No. Our minds corrupted by images of naked women dancing the samba in the Rio Carnaval in the Sambadromo or the various porno flicks glorifying the skills of Brasillian women are reason enough. However, not reading the fine print meant that I landed up in a sleepy hamlet-town called Manaus up in the state of Amazonas in the north-western part of Brasil. No samba or naked women there, just tonnes of rain and slushy roads with lots of red-mud clay. Like they say, "you live, you learn".
Sleepy towns offer little post-sundown places to go except possibly for dinner (A Churrascaria) and a bar where you sip the Caipirinha.
Brasil for one had me fixated for a while, firstly when I had to apply for a visa, they made me go through a song and dance sequence with a complete item number and bharatnatyam combination before they decided I would be given a visa. When I actually got the visa in hand, i mustered enough courage to tell the gentleman at the window in the Lutyen's Delhi bunglow-turned-embassy about how difficult it was, his response to me, "well, its just the same as how you give us a visa when we want to come here". That statement made me wonder what he was saying and went out of my memory replaced quickly by my urge to run to the nearest watering hole with friends.
Brasil has a national policy of reciprocity, which means they do whatever you do to them. In short, this means that Gringos (short for Americans) have a really tough time getting a visa to Brasil. Pretty much the same way that a Brasillian has to face the long loops the American visa process throws at you. So its never very difficult to find pissed off gringos in bars trying to establish global supremacy by having Tabatha and Analinda in both arms with a couple of Reals (pronounced Hey-Aye-zz) on the table and drinks around. Hence, over the first week I learnt what kind of people to avoid at bars. This was a quick learning after Day 1 involved an American telling me how screwed up it was to get a visa to Brasil and how corrupt the people were and how ridiculous the.... yada.... yada... yada....
So when this interesting Brasilian who spoke no English tried to strike a conversation in Portuguese I was anything but interested. However, this person's persuasion (read buying me Caipirinha and the fact that they looked very presentable made me relent to a conversation which lasted about 35 minutes and opened up a whole new perspective to me.
Between the Ola and the Boa Noite somewhere the conversation slipped to corruption in India and Brasil and the public haplessness at such situations. Now here the garota made an interesting point. And as always, i started off on the scams in India in the area of defense procurement, what would happen 55 minutes later is something I would not believe even if it was written in stone.
So here is the gist of what the garota told me. "Do you know what BRIC is?", 7PM in the evening, a sleepy town, nothing better to do... yeah... might as well indulge in world economics.. so I gave her the logical answer "brazil, russia, india and china, as economic superpowers" ... And what she said was a stunner, "BRIC was a term coined by Goldman Sachs executive Jim O'Neill for the markets that the US must sell in to, in order to maintain the economic standards of the country intact and the US has failed miserably almost everywhere except in India which has unduly let go of its market without getting much in return".
This is the point where you say, "Go on, i'm listening" or like what Calvin Candie said with aplomb "You had my interest, but now you have my attention".
She wanted me to breakdown the latest scams for her, especially military ones. So I started off narrating the entire Augusta Westland Helicopter episode and belting out details the press has been putting out. And she interrupted to ask me who the contenders were, and the moment I mentioned Sikrosky her eyes lit up. As if to say Q.E.D. she went on to narrate a possible conspiracy theory that speculated that whenever there are military bids that the US loses they run a massive smear campaign around things to ensure that they are able to bring the deal back to the table. Now interesting as it might sound, I wanted more proof. So here she goes, she asks me what other deals did India go through in the military space, and I called out the Phalcons, the Boeing Jets for the President and the C-130 and the C-17 deals, and hey presto, none of these deals seem to have a corruption component in it despite the fact that they were all driven by the same individuals who ran the Augusta copter deal. The only common factor for all these were that these deals were won by American companies. Are you telling me that the same hands that took money from an Augusta Westland would have let a Boeing or a United Technologies go scott free? I think not. I'm sure there's more than meets the eye here. Or at least that she stirred my interest in this. The fact that the Rafale deal is under cloud also raises enough suspicion that how is it that ONLY bids/tenders that American companies win are clean and above board and anything else that any other country wins is always is ridden with doubt.
Quite interesting eh!
Well the garota happened to indulge me in some more conversation before we parted ways with a promise to meet again and deliberate further on conspiracy theories.
An evening in the bar well spent. One thing is clear though, it doesn't matter if it is Brasil, Russia or China the anti-US sentiments are very clear everywhere.
(Quote)
Im sittin at a bar on the inside
waitin for my ride on the outside
she stole my heart in the trailer park
so I jacked the keys to the fuckin car
And crashed that peice of shit and then stepped away
(Unquote)
Sleepy towns offer little post-sundown places to go except possibly for dinner (A Churrascaria) and a bar where you sip the Caipirinha.
Brasil for one had me fixated for a while, firstly when I had to apply for a visa, they made me go through a song and dance sequence with a complete item number and bharatnatyam combination before they decided I would be given a visa. When I actually got the visa in hand, i mustered enough courage to tell the gentleman at the window in the Lutyen's Delhi bunglow-turned-embassy about how difficult it was, his response to me, "well, its just the same as how you give us a visa when we want to come here". That statement made me wonder what he was saying and went out of my memory replaced quickly by my urge to run to the nearest watering hole with friends.
Brasil has a national policy of reciprocity, which means they do whatever you do to them. In short, this means that Gringos (short for Americans) have a really tough time getting a visa to Brasil. Pretty much the same way that a Brasillian has to face the long loops the American visa process throws at you. So its never very difficult to find pissed off gringos in bars trying to establish global supremacy by having Tabatha and Analinda in both arms with a couple of Reals (pronounced Hey-Aye-zz) on the table and drinks around. Hence, over the first week I learnt what kind of people to avoid at bars. This was a quick learning after Day 1 involved an American telling me how screwed up it was to get a visa to Brasil and how corrupt the people were and how ridiculous the.... yada.... yada... yada....
So when this interesting Brasilian who spoke no English tried to strike a conversation in Portuguese I was anything but interested. However, this person's persuasion (read buying me Caipirinha and the fact that they looked very presentable made me relent to a conversation which lasted about 35 minutes and opened up a whole new perspective to me.
Between the Ola and the Boa Noite somewhere the conversation slipped to corruption in India and Brasil and the public haplessness at such situations. Now here the garota made an interesting point. And as always, i started off on the scams in India in the area of defense procurement, what would happen 55 minutes later is something I would not believe even if it was written in stone.
So here is the gist of what the garota told me. "Do you know what BRIC is?", 7PM in the evening, a sleepy town, nothing better to do... yeah... might as well indulge in world economics.. so I gave her the logical answer "brazil, russia, india and china, as economic superpowers" ... And what she said was a stunner, "BRIC was a term coined by Goldman Sachs executive Jim O'Neill for the markets that the US must sell in to, in order to maintain the economic standards of the country intact and the US has failed miserably almost everywhere except in India which has unduly let go of its market without getting much in return".
This is the point where you say, "Go on, i'm listening" or like what Calvin Candie said with aplomb "You had my interest, but now you have my attention".
She wanted me to breakdown the latest scams for her, especially military ones. So I started off narrating the entire Augusta Westland Helicopter episode and belting out details the press has been putting out. And she interrupted to ask me who the contenders were, and the moment I mentioned Sikrosky her eyes lit up. As if to say Q.E.D. she went on to narrate a possible conspiracy theory that speculated that whenever there are military bids that the US loses they run a massive smear campaign around things to ensure that they are able to bring the deal back to the table. Now interesting as it might sound, I wanted more proof. So here she goes, she asks me what other deals did India go through in the military space, and I called out the Phalcons, the Boeing Jets for the President and the C-130 and the C-17 deals, and hey presto, none of these deals seem to have a corruption component in it despite the fact that they were all driven by the same individuals who ran the Augusta copter deal. The only common factor for all these were that these deals were won by American companies. Are you telling me that the same hands that took money from an Augusta Westland would have let a Boeing or a United Technologies go scott free? I think not. I'm sure there's more than meets the eye here. Or at least that she stirred my interest in this. The fact that the Rafale deal is under cloud also raises enough suspicion that how is it that ONLY bids/tenders that American companies win are clean and above board and anything else that any other country wins is always is ridden with doubt.
Quite interesting eh!
Well the garota happened to indulge me in some more conversation before we parted ways with a promise to meet again and deliberate further on conspiracy theories.
An evening in the bar well spent. One thing is clear though, it doesn't matter if it is Brasil, Russia or China the anti-US sentiments are very clear everywhere.
(Quote)
Im sittin at a bar on the inside
waitin for my ride on the outside
she stole my heart in the trailer park
so I jacked the keys to the fuckin car
And crashed that peice of shit and then stepped away
(Unquote)
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