Shouldn’t it be Golden Friday, Rather than Black Friday in the US?

                                                Shouldn’t it be Golden Friday, Rather than Black Friday in the US?

Thanksgiving, the family celebration on the fourth Thursday of November, is unique to the US.

The next day marks the official start of Christmas shopping. Yes, Between Black Friday and Christmas Eve (till 7:00 PM, if I am not wrong) whatever commercial transactions take place, they go into the accounts books as Christmas sales, even revenues of gas stations, airlines ticket are counted under this rubric. That is how seriously commerce is taken in the US.Really.

This year, 2025, there are only 27 days of Christmas shopping, three days of November and 24 days of December. Maybe that is why it is called Black Friday, too few days to do Christmas shopping! No, that can’t be.

The Commerce department of the US Government compiles the money value of Christmas shopping every year, and compares that with the previous year taking into account the variation in the number of Christmas shopping days. For example, if the 1st of November falls on a Thursday, there would be a total of 32 days of Christmas shopping (if I counted wrong, do the math yourself). The eyes of retailers bug out!

If this period is marked for shopping, and all retailers and some others too, the start of this Christmas season must be Gold (lettered; ask D J Trump to tell you how) Friday. This is why I am flummoxed it is called Black Friday.

Perhaps someone would clarify.

Raghuram Ekambaram

P. S. Please note that I have highlighted (in italics) Christmas, sales, shopping etc. to make the point that Christmas appears to have turned its back on Jesus Christ, and towards shopping.

Marketing by Abbreviations

                                                                 Marketing by Abbreviations

I bought a book on marketing costing less than Rs. 300. I knew right then that it has to be a primer. The book, only about 200 pages at the most (I bought the Kindle version, no pages marked), happens to be a pre-primer. Yes, that is how simplistic (not just simple, but simplistic) the book is. 

I do have to mention why I bought the book in the first place. I do not have any book on any topic of management in my personal library, and I thought I would fill that lacuna with this one on marketing. In my reckoning, marketing is on the second rung from the bottom, HR being the lowest in management studies, finance being at the top. I wanted to start and climb up, if I desired. Fortunately, I would not waste any more money.

The book has far too many, for my taste, abbreviations. These would anchor my report on the book. In fact, beyond these abbreviations I may not have much to say about the book.

CMO – Chief Marketing Officer (of a company)

TL;DR – Too long; didn’t read

BBP – Brand Building Pentagon (I think the Pentagon in or in the neighbourhood of Washington DC needs no brand building!)

SPANCO – Suspect, Prospect, Analysis, Negotiation, Conclusion and Order

B2B – Business-to-business (I am, and so would you be, know this; yet as the author condescended to expand it for us, I am including it in this list)

As an aside, I would like to count the number of readers of my posts who know what A2B is? It stands for Adyar Ananda Bhavan, a big thing in Chennai and Tamil Nadu.

Getting back to the list,

B2C – Business-to customers/consumers

CTO – Chief Technology Officer

MHI – Monthly household income

SEC – Socio-economic classification

CWE – Chief wage earner

OBC – Organisational buying centre

CEO – Chief Executive Officer (I added the full form, not given in the book)

CDJ – Customer decision journey

CMIE – Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy

NFHS – National Family Health Survey

SIAM – Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (This should have been given, but was not)

Gen AI – Generative artificial Intelligence

FGD – Focus group discussion

MFG – (digital) mini-focus group

DI – Depth interview

ECG – Extended creativity group

U&A – Usage and attitude study

TOM – Top-of-mind (awareness)

UA – Unaided awareness

AA – Aided awareness

CU – Current usage

EU – Ever usage

ZMOT – Zero Moment of Truth

NPS – Net promoter scores

C-sat – Consumer satisfaction (surveys)

Then, there are the numbered letters, like

The four Ps – price, product, place and promotion (let us see how many times you need to repeat the four Ps before you can recall them at a snap!) 

The above is from Chapter 1 only. I have gone through the whole book, the rest three chapters. The standard is no better and the abbreviations are not any scarcer. Please believe me. If this forms a part of orientation towards management, I say, May God Bless Ye and scoot away in a trice!

Raghuram Ekambaram

Making Sense of Trumpian English

                                                               Making Sense of Trumpian English

In this post I am quoting Donald J. Trump, President of the United States as reported by The Hindu of 2025-11-29 and am trying to make sense of what he said. I have no skin in this game. A scanned coy of the statement is given below

What is the meaning of “to pause an activity”? As I understand, it is to stop an activity temporarily, with an intention to start later. Check me on that.

Yet, the US President said that he would “[P]ermanently pause migration from all Third World Countries.” Third World Countries? That classification went out with George Herbert Walker Bush. What it is now I do not know but what came after “Third World Countries” was “Least Developed Countries.” Then, Trump introduced a classification, “Shit hole countries” during his first term as POTUS.

Now, the above was merely to indicate that some enterprising entrepreneur could compile a Trumpian Dictionary of Obsolete Words and Phrases!

The most recent phrase is, “[P]ermanently pause”. Let us parse this. What Trump wants is to stop migration permanently and temporarily.

Good for me that I made sense of that. Did you?

Raghuram Ekambaram

The Best Detergent for Washing Away Empathy from Your Mind – Religion

                                The Best Detergent for Washing Away Empathy from Your Mind – Religion

Amongst Thamizh Brahmins, there are rules to show even sympathy to someone who has lost a dear one. One shalt not call on (or even telephone, send an SMS or a note on WhatsApp to) the bereaved family on the third/sixth/eighth (for example) day after death, and definitely not after sun down; and also on, certain phases of the moon. The above is merely a short list.That is, even showing sympathy is time-prescribed and -limited. All of the above are dictated to by superstitions propped up by religions and none can take away the props.

If that is for sympathy, merely imagine the case for empathy. Thou shalt not empathize with the bereaved. For the uninitiated, empathy is putting oneself in the shoes of the person/family that is grieving. It is not, “I feel sorry that he lost a dear one,” rather, “I am feeling the pain he is feeling.” This comes vividly in the teachings of the Buddha. 

Yet, empathy is not only sad events. The Buddha also talked about empathetic joy. You are feeling a good happening to others as happening to you. No competition between your neighbour and you! Think about that the next time you go for a new car. You are buying a car for yourself and not to show your middle finger to your neighbour!

I am not singling out Thamizh Brahmins. I am sure there a number of communities that have such rigidities, all imposed by religion. Only because I am a Thamizh Brahmin (a lapsed one, for sure) and can talk with relative confidence only about them.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Had the President of India Droupadi Murmu Been a Man

                                                Had the President of India Droupadi Murmu Been a Man 

Why do our politicians miss no opportunity to put their foot in their mouth?

The Assam State Assembly passed the Assam Prohibition of Polygamy Bill, 2025. The government (represented by its Chief Minister) reserved the Bill “for the assent of President Droupadi Murmu. I do not think the Bill will be denied approval,” and added, “as the President is a woman.”

The shoes are squarely in the mouth of the Chief Minister of Assam. Does he think there was a chance a male President of India could have sent back the bill for reconsideration? The position of the President of India is nothing more or less than the First Citizen of India, be the position be occupied by a male or a female. The Chief Minister of Assam forgot this basic lesson about the structure of governance of India. So much is the pity.

By the way, Mrs. Indira Gandhi was referred to as Madame Prime Minister and never as Prime Ministress!

Raghuram Ekambaram  

Vaccination Will Not Cure the Genetic/Infectious Disease of Religion

                                      Vaccination Will Not Cure the Genetic/Infectious Disease of Religion

I understand vaccine as a disabled virus; to give a more meaningful explanation, a vaccine stimulates immunity to a particular pathogen. It is perhaps better to understand a vaccine from what it cannot do: it cannot be used against common cold, caused by a plethora of pathogens that mutate frequently.

With that out of the way, I think religion is more like common cold than any serious pathogen! There was one man who thought he found a vaccine which he used it to great positive effect on himself.

That was The Buddha. It, Buddhism, lasted for a few centuries perhaps, at least somewhat effectively and then, it lost its effectiveness. Yet, before that, the vaccine had spread itself quite far.

Then, came the death-defining transformation, the vaccine became a disease. How else would you define the violence in Sri Lanka (Religion co-opted by politics) and Myanmar, where it is the Buddhists who cause violence? As far as I know there is minimal violence in Tibet, but none can say when it becomes more than minimal.

The virus of religion cannot be extirpated.

Raghuram Ekambaram

"[A]s soon as possible” v. “[R]easonable period”

                                                   "[A]s soon as possible” v. “[R]easonable period”

I am not even a legal sparrow, yet I dare to discuss the two phrases mentioned in the heading of the post.

Why did the five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court not use the phrase “as soon as possible” in its response to the Presidential Reference in its November 20th “judgement” as reported in the newspaper, probably on August 21, 2025 [the word judgement is within quotes as the question whether a Presidential Reference seeks a “judgement” or merely an opinion is not addressed] against its own earlier judgement on April 8th, 2025. The phrase used is, “reasonable period”. 

If the recent pronouncement from the five-judge Bench is a judgement, the judgement of April 8th can be appealed, I understand as a layman. If it addresses merely a Presidential Reference, the judgement of April 8th cannot be overruled, the then CJI quoted in the newspaper article.

My question pertains to the subsequent statement of the CJI in the same space. “[W]e can observe that the law as laid down in a particular manner [in a judgement] is not correct.” Then, an observation from the Bench is not equivalent to a judgement! Then, how can the incorrect judgement as stated by the five-judge Bench be appealed against? The Bench’s error would have become the law of the land. “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is” – In Marbury v. Madison (US Supreme Court). In layman’s terms, the law is what the Supreme Court says the law is!

However, on this issue the Supreme Court of India has said two opposite things. OK, if you say a five-judge Bench overrules the earlier verdict, I would say a judgement overrules a response to a Presidential Reference. The classic “Which came first, the fruit or the seeds?”  

The matter has not been argued to the end. Coming back to the original question, why did the response to the Presidential Reference use an alternative phrase, “reasonable time.” Are these two phrases synonyms or not? If they are not, the April 8th judgement stands. If not, can it not be appealed?

Are you not opening a box of Pandoras?

All said, the issue is not closed. This is the story of Indian jurisprudence, it appears to this layman. I would accept a definitive clarification.

This sparrow can at best fly between trees and not soar in clear sky like an eagle does.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Thinking on “GREEN” and “SUSTAINABILITY” Together

                                          Thinking on “GREEN” and “SUSTAINABILITY” Together

I have been thinking on how to mark my appreciation of an Editorial page article in the newspaper The Hindu, of 22, November, 2025.

The second sentence, the first merely to set the stage, in the article is bang on the class of environmental cheats. The clear accusation is that under the catchall heading of “ease of doing business”, reducing “green cover requirements for industrial estates, units within [these] estates, and stand alone industries” is celebrated. It is hard to come across such unconditional condemnation of industries. Chalk up one for the writer.

The relevance of copying foreign practices without ascertaining their relevance and suitability (ecological context) is the second arrow through the heart of the cheats, be they governments or industries.

I have walked in the vast expanse of a steel industry plant, and had I not been aware of the true meaning of “Green”, I would have celebrated the manicured lawns watered with care. This point is made in the article as, ”[O]n-site green belts cannot compensate for the broader ecological losses associated with land conversion.” Applause, please, for the writer.

Vegetation provides only local environmental benefits and does nothing to create positive ecological services. Nature by itself provides environmental benefits. I would give you an example: the sub-surface filtration of water over a distance of about 95 km from Catskill Mountains in the southeastern portion of the state of New York reduces the cost of water treatment for supplying New York City! Closer home (for me) in India, at IIT Kanpur which is not too far from River Ganges, faculty members did not want campus water supply from overhead tanks for their use. They are supplied directly from groundwater−after treatment, of course− that needs to be heated in winter only mildly. This is an indirect environmental benefit for the campus and cost-benefit to the occupants in the campus. This is how it was, when I spent two years on the campus. How it is now, I am not aware.

The most forceful sentence in the article, as I reckon, is the following: [P]olicy transfers across countries must be ecologically calibrated. The article merely expand on this “key point”. One other statement made a deep impact on me: “[T]he real sustainability dividend comes from restoring natural systems beyond industrial boundaries.” This should be taken as a demand on industries to look beyond their campus.

The measure of sustainability that industries should truly care about is not “how many trees stand inside the gates, but by how deeply industries root themselves in the health of the landscapes that surround them,” Extend this to how many people live around, recalling Bhopal methyl isocyanate gas tragedy.

Just a few words to end this post. It is written by one Mr. P. Raghavan who is “a researcher in the field of vegetated coastal habitats such as mangroves.” He appears young in the bylinephotograph. Perhaps he had carried out earlier research on the topics handled here. Any which way, I thank him for giving me a wonderful read early in the morning. 

I do wish to ask one question: How is it he ventured beyond his field of research and produced such a beautiful and cogently written opinion on environment, ecology, development, industrial pollution, meaningful compensatory mechanisms and so on. My hats off to the writer.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Incursion of English Language into Street Thamizh

                                                 Incursion of English Language into Street Thamizh

I overheard a supervisor telling his subordinates doing their daily task of clearing the roads of garbage (shame on those who throw wrappers and other detritus from their cars on to the streets) in Thamizh. This is no surprise as I live in Srirangam, a suburb of Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu.

Yet, it did surprise me, the way the supervisor conveyed his message: “Ungallukku edhavadhu daut irundhal enakku fone pannunga (I transliterated).” The Thamizh sentence without the borrowed and accommodated words will go, “Ungallukku edhavadhu sandhegam irundhal ennudan tholaipesin moolam pesungal.”

In English, it goes like, “If you [in a respectful form] have any doubts, call me on the phone.” Note that “doubt” in English comes out as “daut”, there is a letter in Thamizh for “au.” This sentence suggests to English speakers and writers, “please use ‘f’ instead of ‘ph’”. I know why “ph” is used but when would it be time to try rationalizing English spelling? Never? 

Do you know that in the mid to the waning decades of the nineteenth century “tomorrow” was written as “to-morrow”? I do not know when that hyphen dropped out. Do we have to wait for such a time interval for “ph” to become “f”? That was a mild diversion.

When people speak in English with Hindi words thrown in, they call it Hinglish. Then, would I call the language in which the supervisor talked Thinglish. No, I would not.

I would rather call it Street Thamizh, wherein “street” does not connote anything inferior. It has the same status, if not higher than, the Thamizh taught in schools, colleges etc. The name “Street Thamizh” do not connote street, please understand.

At home, I, a Thamizh Brahmin, speak a mongrel that includes, quite often in a single sentence words from Thamizh, English, Hindi and Sanskrit too! I would be justified if I were to call it TamBrahm Thamizh! But, I would not. Or, perhaps I would call it, “Agraharam Thamizh,”, the Thamizh spoken in bad old times in streets on which only Brahmins lived.

No. I would call it, again with no imputation of inferiority, “Street Thamizh”, as distinct from the literary form. 

Raghuram Ekambaram

George Bernard Shaw Needs to be Brought up to Speed

                                                    George Bernard Shaw Needs to be Brought up to Speed

I came to hear about G. B. Shaw through his play Pygmalion when I was in my mid-teens. Then one of the things he said made me laugh, though thinking about it now, I feel silly. He is supposed to have said, “11 players are playing and 11000 fools are watching,” while commenting on the game of cricket.

Facts firs: there are 13 players on the field, 11 players on the bowling-cum-fielding side and two on the batting side. In fact, I am in a good mood to add two more to the population on the field though not players, the field umpires. Add the TV referee, though not on the field but has to be counted among the fools. In addition, there is also the match referee, off the field. Therefore, 13 players and two referees on the field, and besides the number of commentators in the commentary booth, the TV Umpire and the match referee, XXXXX + 3 + 2 who are watching. The number of fools just shot up, because no international cricket match has as low a turnout as 11,000, even the one between Ireland and Afghanistan. XXXXX, the stadium spectator capacity (including the freebies) may go as high as 132,000+ at NaMo stadium in Ahmedabad.

That is a whole lot of catching up that GBS has to do. Let us zoom out and see how people respond to other sports.

G. B. Shaw must have never played any sport. He could not have even imagined how a sport helps one in living, beyond surviving. Sport without passion is no sport at all. 

Even street cricket is played with passion, and not merely in India. Pick-up games in the US are one of the most intense leisure (an oxymoron I invented!) activities of Americans−if you had seen the movie Thomas Crown Affair starring Pierce Brosnan, you would have noticed that the obscenely rich Thomas Crown blew $100,000 on a golf hole on a Saturday afternoon! Tell Americans that such games are not played with a passion for competition and life.

I have seen professional and college sports−Basketball, American Football, Baseball−in the US, competitions (domestic) in India, indeed inter- and intra-hostel sports competitions. To this day, I have not witnessed even any sport being played or spectated without passion. It is passion, indeed, that can bring 11,000 fools to watch 11 players play.

I measure only 156 cm tall, yet none has enjoyed inter-collegiate sports in basketball and volleyball with more passion than what I show, merely spectating.

If George Bernard Shaw would read this wherever he may be, he would know that he still has much to learn.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Change the Discussion to Living and Surviving Languages

                                              Change the Discussion to Living and Surviving Languages

This write-up, which I hope would not be too long, does not take reference to any recent particular verbal duels between politicians. It is rather about changing the parameters of the discussion; please note that I used “discussion” instead of “debate” or “argument”, as I do not want anyone going away having arrived at a definitive conclusion.

Any language dies only when there is a maximum of one person who can do something with it, but has no one else to do it with. When that person dies without leaving a progeny (which is no guarantee the language would survive), the language dies. This, I believe, is an uncontroversial position, though even this is not definitive. As we have multiple venues of reproductions of thoughts, a language can be resurrected. Yet, such a resurrected language may not be said to be the language it was before it died. Time stops for nobody, and all that.

A surviving language; there are many, like Latin, Sanskrit etc. merely survive. That is not an analytic statement if you follow how I define “survival”. This is what Baruch Spinoza did as he wandered in the philosophical terrain: define a word before using it and, this is crucial, his definition matched how he wanted to develop his theses and hardly ever matched how others had defined it earlier.

Survival of a language, I take it to mean, as not changing substantively to have an effect on understanding anything spoken, written in it. I am no linguist, but I would go out on a limb and say that Latin is at best a surviving language. No one ever takes an effort to make it living, the essence of which is to change. Latin never changes. Perhaps someone might want to extend the point to Sanskrit.

A living language, again, as I define it, is one that resists, but not with any conviction, changes. Yet, it changes. Take Tamil, for example. Some Tamils think through the language to come up with words that have no shelf life (though a Tamil by birth, I am not one of them). “Bus” is a word in English and its equivalent in Tamil was coined as “Perundu” in the late 1960s, which could mean something big that pushes (perhaps the etymology of “undu” could give me a more relevant word to carry the meaning of a bus). There are enough examples.

The word bus in a “bus bar” in an electric substation means carrying a large quantity of electricity (power) with minimal resistance.     Now, that matches the meaning of the word “bus” as regards transportation. I hope you get my point.

To get back to “bus” and “perundu”, try using the latter at a bus stop and observe how people look at you – You must be from Mars!

My conclusion is if a word in another language can be relatively easily pronounced and written by a mass of people who use that word in their daily interactions in their vernacular (no disdain, only to mean the marketplace), then that marks a living language, vernacular or otherwise. Both the vernacular and the literary forms of a language should be able to thrive in a dynamic environment; a living environment fit for a living language.

Further, French language does not easily accept words from another language. I might say that it is closer to surviving than to living.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Should Various Scriptural Documents Occupy the Same Shelf?

                                               Should Various Scriptural Documents Occupy the Same Shelf?

Apparently yes. Something called the Code of Criminal Procedure (Punjab Amendment) Bill became law stipulating life imprisonment for sacrilege against the Guru Granth Sahib, the Quran, the Bible, and the Bhagavad Gita.”

I wish to stake a short excursion into the last two in the above list, namely “the Bible” and the “Bhagavad Gita.”

Which Bible is being referred to here, the Hebrew Bible (in particular, the Pentateuch) or the Greek Bible, or its supposed English translation, the King James Version or the more recent versions like the New International Version or the Revised Standard Version. Any interpretation of any of these versions could be considered a sacrilege by the group of people who follow the other versions. 

Actually the Hebrew Bible does not sit well with the Christian Bibles. The Hebrew Bible must have undergone many changes as the language would not have been static over, say, 2,000 years. Then, would only the Hebrew Bible that predates all the other available Hebrew Bibles will not be a sacrilege? Something to think about.

I know that in the court of law a Hindu witness takes the oath not on Bhagavad Gita but on a generic (!) God. There is another option, but I will skip that here. Two questions arise: One, why only Bhagavad Gita is given protection against sacrilege and not the other, older texts of Hinduism like the Vedas, Upanishads, Itihas, and Puranas in the Code of Criminal Procedure (Punjab Amendment) Bill mentioned in the opening paragraph?

Two, what happens to a Buddhist witness? The Buddha never asked his followers to believe him. He pointedly asked them to go their own way and parse whether what they find lessens their suffering. Then, the Buddhist witness would take an oath on himself! Does Indian law afford this, or even, can afford this? Parsis may take the oath on Avesta, I’d suppose. Why doesn’t the above mentioned bill include it? Oh, maybe Buddhists and Parsis are too honest to come before the court. Or, there are no Parsis and Buddhists in Punjab. I am not leaving out Jains because I do not know the name of their sacred literature. I tender my sincere apologies to them.

Things to think about?

Raghuram Ekambaram