If I’m to believe LivingSocial, I have to try out a new Indian restaurant in my neighborhood because the Beatles went to India in the 60s and shared some ganja with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Don’t believe me? Check out the email I got from LivingSocial.

In 1968, The Beatles and their entourage journeyed to India to study transcendental mediation under the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Out of this trip came a healthy dose of spiritual enrichment, most of the classic White Album… and lots of infighting. For a taste of India without all that messy drama, enlist a little help from your friends, and head to *redacted*, where you’ll get $30 worth of food and drinks for just $15. Load up on authentic Indian cuisine at the lunch buffet (only $6.95 on weekdays), or order up a dinner full of meaty and veggie options like tandoori chicken and a potato-and-onion-stuffed rava masala dosa. Just don’t meditate too long on this deal, ’cause it’s splitting faster than the post-Yoko Fab Four.

Let me preface this rant by saying that, obviously, being from India, I love Indian food. In fact, I <3 most regional Indian cuisines. But then again, so do I <3 most popular world cuisines. Indian restaurants in the US with their lack of variety and imagination (tandoori chicken, tikka masala, dosa) frustrate me to no end. Tack on their marketing jargon, combining Indian food and exoticism, and I actively start to root against them.

Maybe it’s just cynical ole me, but does anyone really believe in this *pardon my Hindi* holycowshit marketing? Why would eating greasy overpriced tandoori chicken and rava dosa in an eating establishment in suburban America give people an experience similar to that of the Beatles’ ‘68 stoner trip? Why does everything coming out of India have to be advertised as spiritual/transcendental/enlightening? I think this kind of marketing is disingenuous, almost insulting to it’s target audience.

What do you think?

Warning: If talk of non-traditional Indian foods, offends you, please take your outrage to Twitter

Nothing says Main Street America like strip malls and chain restaurants (see: Applebees, Chilis, Subway, Burger King, McDonalds and so on. During my pre-FOB days (mid to late 90s), McDonalds was the new “in thing” in India. Heck, one of my farewell parties was at the Mickey D’s on Linking Road in Bandra, Mumbai.My next brush with American chain restaurants in Mumbai was in ‘06, a Subway and a *bleeping* Ruby Tuesday in Mumbai. Apparently, this was just the beginning of a trend. [WaPo]

The picture (left top) was taken during my October 2010 trip to India, and if you click on it, it opens up in a larger image that shows the menu pricing in Indian Rupees. Have fun converting.

NEW DELHI – A group of hungry college students crowded around the newest food stall in an upscale market here: the American Hotdog Factory. Its sign proudly announced, “real American hotdogs for the first time in India.” But these “hawdawgs” – the Indian pronunciation – aren’t exactly what they would find on the streets of New York or at ballpark concession stands across America. Where’s the beef? The only concession here is to Indian tastes. Cows are considered holy by many Hindus, India’s majority religion. So the top-selling item at this stand is the “American Desi,” a mushy, green log of spicy potatoes, soy beans, peas, garlic, chillies and onions held together by a fat hot-dog bun and topped with raw onions and thick mayo chutney.

My first reaction is to drool, masala bhaji in a hoy dog bun with mayo chutney, brilliant! Like I mentioned earlier, if non-traditional desi food is not your thing, outrage on Twitter.

So, what other American chain restaurants have crossed over to the good side and what else is on their menu?

Subway’s six-inch Veg Shammi, a kebab made of lentils, garlic and onion.
Cinnabon, offers an eggless Indian sticky bun,
Starbucks said its offerings would include many local and American treats, such as samosas next to muffins and spicy chai alongside skinny cappuccino.

But not all restaurants have switched their menus to exclusive Indian versions, TGI Friday’s, for instance.

“They have to buy into the culture before they will buy the food,” Rohan Jetley, vice president for marketing for TGI Friday’s, said from a plush booth at his flagship restaurant. The room was filled with decorative Americana: a bust of Elvis, a “Charlie’s Angels” movie poster, a surfboard, a disco ball and a statue of a U.S. astronaut.
Jetley’s insistence on keeping the food authentically American has made him a maverick in India. He even flies in official tasters from the TGI Friday’s Dallas headquarters to make sure its signature Jack Daniel’s barbecue sauce tastes the same in Bangalore as it does in Baltimore.

So next time you’re in India and, for some weird reason, have the yearning for American food, try TGI Friday’s.

Starting the New Year off with some good ole fashioned narrow-mindedness and prejudice, a family “catches” their daughter hanging out with a long-haired dude, who allegedly, is from a different community*. The parents are worried and a nosy younger dude suggests CommunityMatrimony.com because forcing their daughter to marry from the same community ensures a virtuous, reliable, good-character life mate, right? [video link @desinole via Twitter]

* Community in this instance, could stand for caste, sub-caste, “gothra”, clan, other sub-categories or combination thereof.

How Santosh Ostwal quit his job, did some jugaad and bettered over 10,000 lives. [Economist blog]

Couple of year back I had a post on “Indian farmers texting their way to prosperity” in which I discussed the likelihood of wireless technological innovations happening in rural Indian with almost zero Internet and computer involvement.

People complain about the folks in rural and backward areas of India getting left out of the information gold rush. That is a pretty myopic view because you don’t have to sit in front of a computer with keyboard and mouse for “information”. That is so 90s. Pretty much anyone in India, who earns some amount of money, can afford a mobile phone these days, and that is not hyperbole. And guess what the easiest and most convenient way to access information is? An entire set of people numbering greater than the population of the USA are bypassing computers altogether, but still getting information. Hope some entrepreneur minded person is listening.

This thought process stems from the concept of jugaad a.k.a the ability to make the most of existing resources and improvise and innovate. The timing of that post was right around the big crash and most of the world had not yet started feeling the complete effect of the recession engulfing the globe. Fast forward two years, frugal is in. Entrepreneurs are embracing lean practices is kick start their business ventures. Jugaad has arrived on the main stage. But what would one do jugaad for? To save the world or build the next Facebook app?

If it were up to Santosh Ostwal, his answer would be to save the world. The [Economist blog] has an incredible story of how one man applied his engineering ingenuity to help farmers in rural India at great personal cost.

Ostwal first stumbled on this problem when he visited his grandfather.

In 1981 Mr Ostwal, then an adolescent, visited his family’s village near Pune during his summer vacation. Every midnight, his 82-year-old grandfather (who had lost a leg to gangrene and walked with a stick) would walk a mile to switch on the water-pump to ensure that his oranges were ready to ship the next morning.

His first solution a.k.a jugaad was simple but effective.

He started with a $2 alarm clock. The farmer set a time, and the sound of the alarm fed into an interface that signaled the coil of the pump’s starter. It was a user-friendly technique, but the alarm could be set only once; the farmer still had to walk to his fields to switch the pump off. Mr Ostwal would scooter to the fields himself at midnight and take out his multi-meter and oscilloscope, and he began to win the farmers over.

His second jugaad ran into some hilariously suspicious babudom.

In 1998, he abandoned the alarm clock and considered a remote control that would use a radio frequency allocated to him by the ministry of communications. He first had to convince the ministry that his remote control was not capable of deploying a bomb and that he could be trusted with it.

By 2001, he had quit his job, lost his apartment and was literally leading a hand-to-mouth existence. However, the desire for a solution spurred him on.

For about 9 months, I was not having any bread and butter at all. Me, my wife and my two kids… I was driven out of the house by the house owner and really came on the road in 2002. I was unable to fuel my innovations anymore. Sustainability was totally finished. But (at the time) thanks to mobile phone technology, one fine morning of Ganesh Chaturthi in 2003, I thought to myself, ‘why do I have to go for these licenses? Why can’t I try the same technology by using wireless connectivity of the mobile phone? I immediately tried the same technology with wireless connectivity of the mobile and surprisingly, I can tell you within 15 minutes, I got the result using the bulky Motorolla T 180 mobile ha ha ha! So instead of investing in a license, I piggy-backed on the wireless connectivity of the mobile phone.

Per Ostwal, the biggest impediment he faced besides lack of funds and resources, was resistance from the very farmers he was trying to help.

Farmers were not accepting this as a problem of theirs. They would tell me that this is routine work for us and our sons. Why do you worry so much? Walking a couple of miles daily is no big deal. What other work do we and our sons have? Let them work hard and appreciate the food that they get at the end of each day!

However, he did not let any of this disrupt his pursuit for a solution to the problem that plagued him from childhood. There is a happy ending to this story.

Today his solution – a mobile-phone adaptation that triggers irrigation pumps remotely – is saving water in India and helping more than 10,000 farmers avoid several taxing, dangerous long walks a day.

Do you know of any other inspiring entrepreneurial stories like these? Please share them with us in the space below.

Miscellaneous links:
NanoGanesh

Since this involves desis and because we set the rules on this blog, we will challenge Godwin’s law in this post.

When Chris Andreson wrote about the “Long Tail” effect back in ‘04, he probably was not thinking about the sales of Hitler memorabilia in India. [BBC]

The (disturbing) growth of Hitler’s influence in India was literally thrust into the limelight by the announcement of a Hitler movie by Bollywood. Bollywood veteran Anupam Kher who was slated to play Hitler subsequently had a change of heart and withdrew from the movie. However, Hitler fandom appears to be alive and well in India.

Slowly but steadily, a decade-old business around the dead and universally despised dictator Adolf Hitler is emerging as a small-scale industry in India.
Books and memorabilia on the German leader’s life have found a steady market in some sections of Indian society where he is idolised and admired, mostly by the young.
The numbers are small but seem to be growing.

Most of these new customers appear to be educated upper middle class Gen Y customers, who are well aware of Hitler’s racist tendencies and the Holocaust he engineered but are drawn to him nonetheless.

It’s hard to narrow down what makes the dictator popular in India, but some young people say they are attracted by his “discipline and patriotism”.
Most of them are, however, quick to add that they do not approve of his racial prejudices and the Holocaust in which millions of Jews were killed.

Like vultures, businesses and publishing houses are quick to key in onto this “opportunity”.

But the truth is that books, T-shirts, bags and key-rings with his photo or name on do sell in India. And his autobiography, Mein Kampf, sells the most.
Jaico, the largest publisher and distributor of Mein Kampf in India, has sold more than a 100,000 copies in the last 10 years.
Crossword, an India-wide chain of book stores, has sold more than 25,000 copies since 2000 and marketing head Sivaram Balakrishnan says: “It’s been a consistent bestseller for us.”
And demand seems to be growing. Jaico’s chief editor RH Sharma says: “There has been a steady rise of 10% to 15% in the book’s sale.”
Until two years ago, a typical Mumbai (Bombay) bookstore sold 40-50 copies of Mein Kampf a year. Now the figure is more like several hundred copies annually.

Given the paucity of “real leaders” in post-independence India’s history, it appears that some of India’s youth have latched onto Hitler as a role model.

But young Indians’ fascination for him has been explained succinctly by academic Govind Kulkarni: “The youth look for a hero, a patriot, and Hitler was a committed patriot. He is seen as someone who can solve problems. The young people here are faced with a lot of problems.”

We’ve lamented time and again about the lack of Holocaust awareness in India and recent trends seem to confirm this line of thinking. This rise in popularity of Hitler can be attributed to the sudden acceptance of Hitler’s ideas among management students, a trend we talked about last year. Unfortunately, instead of a becoming a passing fad, it appears to have permeated into other sections of Indian society, which is quite disconcerting given the amount of racism and vitriol that embodies Hitler’s ideologies.

So what do you think about Hitler’s sudden popularity in India? Do the Indian youth really Is this a passing fad or here to stay? Would you consider it disturbing or fairly harmless?