Malanoma

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For once I thought I beat Google with 'Malanoma', and invented a brand new word. Sigh! As usual I got 12,000 results in 0.17 seconds, all of them saying, 'malanoma' is a common misspelling of 'melanoma' which as you well know is a 'highly malignant skin tumor'.

The context of 'malanoma' is that it is a 'rapidly spreading cancer' typified by the blooming of soulless malls that I talked about yesterday in 'Pig and the Elephant'.

Listen to what Aniket, the High Commissioner of 'gps blogs', says:

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--- On Sun, 4/1/12, Aniket Basu wrote:

From: Aniket Basu
Subject: Malls

Dear Sir,

Just as I say you cannot go a day without blogging, it has become difficult for many of us, I am sure, to go a day without reading your blog. Yesterday, for some reason, I had not read your blog by evening, so I launched it in my browser when some of my relatives were visiting leading to some rather pointed comments, so I had to close it down and read it again on the sly later.

This morning, too, we had visitors, so I could not read your blog until now, unusually late for a Sunday, and then I made my father read it. I think your generation have a view of life (and malls) that ours is going to sorely miss, unless, of course, globalization itself gets swept away in a changing world and we get back our marketplaces of old.

Sincerely,

Aniket

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Aniket's symptoms come under what Varun termed 'pseudo-nostalgia':

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2011/07/pseudo-nostalgia.html

which is defined there as:

"while real nostalgia is fond memories of an experienced past; pseudo-nostalgia is fonder memories of a vicarious past, viz. a past others experienced and told you tall tales about"

I am told that Gurgaon's malls are legendary and out of India.

But Hyderabad has nothing to fear. Malls like the one I described yesterday are rare. As of today the Hyderabadi culture remains that of Street Corner India:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/10/street-corner-india.html

No amount of globalization is going to change the climate of India...sunny and warm...typifying the nature of Indians.

Here is a rather fancy news item on the front page of ToI, March 29:

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India will be No. 1 economy in world by 2050: Report

'Mumbai, Delhi To Be In Top 20 Cities In 10yrs'

Mumbai: India will outpace China to become the world's largest economy by 2050, boasting a GDP of $86 trillion, forecasts a report by global property firm Knight Frank & Citi Private Bank. Leading the elephant's charge will be Mumbai and New Delhi, which will feature in the list of top 20 cities globally within the next ten years....

....Citing calculations by London School of Economics professor Danny Quah, the report predicts that the world's economic center of gravity, a theoretical measure of the focal point of global economic activity based on GDP, will shift eastwards to lie somewhere between China and India. Professor Quah calculated that in 1980, it was in the middle of the Atlantic.

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Let me see: the middle of Atlantic...that would be the mid-Atlantic Ridge. Britannica says:

"The ridge is equidistant between the continents on either side of it. The mountains forming the ridge reach a width of 1,000 miles. These mountains sometimes reach above sea level, thus forming the islands or island groups of the Azores, Ascension, St. Helena, and Tristan da Cunha, among others."

What lovely names!!! Azores, Ascension, St. Helena, Tristan da Cunha...

I suppose they are good for exiling poor creatures like Napoleon Bone-Apart (sard-lingo).

But not much known for being the center of gravity of world's economy. But that is how economics and statistics work. I was told that Economics came under 'arts' till it started living-in with Statistics which boasts of Theorems and Lemmas; but math itself was an arts subject...more like voodoo.

Now, 'somewhere between India and China'...

Which could that be?

Don't tell our Dragonian Neighbor now, but my calculations with my Facit Machine tell me that it is Tibet...

This 'Don't tell now' reminds me of a hilarous Punch cartoon in the 1960s:

Those were the decades of 'sexual revolution' and 'mixed nudist colonies' were the in-thing. There are these two nudist guys walking in a grove of elephant grass half-hidden from the viewers, and there was this lady sighted far enough away.

And the fatter of the two guys says to the other:

"Don't look now, but I have a feeling I am falling in love with her"

Cheerio!


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