When Re 1 is worth US $ 100

Year : 2050

Place : Silicon Valley, USA (Two American born Indians Talking)

Currency Conversion Rate : INR 1 Rs = USD $ 100

Ram: Hi Sunil, you didn't come yesterday to office?

Sunil: Yeah, I was in Indian Embassy for stamping.

Ram: Oh really, what happened, I heard that nowadays it has become very strict.

Sunil: Yeah, but I managed to get it.

Ram: How long it took to get it stamped?

Sunil: Oh, it was nasty man, long queue. Many PHD's was standing in front of me and they played with him like anything. That's why it got delayed. I went there at 2 AM itself and waited and returned by 4 PM .

Ram: Really? In India , it is a matter of an hour to get stamped for USA

Sunil: Yeah, but that is because who in India will be interested in coming to USA man, their economy has been booming.

Ram: So, when are you leaving?

Sunil: Anytime, after receiving my tickets from the client in India and you know, I will be getting a chance to fly Air-India in their new Supersonic Jet, which reaches Hyderabad in 2 hours. Sort of dream come true.

Ram: How long are you going to stay in India .

Sunil: What do you mean by how long? I will be settled in India , my company has promised me that they will process my Hatte Pachcha ..(Green Card)

Ram: Really, lucky person man, it is very difficult to get a Hatte Pachcha in India .

Sunil: Yeah, that's why, I am planning to marry an Hyderabadi Indian girl there.

Ram: But you can find lots of US born Indian girls in Hyderabad , Bangalore and Mumbai.

Sunil: But, I prefer Indian girls because they are beautiful and cultured. They also date!

Ram: Where did you get the offer, Hyderabad?

Sunil: Yeah, salary is good there, but cost of living is quite high, it is Rs. 2000/- for a single room accommodation.

Ram: I see, that's too much for US people, Re. 1 =$100/-. Oh God! What about in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai?

Sunil: No idea, but it is less than what we have in Hyderabad. It is like the world headquarters of software

Ram: I heard, almost all the Indians are having one personal Robot for help.

Sunil: You can get a BMW car for Rs. 5000/-, and a personal Robot for less than Rs.7500/-. But my dream is to purchase Ambassador, which costs Rs.2 ,00,000/- but has got a lovely design.

Ram: By the way, who is your client?

Sunil: Subbarao and Apparao Associates, a pure Indian company, specialising in Embedded Software.

Ram: Oh, really, lucky to work in a pure Indian company. They are really intelligent and unlike American Bodyshoppers who have opened their Fly-by-night outfits in India . Indian companies pay you in full even when you are on bench.

Retired President Barack Hussein Obama, it seems, used his visit time to visit Bihar, the most liveable place in India , probably world.

There you have full freedom and no restrictions. You can do whatever you want! I
wonder how that state has perfected that system.

Sunil: Yeah man!, you are right. I hope our America also follows their footsteps.

Ram: How are you going to cope with their language?

Sunil: Why not? From my school days I have been learning Telugu as my first language here at New York . At the Consulate they tested my proficiency in Telugu were quite impressed by my cent per cent score in TOTIL i.e. Test of Telugu as International Language.

Ram: So, you are going to have fun there.

Sunil: Yeah, I will be travelling in the world's fastest train, world's largest theme park, and the famous Cyberabad where you can see actors like, Ram Charan Teja and all. You know Ram Charan's son Junior Chiranjeevi is also going to debut as a star, with Maghadheera Rendu. Ramoji Rao Film City is also near Cyberabad. You should also visit Mumbai, where its slum of Dharavi is still maintained, as it was in 2009, but costs Rs 5000/- a night to stay in one of the tenements, worth 2 BMW's!

Ram: You know, the PM Rahul Gandhi is scheduled to visit US next year, he may then relax the number of visas.

Sunil: That's true. Last month, worlds richest man Teja Raju visited White House and donated Rs. 2000/- for infrastructure development at a SiliconValley company and has promised more if we follow the model of High-Tech City of Hyderabad. My dad also got a chance of meeting him. Very lucky person.

Ram: But, Indian government is planning to split Tech Mahendra and Satyam, the largest company in the world. That is to help both the sons of Raju, who are the world's richest. It seems, after serving his 10 years sentence, Ramalinga Raju, brought out few thousand crores, paying the 30% Voluntary Disclosure Tax, and made a killing when the US Dollar fell in the last 2 decades! Now at 90 Ramalinga Raju is in Moon, doing the age defying process.

Sunil: Both Rajus are hard workers man, he can build any number of Satyam like this. Every minute he is getting Rs. 1000/-. It seems, if you keep all his money converted as $ 1/- notes you can reach Pluto.

Ram: OK, Good Luck Sunil.

Sunil: Same to you Ram. And don't go to Consulate in a "Kurta Pyjama" or "Veshti Tundu" because they will think you are too Indianised and may doubt you will never come back and hence your Non-Immigrant Visa may get rejected. But don't forget to say " Namaskara, Baagunaara " to the Visa officer at Window 5. It seems he likes that and will not give you a visa if you don't greet him that way.

Atlas Shrugged (1957) Ayn Rand

This a book which sees raging debates in review pages and discussion groups. It seems people like to love it or hate it, and if there was a list for 'most fascinating book of the 20th century', Rand's classic would have to be in the top ten.

Rand was a philosopher who used fiction to influence the masses. A Russian emigrant who had seen first hand the restrictions placed on individual freedom after the Bolshevik revolution, her magnum opus may get you thinking for the first time about what it means to be free and the nature of capitalism. The book addresses one of basic issues of existence: the degree to which one should be selfish. At a higher level, the work is a treatise on the heights that human beings can and should reach for.

What is Atlas Shrugged?

Atlas Shrugged is a mystery, raunchy romance and work of philosophy all in one. Its protagonist is Dagny Taggart, a driven young railroad executive who tries to run Taggart Transcontinental while fighting off corruption on a national scale. She is joined in the cast by the ruthless industrialist Hank Rearden and the flamboyant and aristocratic mining baron Francisco D'Anconia. But the key character does not reveal himself until late in the book, when we get answers to some intriguing questions: why is the greatest living philosopher working as a short-order cook in a diner in the Rocky Mountains? How did the most important inventor of our time come to be an underground ganger on the railways? What happens when the people who might save the world choose not to save it? Who is John Galt?

Reason (or the responsibility to live according to a purpose)

Atlas Shrugged was inspired by the author's fury that people wasted the one capacity which distinguished them from other animals: reason. Those who no longer asked 'Why am I alive?'or 'What am I going to do or create that can justify my existence?' were for Rand as good as dead. 'Society' amounted to a protection racket for all sorts of mediocrities, with people agreeing not to point out others' lack of effort if theirs was not likewise exposed. But this willingness to accept less, in order to accommodate 'human nature', was for Rand actually anti-human. One of her characters says something to the effect of "…most people don't really want to live, but "to get away with living'". And when Dagny Taggart asks Franciso D'Anconia what he thinks is the worst type of human being, he shoots back 'The man without a purpose.'

Dagny's role in managing Taggart Transcontinental is, in her eyes, a sacred trust. Only when out on the tracks or poring over figures does she feel really alive: the trains are a metaphor for her whole understanding of life - they run at high speed on undeviating courses toward a fixed destination. In one scene, as she pushes a locomotive towards 100 mph on the newly built John Galt Line, Dagny gets a flash of insight above the roar of the engines: Wasn't it evil to wish without moving - or to move without aim?

Atlas Shrugged holds a person's greatest duty to be appreciation of the joy of being alive. Dagny Taggart's whole existence seems to be a struggle, yet she refuses to give suffering authority over her life.

The nobility of making money

For Rand, wealth was a sign that significant individual thought had taken place - to create something and to make money out of it was nothing less than the essence of human morality. Napoleon Hill said it in cruder words: 'Think and grow rich.' Money obtained by any other means (including inheritance, fraud or public directive) is 'looting', yet in the book the people who advance civilization and keep the world turning are sneered at as being 'vulgar materialists', and 'robbers of the people'. The big question that Dagny faces is why she should still try to save her railway while the looters, in the name of 'the public good', emaciate it. Wealth creators be proud! is the book's cry. Fight for your freedom to innovate and produce, and never accept the guilt of the non-productive.

The best society is one in which people trade the best they have created for the best that others have created. Alan Greenspan, the famous former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, is probably Rand's best-known disciple, and was part of her New York circle in the 1950s. In The Greenspan Effect (Sicilia & Cruickshank), the authors refer to a statement by their subject. Before he met Rand, Greenspan notes, he was an 'Adam Smith' economist, appreciating the technical basis of capitalism - after Rand he became convinced of its moral force.

Atlas Shrugged and the individual

For so long an object of ridicule, many of Rand's ideas are now conventional wisdom. We now worship the entrepreneur just as she did, and despite the turmoil on world markets many still believe that a purer brand of capitalism makes the best use of each person's talents and delivers ever-more refined products and services. Economic life in the 21st century is not simply a triumph of technology, but a culture of invention generated by individual imagination.

The motif running through Atlas Shrugged is the dollar sign. For Rand, an immigrant to the United States who loved its ideals, this sacred symbol represented the triumph of the creative mind over the state, religion and tradition. It meant freedom from mediocrity and its strangling power. This worship of the dollar and self-interest looks unpleasant and unseemly, yet Atlas Shrugged brilliantly portrays what happens when the ethic of 'the greater good' is pursued to its logical ends. It very effectively annexes the spirit from an entire nation. Self-interest, as Adam Smith noted, is actually in full accordance with nature and therefore brings the more moral end. Rand is a patron saint of the 21st century entrepreneur because she provides a morality of powerful creation; a person with a Randian frame of mind is opposed in principle to 'equality' if it means sacrificing their dreams for the sake of others. The pursuit of equal rights may be noble, but ultimately suffocates the life-spirit that has always fired human advance.

Final comments

Rand may have been a ranting, chain-smoking, homophobic, commie-hater, yet her star continues to rise. Whether she influenced its emergence or not, her philosophy of maximum self-expression teamed with a lust for technological progress has been the perfect backdrop for our times.

Atlas Shrugged will probably outlive its wry-smiling critics, continuing to inspire while other works classified as 'literature' become of only academic interest. The book runs for 1080 pages, and like the greatest novels, it is a world you enter rather than a book you read. The prose may not be the most brilliant: there are many lines that will have the discerning reader shaking their head or chuckling, and there is a fair amount of repetition - like many books of this length, it could be a lot shorter and better edited. However, there is a spirit behind the words that makes you certain you are reading something important.

- from Butler Bowdon