A Very Civilized Evening

This evening I attended a piano concert. “Why”, you might ask. “Martin you don’t strike me as a classical music lover”. The reason was that I was invited by my parent’s friend and sponsor of my internship, Nadir Godrej, and I thought it would be rude to turn down his hospitality. The concert was held at the Tata Theater at the National Center for Performing Arts. The pianist was Andrei Gavrilov, who performed a pieces by Chopin, Scriabin and Prokofiev (Yeah, I didn’t know the last two either).

In any event, it was a great opportunity to see how the other half – make that the .0001% - lives. Very wealthy Indians are extremely cosmopolitan, speak flawless unaccented English, and enjoy the finer things in life. This lifestyle is enjoyed by a privileged few and wealth distribution in India is one the concerns surrounding continued development (although India currently has more equal wealth distribution than the U.S. as measured by Gini coefficients). The current boom is making the rich, richer but the poor are not really participating. The consequences of this dynamic can be seen in the recent opposition to development projects such as Tata’s Nano plant in West Bengal, which they are the process of abandoning in the face of opposition by villagers whose land was “purchased” by the government. Just to editorialize a bit, the land was indeed purchased and the villagers were paid, some politician has just taken up the cause and the villagers are happy to go along hoping to double dip, either to get their land back or to be paid an additional sum. Meanwhile the surrounding area is deprived of the jobs and economic development that the plant would bring. Obviously, very self-interested in short-sighted.

Returning to the concert, it was a very nice event and I think I even liked the music. Am I getting to that age already? I mean, its not going on my iPod, but still pretty good. Clearly I am much in need of an evening of heavy drinking, pong, and 80’s rock. Missing Tuck already.