Geographical Indication (GI) Tag !!

    Authenticity is something all of us look forward in whatever we buy. Biggest gift for one’s work happens when they are given the due recognition. I would like to go over the “Geographical Indications” topic in this blog. Basically products which carry GI tag are nothing but products originating in a region or a locality in that territory where its quality, reputation or characteristic is essentially attributable to its geographic origin. This is a great initiative from Government of India in partnering with WTO and other affiliated organizations. With the recognition it gives huge boost to Exports of these products, promotes Tourism, protects goods from fake competition, livelihood of people involved improves due to recognition from World market.


I wanted to share couple of my experiences in recent past where couple of terms – “Chettinad” and “Montessori” were overused and in fact misused in Tamil Nadu.


Misuse of the term Chettinad:  I love trying different restaurants and one such category is ‘Mess food’ since I enjoy the taste. This was a newly opened mess in Trichy and went for Dinner and ordered Ceylon parotta and Fish chettinadu kulambu. In few minutes I got both the items and was shocked to see the Fish kulambu. Basically fish pieces were deep fried like Chicken-65 and then dipped into curry which was creamy and rich in taste and had heavy dose of ginger,garlic,onions and Tomatoes. In short words it was more suited for Rohit Sharma and Harbhajan singh and not for Ravichandran Ashwin. I asked the server to look into my face and see that my face has Chettinad written all over it in Times new roman font size 72; I had no problems if the dish was mentioned as North Indian curry since taste was good but using the term ‘Chettinad’ whose characteristics are primarily being extra spicy laced with roasted spices was completely missing. Every damn restaurant, mess, hotel use this term but unfortunately do not adhere to the cooking methods adopted in Chettinad.


Overuse of the term ‘Montessori’:  Hunting for schools is not a joke in India since this is one area where competition is much more fierce than Thalapathy and Thala fans.  When hunting for schools for Skandan I visited one such school which was taken over by some big weights in the city. My goal was to focus on curriculum and not on the infrastructure and I asked a simple question “Does the school adopt Montessori education for kindergarten” and the mam goes on explaining they have fully air conditioned classrooms, swimming pool construction to begin, artificial grass lawn, huge playground, blah blah …..appreciating her response I once again asked the same question for which she said she has to have a kindergarten teacher come and answer the question. Teacher came and said they are awaiting paperwork and should most probably get the approval soon to adopt Montessori education and I was shocked not looking at the school but the parents who have signed up like crazy for admitting their kid into their school. Once again the term ‘Montessori’ lost its credibility since every damn school either use ‘Montessori’ or ‘International’ as the tagline.


   Therefore I feel there must be a system where we need to safeguard our strength (produce, skillset) by stamping our authority in World Market. Examples of some of the GI tags that has been given to Tamilnadu are Salem fabric, Madurai Sungudi, Coimbatore wet grinder, Kancheepuram Silk, Tanjore paintings, Madurai Malli, Tanjore veena, Erode Manjal, Chettinad kottan, Dindigul locks, Swamimalai Bronze icons, Arani Silk, Kovai Kora cotton saree, Tanjore Doll, Srivilliputtur Palkova, Pazhani Panchamirtham, Kandangi saree, Kovilpatty kadalaimittai etc., Now let us go through couple of these in detail.


[1] Srivilliputtur Palkova: So what makes this dish special which is made by simmering milk?  Basically it is the Milk that makes the difference since Milk has more fat content and rich in nutrients; They also use tamarind wood and traditional clay made stoves for the fire to fuel the making process. Looks like they on every pan only 3 kgs of palkova is made since making more than that will spoil the traditional taste.


[2] Dindigul Locks: These locks are known for their superior quality and durability. Once again raw material is iron and that is available in abundance for the growth of the industry. These locks are made up of iron and brass and are completely handmade; The way these locks are designed will surprise many with different lever pattern and the city manufactures quite a number of models based on the needs of the public. One such variety is ‘Partner locks’ where in a Business if there are two partners and if they want the lock to be opened then both the keys has to be simultaneously used; Other variety is ‘Grand master’ locks which is used in family business where head of the family holds the master key and sons have the subordinate keys and if Father locks then all the keys son hold becomes dummy like a heroine in Kollywood masala movies. Since they are handmade the locks lasts many years unlike machine made locks and these locks cannot be duplicated since they are handmade.


  So I welcome the GI tag concept and happy for all the workers in those respective regions, money can fetch the requirements but beyond that if a weaver in Kanchipuram, painter in Tanjore, cook in Kovilpatty realizes that their products made out of them has got International attention and recognition then that is much bigger gift than Money which is a mere legal paper.

Dada ..Thala ..Cho

    If all of us look into our lives there would be few people who may influence us. The type of environment we live from childhood, our teachers, friends, neighbors, social circle, Colleagues etc., all of us play a role in building our personality that we finally end up being. Sometimes it happens without our consciousness too. This is on top of the genes we inherit from our parents, grand parents and great grand parents etc., If a person comes from a Doctor background where his/her parents, grandparents all are into Medicine profession but this person wants to switch gears and want to get into Lawyer profession then that decision wouldn’t have happened in one day as it is just a culmination of various incidents, people around him that have made up his mind to take up a profession completely new to his family.


   Now when it comes to nature of people in terms of their general behavior, the way they talk, react/respond to opinions I would like to classify people into three categories


[1] Diplomatic studs: Around 60% of the people belong to this category; This is a safe bet as they can be in good books with everyone. They will never reveal the true story and will just politely be in acceptance with everything. When two people of opposite sides reach out to this category they may please each side saying they are correct and other side is wrong.


[2] Cousins of Kamal haasan: This category of people are like rather than saying ‘1+1=2’ they may sound ‘1+1=only even prime number’; It is difficult to follow their speech since we may need to hire CISCO engineer to decode their speech. They make things complicated not just for them but even for people who are listening and around 20% of the people may belong to this category.


[3] Speak your heart out: Around 20% belong to this category and this category does not care about anything since they just speak out in a frank and honest manner. But the key thing is one should not sound so just for the sake of it since credibility of the person is based on how truthful he is. People can easily make out whether the person is being truthful or drawing some attraction through negative publicity.


Now that I have gone through the different types of people I want to go over three people who does have a influence in my life and these people are from three different paths – Sports, Cinema and Politics. Actually there is one more person but he deserves one full blog which I will come up later. Consciously or unconsciously I like Sourav Ganguly, Thala Ajiith and Cho very much and I think one common thing between all three of them is ‘Being Truthful’.


Sourav Ganguly: I love Sachin, Kohli but when it comes to favorites then it must be Ganguly on top of Dhoni. There is no doubt that he was one of the best captains India has ever produced, on top of talent and guts the thing that I personally admired was his Truthfulness. He is one person who would not mince words. It was Ganguly who broke regional bias of bringing players mainly from Mumbai to Indian Cricket team since he brought players like Yuvraj, Harbhajan, Zaheer, Pathan, Kaif, Dhoni from Tier 2 cities. Sourav brought credibility back to Indian Cricket since Indian cricket was going through a low phase with all the match fixing scandals. Ganguly was also one captain who would not allow players to be picked and dropped at whim and fancy and to do this one has to have a strong conviction and belief on your players. It all boils down to being truthful in what you do since it is not easy to get on top of Indian selectors with the amount of politics that goes inside.  


Thala Ajith: Let me accept the fact that I may not be fan of his movies but just adore the man himself as a person. He has given more flops than hit films. Once again, I am not going to talk about talent since that is not that draws people like me towards him. He is one person who has such huge “Loyal” fans – he does not appear in Award shows, no mega Audio release for his movies, does not give T.V interviews, avoids filmy functions, no media bytes, no press release,  etc., but you say the word ‘Thala’ in any function and just listen to the uproar from his Fans. I think he is just being straightforward – perfect taxpayer, dissolved fan clubs, actor to fight against politic pressure, does charity but never advertises, so on and so forth. If a person does not want to be in limelight but still when his fans celebrate him like the way they are then it must be his Truthful nature of practice before you preach. It is more than just a coincidence that fans who like Ajith may also like Ganguly and vice versa.


Cho Ramaswamy: I just love him so much especially his satirical talk, his self destructive way of talk especially his bald head, his intellectual take on current political scenario, his predictions etc., This man had an uncanny habit of bringing the house down through his humorous talks. Every time Thuglak anniversary function was held in Chennai it would go sold out. Thuglak magazine is one of the most reputed magazine amongst the reading community and the magazine does not fall prey to kollywood commercials. No wonder Cho appointed Gurumurthy as his successor; If you have seen the movie Guru then do you remember the daredevil journalist played by Madhavan which is none other than Gurumurthy himself. Cho left movies long time, he was not into active politics but still he drew attention of all big weights in Indian Political circle only because of his political acumen and Truthful analysis of political developments across the state and country. It is to be noted Ajith and Cho had a good bonding.


Now let us do a simple exercise, which category do you belong to and who are some of the people that you believe may have influenced you?