When I arrived in Umm Qasr near the Kuwaiti border of Iraq,I was not very optimistic.The British, who were keeping a low profile, had recently come under attack and have announced plans to withdraw from Iraq.One of the pleasant surprises for me was to find that my friend and taxicab driver from Bangalore, Chauncey Gardner, was plying a cab in Umm Qasr. When I greeted him with a hearty handhshake and told him what a pleasant surprise it was for me to have him to talk to.He said”the money is better here than in Bangalore, Tom Sahib, you know”.”But what about all the bombs on the roadside, Cauncey, isn’t that a little dangerous?”
” Well, Tom, you know as well as I do,that the flowers bloom in the garden during spring and start falling in autumn.I am now in the autumn of my life, you may say”.
“Chauncey, this is why I like you;you simplify everything.Not to mention giving me quotes from a highly placed source for my op-ed piece that will be published in the New York Times.Now can you tell me what do you think about the Iraq situation?”
“Well Tom Sahib, here in Iraq there are a lot of olive trees and just a few Lexuses.If that were reversed, we can have peace”.
I was stunned by this bit of wisdom from Chauncey even though he drops pearls like this all the time. At long last we may have a glimmer of hope for our side in Iraq.From what Chauncey said, I gathered we need to turn Iraq into a high tech paradise( the Lexus part) and get rid of the backwardness ( the Olive Tree part). Simple.
But how does one go about doing that in a practical way?Here I recalled the insight another friend of mine, Nandan Nilekani, the CEO of Infosys Technologies in Bangalore told me: “Tom, geography is history”.That insight was so profound I remembered it and now it provided a solution for our Iraq problem. If we withdrw from Iraq and convert Iraq into the high tech paradise I talked about, everything will fall in place, just like that.And because geography is history, we don’t have to be in Iraq at all!.
What a great day! I have to call Bill Keller right away and tell him about this.May be I can give him some insights on his problems with Judy Miller too. I believe in striking while the iron is hot!