An Asian business trick

Once a year, you should sing to your laptop

HEARD SOME SHOCKING news about a businessman I know. “Jahan decided not to sing to his account books this time,” his wife said. “He chanted a series of verses to his laptop instead.”

It’s progress I suppose. But it’s also a reminder of the difference between east and west. Business people in Europe and North America NEVER sing to their computers. (In Texas, they shoot the poor things!)
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But thankfully there are large patches of Asia, from Singapore to India to Malaysia to Hong Kong’s Indian community, where these important ancient traditions are preserved.

You’ve heard of Devali, the festival at which people light hundreds of tiny oil lamps? Well, a less well-known aspect of it is the Prayers to the Account Books, in which blessings are addressed to business ledger books. I am not making this up. “Dear Account Books, inflation is back and I need you guys to be filled with way bigger numbers, hear what I’m saying? Or I may have to spill coffee on you, know what I mean? Amen.” (A Hindu reader swears this works.)

For the past year or so, these guys have put PCs or laptops on their altars instead. "In view of rapid computerisation, most traders across the country have changed their accounting system from traditional Bahi-Khata to computer system,” Praveen Khandelwal, president of the Confederation of All India Traders, said to the International Asian News Service. (Bahi-Khata is an ancient hand-written accounting system.) “On the occasion of Devali, the trading community is worshipping their computers," he continued.

At Devali last year, a desktop computer and a laptop were the recipients of a puja (blessing ceremony) in the business district of New Delhi. Housewife Gauri Sharma told reporters: "Generally we see shopkeepers praying to their account books on Devali, but this is the first time I am seeing puja [blessings] being done to computers.”
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An American friend saw this as proof that Asians were gullible and superstitious. I found his view outrageous. “You call us gullible, yet you’re the ones who believe that the tooth fairy exists, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the world will end in 2012, Justin Bieber has talent, etc.”

Two days later I saw HIM praying to his computer! He’d been working for ages on a document, and then tried to save it but got the message: “Not Responding”.

Eye closed, he whispered: “Please please please PLEASE work.”
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Anyway, most financial history books say Italian monk Luca Pacioli invented accounting in 1494. Rubbish. Business people in Asia have been doing Bahi-Khata for more than 2000 years. Chinese financial documents stretch back to the dawn of history. “Sell theme park shares as private zoo profits tipped to fall 37 percent due to recent dinosaur extinction.”
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Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a pressing engagement. I know it’s not Devali but my HSBC current account is in extremely poor health, possibly close to death. A couple of hymns are urgently required.

I plan to sing Eric Clapton’s Let It Grow: “Let it grow, let it grow, let it blossom, let it flow.”

But I suspect it’s been listening to the Dixie Chicks song: Long Time Gone.
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Technorati Tags: singing to your computer,worshiping computers,blessing computers,devali,dewali

(Illustrations are montages)

Comments

[Dancer Arroyo]

This is so freaky. I've been having a similar conversation with my husband that if ever he opens his own martial arts school, he should put his laptop on the altar and worship Youtube - the best Kung Fu master he could find!

[Jason]

“Sell theme park shares as private zoo profits tipped to fall 37 percent due to recent dinosaur extinction.”

Would this be the same attraction in Bible Belt USA for fundamentalist Christians that has saddles on dinosaurs that Adam and his spawn rode 4000 years ago?

[Torun]

Hi,
In China before the start of the business day, employees would take out their abacuses ( this was before computers) and shake them making a loud noise. This is hoping for a lot of noise from the abacus and hence lots of business.

[Lift Lurker]

In accounting world they have GAAP aka Generally Accepted Accounting Principles

Maybe in East they adapt it to Generally Accepted Accounting Prayers

West: drowning in debt
East: flooded with money

One of the GAAPs seem to be working.

[Karuna aka Kaye Moreno]

Across India we have another very important festival of the divine Mother for 10 days, called Dusshera.

During this festival, the last 3 days is dedicated for the worship of the Goddess of education. All text books and reference books are kept in the altar for ritual prayer. Children love it. No homework allowed :-)
On the 10 day, the schools reopen. It is on this day, young pre-school children are taught to write the alphabet for the first time.

On the 9th day is the worship Goddess for equipments(including tools, vehicles & weapons).
Vehicles are decorated and worshiped. In factories and labs, all tools including electronics equipments are worshiped. Gratitude is expressed to these items.

The belief is that is that divine Mother exists in everything and that we live by Her grace.

[Anonymous.]

It doesn't just apply to your account books. Research has proven that talking to your stomach in times of emergency helps your stomach be in control. I've tried this on a seven hour trip from Delhi to Jaipur, seeing that I am not worthy enough to release myself on the road like other Indians. Works. On the other hand, my mum was trying to get me to pull over and take a rest as I was supposedly hallucinating due to no proper rest and was slowly going crazy talking to my stomach. Well. Talking to anything would be nice, but my computer is kinda deaf.

[grandpa]

"An American friend saw this as proof that Asians were gullible and superstitious."
Well if that's so , why do they invoke their God on their bank note?

[Jason]

Touche! Grandpa

http://thebeattitude.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/england-usa-god-money.jpg?w=450&h=346

[grandpa]

I remember traveling in a beat-up car with a friend.
He was saying that it ( she) was so old that he could not repair it .
He would replace it( her)
She (it) must not have appreciated the comments and decided to stop in the middle (right in the middle) of a busy intersection.
He started to talk to her (it) , apologizing and promising to take it(her) to a garage.
It (she)started tight away and took us home with no problems

[rafanjr]

... Asians worship accounting books, not asians adorn themselves with various electronic gadgets. we are pretty much in insane of what things can do to us and not the other way around, which is what is supposed.

...one more thing that is prayed over and even ritualized are lottery tickets

[Chamin]

In Kamakura, Japan, there is a shrine called "Money-washing-shrine" (no, not money laundering). The shrine is more than a thousand years old.

People wash their money in a fountain there. It is believed that the money will double if invested after washing.

Given my interest in investing, I have already forgotten what I did with the 500yen (5 USD) that I washed :-p)