Awesome America!

( The picture is by Kishore, shot at the Nandi Hills, close to Bengaluru, India )
Apparently the cool tender coconut, that you find being sold for about Rs 10 a nut on the roadside,in India, has become hot news in the United States.The tender coconut's water is touted as the new fail safe Isotonic panacea and is said to deal with a wide variety of health issues ranging from kidney stones to diabetes to being a rich source of potassium.

The tender coconut is receiving a great deal of attention as it is being associated with a host of Hollywood celebrities from Madonna to Demi Moore. No more carbonated drinks for them, tender coconut water is the new flavour of season.

This has caused a host of folk scurrying to market bottled coconut water post which you will have folk branding the stuff and carrying out a high profile marketing campaign where you will see, guys or better still pretty girls,with bronzed sweat stained bodies & skimpy outfits, amidst a game of beach volleyball, endorsing the new exilir! The process of getting the stuff into little bottles will be patented and will create issues of IPR across the world. There is also sure to be a great deal of media coverage talking about celebrities experience with the tender coconut and its benefits to one's health and otherwise.

All this while, the poor Indian, continues to sell his nut, on probably an old bicycle for Rs.10, on a hot afternoon, to tired pedestrians, by the wayside, storing the shell for firewood and after removing the meat which makes a delightful snack.

I'm amazed at the Americans chutzpah to exploit the mundane and create an industry where none existed, surrounded by hype, hoopla and glitz.The coconut is not new to us, but did we create a buzz around the nut? No way!It, probably been quietly drunk in this part of the world for centuries.For that you need to be an entrepreneur and an MBA from a premier B School, hopefully from the USA!It is also not surprising as why you have boom-bust cycles in quick succession, where virtual industries disappear causing immense pain to the poor bystander.

Carrying out a quick SWOT Analysis, what is the 'weakness' that the coconut water faces? Apparently some Americans feel it tastes like 'smelly unwashed socks', which throws up the fundamental question: 'Why in the first place do they chew on, dirty socks?'

A Nut's tale!

During my travels in the city of Bengaluru, I see many signboards on house gates. The commonest being, 'Do not park in front of the gate'. I also see, 'Beware of Dog'. However, the other day, I saw a sign which said, 'Beware of Coconuts'. I was amused and looked up to see a couple of towering trees, arching into the road! The amusement turned to concern, as a couple of days ago, as a nut, falling from a height of about thirty feet, almost smashed into the roof my Honda City. I was, shaken, to the core of my stubby feet, thinking, as to the cost of repairs, should the nut have found its mark. Bangalore, is one city where, folk have planted coconut trees, rather indiscriminately & found much to their chagrin, that eventually, it would be cheaper to buy a nut rather than pluck one from the tree.Though much of the population have come to realize this fact, they are chary of getting rid of the tree! Why? The only explanation, I can think of is as follows, called Escalation of Commitment.

Escalation of commitment was first described by Barry M. Staw in his 1976 paper, "Knee deep in the big muddy: A study of escalating commitment to a chosen course of action". More recently the term sunk cost fallacy has been used to describe the phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong. Such investment may include money, time, or — in the case of military strategy — human lives. The phenomenon and the sentiment underlying it are reflected in such proverbial images as Throwing good money after bad and In for a dime, in for a dollar (or In for a penny, in for a pound). The term is also used to describe poor decision-making in business, government, information systems in general, software project management in particular, politics, and gambling. The term has been used to describe the United States commitment to military conflicts including Vietnam in the 1960s - 1970s and in Iraq in the 2000s, where dollars spent and lives lost justify continued involvement. Alternatively, irrational escalation (sometimes referred to as irrational escalation of commitment or commitment bias) is a term frequently used in psychology, philosophy, economics, and game theory[citation needed] to refer to a situation in which people can make irrational decisions based upon rational decisions in the past or to justify actions already taken. Examples are frequently seen when parties engage in a bidding war; the bidders can end up paying much more than the object is worth to justify the initial expenses associated with bidding (such as research), as well as part of a competitive instinct.

A friends family, went through a horrendous experience, when, a person they had hired to pluck nuts, got into their home & threatened them with the chopper, for money! The family, then spent, a good twenty grand on having the offending trees uprooted & carted off!As for the intended thief, he was picked up by the cops, a few days later, putting an end to what seemed to be the first 'Coconut Thief', that Bengaluru had seen.

When my Dad built, a house, the first, discussion centred around where the Coconut trees, should be put. On relocating, a few years later, we resisted the strong urge to have Coconut trees again....now, with, all the talk about cholesterol and such, the omnipresent Coconut has all but disappeared from our diet.The good old nut has really fallen from grace!

I'm sure this bit would get your attention: "Falling coconuts kill 150 people worldwide each year, 15 times the number of fatalities attributable to sharks," said George Burgess, Director of the University of Florida's International Shark Attack File and a noted shark researcher.

Analyzing the force at which falling coconuts might hit a person,it is true that one can be injured, and in some cases killed by falling coconuts because the trees are tall, and the falling velocity of the coconut accelerates. It would essentially be the equivalent of dropping a coconut, in many cases, off a ten-story building.



How nutty can we get?