My Being and My Doing

We did it!

2011-11-30T23:35:00.009+05:30

Its good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

Some 80 odd middle aged (mostly, ladies please ignore), confused people entered into classroom on 19^th June -2009, and thus began the new Journey called “PGSEM-2009”. I mentioned confused because nobody new where was the classroom C-11, (though readers can take liberty in interpretation).

Finally today, I submitted my last assignment (dutifully on last minute before deadline expires, so keeping up the tradition), and thus today marked the formal finish to the journey undertaken 2.5 years back.

Today I am not going to repeat what I mentioned in my last blog, though repeating is not a crime in IPC and incidentally many are making a living in just repeating things.

I will mention today some things which are seared into the generic make up of this journey.

PGSEM stoked the flame of “Life is but one chance” invariably in all of us. The unsaid “I wish..”, buried deep within all of us before joining PGSEM, became so vivid that all of us could muster ourselves, pick our pieces, go through the grill and finally enter into the class room. This journey epitomizes the transition from “I wish” to “I did it”. And I am game to savor this feeling for sometime now.

Another aspect of this journey is the “Experience” part of it. No, I am not talking of “getting high”, but a kind of liberating, elevating feeling each time a course, talk or discussion touched where it feels. It teaches people to be comfortable with scale of things, be comfortable with light speed shuttle between 30 thousand feet to 10 feet and finally be practical but sensitive about the fact that business is not balance sheet, employees are not raw materials. The whole is much more than the sum of its parts. Today all of us can wade through a multi billion dollar balance sheet (the #of line remains same J), talk to a top shot hedge fund manager and also learn something from road side tea stall person. You want to know how?

There are two secrets to this.

First is PGSEM de-stigmatize the word “Mistake”, which has haunted our whole education system so badly that people want LIC insurance before taking an exam. But in PGSEM, you make as many as you want, and you discover that making mistakes is ok since everyone is making them.

Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment.

Second is, it punctures the heavy word (I mean literally its like metric tons per letter)- “Expectations", or in other word the notion like “ log kya kahenge type” ( what will others/people say?). The truth is, nobody is watching you honey, so do whatever you want, and two, everyone is busy making the same mistakes, so it is cool.

So think of it, If only I could de-risk myself of these two words “Mistakes and Expectation”, I would still be the same but would have lot more moments with me of something which we call Life.

There is one more aspect which marks this journey “Exam Hyper-Inflation”. Think of it, its like once you go through 150 exams ( roughly) of all shades which includes, your ability to reflect upon a piece of empty paper for hours, to your ability to go hysterical before class to prove that Steve Jobs is way below your level of panache. So then you realize that the net value delivered by 100s of exams is roughly equal to the value we got of one dreaded board exam of 10 or 12^th. I kind of liked this inflation.

I mean, in my 10^th days, the mere thought of board exams would make me do 7 rounds of Hanumal Chalisa. And now, I am ok to give an exam at 3 am during my bio break. Actually some of us have actually written exams while there better halves were making calls to maternity ward in hospital, how do you beat that. Do you know why and how could we achieve this? It is not that we are not serious, but that we have realized “what is a real exam vs nominal exam”. Now this dear friends, I call a real experience.

No talk of PGSEM is ever complete without mention of “Time Management”. We did it so well, that some of us got married during exam breaks (basically overnight breaks). I am serious. We were doing skyping for assignment when normal people sleep and also used to work when normal people work. You can do this if this is once in blue moon, but how do you do this if this moon come 10 times in a quarter.

Lastly they say, Journey is not measured in miles or years but number of friends. And without doubt, most of us have got at least a couple 3:00 am friends (3:00 am in local timezone J). This is the asset which all of us would cherish for rest of our lives.

We came in confused, we are walking out even more confused but as someone has said, wise is one who is wise enough to realize that he knows nothing, most of us are wiser. We may have aged more than 2.5 years, but we have grown many times than that.

I am concluding now as someone said, “Conclusion is simply the place when someone got tired of thinking”.

I wish all my friends in this journey good luck and good wishes. Grow babies, make babies, become a baby, do whatever you wish as now you have the secret of how to go from “I wish” to “I did it”.

If ever you need to choose between dream big vs dream small, always dream big because marginal cost of dreaming big is zero.

Finish in Sight

2011-08-01T22:28:00.011+05:30

With each passing day, there is something special happening. The finish is coming out of haze and becoming clearer. I am not taking about Ram Gopal Verma finishing another movie (this time in less then 6 hours record). I am also not talking about me hallucinating my own finish in sight. I am also not wishing the corruption in Indian governance coming to finish line ( even if you are hallucinating this time). I am also not taking bout Anna Hazare finishing with his series of fasting threats. I am also not talking about Rakhi Sawant finishing with her witty cheap one liners ( don’t pretend who rakhi sawant ? its same rakhi sawant who you keep on watching in Zoom for half an hour and continue to crib what the crap is coming, but don’t dare to switch).

I am talking about something much more profound, meaningful here. This is true especially to those who alongwith me on June 17^th 2009, walked in quietly in C-11 and located their nameplates and sat down shyly waiting eagerly to take upon what was about to come our way. Some were thinking, what the heck, what the big deal (including yours truly). Some were excited like a 6 months old kid, looking at everything around with huge excitement and started writing IIMb like Gazni’s Amir Khan at god know which places.

Some others were already philosophical, and the opportunity was good enough to push then over the cliff and finally they have been night walking since then and spew huge philosophies given slightest opportunity.

Finally slowly and gradually people found they comfort zones, discomfort zones as well. Came second year and people just gate crashed their favorite streams to be next sensation on the international arena in respective domain. Yours truly with zero paisa in stock market, has take more than 14 courses in finance and economics. This is to ensure that the moment I put my 10 rupees in market, I want the safe risk free return on that without jeopardizing a single paise despite US rating slumping to D or Euro going down the chute . What better approach to eliminate the risk.

Some others, became so deeply entrenched in Marketing that, finally entire Internet along with its data knelt before them begging, “Please ab to maaf karo, kitna download karoge” Same few links to the same stuff came to verge of collapsing. Talking casually to 5 friends over Prabhakar’s tea corner was projected as thoroughly researched Market study with diverse sampling. Finally after stupendous 20+ presentations many of us managed to add 4 lines written genuinely our ourselves and not copying from Internet.

Some other legends in OB, reached new heights. Many felt a personal insult to talk about anyone lesser than a CEO. It made me feel at times pretty worse actually whose only experience with CEO was some YouTube video over a slow and dysfunctional link. Some genius friends talking about leadership as of just returned after a world leadership concert of training top fortune 100 CEOs. Which was quite a revelation to me actually.

Some actually excelled in stream of questions. These geniuses ( Including yours truly) have been asking the same exact questions for last 9 terms, But look at the talent each time not a single word is common except some low key pronouns and grammatically compulsions. Finally there are also some who debuted like Shahid aafridi but converted to Pushpak’s Kamal Hasan. Some others are like Aamir Khan, what a consistency. Some were shrewd like Shahrukh Khan, The moment CP is introduced, invaluable words starts flowing out at quite a pace otherwise who cares.

Finally there were some courses for introspections as well. Some went in so deep the did never actually come back really ( I meant 100%). Others quite easily introspected the moment popping into classroom and came back to planet while 90 minutes gets over and tea time kicks in.

Finally realized that no better place to sleep then sitting right in front of Profs, looking into prof’s eye and dozing off with quite panache. The switching from on and off was as sleek and smooth as Windows boot-up (well for Microsoft lovers actually).

There were also a sight of watching people looking for marks in consolidated sheet or in the answer sheet. I mean I had to search the time complexity of an algo where each person looks first 70 other sheets carefully and dutifully before picking his own and then very generously giving comments about “ How prof misinterpreted, or How Prof could not get the subtle intellectual treasure hunt they left in answer sheet etc” . Sometimes for me personally gauging the reactions of folks while looking at marks or grades was beyond comprehension. I could never guess for some whether they were happy or unhappy or devastated or over the top as it used to be similar almost all the time. I mean guy coming out lauging terribly then saying “meri to lag gayee yaar”. Some other who missed the 4 by a whisker appearing quite philosophical actually like “sab maya hai”.

But so far is this is giving a sense that I am actually ridiculing everything and demeaning everyone, you are right J No you are utterly wrong. This was just to get you hooked up thus far (and you know how much was actually true). If any of you has noticed, the thing worth mentioning is while all this was going on, people were actually fighting it out, incessantly. NOONE GAVE UP.

Though many jobs, marriage, kids, people continued to slug it out in the middle. Week after week, putting whatever behind then, showing up 8 in the morning was not only a test of character but a test of will power as well. At times people slogged on Friday nights but diligently toiling through entire Saturday with red burning eyes. After making their families to sleep, people slogged over Skype till 4 am in the morning and then ready for presentation on 8 in the morning.

People not only managed the time, they managed their life, family, relations, priorities throughout. Friends this is called MANAGEMENT. Education is not what happened in classroom, it is what prepares one for the life ahead. It mainly is what has been unlearned in the process. Education is like Rowing upstream, not to advance is to drop back.

If for gods sake some one outside thinks that it is easy, I will technically take his lungs out with whatever comes along, I frankly do not care. Finally friends coming this far makes all of you winner, fighters. Walk along little more and oblige Mr Ambani soon. Finish is in sight.

Tribute

2010-09-27T22:32:00.011+05:30

At the time when my chapter with Juniper is being finished today after around four years, I thought to reflect on these years not to discuss my mundane journey but about my impression of this organization and its superlative growth in the era.

Growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of cancer cell. In my short career of little over 10 years, I have seen very few companies which have a clearer idea as to how to grow, why to grow and how not to overpay for growth. Juniper is definitely one such gem.
Juniper Networks was born on February 6, 1996 in California, and standing at 14 and half years, this teenager has seen a little more, done a little more than what a teenager sees and does normally.

Since I was part of the bottom on company, so my account by no way is authoritative, rather offers "bottom-up" view of things as seen from ground zero. With per employee revenue of roughly around 0.5 million USD, which is roughly 10 times that of our Indian IT servicing giants who despite being multi-billion dollar companies are still scrounging the means to grow non-linearly.

What struck me was, despite being born in the era, when companies were founded to be sold like babies conceived to be adopted while still in, while many blue-eyed boys simply added .com to any damn prefix in the morning and secure a valuation of $100m by 5 o clock in the evening, Juniper was conceived to take the biggest player of its domain by its horns and shake the networking industry irrevocably.

This company built on the promise to deliver on its own, solving the toughest challenges in networking industry by not just making more colorful power points and selling them on wall street but but solving them in reality, shunned many offers to be bought and stands tall with more than 30% share in service provider market.

If I am asked to write the strongest aspect of it, I would write it as extraordinary capability to not only conceive but execute ahead of others, in time and better.

Talking specifically of India center, I have seen this growing from little more than mere experiment to competence center which is now contributing in most of companies ambitious growth stories of future. Hopefully this center will eventually blossom by finally coming in from conception to deliver stage on its own and creating solid IP for company, I am sure all the rights seeds are there.

I have personally believed that Juniper has been to networking industry what Google has been to Internet and Junos is to Juniper what Windows is to Microsoft. I wish that in due time this company really unlocks lots of its latent value and shines for lasting time.

Humans are like trees, they tend to grow roots if allowed to stay at a place for little longer. I am also feeling the same at this point of parting ways, but believe that taking a step forward necessarily entails a step in reverse. If at all I miss anything its going to be the people I worked with. The team which we grew from infancy to maturity, the environment of frantic and crazy work to sedate moments of reflection and lots of cherished moments of learning in between.

I somewhere read, there is no such thing as good or bad work. There are either good teams or not so good teams. Turning challenges into opportunities is virtue of fighter spirit and I wish the team I worked with, bask in its glory for a long time in company. Being an industry where even the trespassers are recruited, somehow Juniper has managed to scale and maintain the quality input.

I read somewhere, dreams are not something which you see when you sleep, but dreams are which do not let you sleep. As I see around I find Juniper as one of those restless companies which are almost infected with this huge hunger to grow with the audacity to dream almost unattainable thus far for others. I hope this remains like this for ever.

Systemic rot setting in

2010-01-24T21:36:00.011+05:30

"Everyone has a right to be stupid but some misuse this privilege" And I certainly seem to be misusing this a lot off late.

I have not written for quite sometime apparently not written since Muhammad Kaif scored a double century in tests or since Mamta Kulkarni won a national award for acting ( Not sure if either of this ever took place). But now I am coming to point as to what are so charming thoughts that are keeping me awake at this hour of midnight when most of the gentlemen on planet sleep peacefully preferably in their cosy homes.
With 20% MBA literally in the pocket and another 10% is work in progress, I am feeling lots of changes around in my class and in myself as well. ( time for heavy philosophy - outside augments the inside - marketing maha jargon).
During the orientation on May end, I interacted with some folks and saw a glint for something to be achieved which was nobler than posing on page 3 holding empty wine glass. The atmosphere in the I term was palpably different. People were still unearthing the IIM system and seeking their own fit in it. Soon things started to change. There came carrot of grading and thus began the journey of -know the system and .... it the way you want.

Personally for a simple subject like microeconomics - I read two text books ( approximately full), irrespective of syllabus and course etc, solved most of problems as if I am going to make a career out of the subject. And my grades were around 3.4, just about average. Then came Macroeconomics - This time I did not touch a line other than the one taught by teacher treating the other sections like untouchable and scored 3.81, not bad - better value for money I would say. This itself is an example of how self-defeating this is going to be. My result for I and II terms are quite opposite, much lesser the effort and much better the result.

I mean, I was never in the race, and thought to work, read the things for which I have joined this course. The gaps which I have felt, certainly not the marks.
Its not that I am being a saint or something or saying to hell with grades. No hell not, being placed in bottom in any setting can wreck the self-confidence sometimes. But the larger point is did I join this program for grades. If I make best of grades by dedicating all my effort to just maximize the marks, what will I achieve really? Will it be justice with myself?

I have seen the trend of discussion changing since I term. In first terms I saw groups discussing the content amongst themselves even when the teacher left. Now apart from absolute minority hung up with prof, majority is discussing anything but remotely subject content. The frequency of words like quiz, marks, exam, syllabus, date of exam, easy/tough etc keeping popping up at alarming rate.
I was surprised that recently when a teacher of quant offered the last session for generally questions about overall contents of course, not a single question was about the subject ( absolute zero), but all the discussion was about how easy or difficult the exam should be, with teacher also encouraging the trend. I was feeling aghast and wanted to say " set whatever paper you want" but....
Recently in the campus there was a talk by Dr Raja Birava Murthy about IT future in India for next decade. A Harvard and LSE veteran researcher sharing his thoughts in a classroom like interactive environment when easily he could get the CEO lending ears to him, and attendees from our class or other batches were a handsome single digit. People must be really busy, no wonder.
Anyways I am not blaming anyone here, I first tried to co relate with myself and then sensed, is really the systemic rot of rat race is catching up with people. Are short term objectives are blinding people of longer term goals. I do not see much talks of entrepreneurship or ventures or writing papers, national or international competitions etc some other collaborative stuff but as a placeholders the air is filled with distant and cheaper replacements.

I felt yes, at least with me, the rot is setting in. And this feeling in itself is so horrific to me that it has kept me awake at this hour when I see my grades in term II as ( 3.81, 3.70, 3.8) with barely any learning or contribution which I would cherish for a long time, I feel I have started cheating myself probably yet again.

I feel first education is by compulsion when you have to get place to hang on. You parents just want you to be on your own. You remain largely ignorant of your passions. life goes on.
But II education is mostly by choice. When I leave fairly cushy work at office ( better then many MBA graduates), when I leave my family and esp my two and half year old son at home behind, when I forgo the option to enjoy the life beyond office cubes and walk to classroom despite running a fever at 102 degrees, I think to myself what is the true return. Grades ?

Cost of MBA?

2009-11-02T00:14:00.006+05:30

Yesterday at a friend's place, we briefly touched on the question of effect of my MBA on family life, which made me think about the cost.
But before I get into it, what I want to clarify that we have thought about this cost part before starting the program and agreed to bear it. I believe ( and more after knowing a bit of economics) that every choice incurs a cost.

What we can control about is the choice/option not the cost. Its like the moment you choose to buy a mobile phone, you automatically ready yourself to pay the price for it. You have no option to change that. One more thing to ponder is in economics, the assumption for people to be and behave rational is a colossal assumption.
But this rationality is not about being logically consistent but behaviorally consistent meaning knowing the preferences and choosing them consistently. however this is not always assured. Example is if you have 1000 in your pocket and you loose it somehow, how would one react is generally different than if one first wins 1000 in a game and them one bets that 1000 for improve one's chance to win 5000 and in the end one looses. In the end you are loosing 1000 but the behavioral reaction is vastly different.

Now let me turn to the cost of MBA. I will mostly talk about the tangible cost and not the opportunity cost just to be more to the point.

1. Two and half years of time span
2. 8.5 lakh rupees of fees money. typically we have to pay 85000 every quarter, so if I take 2.1% interest per quarter ( 8.4% per annum) then the total amount will be little over 950000.
3. 50 thousand rupees of petrol ( assuming 4 litres of petrol per day just to commute IIM, twice a week and for 125 weeks). While so far we are car pooling so effectively 17K each.

4. Time - 1000 hours classrooms ( regular classes + tutes+ exams), 2500 hours of home study ( assuming 2.5 hours study for each class room hour), 500 hours of commute time ( assuming 1 hour in one way trip and 4 hours per weekend) - Total 4000 hours. This 4000 hours is the time I am taking away from my family. If you take a day for 11 hours ( including commute) then this course is roughly 363 days of regular study, a typical one-year MBAs.

5. In terms of effort - roughly around 10000 pages of study (330 pages for a full 3 credit course and for ten quaters).

6. When we wean away these 4000 hours from our family, lots of personal things goes for a toss including social networking, relationships and others.

7. In terms of validation there is fair amount of grind there. Roughly assuming 5 exams per course per quarter (mid terms, end term, quizzes, assignments ) and 1.5 project/quarter. This gives me 165 exams/projects for the course and safely some approximation gives me a count of 150 exams.

8. Accommodating this in the regular schedule, also means that the time spent on your health and fitness is also cut down.

9. When more then 50% population is with experience of 9 years, I can safely assume the the folks are carrying quite a bit of responsibility in office as well. Thus its implicit the there is directly a challenge to keep up with that burden as well which takes an extra toll upon us.

So these come to my mind when I think about the direct costs. Finally not knowing the cost is ignorance, refuting the existence of costs is foolishness and justifying that there should not be costs associated, is insanity.

And after making my choices and having prepared myself for costs, I do hope that I will be honest to put the effort, compete respectfully and accept gracefully the result.

Running ?

2009-10-06T21:37:00.009+05:30

There is a dialogue in "Pursuit of Happiness", where Will Smith narrates a portion of his life as "This part of my life is running". I understood it lately while being through the demanding routine of life.

I mean what would you say of a guy, who spends 6 hours of groceries rounds on Friday followed up with half day affair with macroeconomic jugglery and discussing some transport company in Denver on Saturday followed with perfect Sunday morning 8:00 AM starting the discussion on "Great Depression" which starts from capitalistic excesses leading to mass misery and ends at planning for your death. This wonderful discussion of the death planning makes you wonder on Sunday morning and makes you ask yourself, choose between consumption and being alive because both cannot go together in a long run. How can we help but "chew our nails" and that too gets noticed in the class :)

Finally the beautiful day ends with a fleeting one sided romance with stubborn random variables analyzing if the German launched bombers in II world war were guided or randomly targeted.

How the hell I would know that, when Mr Poisson ( do not pronounce it literally else will be laughed at in France, if you care), who needs you to tell him first the expected value of some data ( read random variable) for a fairly large population ( basically a pure guesswork) and then goes on to build a theory around to claim to tell you the probability of a specific rare event. Its like first you go around the streets and tell him that roughly 5% doggies do not wag their tails on any given point and then he will help you with probability of 5 of one million stray dogs in town who will not be wagging their tails. I mean good to know the guy who himself did not ever experimented like making a tea, but helped Nestle with finding a rare flavour of tea which might go well with crazy customers. "Yaa Yaa Easyyy, Good."

While I am randomly figuring out the randomness of the random variables, in between there is another topic called "Managing Organization". "You Know.."
This wonderfully structured course is like a car on cruise, where the car keep going and you can actually play ludo on Internet with 10 other equally faltu folks like yourself. I mean this subject is like a truckload of cosily buried decades old papers ( read research papers) which if touched start slapping you with 10 jargon/sec. I mean these papers are analyzing the organizations corelating it with human anatomy, human physiology, human psychology, Darwinian theory of survival and species.
One second we say its the environment which molds everything and before I focus, its said there is nothing called as environment as its simply a figment of imagination or technically its "Enacted". I loose track as if I am sitting in a class or watching this war between the ghosts of theoreticians who will now elaborate the theory of organization patterned on Britney Spears acting skill evolution and will explain the adaptability of organization like Katrina Kaif's adaptation to Hindi movies. I must say by the time this course finishes ( and I assume I survive) I will have a 3.5 kg jargon to fool a lay man that i know something of an organization.

Barely this amazing weekend is over when the beautifully packed week is just staring at you like a terribly upset girlfriend ( or boyfriend as the case may be) who wants each second of your life's next week only for herself. If this all sounds like "Saadi band baji hui hai- full time", then you get zero for guessing this sitter.

Accounting ?

2009-07-01T22:40:00.004+05:30

I have had same equation with accounting as Yuvraj Singh has with spin bowling, basically it does not go very well with each other.

Reasons are plenty. First this subject is most money-minded.

I mean this is height, that if I start preparing a balance sheet or myself (literally), then on one side though it allows my old and worn clothes to be valued at some level (non-negetive), but it refuse to put a price on my intellectual asset(assuming there is some). This subject is like old conventional villains in movies who use to come to rich girl's dad with an eye on her dad's asset. I mean rise beyond money buddy.

Anyways on serious note, I read following.

Any expenditures has two eventual effects, either it is converted into an expense if it gets consumed in the same period ( as that for expenditure- courtesy matching principle), or into an asset ( if it has some future prospect of generating the revenue).

But the reason I have spitted out this heavy and boring theory is the mother of all principles. "Over a period of time all expenditures become expenses." Now is very powerful thought and deserves a commercial break in the thought process.

If I break from accounting and come to real life, and reapply this funda. Over a period of time all expenditures become an expenses. Means during the course of life, we make several choices, either we consume ( read enjoy instantly), or we invest ( read - work hard to save and ensure a chauffeur driven Aston Martin ( though I have yet to see a chauffeur driver super car), some point in future. The former ( instant or immediate enjoyment) looks like an expense, while for the latter ( work hard), we assume that we are generating the asset for the future. Its precisely at this point I want to apply the above stated principle. All these assets are also supposed to be converted to expenses, before the game of life is over.

Haven't we heard from other sources ( quite unlike accounting) also the similar things that nothing will go beyond the life and everything will be left back before we pack our bags for one final time. I remember the following verse.

"Sab thath pada rah jaayega jab laad chalega banjara"

Though who know Hindi not more than George W Bush, this means, "All that you possess with pride will be left behind when the eternal traveller will set for final abode".

I was just wondering, if same wisdom is disseminating from all vistas, whether you call is accounting or philosophy. God has many ways to tell us the truth, its just that we understand one language better than other.

And I certainly do not understand the language of accounting very well otherwise I could have used this time to make the income statement which is pending for hours and I am not able to figure out if net income has to be zero eventually then why we are toiling hard to make the income statement at all.

Dhoop Mein Niklo ghataon mein Nahakar Dekho
Zindagi kya hai Kitabon ko hatakar dekho.

My audacious attempt to rephrase this in English ( without intentionally trying to strangulate the meaning intended in original).

"Venture into sunlight, and immerse into misty clouds
What is life, thou shall know, once see beyond the books"

Orientation at IIM-B

2009-05-31T21:42:00.065+05:30

Just back from a two and half days long orientation session for PGSEM batch 2009 at IIM-B.
Needless to say that it was intense experience, otherwise, I would not be urged by this itch at Sunday night to note my ramblings.

The session was an intense experience, unnerving at times at the prospect of getting in touch with academia of global repute, tremendously exciting at other times for being naively fresh.

My idea here in this article is not to provide a gist of itinerary with minutiae, but noting down the things which touched/nudged me deep inside and the way I would like to remember about this.

As communicated, the official purpose of the event was to give a glimpse of the times to come, feel of the value system we will be part of, the sense of rigor required to deserve the brand and a world where we can be often laughed at without any fuss.

Day 1 - Friday 29 May 2009

It all started with the students reporting at the hostel desk. While they were carrying the baggage, they were also shedding the weight of being something outside in order to unlearn and then learn afresh. I was seeing matured individuals slowly coming out of the cocoon (called professionalism garbed in seriousness as if they are working on Gietner's rescue plans) and becoming the same zealous fresher who wants to taste everything in order to know what it tastes like irrespective of what others tell about this.

Day 1 - The Big Debate -

Gradually folks got settled in auditorium for kind of heavy (with each passing minute) debate about "executive MBA - a faster way to top". Debate was actively participated by Wipro global delivery head, and HR head, an alumnus and faculty. While discusses swung from utter pragmatism to ultra philosophical notes, but still I was deeply touched by professor's (panelist) viewpoint.

To me the topic was completely misplaced. Without knowing the head and tail(literally) of "TOP", how can we even talk about a way and furthermore race to it assuming "TOP" to be a roadside hotel on Mysore road 60 miles away from Bangalore and instead of an 1966 ambassador a 2009 Ferrari will take you there in jiffies.

Is there a top, is it a position or state of mind or state of satisfaction or what? Assuming it is a position, is reaching to top a function of speed and distance at all? Is there a conventional way first of all? I do not have answers, but I am still compiling my questions. But when I think of top, race and efficiency following comes to mind.

"Top is always empty, therefore it is always up for grabs"

"Even if you win the rat race, you are still a rat."

"Result is not a function of efficiency alone, its the direction which matters more. A navigation of Bangalore with the help of Delhi Map, will never take you from MG road to even brigade road, however efficient you are. If a sprinter runs at 100 times more efficiency but in opposite direction, he will be nothing but a fool."

Day 2 - Official Orientation KickStart

Next day was packed with some formalities where in the chairperson Professor Shankar Venkatgiri welcomed us with the following quote as inscribed at Lalbagh entry point.

"Fold your hands, pray and then enter as you have come to a sacred place."

Day 2 - Case Discussion

This was followed with an extremely exciting session with professor LS Murty's case study session. It was a beauty to see the individual bits of knowledge (information) converting into group bytes, a argument and cross argument process converting the individual limited contributions into Wisdom of Crowds when subjected to the supervised processing of refinement full of awakening, self feedback and sometimes the humorous slaps.

Quotes which I will remember " Information Technology is God's way to laugh at humans". and "Most of the time the way we look at the problem is the problem itself."

Day 2 - Unravelling the Murder Mystery

Another group exercise was a thriller mystery to be solved, which all the freshers were game for. What remained with me is there was a guy amongst us, who was the first one to find the killer and unfolded complete plot to the group precisely, but his argument was not bought for beyond zero price. I asked what was missing.

I thought, "More often we are not in search of end result or just an answer. We look for conclusions. Answers are like the point, start and end in itself, conclusions are like the process of assembling the dots of facts, connecting them with the arrows of reasoning and the impression of picture thus emerging offers us the conclusion. A logical mind likes to cross examine, it wants to reason to find that very path which connect the facts to the results. In the absence of this, any result or answer is nothing more than a magic.

Day 3 - Entrepreneurship Discussion

The concluding day had another healthy discussion about "encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit", lined up among other formalities. The net balance was tilted to entrepreneurship than management side.

Since the first day debate for "Executive MBA a faster track to Top" to this discussion, I could sense this tone that management is something which just retains the value whereas entrepreneurship creates it, multiplies it and thereby former is less relevant or at least less challenging.
Lots of references from Steve Jobs to Mahatma Gandhi were made. Joseph schumpeter was referred to underline "Creative Disruption or Destructive Innovation".
It was suggested the entrepreneur converts constraints into opportunities while management enforces mere structure and discipline, order etc.
Though nowhere and no one took a judgement call but the intent was still there.

Though this topic itself deserves more thorough analysis which I will do later. But I think, though its true that innovations are disruptive "creatively" but to convert an innovation into a tangible success, this disruptive innovation, this incessant urge to question the structure needs a cradle of management. Uncontrolled, unfocused, unstructured energy more often fritters away like the sunlight. Isn't is also true that same Joseph schumpeter also advocates that corporate monopolies are still most effective way to breed innovation.

While it is true, HP, Motorola, Sony, walmart, Disney, 3M, Johnson or Amul etc were not started by Managers, or the companies like Microsoft or Apple were created by school dropouts.
But it is also true the way we perceive these companies now in 2009 is not the way they began. Isn't it true that the value has been multiplied almost exponentially. Isn't it true the generations have made most of these companies what they are today transcending beyond individual charisma.

While none of these companies was started by MBAs, isn't it true that for decades (90% of their life) they are run by professionals who are managing this disruptive innovations. Motorola started by repairing the motor mounted radios and batteries, Sony started by making rice cookers, HP made flush automating device among other things, Steve Job started with illegal wire tapping device to originate long distance calls and afterwards copying most of things from outside to which Apple is accredited for including GUI, iphone or pixar, American express starting with freight carrier services etc. These were the disruptive innovations? Certainly not, may by in form but not in intent and I am not underplaying the tremendous forces of these innovations which shaped future world.

But the point I am highlighting is to take a venture or idea from something affecting 10 to 10 million, don't we need the structure, discipline, professionalism. Isn't it multiplying the value? If this were such a simple thing as said, while 90% start ups do not even ask for water before dying even in booming times? Isn't it true that all ventures needs vision, funds and capability but the risk alone is insufficient. Isn't it the calculated risk which is weighed before putting one dollar on the table.

The point I am making is entrepreneurship is a spirit not a function, which can be put in any function one is operating in and still excel, multiply value, be socially relevant and create impact. Rather than wholesale structural changes, can multiple incremental changes not bring about the same effective changes in most (if not all) cases provided it is consistent.

I am just playing a devil's advocate here and not being judgmental.

Closing Thoughts -

Coming back to the campus, which was brimming with huge energies of folks busy in finishing the competitions set amongst ourselves for some cup to be won.

Irrespective of who wins, I was just thinking on different note, "They have divided us even before we met for first time."

But probably that's the way it is everywhere, we compete knowingly or unknowingly, but in any case we do compete, then is it not much better that we relearn to compete with sports-spirit. Probably that was the message. That reminded me of following lines

Dushmani jam kar karo lekin ye gunjayish rahe,
Jab kabhi hum dost ho jaye to sharminda na ho.

Finally while on my long way back, I came out of the campus and scrolled down the windshields, the fresh wind kissed my cheeks and this reminded me of the quote of Mahatma Gandhi, from one of the discussions in campus.

"I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any."

As after all education replaces an empty mind with an open mind, I realized a sacred and arduous journey has just begun

India - Private vs Government Sector

2009-05-05T22:18:00.075+05:30

Last weekend, I was part(mostly passive), of a passionate debate on the topic of Govt sector vs Private sector in India. Since the backdrop of this article is the debate- a vigorous and emotive one, and in a typical debate its natural for humans to act as human means to be sometimes angry, cynical, liberal and sometimes belligerent. So I would start this thread with the following quotations applicable to above mentioned emotions.

Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind. -Evan Eser

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. -Oscar Wilde

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel. - Robert Frost

A long dispute means both parties are wrong. - Voltaire.

Mainly the facets touched (and torn as well) were as follows.
1. General perception about govt and private sector workforce, culture, excellence accountability etc.
2. In order to conjure up the big picture, can we generalize the entire govt/private sector? Will this gross generalization will lead to loss of unique identities?

3. Whether "Cream of India is in Govt sector or in Private Sector"?

Even though the impulsive arguments, boisterous counter arguments, heady quips, brash and smart one-liners accentuated with appropriate intonation, all brimming with passion threatened to hijack the discussion at times , yet thankfully the debate did not go much off the track. This offered me an opportunity to listen up the thoughts discussed, to discount the arguments by the locality/biases because of limited individual experiences, before drawing some positive conclusions.

For normalized analysis I thought of following parameters for side by side comparison.

1. Fundamental Difference beteen private and public sector.

Relative assessment with respect to the following parameters in the India context.

2. Responsibility - Challenges of Scale, diversity and complexity
3. Accountability - Business, Social
4. Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship
5 Culture - Operational Excellence, Quality, Customer satisfaction, Drive for consistent excellence, tolerance for non-performance, Employee care and stability.

Some Introductory Numbers -

Before even starting the real discussion, I will start with some facts. India has around 300 thousands industrial establishments which employ the entire organized sector workforce. Almost 60% of these are public secter enterprises and 40% are private ones. India has approximately 30 million organized workforce ( public and private combined), out of this around 70% are employed in public sector and rest 30% are in private sector.
So this brings out the first difference in terms of scale - The public sector employment is roughly 2.5 times that of size of private sector. For the sake for providing more context of the debate(Govt R&D vs IT companies in India as it was broadly discussed), out of 30 million of all public sector, number of government employees is about 4.5 million, even further the collective R&D employment (engineers/scientists in the field of science, technology, engineering) within India including all gems (ISRO, DRDO, NPLs, and lot others) is less than around 40K ( not including the engineers in state depts for this discussion which also will not exceed 40-50K independently), which represents roughly around less than 1 percent of all government employees, and roughly around 0.25% of all public sector employees.

One the other hand the India IT employes arond 1.6 million people, provides around 5.5% of India's GDP and out of this 1.6 million around 40-50 K are employed with MNCs, which is around 3% of the total IT population in India. With this rough introduction of the scale I will start with the original premise of the debate.

1. Fundamental Difference between private and public sector.

Typically I see the public/govt sector as the socialism response to the nation development and private sector is result of capitalism. I find following to be the definition of the socialism and capitalism.

Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by equality for all individuals, with an egalitarian method of compensation.

Capitalism is an economic system in which wealth, and the means of producing wealth, are privately owned. Through capitalism, the land, labor, and capital are owned, operated, and traded for the purpose of generating profits, without force or fraud, by private individuals either singly or jointly, and investments, distribution, income, production, pricing and supply of goods, commodities and services are determined by voluntary private decision in a market economy.

I find the following three to be important criterion for the differentiation.

1. Spirit of entrepreneurship
2. Motivation by profits
3. Social Responsiveness

While most public sector and government sectors drive the social accountability and nationalistic agenda and thereby award their employees not only in monetary terms but also instilling the feeling of nation building directly or indirectly. However the public sector ( non-government) are like midway between our government sector and wholly private enterprises. They enjoy more autonomy than the government departments but still are less entrepreneurial than the private sector counterparts. On the other hand the private sector foster the culture of entrepreneurship, carry the capitalistic agenda and are in general accountable to the stake holders like share holders.

Devil's Dictionary's author Ambrose Bierce defines Corporation as follows.

CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

Thus clearly we see the DNA of the two sectors is different, thus it must engage the workforce which is primarily aligned with the core values of the respective cultures and it will be grossly unfair to put them in the same basket even for the academic comparison.

2. Responsibility-

Most of the PSU and government sector carry the broad agenda of nation building in different and specific ways. Keeping this nation building mission and social accountability in the core they build their structure around.
In order to correctly understand the difference between the responsibilities, one must realize that the real difference comes, not from what they do but why they exist.

Keeping this in mind, the government sector carries the prime responsibility of making change in the lives of millions either by employing them or by serving them. And this puts their responsiblity of functionally excelling in whatever they do as the second or probably lesser priority.

Whereas the private sector's prime responsibility is to earn profits and there by creating consistent value for the shareholders. This indirectly beckons them to operate or rather excel in the specialized function of producing, marketing, selling something with highest level of efficiencies.

This also means that by definition government sector is not as much focused and committed to the operational excellence as sector is. This is true especially if the government sector is confronted with their higher priority of serving the nation building and enriching the quality of lives of the people. For example given a choice, a government company will never think of firing 100 people for improving its operational efficiency whereas for private sector this hardly is the problem.

Now in the contexts of India, which is a enormously huge country as since government is the first owner of the national resources, the public sector responsibilities are primarily huge and complex because of sheer scale. Its not the functional nuances but the scale of operations which puts them apart.

3. Accountability

While government sector is accountable to government which is indirectly the caretaker of the public interest at large. Whereas the private sector is accountable to the shareholders only, however it has to always abide by the same set of legal framework which are developed by the government and in which the government sector also operates.

While this sounds noble so far, but this also limits the public sector in multiple ways in directly competing with private counterparts in the department of productivity, accountability, transparency, efficiency and quality of inputs.
For example they have to abide by the rules of caste based reservations but private sector has no such liability. Because of being less modular and socially driven, Public sector is poor in ensuring the individual accountability. Whereas the private sector clearly sets the goals for the employees and hold them directly accountable for any deeds/misdeeds. Private enterprises are not plagued by the social accountability and thereby putting holes in their balance sheets. They operate not to serve but to earn profits legally.

4. Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship

Avoiding repetitions, needless to say in this department private sector is the way ahead than the government sector. It does this not by choice by design. Theory of corporate existence or competitive markets is based upon this fundamental principle, that is why Adam Smith in 1776 propounded the capitalism to be the founding principle of nation building identifying the glaring holes in the model of socialism.
Following is the exact text quoted from the father of modern economics - Adam Smith in this regard.

As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can, both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce maybe of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

Though I do not need to add anything after this, but just to elaborate the point, the government owns the national resources, like a son enjoys the resources of the father. Thus in whatever function it pursues the competition can never be the same as with the one who started fromt he scratch. however this analogy holds good only for the production based function. For the function of regulatory bodies where the main agenda is the policy making, administration, guarding the social interest and etc, there is not competition from the private sector as they are not even entitles to enter into this domain

5. Cultures

In this section I will briefly touch upon the various issues like Operational Excellence, Quality, Customer satisfaction, Drive for consistent excellence, tolerance for non-performance, Employee care and stability.

Here clearly within the realm of functions of production (concrete input, output model) in a profit based model, Private organization are much ahead then their government counterparts because of their reason of existence and fight for survival. Its like even a non athelete can clock his life time best for running if a violent dog is chasing one. So its not by the choice but out of sheer compulsion to survive, earn profits consistently which makes private sectors better in this sector.

In other words for the similar functions (production model in a profit based model) the government sectors are full of chalta hai attitute leading them consistently southward. The example of these sectors is like natural resources production, engineering, electricity, infrastructure developments, civil supplies, health care and education.

They do not feel the competition, their jobs are secure, their families are taken care of with the pension, their labor rights are well protected within law which collectively makes them think like a governor and treat the people, which they need to serve, as their servants.

But in the sectors of non-profit based model, the things are entirely different. The examples of these are law and order, justice, regulatory bodies, science and technology R&D organizations.

Though these department also enjoy the de facto bounty of regular benefits as outlined in the above section, but there owing to highly qualified workforce and enormity of challenge in complexity, huge investment of powers in respective ranks, the cultures starts deviating from the typical chalta hai sarkari attitude.

But even here the system acts merely as a facilitator for encouraging people to excel, it still does not strictly enforce unlike the tiniest private enterprise. Now its up to the individuals to be self-motivated to a large extents. But one clear difference is that though these departments do not immediately fire people of low productivity but are relatively more driven by meritocracy and encourage the bright people by recognizing them.d

For example, the real difference between ISRO, DRDO or BARC, IITs, IIMs, IIScs and other state run and owned science/engineering institutions is primarily hinges upon the following factors.

1. Better quality of input, thereby better culture to encourage the performers

2. Exposure to global competition

3. Exclusivity in huge funding

4. Relatively higher autonomy from the typical government bureaucracy.

5. Since focused into the niche areas, there is negligible public dealing and political intervention.

This summaries, that when a group of high caliber people, assembles to achieve something big in a focussed area and funding is hardly an issue, and on top there is little structural (bureaucratic, political social etc) interventions, the group is bound to excel. These are typical qualities of focussed private group also. However these systems (government systems) still operate based upon encouragement of better performing resources and less strict in weeding out the laggards which is in stark difference than the private sector counterparts.

I mean in the crude way if hundred people are allowed to race with an assured thirty years salary+pension+health care+other benefits to all the runners, plus special recognition for the the top 10 winners, I would presume that majority will not be actively competing for the top honors.

However if the same set of people are being chased by a hungry tiger, and there is no assurance to all the racers thought there is also a similar award for the top ten survivors, then I would assume all to give their best shot, if not being a winner.

This primarily sums up the main difference in cultures of private and even these premier non-profit driven government organizations.

Now I am addressing the final remaining question for this debate.

Whether the cream of India's Intellect is in private sector or public sector?

Since this topic alone could be touchy and itchy to many, I would like to set the basic premise of this question unambiguous. By cream here we mean the top 1% talent in the respective fields. Though I remember the following quotation about the greatness of minds.

Great Minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.
Eleanor Roosevelt.

We have various instruments to measure this tangible greatness like competitive exams and furthermore the proven track record of successful handling of challenges which are globally recognized for the sheer complexity.

If I broadly define the streams into science and humanities and furthermore sub divide the science into the fundamental science, applied science, engineering and technology. I can similarly also sub divide the humanities into fields like economics, management, administration, law, creative arts, history, sociology and political science.

I am doing this fine classification to make clear that "Cream" is not only the mind which is good in maths, it can also be a person who can make laws, interprets them and pronounce justice which helps in retaining the roots of multicultural society intact.
So largely cream is a relative terms more applicable to the specific stream and overall they have their relative (less or more) importance for the job of nation building.

Based on this classification, I believe, majority of the cream in the field of science, technology and management does not work inside India. The second rate in these domains is controlling the giants in the government sectors and a relative minority in this fields are controlling and driving the nascent private sector in India.

When I say that the cream in science and technology is not in India, its is worthwhile what it has left for. It had left for the places with higher autonomy, more direct return for their contribution, respect for non administrative ranks and largely a society based upon the relative merits. More often than not, these people have landed upon the private enterprises in the US and Europe and other parts.

Its noteworthy that this is true only for the present nascent state of private sector in India, which is fairly younger in comparison. With more liberalization the private sector hopefully will not only be able to reverse the brain drain but also attract the second rate people also thus collectively attracting the majority of cream in these sectors.

However, for the other streams which I have already mentioned, the cream is very much in India and certainly not in private sector and in some of the domains like administration, law and order, regulatory bodies like SEBI, RBI, election commission etc presence of private sector in any country is inconceivable and these are not the areas of profit loss model.

However a parting twist to this "Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki, claims that a groups of average people consistently outsmarts a relatively much smaller groups of so called experts and that is what he prefers to call the collective intelligence quotient of the average crowd, which always outdo the much smaller ensemble of more focused expertise. From this angle, the average quality of people (because of sheer focus upon competitiveness, excellence and efficiency and therein promising higher and direct monetary compensations) choose private sector as the favorite addresses along with the most brilliant minds, though not true completely for India because of being fairly new to the world of capitalism.

Now if India continues to tread on the path of controlled liberalization, this trend of stronger private sector may offer as better destination for the people who want to work in the production model. After all the brain-drain fed to private enterprises across the world, so if our private sector is allowed to grow on the similar patterns, I do not see why the cream will not start coming back in join Indian private sector.

As a parting shot, I believe a great mind is also by definition a free mind, and a free mind needs a free structure to operate in.

Typically the government structures amputate this freedom by putting lots of hierarchy and private sector crush these freedom by subjecting this to inferior motives of profits maximization in the quarterly approaches. But given the private sector's more emphasis on competitiveness and entrepreneurship, the probability of private sector to have more chunk of greater minds seems more plausible.

Having said that this statement is not applicable to prevailing Indian environment where we clearly do not have such private or government organizations.

Why New Chapter -

2009-04-21T13:07:00.010+05:30

Only limits to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of Today.
- Franklin D Roosevelt.

Conservative is a man with two perfect legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.
- Franklin D Roosevelt.

When silence is prolonged, it can only be broken by deeper voices.

This volley of quotes should not give you an impression that I am doing something as revolutionary as Columbus mission to find India without having any damn clue about where it is and thereby hitting the most famous missed shot of present times by finding America.
Neither my journey is as colorful as the walking to neighborhood grocery store to buy a kg of potato. However as always, its the middle path which I am following.

I am going back to school, IIM-Bangalore, for MBA (part-time) starting Jun 09. While my next two and half years are gonna make me feel inside oven(literally as I have been assured since day 1), I asked myself why am I doing this.

I asked this to myself after I was asked this question from everybody from interview panel to my apartment watchman( though I have not told him yet, and people I have told yet are in single digit, but I assume even if I had told him, he would have asked the same from me) - why this, what for, for whom and why now?
I am happy that finally I have asked this question from me now. I remember so many people did not ask the same question when they should have asked, yes when I got married. Nobody asked me then - Why, what for, why now, why not later/earlier etc?

Coming back to this school thing, I finally asked from myself, why am I doing this? I got amazing answers. It may be an act to fool myself or to console myself as I still remember "This world is full of people who do not need a reason to believe but they need an excuse to believe."

But following is my thought process.

Basic premise of my argument is as follows.

In India a career in IT businesses, which is totally limited to technical/technological contribution will lead to a grave dissatisfaction sooner or later leading them to either move outside the country, or to change their line or be happy being the second fiddle.

This statement might seem pompous or amateurish unless coming from someone who is as high in stature as one who have founded HP, which for sure I have not (If you do not believe me for this please google for this:)).

The backdrop of this basic premise is as follows.

Technical growth can only be assured by consistent handling of bigger technical challenges. Going forward the technical challenges tilt more toward R&D then just execution and delivery.

This R&D commitment requires a technology vision on the part of organization, elaborate road map of the future, strong belief in one's core Values, consistent viability of funding and market research to rationalize the funding for these R&D programs.
This R&D commitment also requires the large-scale availability of the domain expertise in respective segments.
These R&D commitments being longer terms in nature also require focus and commitment from the workforce. It needs workforce which is equally motivated by the cause/goal and is not driven merely by the cash value on the plate.
Finally it also requires the equitable organization & social respect for technical contribution

If I summarize this - high value technology development is possible in a scenario where the organizations, workforce and the markets meet following conditions.

1. Stable business organizations with vision and potential to start from scratch and finally doing it themselves.
2. Highly motivated and committed workforce with substantial domain knowledge and perseverance.
3. Where Organizations and engineers are willing to take some risks.
4. Finally a social environment which respects such organizations and such people.

Since this discussions is about the professional career around the businesses and not that of the academia, I have consciously kept out one crucial element - Centers of excellence which produces the world class technical workforce and fosters the culture of cutting edge R&D.

Now when the ground is set, I will come back to our prevailing Indian technology scenario.
I will be discussing the three elements of this trilogy - Organizations, Workforce and Society in detail and then finally analyze why I reach to the basic premise as stated above.

1. Organization -
On the organizations front, there are four kind of organizations.

First group is of the the private (wholly Indian) corporates with pretty impressive global footprint in terms of employee strength and revenues. But their track record for technological ground breaking work, innovative products, research in technology, global share in any product market is abysmally poor. Mostly its the outsourcing model of channelizing the cheaper workforce to the high cost job and chewing up the margins which is making their balance sheets looks greener.

Second is the Indian centers of global Biggies, which is a kind of American response to the outsourcing model. Mostly these centers (Barring very few and rare exceptions) are also maintaining the products which were last being used for someone in Africa a decade back (Little bit of exaggeration here but trying to push the point hard).

Third set is the plenty of start-ups which are doing lots of niche technical work but their evident weaknesses are as follows.
1. lack of vision - most want to be sold or acquired sooner or later
2. lack of access to potential network of investors- this leads them to die for want of seed/bridge funding.
3. Lack of access to the customers/markets - Since more markets are outside India, thus they have a tough time getting their feet in.

Fourth and last set is of huge government/PSU organizations. Though undoubtedly most of India's technological growth is only because of them, but their potential is largely not harnessed due to ultra-poor accountability, insulting compensation packages (at least before six pay commission).

Thus across the spectrum I clearly see a lack of the organizations which have the vision to commit to path breaking technological work, which have the funding to explore this, which have the accountability and drive to continue on these tougher and rather unfulfilled journeys.
Thus most careers in these organization either does not require that kind of focused high value technical expertise or does not offer that kind of environment wherein one can pursue such a goal.

2. Workforce -

Now the second point - Workforce. First we have very small (single digit) centers of excellence in India, which the cutting edge technical talent which is globally competitive. But sometimes people, given an opportunity, can excel in later phases of their life. But that requires the appropriate environment in the organizations and in the society.

Secondly large (more than 90%) of the workforce come from modest financial family background. This makes them less prone to risk and forces them to trade their passions with the basic necessities and then competitive luxuries in life. This arduous task typically takes at least one generation to take family up to the next level. In this perspective money in the short term by a mediocre organization appears much better then the high complexity technology work in a financially unstable organization.

3. Society -

The last factor is the society. Almost all societies in the world have been hierarchical in structure with the elements of feudalism replacing the real merits earned based upon the performance.

More mediocre societies continue to give higher importance to administrator. One who rules becomes more important than the ones being ruled. This leads to a race to being a ruler or wielding an authority. This thirst for authority and feeling the power there in and thereby earning more recognition in the society drive more and more people to seeking for this authority.

Indian society which was highly intellectual in ancient times, gradually ceded to be so and degraded into a strongly hierarchical structure. In some cases it was age, caste or religion or other such non-merit bases criteria which decided who will have the final word.

For corporate world this translated into the a hierarchy of power or food chain i.e who eats whom or who reports to whom.

Managing a group is brazenly confused as Heading a group which is automatically understood as Leading a group.
Power to decide one's daily work, doing one's annual appraisal and signing on the leave applications are still considered to be more powerful then developing a technology. Individual technical contributions are still considered to be individual weaknesses or non-competitiveness thus symbolise a laggard's career.

All is not lost -

Having said all this, I must say we still have exceptions in each of the above mentioned categories. Fortunately the trend is optimistic.

Why Business Knowledge is Important -

So I thought finally that if I have to evolve in the technology side, I will grow in the technological business side. I need to have a sound understanding of the business side of technology. Keeping eye on the end goal, this business study will not only equip me with some of the minimum mandatory knowledge but also will give me access to wide network of people from industry and academia. My objective is not merely to earn a grade in the hierarchy or two, its also not shunning the line of hard work in technical contributory roles. But I want to start with authentic and applicable quality education of the fundamentals.

Finally I hope and wish this will help in one day starting a technology product company right here in India, which will not die for want of funding, which will not be born to be sold out, which will not sell the cheap labor but competitive technology, which will not foster the culture of bureaucracy but of meritocracy and which will exist beyond my existence.

Next poem

2009-03-08T22:45:00.002+05:30

Putting one more of poems written in good old days.

Some of my poems - 1

2009-02-21T11:58:00.002+05:30

Human as Resource?

2009-02-05T10:58:00.016+05:30

Can we ever equate a Human as resource in any model.? What do we really mean by the term "Human resource", what do we gain by categorizing human as another resource and what is the problem in this simplification.

I searched for the guy who coined this term "Human Resource". I did not find the definitive answers. But came to know that it was Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary S. Becker, who coined the term “human capital”.

What prompted me to think about this topic is what was the intent behind terming Human as a resource. Was the intent to categorize this as a crucial factor for any organization or to relegate Human to yet another assess classes and then coming up with the equitable models to manage this resource like other resources.

Its like this, in order to make the tea, we need some ingredients like follows.

1. sugar, tea, milk, water, heat, utensils etc
2. Recipe of tea
3. Some real estate to have this entire setup
4. An Agent (machine/human) with limited intelligence and willingness to interpret the recipe and use raw materials to get the desired output.
5. An Environment wherein this freedom to make the tea is available.
6. A place where all these raw materials are available at affordable cost

Finally the productivity criteria could be Quantity and flavours produced.

With more amount of automation in the process, we can replace most part of human contribution with some machine pre-programmed with various recipes for various flavors of tea. In this case the human interaction is finally required to instruct this machine, either physically or over the Internet.

In the final stage of automation, we can even pre-program the machine to make tea at pre-programmed intervals, eliminating any human interaction as far as the basic objective of tea making is concerned. However, here the human contribution is required to first conceive the model of this kind of machine and then building it finally. This process is always on, migrating the human interaction up in he chain wherein it cannot be further replaced with any machine, paving way for machines/mechanical agents to replace humans at lower levels.

Even in the basic process of making tea, a human contribution can be of two types.

1. Simply mechanically performing the functions like a machine as described for a machine.
2. Adding values by producing specialized flavors to such an extent which cannot be mechanized.

Generally in any organization, the functions are broken up to refined details wherein each step is defined by its entry and exit points, its boundaries (limitations), and its scope. The productivity criteria is also charted out in accordance. It is this task of defining productivity for human as resource, which is highly subjective and requires maximum intelligence possible.

What do we mean by Productivity here? How this discussion about tea making is relevant.

Productivity for normal organizational function is the quantifiable, tangible output which meets organization's expectation about efficiency of resource consumptions. Productivity is first conceived by replacing any step which either requires man/machine with a machine and then try to reach to certain quantifiable output. Once that output expectation is defined, the certain step which were assumed to be done mechanically are realistically replaced with human beings and certain assumptions are further taken into into account to fine-tune the definition of productivity. Then over a period of time, the system self-feedback to further refine its productivity levels.

If I take again tea making example. Assuming, with the available set of utensils and burner capacity and raw materials, we come to a number e.g. 100 cups a day. Here we assumed that the Agent which interprets the recipe and utilizes the resources was a machine.

In the next step when we replace this agent with a Human being, who ends up making 80 cups a day, organization calls him a under performer and tries to push him to achieve those pre-conceived levels. At this point the employee start feeling disgruntled.

This is precisely the moot point of my discussion. Is this feeling justified? What is wrong here?

While originally productivity levels were being defined the goal setting was pretty crude i.e. some quantity with unclean expectation about flavor or optimality of resources or customer satisfaction etc. Since we assumed the machine to contribute in those steps where any external intelligence/interaction was required, as models do not take into account any unquantifiable parameters into account, thus lots of ambiguity sneaked into.

Basic premise of my theory is, in any function, there always exist some steps which cannot be completely replaced with a mathematical model (machine) at a given point of time.

Here I am talking about theoretical impossibility and not the unavailability of machine due to shortage of factors like capital or technological access etc. For example, even though tea making machine exists, but still some organization engages the human being for want of capital or other issues. But this does not deter them to still model and review the tea making business from a machine perspective.

The moment human contribution is unwanted in tea making, the contribution is possible in making/optimizing such machine, innovating new flavors, setting up supply chain etc.

Fundamental question an employee should ask from himself/herself. Am I doing the step of a function which cannot be done by a machine. If the answers is negative then there is hardly a scope for different treatment/expectation then meted to a machine.

The question which the organization can ask is, whether or not a particular resource is doing purely mechanical job. If yes then possibly redeploying the resources where in there is larger scope for human contribution.

In the absence of this self-realization and subsequent corrections, employee continue to model themselves like machines, more so as our organization also sometimes applies the equitable criterion to measure an employee productivity as applied to machine.

Now this is vicious loop. We can never have more then 24 hours a day, we will always be limited by our capacity carry certain load, thus this approach takes us to the final point of breaking up piece apart. On the other hand organization also starts looking at humans as mere resources and rather crudely as a function of time say 8 hours a day. The most unfortunate stories unfold when a human is reduced to a number of hours.

Before I close this article, the final topic to be discussed is what is the function which a machine cannot do but a human can. Some things which come to my mind are as follows.

1. Innovation (which in itself has several diverse dimensions)

2. Power of discretion

3. Judgement of social values

4. Ability to rationalize

5. Ability to analyse and conclude not just based upon the data but using power of extrapolation and ability to read the future.

Now these are the powers which we have, and we waste them in sheer mimicking the dumb machines. What a pity that sometime we get even rewarded for precisely this nonsense.

Just to give an idea what machine cannot do, it can never tell a company how to get out of a recession, while a human being can try and eventually succeeds.

Finally leaving with this parting thought.

"If I'm compared with a machine for performance then I do not need a human being to do this job. That also can be done by a Machine."

"To Have or To Be" Thats the question

2009-01-29T22:53:00.003+05:30

My wayward reading habbit landed me upon this beautiful piece by Erich Fromm. The main idea is there are two fundamental ways of pursuing oneself and everything around one.

To Have or To Be.

While first focuses upon defining the existence and pursuit of life based upon the material possession ( I think possessions can only be material). The drives the notion of evolution of the existence from having nothing to have more and so on. Since this chase is endless, but inevitable this leads to emptiness.

The Second aspect "To Be", focuses upon defining the existence based upon our being. Which is largely not based upon materialistic yardsticks.

While Fromm, agrees that there is little bit of both in each individual, but eventually the surroundings encourage ( read force) one to adopt the common ways.

Well the idea behind this blog is not to put forth another biased and incompetent explanation, but simply to highlight the beauty of this this question alone.

I am not worried about finding answers. I am more interested in rather first sinking in the question itself. Easily this is one of most important questions in my life, I have ever come across. So let me first spend some time.

"To Have or to Be"

Conclusion !

2008-12-22T15:22:00.010+05:30

Warren Buffet has said, "This world is full of people who do not need a reason to believe. They just need an excuse to believe".

A cat once jumped to sit upon a gas burner which was just put out seconds ago and still red hot despite no traces of flames. You can guess what would have happend with cat, but cat concluded something. "Never sit on gas burner". Could you have corrected the conclusion?

This topic is all about Conclusions, Inferences, opinion and judgements.
I will start with a practical example. Some time back I asked following question from a group.
Q: Can someone share the info about weather in and around Coorg coffee estates, during dec end in particular?

I got following seven answers.

1. It is very cold. Make sure you take a lot of warm clothes. Mornings are usually chilly. But by 9:00 am things turn out to be more like Bangalore. Visit Raja-Seat in Madikeri and Abbey falls. Apart from that there is not much to do.
If you are looking for a good relaxation place, I would highly recommend Gokarna Beaches in north Karnataka.

2. Dec is a nice time to go to Coorg. It will be hill station like weather.
3. During December end it is very cold J over there and sometimes it rains
If going with friends just you can chill out …
If going with family along with kids and elders it would be good to go prepared with warm clothes.
If newly married couple … they can enjoy ;)
4.Chill and little rainy. Two years ago, we could hardly get out off our rooms after 2-3pm.
5.Very pleasant. Open skies (no clouds). Temperature in the range of 10-25C. Go for it! My first and last visit was around the same time of the year.
6. The climate during November, December and January is really cool.
7. Should be good. For me, anything but lots of raining will be good in such occasion.

Can you risk to conclude anything?

The problem statement I want to state is the Skill of drawing Conclusion is rarely gifted but rampantly exercised by all and sundry leading to disastrous results.
Before I get into the gory details.

Let me take another example.

Some students were conducting an experiment upon a creature with 12 legs. They broke one pair of legs and ordered the creature - "walk". The creature started to crawl but rather slowly as compared when it had all the pairs of legs.
Students, broke another, and ordered the creature again to walk. This time also the creature started walking but rather slower than previous time.
When students broke the last pair of legs, and ordered the creature to walk, the poor guy could not move. Guess what was the conclusion drawn by the students.

"Once all the legs are broken, the Creature turns deaf ."

The logic says about the following terms.

Fact, Inference and Judgement. There are thousand other terms also but I am picking some useful ones.

Fact - Something which is largly undisputed and based upon the fundamentals. Like sun rises in the east. India's GDP is 1 trillion USD. Today is sunday, 2*2 = 4 etc.

Inference - An opinion/assertion based upon a set of facts. That means something which can be proved with the help of available facts. Like definition says if GDP growth is negetive for more than two consecutive quarters, then its and indication of Recession. If there are two queues with 10 and 20 people both and both counter takes equal time to process each individual request, the longer queue will take longer to be served etc.

As we can see here, even though Inferences are based upon the facts and can be proved, but here little bit of subjectivity is introduced. The primary drive here is a belief for/against something. Then one finds the relevant facts and tries to prove it and drives a conclusion. So inferences are not aloof to disputes as one proves what one wants to prove.

Lastly there is judgement. You start with the facts, you drive the inferences. Now what. You have to make an opinion out of them. Here maximum subjectivity/discretion and notion of disputability is introduced.

Lets start with an example.

Example -1

All high end cars (e.g in price band x-y) have better suspension, ride quality, safety, maintenance than the lower end cars. High end cars are good cars.

All high end cars have higher carbon footprint, less fuel efficiency, less manouverability around the congested streets, greater depreciation in resale values. High end cars are bad cars.

Example - 2

Last four years of government, GDP has grown from x-y, UNDP human index for India has improved from x-y, industry has grown from a-b, unemplyment has shrunk from b-c, y kms roads have been built, z mega watt more energy is produced, crime rate has come down from i-j etc. Hence this goverment has been good for India.

Last 4 years have seen an increase of x percent of terror attack, four consecutive quarters of highest inflation in a decade, x hundred thousand job losses in export oriented sectors, Industrial growth for more than three recent quarters have been less than 4, which is way less than the previous regime. Hence this government has been disasterous.

In both the examples, each statement has two parts. First part is Inferences, which refers to facts. All of the fact are quantifiable and can be measured and proved. But you see amazing contrast in the conclusions which is mentioned in the second parts in red.

Normally when I see folks around debating like ----, I get amused. An unending debate is replete with countless references to facts and inferences based thereupon. But still the judgements are north pole south pole. And I bet they will remain as is it. I remember someone has said once, "If two parties fight for a long time, chances are that they both are wrong".

Fundamentally it is the belief system what drives the process of arguments. This belief systems is based upon one's entire life's learnings in any form. This belief system consists of countless biases as well. When we believe into something and we need to present a case, we rummage the supporting arguments and blatantly overlook the contradicting ones. Its just like an attorney prepares his/her case. But we know in a fight at least one of the two attorneys is wrong.

The process of drawing conclusion gets murkier, when we start baselining the conclusion upon earlier conclusions and so on. Now you see the references to non-quantifiable and unmeasurable things. Most of the never ending debats are just like that.

Basically we spend lifetime in just carrying around with certain baises and fighting for these. I remember some has said. Noone damages the cause more than one who defends the cause with wrong arguments.

Lately I saw its example in Time's coverage on Kashmir issue.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1864880,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1864207,00.html
Someone sitting in cosy plush interiors of Manhattan studio, dreams about a story of connecting Bombay blasts with Kashmir. To prove the claim he/she goes even to an extent of quoting the excerpts of a specific Indian news channel . Surprisingly, the particular channel does not enjoy the viewership of more than 0.001% of India and mostly known for soft porn and sleeze mixed cheap titilating coverages. But any channel becomes quotable as long as it's nursing original biases thus can be quoted. But the story will be liked by those readers who already nurture the similar biases as carried by author, thus will remain unquestioned.

I remember while reading the biography of Lee Iococca. At one point he says when you chair the company's leadership meeting and have Harvard graduates painting a particular picture. You will have plethora of analysis done, tons of numbers quoted and countless reports sought as supporting arguments. But one thing which nobody will tell and everybody else looks upon you for, is the tough question "What should be the final decision?".

All this means is, concluding is not as simple as everybody thinks it is. Please shed tons of biases before taking the plunge and being objective about this process despite being a sujbect youself.

Well that is the conclusion I am drawing at the end of this blog and leaving with this quotation.

Do not belive something untill officially denied.

React vs Respond?

2008-10-05T12:08:00.005+05:30

Recently, while brooding over an article, these terms kicked me. What is really the difference, and how the hell it matters to me? What do we mean by "Reacting" and "Responding", and what are their subtle notional differences?

Typically, when we come across any situation, that touches us in some way , touches is little deeper, so as trying to elicit a response from us, that is when we are offered a choice to either react or respond.

The examples of these situations could be getting involved in some debate where our ideological identify is at stake, or getting involved in a conflict when we run a risk of being misinterpreted, when our dignity is being flouted, when correctness and prudence of our decisions is being sold, our resilience is being exploited as our weakness, our principles are portrayed as our rigidity and adamancy etc.

What do we do? Pour a bucket of water on the face of someone sitting across the table? or kick ones ass so hard that the hurt compensates for the hurt we feel? Or in more sophisticated ways, do nothing of this sort and launch a verbal assault, or ignore etc.

Point is not to mention all the mean ways like this. But to mention that if we do any of the things of this sort, its can be called Reaction or OverReaction in some cases.

So typically, Reaction is, like a opposite action. Putting up one wrong act for one wrongdoing. Reaction is like a bounce. When we do not listen completely, or we do not take into account the context and background, we do not take into account our own background. Even if we take them into account, we do not apply our thought process, to get to the conclusion, but its the waves of anger which cripple down this whole system and forces us to put a brave face and make us fooled into being consoled that damage is controlled or hurt is revenged.

Reaction is normally focused upon people or some event, hence substance is missing.

Whereas, response is, first making sure your thought process runs like a professional system, takes into account all possible input, and carefully spending time for reaching to the conclusions, and trying to shun away the anger whatsoever during this entire process. Then deciding, if an exhibition of output is required at all. If yes, then projecting it by focusing upon the ideology rather than a person or event.

When we face a question, either we can say that question is true or false , or we can take is a problem deserving a solution. Stating the true/false is generally a reaction, finding a solution is a Response. Reaction is nothing but either ignoring or accepting the challenge by immediately branding it as an absolute true or false. Response is a positive answer to the challenge.

World or My World?

2008-09-26T11:10:00.012+05:30

If the topics I am choosing of late, give an impression that I am totally sucked up by the things around including promotional calls from tele marketers, and I am so pissed off that I pick the next call with gun in the other hand, then this all may not be true literally, however a very intelligent and accurate guess.

But, coming back to the topic. How do we define "World" for us. What all is there? How do we measure the vastness of it?

I wake up in the morning, and see my family, work with colleagues in the office for the major part of the day, then watch TV/read paper in the evening, have a walk in the neighborhood and meet the neighbors. Some days, call my family, less often talk to some relatives. Sometimes talk to friends, get in touch via mails. Sometime read some books and stuff on Internet.

If all this this is giving an impression that my routine is rotten and smells mediocrity like it smells after gulping garlic soup, and I seriously need to whip it up to catch up with something like Tom Cruise social and private life, that its not a suggestion but a serious digression for the topic, and I am not considering this for the current five year plan.

But the intention of revealing the boring details of my routine to define "My World" which is comprised of "People, Events, Thoughts", I interact with in my life. So I tried to reverse engineer this all to sum up and come up with, what comprises "My World". The reason I am coining this term "My World", is basically that subset of generic notion of World, which affects me. I mean how does it matter to me that where is "Gibraltar", though it becomes part of "My World", when I read that Anurag Dixit it the richest guy in entire Gibraltar and one of the youngest billionaires in the world. So that's how "My Word" gets affected.

So, to concrete this all.

1. People. Lets say, I interact actively with around 50-100 people (family, friends, relatives, colleagues, occasional meetings, same characters on TV/Newspaper/Internet etc).

Passively I interact with lets say a couple of thousand people, which includes while being on the road, city, markets, and other places. But this is just a passive interaction, like either I honk or get honked by, no formal hi Hello, but nevertheless, its an interaction theoretically, however its impact on "My World" is very very less.

2. Events. Typically there are two classes of events. One that I am directly involved with, which also includes the events which gets triggered by interaction with the people also. The other set of events are one which I come to know by Media. This is also fairly limited and more importantly its like being governed by somebody else, i.e. this portion of world is defined by others, not me.

3. Thoughts. Rationally thought is a reaction of Mind to everything we interact with. Like all journeys, this journey of Mind, if is ephemeral and do not survive enough to get consolidate enough to evolve into Thinking, that cannot be possibly be terms as Thought. So practically everything our Mind does not a Thought. But each action has the potential to evolve into a thought. E.g. seeing a stranger on the road, does not cause us think anything about him/her or us, if he/she is normal in general ways, but we do apply our mind. But if we see something little special (subjective), we spend some more mind cycles on this. There are chances the even this interest will fade out. But There can also be some completely thoughtful experiences also. Likewise, most of actions of our Mind do not consolidate, and its more like waves in pool crashing into each other.

So, thought is a consolidated outcome of application of mind on the people/events/thoughts we interact with. So this is a derived product. We can also stimulate our thought process by reading stuff or sometimes discussing etc. We can also argue that since all interaction leads to some kind of thought process, so eventually its the thoughts that are main essence of "My World".

Vastness -

First thing , I believe that the vastness of "My World", is dynamic. It keeps changing. Sometimes new people/event/thoughts become part of it, and some get obsolete and hence deprecated.

But since this phenomenon of shrinking or expanding is stimulated by the three things I have mentioned earlier, so we can deduce this notion of vastness of "My World" by studying the contributing parameters.

Since the ensemble of people we normally interact remains similar, so more and triggers from this same stimulus does not contribute to variation of vastness in my space.

The events, in general are out of our control thus, depending upon the situations, it follows a random pattern. However as I have mentioned, events can be triggered from interaction with people/things. And secondly we can (in fact we most of the times) apply filter to pick the events selectively. E.g while reading some stuff or watching something on TV, we come across with something, but we skip something and give weight to others. So this process is dependent upon our interests also.

Now the third, and most important contributor, Thoughts. The notion of vastness is not actually applicable much to this facet . However since the thought process is an continual ongoing process which get various kicks from others things we interact with and also how much introspection we do. So the real transformations for thoughts is not related to vastness but more related to process of consolidation and refinement.

Now the points is, since our window of people we actively interact remains stagnant, the set of events we adapt/pick is subjected to our inclinations and outside inputs, then the last resort which stimulates our thought process is what we read, think.

Since the life in general when becomes monotonous, it resembles like a car despite driven at top speed but without breaks and with similar scenery outside, thus leading to stagnation of evolution of "My World". This monotony is not absence of motion but absence of progress.

The proof of the stagnation is that account of the years gone by is measured in terms of the things which hardly makes a difference in the long run, e.g bought new car, bought new house, got promotion, got married blah blah. I mean these are not the things we live for. This is our irony that we do not substantial association of objects in our world with the time. We try to first make unimportant things important and continue to feed on them, thus helping us to avoid the realization of this very stagnation.

So to finally conclude, We generally do not care about "World", but more about "My World". Thus irrespective of what is happening theoretically around, we are affected by what is touching "My World".

And lastly most ironical is "My World", has become stagnant. Its an impasse, its a pregnant proposition which is turning blind and deaf to potential things around it.

I am thinking on second part of this. If this stagnation is there, how to break it.

Pressure - Test of Character or Test of Stupidity?

2008-09-17T20:56:00.024+05:30

There seems to be two sides of Challenge. One is Opportunity and other is Pressure. While in the corporate world they provide steroids to make people immune to pressure and give them prisms which convert the challenges into rosy opportunities, I see something else also.

What is this pressure? How does it generate? What does it mean " Not wilting under pressure"?

When you set a goal. The first thing we do is to set a road map for implementation, set check points, participating in the processes which gives periodic feedback, using these feedback again to correct things.

So far this all is objective, no pressure at all. Then where does pressure come from. While preparing for a challenge, there is a parallel mental game which we subject ourselves to. While we are engaged in the preparation we start developing the fear of failure syndrome. We then start thinking about the expectations other have from us, we have from ourselves and suddenly we feel there is a lot at stake. Resultantly, this cloud gets thicker and directly fritters away the focus which should be totally upon the preparation.

In other words we start worrying about the result before the act is over. We also feed this fear back to us, thus starts the story of pressure.

There is another kind of pressure. Sometime we stretch ourselves, and consciously or unconsciously set the benchmark for us. Since life always do not let us operate in perfect conditions, but in general the expectations do not take into account all these factors. Thus we continuously engage into stretching ourselves. Since stretching in one direction makes our life severely disbalanced, thus we feel the heat on the other fronts in life. Now, the natural reaction is not to eliminate the original stretching, but we start stretching ourselves more. Example we set a benchmark at work place. But consistently performing at your personal high level costs you your personal space happiness. Your family is at the stake. The first reaction is to somehow manage this all. This we get into the loop of managing things rather then living the life.

There is third kind also esp for the corporate environments. While management is more interested into getting things done rather than taking care of you. Since the psychology of pressure also operates on groups as it works in individuals. Thus the some characters in the hierarchy in group, who are supposed to take decisions, starts building the fear failure mania and starts feeding this back to the whole group. Since the worker threads in the group in general believe in not to wilt under the pressure, but they fail to distinguish the real objectives to be achieved vs chasing the false and foolish targets set by some stupids who are weak in handling pressure.

This is more dangerous preposition. Since the precious energy of the system is being sucked up by the stupids in getting lots of useless things done.

So, in the end my formula.

1. Do not worry about the result or end date or target, while working on something. Only thing to be kept in mind is the focus and priority. Clarify about this before starting.

2. Don't leave a path without concluding it, as situations created by the fickle minded jokers will ask to to dig hundred 10 inch holes to see if there is water underground, instead of letting you consolidate in one direction till logically you see a hope there.

3.Question or reason before starting to work on something, instead of knowing at the end of the month the whole lot of effort has been junk and useless.

4. put forth your best and don't think about the results too much, because come what may you cannot better your best. Thus you have already contributed for the worst case scenario.

Wall Street Busted

2008-09-17T20:56:00.022+05:30

Confidence vs No Confidence?

2008-07-21T14:08:00.001+05:30

While all the focus is the whether or not UPA will be able to win the vote of confidence, I am thinking on the other and more important topic. In objectivity, this exercise of motion is an mathematical question as its being played, rather than then serving the original objective that whether the people of India has confidence in the Government and governance, which is not getting the due attention.
This game of numbers is being solved with the help of change of stands overnights, give and take, squaring old records, alignments in the future. The ideology, who fought against whom and on what issues, is largely immaterial.

To many (read common man) the outcome is immaterial, as the kind of governance is largely going to be the same. When parties are no longer sticking to their allegiances to ideologies, the individual identities are getting blurred. I am sure while solving this given mathematical problem as to how to get 271, many honorable member would not have thought of something called India. While making choices they would not have thought of accountability they have to the millions they represent. They would not have given much to something called as Democracy, which has evolved more as a game to fool others and art of grabbing the power or not letting it go.

But the point I am trying to make, can we really be contented by cursing the politics or politicians we have around. I ,deep down my heart, feel that we do not have that right. We lost that right the moments we stayed away from voting, or when we chose that same corrupt guy who is standing on my behalf in Parliament not because I thought he is worthy enough, but because he belonged to my caste or religion, or because he will be handy in getting my projects go ahead, because he will be useful in regularizing my illegal lands, because he will help me in waiving my dues etc. Did I think once at that time of making my choice. I am afraid the answer is NOT. So as a result we get what we choose, and we choose what we deserve. Its not so easy to digest, that one of the best leaders India has had Dr Manmohan Singh, lost in one of the most posh South Delhi constituency, where as there are countless Pappu Yadavs, Phoolan Devi's and Shibu Shoren's are guaranteed to return to house every single time.

That cost which I attach to my vote, is that same cost these honorable members are going to attach to India. This cost unfortunately not very high and honorable.
Democracy is not about voting, its about right to choose and judicious execution of this right to choose. It was the fundamental belief in this judicious exercise based on just criteria, which made democracy best practice for governance, as it was thought the better senses will prevail in majority and wisdom of crowds will prevail.

Simply majority of opinions leads to the kind of governance we are having. And there is not much we can do right now, but to watch this drama, which I am sure will have no consequences for the common man, as all this is going to decide is when the next election will be? To me what is more important is what will happen even after that election?

frustraion Uncorked!

2008-07-15T10:40:00.002+05:30

While watching the movie 25th Hour. There is a scene when a while guy (Monty) in late thirties, involved in some drug dealing, caught, and starting to serve his 7 years long sentence, the next morning onwards. This guy is a born New Yorker, son of a an alcoholic, deprived of love, has two while friends beside him since he was 3. One of them is sympathetic and other one a wall street broker, believes he deserves what this guy is getting.

So evening before his sentence starts, he is having farewell dinner with his father, enters into rest room and finds "fuck you" written on the mirror. This sort of uncork him and triggers the burst out straight from his heart. Lots of anger, venom and negativity. Mostly its is lifelong agony at the New York ways of life. Here is it, uncensored, in original.

This is really long but ...

(sees "Fuck you!" written on mirror)

Real Monty:
Yeah, fuck you too.

Mirror Monty:
Fuck me? Fuck you. Fuck you and this whole city and everyone in it.

Fuck the panhandlers grubbing for money, smiling at me behind my back. Fuck the squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car. Get a fucking job.

Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores, stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. Slow the fuck down!

Fuck the Chelsea Boys with their waxed chests and pumped-up biceps, going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jiggling their dicks on my Channel 35.

Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speakee English.

Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafes, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth, wheelin' and dealin' and schemin'. Go back where you fucking came from.

Fuck the black-hatted Hasidim strolling up and down 47th Street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff, selling South African apartheid diamonds.

Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas-Gordon Gekko wannabe motherfuckers figuring out new ways to rob hard-working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for fucking life. You think Bush and Cheney didn't know about that shit? Give me a fucking break. Imclone. Adelphia. Worldcom.

Fuck the Puerto Ricans. Twenty to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls. Worst fucking parade in the city. And don't even get me started on the Dominicans, 'cause they make the Puerto Ricans look good.

Fuck the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warmup suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their Jason Giambi Louisville Slugger baseball bats trying to audition for "The Sopranos".

Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermes scarves and their $50 Balducci artichoke. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched all taut and shiny. You're not fooling anybody, sweetheart.

Fuck the Uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don't want to play defense, they take five steps on every layup to the hoop, and then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended 137 years ago. Move the fuck on.

Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus-violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust!

Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child's pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil.

And while you're at it, fuck J.C. He got off easy -- a day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity. Try seven years in fucking Otisville, J.

Fuck Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and backward-ass cave-dwelling fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your 72 whores roasting in a jet-fuel fire in hell. You towel-headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal Irish ass.

Fuck Jacob Elinsky. Whining malcontent.

Fuck Francis Xavier Slaughtery, my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend's ass.

Fuck Naturelle Riviera. I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back. Sold me up the river. Fucking bitch.

Fuck my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar, sipping on club soda, selling whiskey to firemen and cheering the Bronx Bombers.

Fuck this whole city and everyone in it, from the row houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue, from the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho, from the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park Slope to the split-levels in Staten Island, let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash, and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place.

Real Monty:
No... No. Fuck you Montgomery Brogan. You had it all and you threw it away, you dumb fuck!

(tries to rub off "Fuck you!" from mirror)

Friends !

2008-07-14T20:52:00.012+05:30

One of the terms which has been brutally raped in modern language. Mostly one who is being referred as one, and one who is referring someone as one, are completely and blithely blind to what it means.
I was chatting with a colleague today morning and as usual our small sessions on messenger became heavy with philosophy.
I am a great miser when it comes to using right words for right moment. For me, calling someone as a friends stems from great amount of trust , and being called as friends becomes great privilege for me.
To me friend is someone, whom you can open your heart in. Someone who can help you in tailoring the sewing of torn heart. Someone whom you trust, at times more that you do in yourself. Someone who is not thrust upon you, but you choose.
Someone who likes you not because what you are but despite what you are. Someone you don't try to impress, influence.
Someone who walks away silently when you long for being alone, and you still feel him around.

Success, Money, Chase, Fatigue - Chill

2008-07-08T21:56:00.009+05:30

Snapshot of typical conversation in the corridor of an MNC esp near the coffee machine.
A: how is it going on?
B: yeah, good good, lots of work.
A: yeah, off late its crazy like hell. about about u.
B: same here, no time. my deadline is approaching. gotta rush, see u later.

Once A comes back to his seat, he starts once again watching the latest at moneycontrol.com and ibnlive.com, probably tenth time since he had breakfast. Trying to come up with a theory to corelate the latest video at ibnlive about some dog disease breaking out in Pondicherry with the latest downfall of textile sector stocks. Once this theory is left like orphan kid, he turns his attention to other stuff on Internet. Anyways, the idea is not to completely downplay the productive culture in the corporate environment. But the effect on the people, who get accustomed to being under the gun round the clock. Emergency, critical, red flag etc is good if happens once in a while, but then Management conveys even the job of ordering the disposable tea cups, by wrapping the plain message within the envelope marked by these words, they loose their importance.

The irony is that the folks in these MNCs, who are working in supposedly best working conditions, being paid supposedly best in the market, start thinking about themselves like the James Bond XVII. This generation, when gets an urge to pee, first googles the number of rest rooms on the floor, then from google maps gets the location of the nearest one to them, then while covering that huge distance of 25 metres, optimally use the long journey time by making couple of quick calls to folks who they think are covering their peeing as the national emergency. So whats is it which I am trying to say. Well nothing to be honest. Though the idea is being progressive, modern, educated is one thing. Being blind to the reality is another.

There are some pressures we folks subject ourselves to.

1. Messing up terribly with the priorities of life.

2. Trying to weave the web for ourselves then getting trapped in that web. For ordinary folks who are not from Shakespeare Khandan, this means, by imitating the false lifestyles and setting up the fictitious goals for ourselves which are mostly based upon what the fellow next cube is upto, rather than what I want/need. Then sticking with this stupid lifestyle/mindset for long.

3. In most cases the life looks like someone on railways platform waiting for last so many days for train to show up. Waiting for something to happen in future, forgetting Life what happens to us we we are busy making big plans about it.

4. Always creating this fictitious notion that we are ultra busy doing cutting edge stuff and believing that following the path, will lead them to be CEO of 100 Billion USD company. And once they become CEO, they will have all the time in the world to spend with their Secretaries.

5. Reality is 99% of us spend time in arranging for the basic necessities - Roti Kapda and Makaan. Something which we saw our Parents doing through their lifetime. What has changed is the ways and the definition of basics. Rest remains the same.
Read the following lines somewhere, don't know who wrote that but must be quite a person.

At age 4, success is…not peeing in your pants.
At age 12, success is…having friends.
At age 16, success is…having a driver’s license.
At age 20, success is…having sex.
At age 35, success is…having money.
At age 40, success is…finding meaning & purpose to life.
At age 45, success is…finding meaning & purpose to life.
At age 50, success is…having money.
At age 60, success is…having sex.
At age 70, success is…having a driver’s license.
At age 75, success is…having friends.
At age 80, success is…not peeing in your pants.

Being in the corporate world, where they serve the Ghutti (Tonic) of Excellance, three times before lunch and if there are more meeting post lunch and you can assume equal dose in that window also. In summary Management hires some guys as instruments, and gradually by virtue of something called "Process", the Natural Intelligence (if thats there in the first place) is neutralized, and replaced with artificial intelligence. This converts the hansta Khelta Insaan, who once use to dream about life, about happiness, about watching a C grade Film in the night shift along with ten other friends (of course like minded), about owing money which can afford couple of private islands each with a clone of Mallika Sherawat etc (by the way this is exposing my standard, so not stooping any lower but you can get the trend). So the corporate process of neutralization make a human being with coincidentally a active brain into a computer. Which is capable of taking input in certain way, carry them out in the best possible way and for maximum part of the day (minimun 25 hours a day), think breathe and eat the word "Productivity".

Anyway here I am not blaming in anyway the corporate culture. By principle the corporate comes into existence to maximize upon the profits by adopting maximum legal means. Devil's dictionary says "Corporate is the means to earn money for an indivudual by putting collective responsibility on the people working for it".

The points is what is driving these volunteers (including yours truely) to become like robots from a human beings. Warren Buffet has said "Lots of people in this world don''t need a reason to believe, they just need and excuse to believe into something."

Finally the bottom line is, switch off the TV sets (I have already done it), enjoy the life, never repent the decisions, value your family, invest time in yourself and share whatever little you have with others, and finally always dream big. First you should keep dreaming as you never know they might become true, and secondly the cost of dreaming small is same as cost of dreaming big, so why not always dream big.

Akshaj Turned One

2008-06-30T10:30:00.007+05:30

Yesterday on June 29, 2008 Our son Akshaj turned one. Though this was just like another day for him, but for us the parents, this is a major milestone. This made both of us relive the numerous moments which are permanently carved out in our deepest memories. Some of them most anxious moments for our lives, and some of them most enjoyable moments of our life.

The way I feel seeing the ways parents celebrate the first birthday, I get the feeling that its more a celebration of anniversary of parenthood rather than the birthday. As its the parents who are most affected of all the tremendous changes in their lives due to this new member, so its more of celebration time for them.

However for me, it was another quiet day celebrated with few friends and over the phone with family. Nevertheless, this made me taking stock of the year gone since a father and mother were born for the first time.
I notices certain things about kids, the opportunity of being a father made me do so though I also have a first hand experience of being a kid for so many years.

1.Kids try everything and don't take your gyan about it.
2. kids are never tired of trying.
3. They model of learning is observe, touch it or feel it or eat it if they can, basically explore it in whatever way and then to made some opinion of it.
4.Kids have least boot up time, lesser than a linux machine.
5. One thing which makes kids extra happy, is good health and bad memory.
6. They prove that languages are optional and less affective tool to communicate. The only language which is created by God and is universal is the language of expression mastered by Kids. They can communicate with mortals, animals, walls furniture or even with silence. Just because we have not been able to find interpreter for this, so we have come up with our version of crap, and gradually in a systematic way which we call schooling, we kill this.

7.They prove all the makeup is redundant and not even even 0.00000001% as effective as the god gifted beauty. Look at a kids who has just woken up 10 seconds before and find a guys who is not attracted to him/her.
8. They posses best negotiating skills,. They precise know what they want and how to get it done.

Now this list is limited by my capacity, I could summarize certain things we kill in our kids and spoil them to train in our system.

1. Immenser power to observer and explore and then to learn.
2. Undiminished attitude of not getting influenced by others biases but understanding it themselves.
3. Being always happy unconditionally is the secret to be most beautiful. One secret to this to keep minimum requirements.
5. Their prowess to negotiate is better then Harvard graduate.

This left we thinking, can we create the environment where these creations of nature remain unspoiled. This reminds of of some quotation, "I was born intelligent, this education made me a fool."

Leading vs Managing?

2008-05-13T16:40:00.006+05:30

Being in corporate world, I get sometimes thoroughly confused at blatant mix-up between the terms Leading and Managing. I also get the feeling that this mix-up is most of the times intentional.
Given the kind of routine job we generally do here in the plush building called as R&D centers, this mix up is used effectively to boost the false egos of lots of characters till the extent when these characters start becoming their own caricatures.
Anyways like billions others in this planet, I am entitled to my own opinion.
Read somewhere, probably in "Execution".

Leading is "Doing Right Things".

Managing is "Doing Things Right".

Leader has the onus of deciding/helping to decide as to what to do. Once that has been figured out, then comes the task of Manager as to how to get it done correctly. The emphasis here is not to downplay any body's role, but to express the surprise over the intentional mix up practiced openly.
Leader is naturally evolved, Manager is carefully chosen for the role. Leaders are born, Manager's are trained. Leader leads from front. Manager walk along with you. Leader sets an example for others to follow, Manager carefully use the examples/precedents which are already set, to encourage the group . Leader stresses upon each of the member of the group to exult in his/her own success, by contributing something of their own. Manager stresses upon the members to get acclimatized to certain kind of environment, and then let them perform within the framework.
Leaders are genuinely more risk prone, Manager are more calculated. Leaders emphasize upon innovation, Managers stresses upon corroboration. Leader are more prone to face the tide, Manager stresses upon going with the tide.
Leader stress upon actions, and normally set an example by doing it himself. Managers are closer to words rather than actions, and they use the words to get things done.
And finally, Leadership is doing things, and Management is all about getting things done.
But the bottom line is, in order to achieve success, any organization needs both kind of resources in right proportions. Overdose of any of them, paves the way for faulty follow up and leads to gradually decay.
Even for the manager category, I am seeing another kind of class evolving. Like the clerks in the government departments, the new role of managers is not more then that of a clerk. This may be the new necessity or corporates, but a terrible twist to the organization structure. Becase this paves the way for making good assets into horrible overheads.
Lastly I feel deeply sorry for those, who are made to feel like leaders, where on the ground they are even fighting to be able managers, let alone the leadership. On the other hand I have also seen tragedies like good leaders made to work like managers and good managers forced to act like leaders.
Following words from Wasim Barelvi says a lot, though may not be very much aligned to the topic, nevertheless.

Mediocrity?

2008-04-30T22:39:00.004+05:30

I read somewhere, coming to terms with one's own mediocrity is one of the most agonizing experiences. Woes gets worse by getting deluged in surrounding mediocrity. I can see an ongoing grappling due to symptoms of surrender and withdraw and resurgence within myself.

Had a chat with one of my friends and colleague today about this, and realized that this mid-age crisis is not so rare phenomenon.

In the course of life, we get influenced by certain objects, people thoughts and philosophies. This influence gets changes or reaffirmed as the life progresses and as we have more experience in various theaters of life. The belief system is subjected to updates.

In the process, we start setting goals for ourselves based upon our vision of life whatever we have, and in the due course we try to realize that vision by pursuing them with whatever capability we have. Most of the times, there is some thing wrong. Either the goal setting was done based on false notions and somehow we realize that life is becoming like chasing a moving and diminishing target. Thus whenever we get there (if at all we get there), we feel like cheated.

In other cases, we find that the goals conceived and the target achieved are mutually quite distant. This gap keeps on increasing. That is where mid-age crisis kick starts. We see our theories subjected to major shocks.

This is also a phase of life, when we are getting out of one web of relations and getting into new one. We have a chance to know where we are and we have the experience to know if its worthwhile to go further in the same direction. You worked so far to have a good house, decent car nice gizmo's, good adjectives on visiting card, good securities in banks. But all which is promised by the future is the multiplicity of these. As life is getting mechanical. Meaning, going further you will end up having twice, thrice of all you already have. Thats where it all starts looking messy, as there is something which is still zero in the life. That zero will remain zero, even though multiplied any number of times.

I feel deeply into this crisis and hope to find something worthwhile to pursue at the end of it. I guess its ok to know that we have the false vision, rather then wasting the life pursuing a myth, assuming it to be true.

Realizing lack of identity is any day better than wearing false identity, twice on Sunday.

Somehow I find following by Krishna Bihari Noor echoing what I feel.

Democracy vs Votebank Politics ?

2008-02-13T18:25:00.003+05:30

This is one of the most glaring pride, that is often hurled at India time and again that "India is the largest democracy in the world". This is one of the rare honors which India shares with USA, as one being the biggest democracy and other being the oldest. I do not want to discount the pride factor nor want to disparage the eminence of conscious effort by generations to keep the ship in one piece, surviving numerous shocks. What I am really interested to explore is, what is this democracy in theory that make us feel proud and how is being practiced, and more importantly whats the way ahead.

While going through the great book "Indian After Gandhi", I was amazed to see the momentous efforts of Indians to erect the pillars of democracy, which still is there for entire world to witness. There have been numerous surveys across the world about the survivability of democratic system in any society, and most of them have quite often cited Indian democracy as one of the most fragile democracies across the world. The odds gets worsened due to lethal concoction of the extremes of conflicts of interests, which prevails India. For example, enormity of population, extreme disbalances in the economic empowerments, religious diversity, linguistic diversity, regional diversity, social gaps etc. But the fact of the matter is that these reports are not new to us and they are there even before India was wrenched out of British claws. In fact British prophesied that if India left to its own, will fritter away into decaying pieces pretty soon.
On the contrary, India managed to evolve into a sovereign state after merging 565 states, and still continues to remain same. So the thought I am pondering over it not to downplay the impact of inclusive nature of Ancient Indian Culture, which is way above the religion, caste, language and other factor which tends to classify us and then divide us. As that is what was ignored by all the studies about Indian democratic system while analyzing the stability.

The thought that troubles us is theoretically Democracy is the least bad kind of governance and typically, in India, the democracy in theory is "Constitutional Democracy". What this means to me is, the we have framework of democracy comprising the Indian constitution at the top, putting the parliament as the supreme elected representative body, entrusting with enacting the new laws as amending the constitution, putting president as the guardian of the constitution, supreme court of India as the non elected supreme body to ensure that constitutional spirit is upheld and is not trampled by parliament or anybody else, also acting as the guardian of civic rights of a common Indian. The framework puts non elected election commission as the supreme body to ensure that process of election of the legislature takes place according to the will of the people without any coercion or undue influence. And lastly the framework also has the huge bureaucracy (mostly accountable to the constitution though can be working for the states), which implements the constitutional procedures and government policies on the ground.

In summary the constitutional framework has various organs with specific powers, which often guards each other to make sure none of them preempts the constitution.
So what is important to understand is, its not the uniqueness of this framework which is solely responsible for keeping the ship together so far. Lots of newly found states across the world (including out neighborhood), has the similar things in place, but has fallen apiece since then, sooner or later.

What is it which works for India? Why Indian army, despite being 7th largest army in the world and being a nuclear power in the world since 1978, has never tried to take control of the state. Why India has always behaved as the most civilized country in the world forums? Why India has never attacked any other country in the world? Why India has become one of the rare countries to achieve the independence, largely by non violent means? Why despite being the country with largest religious diversity (including 140 million Muslims and 7 major religions), with 22 official languages, continue to be together? Or if there are some challenges to it?

Lots of answers can be traced back into the elements of Indian culture which is the most common factor connecting India.

So principally, there are two sides of the Democracy. One the elected part which constitutes the public representation and ensures that will of the people prevails. This typically leads to the governance that is influenced to keep the majority happy or satisfied. Other side is the frame work which makes sure that the election, electorate and the elected - all work withing the framework of the constitution.

Ironically the caretaker of this framework are Supreme Court, Election Commission, Army and in generally the regulatory bodies like RBI, SEBI etc.... are doing the tremendous job of keeping the ship together.

We are witnessing the continuous degradation of the election process and quality of polity and politicians, but the downside is balanced by excellence in the other bodies. But They act like horizontal and vertical forces. But force acting at right angle can never balance each other irrespective of the quantum.

Anyways this debate can be on and on. But I would like to stop (not finish) at he note that he largest democracy is ironically kept alive by the bodies selected undemocratically. And the major credit goes to the billions of the Indians also.

Land of One Billion Talkers

2007-08-24T11:42:00.000+05:30

When Amartya Sen was writing "An Argumentative Indian", I do not know did he mean what I make out of this in literal sense.

Every Indian is a walking encyclopedia, irrespective of whether it makes sense or not. Lots of info which we have, is factually incorrect, irrelevant and sometimes utterly inaccurate to the extent of complete nonsense. But who cares?

I did a dry run on myself. I have all the rights (as least in India), to self proclaim myself as the pseudo- intellectual. The test was to challenge my knowledge (factual) against the facts. Example I checked my study of Indp-Pak, other world disorders, Indian economy, foreign policy, nature of religious conflicts in India and outside, terrorism largely in India and outside, Indian public offices and primary healthcare, education sector, burning issues of different states ranging from water disputes, border disputes, separatist's movements, naxalites issues. etc.

The list by no means is complete. Its just the limits of my ability to comprehend. But the bigger issue I want to point to is, that everyday we are virtually breathing in these issues, thanks to the aggressive media to decimate the notion of distance. Despite this the factually correct knowledge I have about them is close to 1%. This is not surprising. What is surprising is that I can speak for hours on any of these issues, throwing up the gallons of opinions and suggestions without even realizing that it may be totally bullshit.

A guy who have not heard about the north east even in his grandmother tales can convince you of his ideas of how to resolve the issue. Its like a mother of 13, speaking for family planning. A guy who has no idea how to differentiate a television from a computer can tell you the problems faced by the IT industry in India. Examples are enormous.

A junk mail thread for suggestion to improve the conditions in India will enjoy probably millions of forwards and thousands of suggestion but when it comes to implement something which is as small as saving paper and wastage of electricity or petrol, we refuse to change.

That is not only the problem of old generations but the so called modern generation is infested with this in bitter way. I have seen in the office, groups fighting a World War over email thread. If there is a internet war against any country then I think India can win within hours.

We talk so much that it leaves us without any sensible energy to do something worthwhile. Being from north India, I have seen the brahmins (I also happen to be one), claiming all the knowledge of Geeta and puran and preaching all kinds of godly wisdom, but the same guys can be seen blatantly indulging in petty wrong doings. They don't have any qualms about this.

To argue is in our DNA. Questioning is a rare ability, which is in abundance in India.Rene descartes said, "I think therefore I am". But if you observe any good and working system and there are certain fundamentals. First there are some rules and regulations. This is followed up with the proper sensitization of the people, to make them trained. Then there are checks and measures to correct the erratic elements. So once the people get an idea, they by and large follow it afterwards.

Here in India, we will take million of years to reach to a quasi vitual agreement. Everybody thinks himself as the ultimate guru and at the same time thinking of others and miniatures. We not only question, but we question all the time, we question everything. We debate so much that we don't find time time to pickup the basic and to understand the real issue. Ten people in a debate have thousands of opinions.

Rational and reasonable discussions are the symbol of any progressive and intellectually advanced civilization. No doubt, But here we seldom baseline our debate on the factual fundamentals. Rather we all are biased and we present the same picture the way we see it. So in other way people already have an opinion, however incorrect that may be, and we want to enforce that on the others.

This is a land of 750 national political parties and US is still managing with two (primarily) . The moment two street have a problems with each other, first thing they do is to register one "street A sangarshs samiti" and another "street B revolutionary party".

We talk so much that we don't hear overselves. It cripples the strength to take a decision as you can question any decision in the history of world and it surely bound to have certain flip side. Point is, sometime you have to draw a line and put the full stop to this.

By no means, one can generalize the country of one billion population, But I still feel that apart form the nationality there should be something that is common amongst us all. I think thats talking, argumentation.
There was a quote about sermons, which I find apt for arguments also..

A good argument should be like a woman's skirt: short enough to arouse interest but long enough to cover the essentials.

There is a sher from Nawaz deobandi.

Independece Day - Another Holiday?

2007-08-15T00:08:00.000+05:30

As we have just completed the sixty years of Independence, I am sitting in front of laptop writing this blog. Of course the media hoopla has not touched my soul, turning me into the die hard patriot. There are certain other things which are haunting me more.

What is this Independence? Typically end of British rule, nothing more than that. Some can call me pessimistic, but I standpoint remains unchanged.

Look at the following facts, most of them are valid for 2007.

1. 26% (260 Million) of Indian population is below poverty lines. To elaborate this, an adult requires 2100 calories in urban areas and 2400 calories in rural areas. If we take into account the rate of inflation, then roughly 540 rupees are required to afford this. This assumes that one spend all his income to afford this food and does not take any other requirement like shelter into account. Next time you go out and buy one shirt for 1500 bucks, imagine this to be the total means of survival for one of those 260 million Indians for three long months.

2. Infant mortality rate. In 2002 India was placed as 41 worst country with the rate of 65. In 2007 at 34.61, India is 74th worst country in this regards. Good progress.

http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator_detail.cfm?IndicatorID=25&Country=IN
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html

3. India ranks as 25th most illiterate country in th world.

http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator_detail.cfm?Country=IN&IndicatorID=27#row
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/916814.cms

4.With the GDP of around one trillion dollers, We are 12th biggest economy (rated for GDP) in the world but we rank at 118 for the per capita GDP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29
http://www.photius.com/rankings/economy/gdp_per_capita_2007_0.html

5. At 7.8% unemployment, India is better than 93 countries.
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=in&v=74

6. In the 1970s, per capita GDP in China and India were at about the same level, but the gap between the two has continued to widen, and in 2005 China's per capita GDP stood at $1,703, compared to $723 for India. When we compare the "Human Development Index (HDI)" released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (Human Development Report, 2006), which combines per capita GDP (in Purchasing Power Parity terms) with other factors such as life expectancy and education levels, China ranked 81st among the 177 nations covered in 2004, while India languished in 126th place.

http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/china/06112802.html

7. India has around 2.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS, the world's third highest caseload after South Africa and Nigeria, and about 40 per cent are women.
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1113014

8. As if the above ranking was not better, India has the highest number of HIV infections with 5.7 million people carrying the virus.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6704541.stm

9. More than 150,000 Indian farmers have committed suicides in the last decade. In some regions its one farmer every eight hours.
http://www.csa-india.org/
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1049554

10. Nearly half a million to 700,000 Indian children die because of poor hygiene. 700 Million Indians do not have the toilets in their homes.

http://www.who.int/disasters/repo/12606.pdf
http://www.indiatogether.org/2003/dec/hlt-pathak.htm

11. Nearly 7.8 million Indian children never entered the school till 2004.
http://www.uis.unesco.org/TEMPLATE/pdf/EducGeneral/OOSC-FAQ.pdf

12. The country of 1,129,866,154 populaion, India has won total 17 olympic medals in last 107 years.
http://www.olympic.it/english/country/id_IND

13. At 1000 in 1990, BSE sensex has gone up more than 15 times.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensex

14. With the workforce close to 1.3 million (roughly 0.1% of total India population), IT sector alone contributes to 4.8% of GDP.
http://www.ibef.org/artdisplay.aspx?tdy=1&cat_id=60&art_id=9754

15. 32000 primary schools in India are without any student.
http://content.msn.co.in/Education/EducationPTI_110807_1211.htm

16. 55% Indians do not have access to electricity and 125000 villages have no access to power. http://www.outlookmoney.com/scripts/IIH021C1.asp?SectionId=2&CategoryId=127&ArticleId=6685&NoCache=8%2F23%2F2007+11%3A08%3A01+AM

Well, the idea behind collecting all these gory details is not to downplay the immense growth, India has registered in last decade or so in various fields. There are facts to support that India shining story. Indian run/own 50% of the silicon valley startups. Indian businesses are transcending the national borders and making their strength felt across the world. Sectors like steel, oil and petroleum, banking, retail, IT, auto are progressing at excellent pace.

All I am saying is that this is anything but collective growth. And for how long this growing divide will take to completely disrupt the whole system.

Basically point is the our business organizations have proved themselves so far. But sectors like infrastructure, primary health care, primary education are still competing with worst countries in the world.We are one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Accountability in public offices is a distant dream. Worlds largest democracy is standing on the collapsed political system.

We are the biggest democracy in the world. But how serious we are about our democracy. nearly one quater of Indian parliamentarians are facing criminal charges.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6098710.stm
Indian middle class is completely disenchanted with the political system and resultantly stopped participating in the process.

We are religiously most diverse country in the world and society is continuously being sharply polarized on the new grounds based on cast, region and languages etc. Eventually these divides are exploited by politics resulting into hundreds of deaths every year. Religion is taken as an alibi by the political system to cover up its dark side.

When I look back and think about freedom and independence, I realize, I don't value it as much as it deserves to be. I do not contribute to retain this freedom as much as I can. I do not care about it. We take it for granted. I think its a collective failure which starts from me.

In the country where only three percent population pays the income tax, and being in the income slab which contributes the maximum tax to the government, I would love to pay even more if that is used well. Where the hell all my money is going?

I am not sure really whether 15 Aug is anything more than a public holiday for me. May be, my sensibility is dying. Can I make some difference? I am not too sure.

Relationships - What the hell ?

2007-07-24T13:47:00.000+05:30

Keeping a relationship is like keeping a bank account, you have to first invest into it to take out something from it later. I don’t know if there are zero balance relationships. The only relationship which is exception to all this, is mother and child relationship. Which I see the extension of each other and not as the two separate entities.

If I define the relationship mathematically, then I see this as two (sometimes more) endpoints connected to each other with a two unidirectional arrows. One direction of the arrow is expectation and other is responsibility. The moment one of them is twisted the synergy is no more, you will see the relationships getting twisted as a whole.

Relationships are also like stacks, you invest into it sequentially, but you pop out from it in last in first out manner. Think of a forty years relationship and the last one year has the maximum impact on the course of forty years span.

I get one more feeling sometimes, a man is remembered mostly for what he has not done instead of what he has done. This is more apt for the relationships. When it comes to assess the relationship, all that you have not done come to the top and rest all is buried in the rock bottom.

I may sound like a pessimist, but I have reasons to believe in this.
I also don’t get the idea of a professional relationships and personal relationship? I think relationship cannot be categorized like that. If we are concerned about putting the limits and toning up the expectations in the relationship, by classifying them in this way then, I think it’s a wrong path to take you to a confused crossroads sooner or later and which will take a heavy toll on you.

Now the question is how much to expect and how much to be responsible for. How do we do this calibration? I have no damn clue. There is no science, I guess. It’s more intuitive. But my hunch is that, its good if the expectation part is kept shorter then the responsibility part. But then the relationships will not be symmetric or balanced so to say. Ok let them be, meaning the balanced relationship is a myth. But more responsibility means more obligations, more sacrifice. Its no brainer that it takes a heavy toll on you. Well to decay and to finally to perish is the ultimate fate of living being, so its not surprising. Then what is the point. The point is, this way you will not have lots of regrets thus taking you on a peaceful decay.

I remember from “The Godfather” from Mario Puzo, when the Don is having the last breath in the lap of his youngest son, Michael. He utters “Life is beautiful”, before taking his last breath. In the epilogue, Michael ruminates, If I can say the same while having the last breath of my life, I would consider that as the biggest achievement of my life.

No regrets, nothing, finally.

Loveliest gift of my life

2007-07-10T12:34:00.000+05:30

I feel sorry for Pepsi, but I cannot ask for more.
God has just given the loveliest gift of my life i.e. my son, rather our son and this time (for a change) I cannot be so mean to claim all the credit myself.

His tiny nimble hands, the twinkling eyes and his mellowed murmurings at the sudden disturb in his sleep, the list goes on. But this point I am making here is that there is nothing more natural and more immaculate and completely innocent.

I was wondering, look at what nature provides us and what we make of it in the end. I remember when somebody asked from Swami Vivekananda that how come there are lots of great people born in India, he responded, "Its only the the kids who born not the so called great people".
Sure, the initial times to raise the kid is taxing and tiresome, its worth experienced nevertheless.
Though I have not settled on the name so far, I suppose I am confused hugely. I hope I will come out of it.
Anyways I am not for the most unique and tongue twisting name for the baby, its rather the simplicity which I am looking forward to.

I just pray to god to give me the strength and conviction to be a good father (which I have no clue how to be).
Probably parenthood, make us more respectful to out own parents and makes us remind as what all one has to go through to raise a child and to make a decent citizen out of one.

I remember Wasim Barelvi saying,

Ghar se masjid hai bahut door, chalo youn kar le
kisi rote hue bachche ko hasaya jaaye

How /Why do you get kicks?

2007-06-26T21:52:00.000+05:30

What motivates us to do something? When I say "Do", I mean the actions which takes place not as response to the transient needs e.g. daily chores. I mean the actions which we take to meet our goals.
Well I am not saying all we do is goal oriented or should be like that, but just to simplify the the model to fit in the generic action-outcome cycle. I am also not saying that all the goals precedes some actions. There may be pathless Goals and there may be goalless (not meaningless) paths.

Question here is, what makes us try for something? I know this question can be answered by almost everyone and each one may be right in his own way. So my emphasis here is not to find an answer but to engage in the process its evolution.

The goals could be living by certain value system or could be more materially mapped to crazy things like driving Ferrari to sleeping with best of Woman (or man as the case may be :)).
The goals could be abstract like ascending to certain levels of power/knowledge or leading an ascetic life.
One theory could be there need not be any goals as most of the journeys are without goals. Like planets in the orbits around sun or electron around the nucleus.

Now point is, most likely life seems to be a goalless journey.
Are we really like the planets/particles revolving around the unknown? We do not require the force to continue (as Newtonian Mechanics is refuted by Quantum Mechanics applicable at the micro level). We are not born, we don't die. They are just a way of entering in one shape and leaving one.

You know, when electron migrates from one energy level (orbit) to the another one, it does not follow any path between them :) You cannot pinpoint electron at any point, its everywhere at almost all the time. Likewise our existence is also everywhere, we cannot pinpoint at any moment of time when we exist or when we don't. Probably we exist always.

Before I make it more confusing, let me shut up and I am leaving the floor with one question.

Is life really a goalless journey or may be its not a journey at all? is it sheer existence taking different [non] perceptible shapes?

Then, what the hell drives us like crazy?

One year - I ve done it

2007-04-20T13:50:00.000+05:30

Yes these are the most genuine and uninhibited outburst at the completion of one year of my married life. Its not that my heart is dancing in Rakhi Sawant style and this achievement is as rare as the Hillary's Everest conquer or the Shilpa Shetty's Big Brother's win, but its is no less either for me personally. I cannot be so mean (for a change) to own credit for this alone and the major credit goes to my better half (literally I mean), who could bear a III grade stupid like me.

That was the year which was as important to me as the one I was born into. Fortunately that time I was less cognizant and thanks to my parents who made sure that I move along.
This year was the one which taught me what a family is. Its not that I spent my time so far like Mr Tarzen in the African forest, playing kabaddi with the wild animals, I mean simply that its quite another experience to be on the other side of the river.
This also taught me what it takes to identify your hidden side (I would not say dark :)). This year also taught me small small things are the only essence of life. I read somewhere "Life is what happens to you when you are busy making big plans about it".

I had heard that in India marriage destroys the freedom and your casualness and the carefree attitude. As in the old hindi films the utterly dejected motherof the completely nonsense son (our hero), used to prescribe the marriage as the panacea to all the problems saying "Vijay ke baabpu ab iski shaadi kara do, apne aap theek ho jaayega".

Well I would say that is not completely false, but neither complete true. There is a responsibility certainly but its not that you have to change yourself. May be that I am lucky simply else who knows :).

Well, this year passed easily and looking forward to many more like this. As a parting note I remember the words of Great Nida Fazli -

safar me.n dhuup to hogii jo chal sako to chalo
sabhii hai.n bhii.D me.n tum bhii nikal sako to chalo

idhar udhar ka_ii ma.nzil hai.n chal sako to chalo
bane banaaye hai.n saa.Nche jo Dhal sako to chalo

kisii ke vaasate raahe.n kahaa.N badalatii hai.n
tum apane aap ko Khud hii badal sako to chalo

yahaa.N kisii ko koii raastaa nahii.n detaa
mujhe giraake agar tum sambhal sako to chalo

yahii hai zindagii kuchh Khvaab chand ummiide.n
inhii.n khilauno.n se tum bhii bahal sako to chalo

Sundar sapna toot gaya

2007-03-26T14:53:00.000+05:30

On the outset, lemme make myself clear that I'm in no mood to write the obituary of Indian Cricket as India crashed out of ICC world cup.

I'm feeling bad, no doubt, but I'm not going out on the streets to burn the effigies of Rahul Dravid's primary school Cricket coach. I am even not running to ask dada's doggy and as how depressed it is feeling.

I am just thinking as India crashing out from the cup, is it really that big news? Well that depends, as in India itself, where media claims that Cricket is followed as religion (though we already having handful of problems due to other religions), there are millions of people who even do not know that there is even a world cup for a game like cricket. Well dont look at this agape, like Ripley's believe it or not. You need not to go the north-east Jhinga lala Hurr Hurr tribe to catch these kind of people but they are right there everywhere.

For example, I asked from the watchman of my apartment, "dada India world cup se bahar ho gayee", he got confused as If I am holding him responsible for not keeping Parliament update regarding the Quattrochi's extradition, then responded with gullible smile, "kya world cup babu? hame to malum nahin". Other night I was taking to my mom, then I asked "aur TV dekhti ho ajkal", she said "nahin, isme to wohi faltu ki khabrein hain". Wow, cool answer, switching off the idiot box is really a panacea to all the nonsense problems.

I'm not too sure whether it is still such a big event? It could be media problem for sure and the advertising industry's problem or broadcasters problem. Well it could be the problem of the poor ex-ranjy players of 70, who just got their rusted suits dry-cleaned and done their remaining heirs to babble around, sitting cosily in the DD studio, vouching sermons as to how Indian team should strategize for the coming matches. It look good, seeing a guy, who himself has an average of 10 in International cricket, is giving gyan as to how Tendulkar should play in the match.

In the end, I don't blame them. They are just cashing upon the pervasive madness.
Well for me the path ahead is quite clear, TV mat dekho, is the big message written on the wall. I thank Indian team to be an eye opener and saving a lot of time and energies.

Well, I am not saying that don't love the sport. But there are differences between being passionate, fanatic, unrealistic and unnecessarily over-enthusiastic. Seems, Media is trying to enforce its priorities on me. And, lastly, sorry for plagiarizing the dialog from "American Beauty", "I refuse to be the victim".

Weekend - Two days or Three Nights?

2007-03-23T13:26:00.000+05:30

This friday afternoon and slowly this will pave the way for one more evening for which someone once said "Weekend means three nights not two days".

Someone else said, "Thank God this is Friday. Though God had nothing to do with Friday or Monday. I know there are some Muslim countries like Algeria, which have the weekend on Thursdays and Friday, so they should say, thank god its Wednesday. Though it does not sound as cool as TGIF:)

My memories of the summer vacations in my village in my childhood (though dil se ab bhee bachha hoon), does not tell me that there was (also is ) any such funda of weekend, its like all days. Does it mean they don't thank God at all, well just kidding.

I was just dissecting this idea of "Thank God its Friday" concept.

Well the first ones to say that are all the showrooms folks, who have lined up the years old clothes done completely in the the backyard of ghatkopar, put the tag of made in America (or some other place who cares). I think if they simply put the tag of Not Made In India", that will do equally well. loads of people are just dying (literally also) to get this tag for themselves also. I was watching some stupid model telling happily that people in US surprisingly confuse him for being Mexican. Not a surprise that one stupid is being happy to be mis-identified by another stupid. And third stupid is watching this and writing the blogs. Anyways.

The other ones rejoicing madly on the arrival to completer consumer centric phenomena called as weekend are all those sitting on the roads/markets with whatever junk they have to get rid of to and waiting for lots of stupids rushing to grab the junk and stuff there houses. The madness is all sprayed on the roads.

There was a song, "when the night were long and days were short". Well that must have been before this weekend funda. It only seems to be days only and no nights at all. Evenings are lost to wait for the days to come and let the insanity having last laugh.

Well this could be little exaggeration to some point, but the bigger point is do we really need the break? the natural answer is yes. But the behavior of the people is as if its been imposed upon them and they have to screw themselves too much.

Well as a disclaimer I must confess that I myself am the front-runner in this mass frenzy and not commenting on anybody else.

Abhee bangalore times dekhta hoon, kahan kahan sale lagi hai, and kahan pe underwear saste mil lrahe hai, kaun si ghatiya movie kahan lagi hai.

Parting with couplets from the Jagjit's sajda collection, crooned amazingly by Lata Mangeshkar, which I am listening right now. All angrej bhaiyo, excuse youself from reading any further.

Duan bana ke fizao.n mein uda diya mujhko
Main jal raha tha kisi ne bujha diya mujhko

Khada hoon aaj bhee roti ke chaar harf liye
Sawal ye hai kitaabo ke kya diya mujhko ?

I'm not sure about you, but I've got the answer, its "The Weekend".

wishing you all a happy weekend, even if you are reading this on weekdays.

Present - Can we Feel it?

2007-02-28T12:15:00.000+05:30

Lemme first unveil the origin from where this question got implanted in my mind.

I was going through the book, "Short history of nearly everything" by Bill Bryson. Which anyways is the must read for those who think they know everything and to those who think that they know nothing. Other intended category is of those who give this universal answer to the kids all the time, "you will understand this when you will grow" or "bade ho jaaoge to samajh jaaoge", which is a biggest bluff as only thing we understand after growing up is, not to ask the question, especially important ones.

But anyways don't confuse me for being the publicity agent for Bill Bryson as he don't need me, its already a bestseller. Now I'm coming to the question.

When we see something, it could be as close as the monitor in front of you or as away as some remote galaxy (for whom light takes at least billions of years to reach to us), it is the phenomena of reflection of the light. So in essence whatever we see, we look at the object/incident which existed/happened in the past, when light started traveling from that point to us. So there is always of time difference of distance/(speed of light) between us and the event we encounter.

So if there is a time difference always (howsoever infinitesimal it is), then we are always looking in the past. In theory we can never see at the event which is happening in the present. Because light takes time to travel at the speed of 300 million meters/sec.

Now when it is established that we cannot see the events of present, point is how can we feel the present. I'm for now limiting the definition of present to something what is happening around in the universe and beyond (the perfect void) and of course what is happening inside me, as my inner space is also part of the universe.

So if principally, I cannot witness all that is happening around me, can I witness what is happening inside me as supposedly Vedanta is not driven by the Newtonian mechanics.

These are several school of thoughts to live in the present, but how is it possible? Present is not some fixed point of time, its a moving always. Probably only consistently moving thing in the entire universe and rest all are stationary things/events. Living with present mean to that keep the consciousness always in perfect rhythm with the present. keep moving always. No hark back in the past and not peep into the future.

I'm not giving any answers as I think I'm not capable of, but I'm damn sure that the question is valid and there should be some way to feel the present and that's truely living in the present.

Money and Oxygen

2007-02-19T16:37:00.000+05:30

I read somewhere, "Money is like Oxygen, you cannot live without Oxygen but nobody in the world lives for Oxygen".

Journey starts with accumulating the basic necessities and the urge to get more starts turning more and more things into necessities. The desire for more keeps on driving us and takes us to occasional "State of High". Actually I think, its this state of high, what we all crave for.

Anyways the journey for money goes on and we start symbolizing money and its by-products like power, recognition, access to higher pleasures, distinguished identity etc with the long/short time goals for our lives and try to dispel the other theories as the escapist/idealist/Meta-physical/Philosophical/Impractical theories which fail to acknowledge money as super-power and sole biggest motivating reason to live for.

I'm not trying to prove that most of us live crazily only for money/power/fame. No not at all. I know most of us live for "Happiness" and somehow correlate the material achievements to path leading to ultimate happiness.
That is the reason we always are conscious about the means used for any acquisition, and most of the time we prioritize relations, character, self-esteem, social recognition, morality way above than the money.

But the point is, how many of us are happy? At least I'm not, thought the mid-term goals I set for myself are getting fulfilled and the happiness is nowhere in sight, so I keep on pushing further, believing that the moment I fulfill all my responsibilities (which eventually becomes a laundry-list), I'll become happy. Which is an “Ultimate Illusion”?

Point is that the strategy or the plan, we adopt to accomplish is nowhere connected to the real goal.
I'm just trying to understand the happiness.
"Happiness is a still state of mind". Such a state when, it is not running in 1000 directions at the same time, and apparently it is not controlling us anymore, rather our consciousness is controlling it. "State of Being beyond mind".

This "Transient State of High" is what we crave for, probably unknowingly always. But I don't know how to be beyond mind. They say there is something called Meditation. I need to understand that.

3 or 4 Wise Monkeys?

2007-02-15T12:43:00.000+05:30

I've recently read that the 3 Wise monkeys philosophy “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”, which seems to stem from Japan, actually is inspired by the Tao/Confucius philosophy where there were 4 monkeys.

Following link confirms some of this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_no_evil,_hear_no_evil,_speak_no_evil

The phrase was “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, Do No Evil”. Imagine the image of the 4th monkey, yup, covering its crotch. Later on this image has been mocked by the media and others as the humorous version, but it dates back to the original thought and philosophy.

My point is that connection between posture of covering the crotch to the phrase "Do no evil" does makes sense.

Due to gravitational (?) pull of energy the natural reservoir (most) for the useful energy is centered around that area.
If one can channelize the energy flow to the higher points (via Nabhi "Kundalini", throat, Middle of Eyes and finally to the mind), one can experience enlightenment.

Thats my guess. How about yours?

LIFE a Flame?

2007-02-14T22:46:00.000+05:30

It might seem to be huge overdose of philosophy, but still I've these so many doubts or questions?

Though on the onset, I would like to confess that "All questions are meaningless" i.e all questions are answered by the "Meaninglessness", this meaninglessness is "Ultimate Zero or Shunya".
So there is one and only one ultimate answer to all the questions "State of NoAnswer". Because each answer is an attempt to chain one question to the other questions.

May be I can call it Bramha, till I understand/experience "Bramha".

Coming to my original point, What is life?

A Journey, "Result of Prarabdha", Consciousness wrapped in unconscious body whereas the body changing the states alongwith with the mind in it. A link in the big chain which starts from Shunya and sublimates into Shunya. I don't know, really.

Just a corollary, How do you define the flame?. Say, a candle in burning overnight. Is it the same flame throughout the night or this is a chain of flames connecting each one to the previous one. Is life like a flame? I'm not trying to find out the answer, I'm trying to experience it.

Osho mentions one incident. There was a Zen Guru in Japan. He was leading a group of disciples in a morning procession of a dead man. One of his disciples asked for the teacher pointing to the man who died. "Is this dead or Alive?" The Zen guru, answered, Guess what ???

He answered "I cannot say".
What do you this that was? Alive or dead?

This could be also be understood as "I CANNOT SAY" means the state of the man in question cannot be said. That is, he knows the answer but it cannot be said as the moment he'll try to answer that it'll be incorrect.

Are there other things also like that which are known but not "said". How does a dumb "explains the taste of a fruit".

Do all our five senses (Indriya) "See, smell, touch, listen and taste" are capable enough to carry the mind to outside world, without polluting the originality, assuming Mind itself is being objective enough which again is a bigger assumption.

What is an Individual?

2007-02-14T15:41:00.000+05:30

I'm not sure what is generally meant by the term "Individual".

My understanding make me believe that individual is something which is indivisible, cannot be divided further. But the rationality defies this.

Its like asking who Am I? A body, soul, mind, heart, thoughts, matter, consciousness, what ? Or something which is beyond all this. For a moment let me say I'm "UnDefined".

Because process of defining something is like "Setting the limits" (literally also). That means when we try to define something, we try to establish its constituents/ ingredients/ essentials/ ethos/ characteristics. Then we try to correlate them with each other to make the definition and finally we try to segregate this correlation (definition) from other entities, thus setting the limits.

In simpler terms we try to break the monolith into parts or we divide it.

But how can we divide individual? And if we cannot divide "Individual", then how can we define it i.e its "UnDefined". For the same reason, "Beyond" is also "Undefined".

Is Anarchy Arrived?

2006-08-31T11:38:00.000+05:30

On the onset this can be flouted as hasty outbursts of a frustrated and disgruntled soul who has been seriously harassed. It could be the case of torture by the civic authorities, helplessness of the legal bodies or the crookedness of crass politics or overcharging by Airtel and too many calls by the agents for bundles of loans and cards offers or consistent watching of Himesh Reshamiya vedios etc.

But I don’t qualify any of these criterions. I’m rather shocked at the “NEWS” contents bombarded 24*7, believing some of them are real and exist at least 1% of the extent they are generally projected. My recent pick is the incident of a Teacher who is beaten to death by the promising student leaders in Ujjain, MP. After the murder the entire Police and state administration is busy to hush up the affair, persecuting the eye witnessing and converting their stand from “Meri aankhon ke saamne ” to “Main to Nigeria mein tha” level. On top of that the state CM is fully convinced that instead of murder it was an “unfortunate death”. I think the word “Unfortunate” is the most unfortunate word in the English dictionary which is unfortunately used to cover all the more direct and implicating adjectives pointing toward the subject.

I personally don’t relate to this incident and know anymore about this whole affair apart from what other millions of viewers know. But I’m trying to establish some of the facts which strike me while watching so many incidents like this.

Try to face the following questions and answer them honestly.

Do common men think that majority of Politicians are good?
Do command men think that our bureaucracy is able and not corrupt?
Does common man think that one can survive in Indian keeping one’s dignity and self-esteem high?
Do we think that our education system if strong enough to deliver blood to the lifeline of the nation?
Do we know there exists any stream of business/profession where the fairness and honesty is not butchered?
Do we think that Nation comes to us at higher priority than my petty personal conveniences?
Don’t we know that given a chance most of the people would agree to fly to US or Europe and settle there?
Don’t we think that the “Nobody cares for anything” idea prevails largely?
Aren’t we the utterly confused society grappling between the cultural consciousness and modernization?
Do we think we don’t misuse our freedom and independence?
Do we think that 15 August and 26 Jan are any better than a public holiday?
Don’t we think that we as a society are decomposing day by day?
Do we think we are worthy of Democracy?

I don’t myself know what this 1 billion population bomb is waiting for to explode. I read we used to be 600 independently ruled territories and most of them fighting most of the time with most of the others. Then somebody took the pain to integrate them all and make this monolith work as a unit.

Do we think this integration is worth it and we really care for it?

Mumbai vs Kashmir ?

2006-07-13T16:39:00.000+05:30

Just couple of days back, India witnessed the heinous horror unleashed at two diverse places. One at Mumbai, attempt to blast the local trains and apparently intended to dent the psyche of a common man to believe in freedom, believe in positives. Other at Srinagar, as series of blasts attempted to devastate the life and dislodge the belief, if at all there was any, of the normalcy coming back.

Post-mortem is on and apparently all systemic organs are overworking, some to cover it up, some to divert the attention and some to take mileage out of it be it political, economical, social, diplomatic. In the background some unknowns, some unsung fighters are trying to be genuinely supportive.

I find the way media shops are covering it all, little confusing. There were 12 blasts, five at Srinagar and seven in Mumbai. Obviously the extent of significance and damage done at Mumbai is huge . But if you see the coverage a day after, it seems that Srinagar is fine like hundreds of other normal cities and it's only Mumbai which has suffered.

Not too sure, whether the reality that everyday violence is the normal way of life for J&K, has sunk in deep down the Indian Hearts. If that is the case, its too bad.