Tales from Travel

Sorry folks – been a really long time since I wrote anything. Call it laziness, or call it the effects of marriage.. But, now, I hope to get back to my business and update regularly..

After I joined my new organization, I’ve started to take a cab drop home. It is one of those moments when you get to hear some real tit-bits of unexpected human emotions and occasionally a few juicy gossip. But, I never imagined that a cab driver would open my eyes in terms of what it means to be ALIVE and wonderful it is to be kind. Here’s the story..

Mumbai Mess
I generally used to get a regular cab driver. That day, he was a different person. He looked quite nervous and out of place. I told him about my address and he seemed a bit confused. I sat down and he mumbled in hindi. I asked him if he knew Kannada. He barely knew it. He told me he was from Bijapur and knew Marathi well, comfortable in Hindi and barely manageable Kannada. When I told him that I had lived in Pune and could understand Marathi, his face split into a big smile. For three days, he told me, he was struggling in Bangalore since he could hardly talk. And he talked all the way home.

“I used to work in Mumbai, “ he started. “I used to be driver for this business man’s taxi. He owned a Skoda and I was the driver. One day, these goons in an auto stopped my car and tried to kidnap the child in my car. His father was some inspector, I learnt later. I tried to stop them and got stabbed. They stabbed me twice – once on my hand and once on my back.”

He was lost in silence for a moment.

“I don’t know how I survived sir. It was night and I was left on the road. But, somehow I am alive.”

“Mumbai is a bad place sir. There are areas where you don’t go. And at others, there are people whom you don’t want to make angry. I had done just that. The goondas had seen me. They knew my cab. They started to follow me sir. If they caught me alone, they would finish what they’d started. They wanted no witnesses. I had no choice and so I left the town, sir.”

Then he looked around the road and the people and said, “People here are so nice, sir. Bangalore is so safe. It is a very nice city, sir”

And then, we reached home. I kept wondering, “And we here in Bangalore crib about the traffic jams!”

Slumdogs

Today again, the same driver dropped me. He was chattery and chirpy. “My marriage is fixed, sir!” he quipped. After the congratulations, we started about how costly the whole marriage business. Then he said about his home-town – Bijapur.

“It is so nice in Bangalore. It rains and there is water. In Bijapur, there are no rains. Sir, we have 300 acres of land and nothing to do. We own 3 tractors and a jeep. My father says, I just drive the jeep and earn money. But, after seeing life in Mumbai and Bijapur, I don’t want to go back..”

Suddenly, he changed the whole topic. “Mumbai is so full of beggars,” he said. “There were two boys near my house. One was just 5 and the other was 7 year old. I could not see them struggle, sir. So, I gave them Rs 10 and asked them to get soap. I let them in and let them take a bath.”

“It was nearing the rainy season, sir. In Mumbai, it pours. It rains from May till Ganapati festival. I didn’t know where these two boys would live.”

“I asked them if they would come with me to Bijapur. I told them they would have to work on the farm and live in our house. They agreed.”

“My brother, when he saw them asked, ‘And who will pay for them?’ So, I send money every month, sir. My family gives them food. For clothes and their living, I send them money at the first of every month”

And we reached home.

I was amazed. Here we are – all IT types. Ensconced in warm, cozy 2 BHK flats with 24-hour backup generators, we never give a thought about how great it is to have a shelter. And despite the 50K, 60K or whatever salary, we can’t find money to fund any charity. And here is this stab-wound survivor, driving a cab, saving for his wife and yet sending money that supports two boys. It simply is incredible. The last thing the driver said before I got down seemed so true.
“Sir, I just do whatever I can to be kind. And God always sees this. I am alive today because I saved those two boys. God saw me that day and let me live..”

Book Review: Mike Wilson – The Difference between God and Larry Ellison

Inside Oracle Corporation

-Akshay Ranganath

The title of the book “The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison*” piqued my interest. The asterisk at the end which was explained as “*God doesn't think he's Larry” sort of convinced me to buy the book. Yes, it explains why God doesn't think he's Larry. But, what it doesn't tell very well is – what does Larry think, apart from the fact that he's God?

Frankly, I was trying to get a book on what is Oracle and how it came about as one of the largest software companies in the world. This book explains the history and the beginning of Oracle but, from a perspective of how Larry went about doing it – his personal life style, his girlfriends and so on. The place where I felt a bit let down was that the book delves more on the personal aspects of Larry's life, rather than on how he built Oracle. The author feels that Larry is not a great business leader – rather he's a very good opportunistic person who happened to come across the IBM's papers on SQL standards and converted into a product. What the author never really explains is how did Larry think that this could be a big product. It does not say anything about how the engineers at Oracle do their research, how they develop the product and how they test it. It devotes a lot of pages on the salesmen, the sales debacles and the revenue dressing up but, never explains anything on the product development cycle at Oracle.

A big aspect that has been over looked is the mergers and acquisitions done by Oracle. Assuming Larry is just a plain opportunist. He still needs some acumen to spot the ripe companies to buy. Considering that Oracle kept buying others by a dozen until a year back, the book is woefully unclear on this aspect. It has a passing description of the Oracle Financials business but makes no mention of how important it went to become for Oracle – nor does it mention Larry's war on Peoplesoft. However, it devotes a full chapter and half on lawsuit filed by a spurned girl friend of Larry.

The place where I was disappointed was that this book reads more like a page 3 article. The book seems to present Larry as a hopeless womanizer, an unprincipled opportunist, a ruthless owner and a reckless rich-man. What it totally fails to bring out is the finer aspects of Larry that made him one of the richest men on earth.

I'd suggest that the book is a good read – more like a novel, rather than a business book. If you are looking for sleaze in Larry's life, go for this book. If however, you are looking to gain insights on Oracle Corp. then this book is not for you.

What do you feel? Please do tell me.

Travelling insights: The Dharwad Saga (aka Old Uncle & Interrogation)

Someone has said that, “The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.” Being a traveller by heart, I had nothing specific planned to see. And so, I let myself be swept in by the very journey itself.

And so last Friday, my better half and I set out on an adventure to Dharwad. All adventures in India happen in the second class coaches of the largest employer in the world, The (great) Indian Railways. The sheer sight of train, a station that is clean or a train that arrives on time (ie within an hour of its scheduled time) are things that brings joy and an occasional tear of happiness to the eyes. But, what is most exciting is the people you meet and the moments of life that is shared together – somehow people connect so well that a few hours spent becomes a part of a lifetime.

Ok – enough of philosophy. That was to make you guys a bit sleepy :-) Nothing of this sort happened on this travel though. What did happen was something quite amusing.

My wife and I reached the station early (must say, the train had been there parked for us even before we'd reached..) We got into our bogie and settled down on seats that were vacant. Reservation of seats is a concept that is for popus idiots. In India, you book seats and only while sleeping it has any relevance.

The moment we sat down, the old uncle in front of us suddenly came to life. The fact that he could manage to doze despite the noise of the (tail-less) grand children – that was an amazing feat of concentration. Anyways, there we are surrounded by 10,000 Watts of screaming and screeching with the old uncle who is barely beyond totally deaf interrogating us..

Uncle: Hmm.. So where are you going?
Us: Dharwad, uncle
Uncle: What?
Us: Dharwad
Uncle: WHAT?
Uncle's daughter: Dharwad (in a 10,500 Watts tone)
Uncle: Oh.. That's good. Nice place.
Us Silly grin
Uncle: So where do you work?
Me: Cognizant.
Uncle: What?
Me: (loudly) Cognizant, CTS.. (actually I’d just resigned from CTS.. but there was no way I could explain all of this)
Uncle: What?
Uncle’s daughter: IT.. IT
Uncle: Oh, ok. My daughter too – not this one, the second one is in IT. She works in Wipro. Had been to US, UK, Hong Kong and Singapore. You been to US?
Me: Hmm.. No uncle..
Uncle: We live in …. What about you?
Me: We live near …
Uncle: Our area – it is a good area. So you both are brothers and sisters?
Us: (totally shocked and unable to respond.)
Uncle’s daughter: (thoroughly red in face) Appa, they are husband and wife. (Turning to us) Appa wants to know everything!

And so, the journey went on. Uncle managed to extract all information from us – where each of us studied, worked, where our parents worked and live. I guess any marketing agent would kill to have field surveys done like this. After all, we just trust old uncles so much that we never even hesitate to tell them all the personal details that we’d not even tell our colleagues!

One thing though.. No matter where my wife and I go, people seem to mistake us for some sort of relatives or brother and sister. And this is a big pain in the backside!

Quotes: The 12 Habits that hold Good People Back

Some of the best quotes from the book, "The 12 Bad Habits that hold Good People Back"...

Everyone is afraid at times of a particular assignment, a new responsibility, a new environment. The key is not to allow that fear to leak out, in unintentional ways, into your performance or behaviour.

Think of people who are full of confidence. They do things slowly.

Meritocrats have a naïve reliance upon a certain king of authority, the authority of objective, measurable facts.

In the real world, you need patience, the ability to compromise, and the willingness to accept an occasional defeat.

Remember, life is a long campaign, and if you risk death in every battle your chances of fighting on and winning the war are pretty slim.

Anger and its resolution are an essential part of human experience. Peacekeepers can't accept that reality and thereby learn and master the process.

One of the hallmarks of a successful marriage is the ability of both partners to face up to the conflicts they have with each other and resolve them. The same is true with any kind of relationship, whether with siblings, parents, children, or close friends. If you recognize that you instinctively avoid conflict in relationships, think about the effect it has on you and those close to you. Do you genuinely stay closer together because of your ability to avoid conflict? Or does it, as we suspect, in the long term prove to be a wedge that drives you apart?

..people who know much less about a particular topic can offer wonderful suggestions and ask important questions, precisely because they stand further away from the issue.

The old paradigm “If it ain't broke, don't fix it” has gone by the boards. The new paradigm seems to be “If it ain't broke, break it before somebody else does, and see what else we can make of it”.

(Helping naysayers and helping in decision making)

Make a regular practice of considering the positive aspect of the change – the opportunities it presents – as well as negative, whether in your career, your job, a a project, or a strategic direction. Instead of a single list with the negatives of a new idea, draw lists of both the “positives” and the “negatives” as well as the merits and dangers of instituting “change” and “doing nothing”.

Jobs are like sailbots: unless we are actively trimming the sails and making course adjustments, they tend to drift. Our job can slowly migrate into something that is less attractive. Moreover, at the some point we all want to take our skills and interests to a new level by learning more and doing different things. It is important to remember, however, that our capacity to act to change our circumstances rests with ourselves.

Our potential is not the potential of anyone else. Our path can be traveled by no one other than ourselves. Yet we spend a great deal of time envying the position, talents, and accomplishments of others. We see our career from their perspectives and imagine how they would judge us. None of this will bring us closer to knowing our unique potential for contribution or our particular genius. Imitation is an important part of learning, but it is an early form of learning that must be internalized and made our own. Early on, we may need heroes, but later on heroes can get in our way.

To reduce a career decision solely to a process of maximizing compensation, and to design adaily schedule accordingly, is an invitation to alienation and dissatisfaction. On the other hand, not being honest with yourself about the importance of money can also lead you astray.

The search for a career vision is an ongoing one, cycling unpredictably through the experiences of renewed vision, alienation and finding our way back. The steely career focus that seems to characterize successful business professionals does not come once and for all. Genuine career change and progress begins not with a flash of insight or with a great idea; it begins with a sense of alienation and discomfort, and a period of frustration and uncertainty, with no guarantees as to the outcome. But it also provides an opportunity for learning, if we can give it attention and let it speak to us. It can tell us of the hidden potential in us that has been shut out because there is no way for it to act in our current world of work. We may get frightened, because there is no obvious path in sight and we are afraid of losing ground and esteem in the eyes of others. We have trouble recognizing and connecting with what our heart of hearts says about our life and out work at that moment. But rescue can come only from determined attention to our unique circumstances and with the bit of courage necessary to act.

Primary causal elements for 12 habits:

-         having a negatively distorted self-image

-         not being able to understand the world from other people’s perspectives

-         not having come to terms with authority

-         having an inability to use power comfortably, skillfully, and effectively

Successful people in business know that there is no such thing as an autonomous career. People can achieve maximum success in their careers only by working effectively with other individuals, individuals who have their own needs goals, and agendas. They learn that they must achieve goals within organizations that, similarly, have their own objectives.

Empathy.. not only leads to insight and greater appreciation for others, but is a competitive advantage as well.

Understanding others’ point of view can help you use whatever power you have with greater reserve, precision and finesse. The ability to restrain yourself is just as important as taking action directly and strongly.

You are the one ultimately responsible for your career. People with a positive, engaged attitude toward authority are more likely to see their managers as wise and powerful because they want to see them that way. We see this eve in very mature individuals. This is always accompanied by a subtle abrogation of responsibility for personal choice and career and direction, which is then left in the hands of the person with authority. Mentors can be helpful in the development of career, but you cannot rely on them to know what you should do. For one thing, your best next career move might well be outside your current business unit or organization and thus in conflict with the interests of your manager. Even when this isn’t the case, no one can know the path that will bring you the greatest career satisfaction.

In order to maximize your success in your career and to be as effective as possible in whatever role you have, you must be – or become – comfortable having and using power. You have to learn to be comfortable enough, just as you need to be a good enough swimmer to be safe in water or a good enough driver to be trusted on the road.

Resources flow naturally to people who demonstrate good sense and good use of the power they are given. Empires are expensive to build and maintain, so build one only if you need it.

Each time you hold yourself back from doing something, each time you go home saying, “I wish I had..” or “Why didn’t I just ..?” your self-image tends to worsen even further.

In the end, the process of healing negative self-images is a process of acceptance: accepting our own particular history, accepting our poor judgments and others errors that have caused pain to ourselves and to others.

Arranged Marriage Blues 5 – Arranging Gifts!

Disclaimer: This post is sarcastic, not about the relatives per se but about the hypocritical processes in the arranged marriage system that mandates some things that is so irrational and utterly useless. Yet, these are something that is religiously followed by everyone, lest it brings a bad name to the family! Just venting out my irritation..

Yes folks. Now we are into the eighteen thousand three hundred seventy six step process of arranging all the things for the big day. And one of the most important thing is buying gifts for the relatives. Let me explain.

Inviting the relatives
Unlike friends, relatives are a different species. You (I mean the bride/bridegroom's parents) need to invite them. When I say invite, you don't give the card. You go about it in a special manner. First you write them all down. Then arrange them in descending order of age. Then, you go to each individual's house, give the card and fall at feet and then again invite them. Only then, is the invitation considered to be a properly invited one. If not, relatives have not been properly invited and they will boycott the wedding. So better be aware of this.

Due to the strange way relatives get sorted out, the path to invite them does get tediuos. So for example, if relative aged 79.5 years is staying at Rajajinagar and relative aged 79 is in Marathalli while a third relative aged 78.5 is at Malleshwaram, you still can't take short cuts and call relative 1 then relative 3 and ending by relative 2. This is a strict No-No. You need to keep aside all logic of Shortest Paths aside. They are only for Computer Scince geeks!

For friends, a phone call will do. Invitation is optional. Food is the only thing that makes them attend the function. For all the bachelor type guys it is the food and the feast for eyes. Life's simple.

Gift Hunting
Anyway, for all the effort taken to invite the relatives, you need to again incentivize them for attending the wedding. For this purpose, you (meaning the groom or bride's parents) need to gift them. Generally, these gifts are in the shape of something absolutely useless or, something so useful that most people will have them anyway. However, not giving something so redundant is considered as an extremely disgraceful thing. So, we set out on an expedition to Jayanagar for buying gifts. After a whole half day's of hunt, we decided on “one-two”.

“One-Two”. “What's that?” you ask? Well, let me explain. It is basically this air-tight, cool blue colored plastic glasses of two sizes “one and two”, size one is a bit bigger then the size two one. Considering that most people will have containers to contain most things, these two new containers would probably be not really used to contain anything. But then, to sustain the sacrosant tradition of the south indian arranged marriage system, we contained our irritation, frustration etc and bought “one-two”.

Buying it was the easy part. Transporting it was the nightmare. Sitting on my cousin's L-Board bike, holding onto to so many “one-two” bags, I prayed with sincere devotion that evening. Its just in times like one day before the exam which you believe you are bound to fail that you really give in to the hands of God. This was one such day :-) God heard my prayer and we reached the place safe and deposited the “one-two” to be distributed to our really grateful relatives!

Arranged Marriage Blues 4 - Arranged Travel

-Akshay Ranganath

There comes a time in your pre-marriage, post-engagement time when you need to travel to some place for some family reason and you are supposed to take your fiance with you. Its one of those travels which you, as an engaged guy dreams of – so that you can spend a lot of time with your 'would be' and which all the parents conspire to make it as uninteresting as possible.

So what happens is this: There will be a family occasion for which you all need to go together, be it a visit to the 'family-God' or some such occasion. For this you and your fiance talk and plan – concoct on plans, hatch plots and develop a blueprint of the ultimate travel. General this journey would be early in the morning and would last about 2 to 3 hours in a (generally) public transport.

Parents will always get a whiff of such plots and come up with a sinister plan of inviting lots of the aunts, cousins and other pesky creatures whose sole purpose of existence is to ensure that you and your fiancé don't get to be together. So you undertake a travel in a mini-Universe called the public transport with the whole mass being split between the romantic-”Us” versus the unromantic “them”.

One simple way to escape the pesky creatures of intrusion is to do this. You be courteous and let the elders and the younger ones all climb in and settle down. Assuming they're not way too much in number, they'll all sediment to the initial part of the bus, leaving the back seats vacant. So, you take the back seat. If the pesky creatures are intelligent (and generally they are!) they'll spread themselves around leaving no place that is private for you. In which case, you are better off sitting on the roof of the bus! And God alone can save you.

Anyway, returning back to the trip, what you do is to let the relatives get in. Then, you go in with your fiancé. Here, you need to be extra careful. The wily relatives will offer seats. They'll say they've caught this nice cosy seat for you – it will generally be a three seater with the most nosiest aunt in the middle. I'd leave it to your intelligence on what you do next.

The ideal seat to choose, if available is the one before the last one. This way you are far enough from everyone as possible with as much comfort as possible. It also means that the bus will jump a lot more – and if God hath mercy, your fiance will bump into you once in a while. And that would be like heaven.

You can pray for a maniacal driver. In this case, he'd drive round the turns like he was some F1 driver and that would mean some more controlling touches – and maybe you can even hold your fiancé's hand! But, don't overdo it. It all needs to be romantic, despite the relatives passing you all the chips, bananas, jack fruit, gvuavas and the college crown on back seat. Oh yeah, also the distraction from the latest David Dhavan flick that would most proabably balring from the TV.

In the intermediate time between clinging to seat for life and the eating, you open up your heart and enjoy the ride of your life. This my friends is the concept of the “Arranged Travel”. Happy journey!

Arranged Marriage – Preparing for the first meeting

-Akshay Ranganath

Looking at the trend of visits to my blog, I thought a more serious blog about 'how to prepare for the all important first meeting' would be a useful post to you, my dear readers. And so here is what I learnt based on my experience.

Please note that since I am a guy, this is from a male perspective. I guess most would apply even to girls, so do read on.

Preparing for the meeting
Arranged marriage has its set of excitement and none is more exciting than the first time you get to meet your 'would-be' in a face to face mode. Just the very thought is enough to raise a few goose pimples and start a sense of thrill, of confusion, of worries and lots of butterflies in stomach. After all, what are you supposed to talk to her in the one hour by which you can decide if she is the one with whom to spend the rest of life!

Yes, it is an important meeting and like for any formal meeting, it needs effort on 3 fronts:

1. pre meeting – what you need to talk and ask during the meeting and deciding where to meet
2. meeting – what you actually say and how to say or ask, making her comfortable enough so that she can open up and say what she has in mind
3. post meeting – the duration when the serious stuff is done and you can show the softer side of yourself, just long enough to tease her to get interested in you.

Pre meeting
You are meeting someone who could potentially be your life partner and you need to know if she is the 'right-fit' for what you are looking for. Unfortunately, most of us don't even know what we are looking for in the life partner – at least I could never articulate what I was looking for.

As a preparation, you need to do a lot of soul searching – a sort of long term planning. Like the typical interview question, 'Where do you see yourself' types, you need to make a note of the following questions – and its answers:

1. What type of a person are you? A completely happy go lucky, a guy who likes a detailed and well planned life?
2. Based on your background, what type of a lifestyle did you have? A very rich and happy one, a typical middle class life – equally comfortable with bus or a car
3. Your social status and quality of life – again, typical middle class – occasional movies, summer holiday trip to grandma's place or international visits, bowling alleys, etc.
4. What type of a job you are doing and what are you aiming for, at least a rough idea: A well paying but not necessary being the CEO, a high flier with life filled with constant excitement with fast career, a nomadic world roaming life
5. Your friends and how you all get along
6. Your hobbies – what you do in free time, what makes you passionate in life
7. Any family responsibilities and financial position - only son so need to take care of parents, etc., and salary

The points above are to give a well rounded picture about you. Its like offering a package deal of yourself, describing yourself in all angles and letting the girl get a feel of who you are on the whole and what to expect in terms of life, travel, location, family and friends.

During the meeting, you need to extract similar set of information from her so that you can make a judgement about what she wants in life and if you want to and can afford it. If not, its better to take a call right after the meeting rather than letting a life get messed up by wrong expectations.

Meeting

After all the preparation comes the actual meeting – the thing that is most important. For this, first choose on an appropriate location. Regardless of what movies and serials show, girls are shy for the first date, at least in the initial few minutes. So, the most important thing is to ensure that the location makes her comfortable.

My suggestion is to choose something that is close to her place. That way she knows the area around and knows things in general. Cafe Coffee Day outlets in cities like Bangalore are the best places to meet – more so if they have an outdoor chair. This way, you are sort of in free fresh air and she need not feel suffocated.

Starting the meeting
As with any planned meeting, set the agenda. After the initial meeting and greetings, tell her clearly that the meeting is for generally discussing about what you are generally planning in life and would like to know about her plans, interests, desires and concerns (if any).

During the initial few minutes, the girl will (most probably) be shy. So take time and explain about yourself. Don't say the mundane stuff like which college, 12th marks and so on. It doesn't matter. What does matter is the type of life you've had – if you stayed in multiple places, how you enjoyed the rains in Pune, the beach in Chennai, the dejection when you couldn't get into that college you wanted – you get the picture. Something to make her feel that you are a human.

Ask her about herself, what she does and generally how she spends time. This will give her an opening to talk. Don't ask too many personal questions at beginning and don't probe. You are not in an interrogation.

Don't order by yourself. Let her take a look at menu, ask for her preference. If she's confused, help her. The break will give her some time to get her thoughts in order and same goes for you too.

Progressing with the meeting
After the initial 10-15 minutes of startup, get into a bit more specific details. Explain about your career, what you've done so far and what you want to do. Tell her if you have plans for settling abroad or you are just not interested. Keep interspersing your points by her details. Try to ensure that the conversation remains two way. Keep watching her and check if she's not getting bored or pressurized.

Here is where you basically talk all that you'd prepared. Ensure that you ask questions so that you too can form an opinion of her. You basically would be interested in her plans for:

1. career
2. life style
3. location preference
4. open to stay with in laws or not, etc

Don't drag it with too much details. Keep it to a maximum of 30 minutes.

Concluding the meeting
By the time the coffee gets over, its time to end the meeting. At this point, tell her something about your friends and what you do for hobby. Something to tell her what is your likes in food, movies music, etc. Ask her about her favorites. Comment over it since it gives her a feeling that you really care for the preferences. Put in a few funny things that had happened in some trip or movie – it should be funny but not gross!

Post meeting
This is the time when you drop her from the meeting venue to her home (or till her vehicle or bus). By now, you would actually know the outcome of meeting. It won't be tough believe me. If you two can talk like you've known for ages by now, you know she's the one.

So look for signs from her – if she laughs happily and her eyes sparkle, then you know its a win! If not, try and explain any points that could mean you are not made for each other. Whatever the outcome, it should end cordially. And if the result is a 'yes', then take a small risk and insert something romantic in your speech. I didn't realize it but, I gave her my card with my mobile number on it. And my fiance says the moment she got the card, she realized that I would say yes.

Finally
So, finally, the first meeting is all about setting the right expectation for both parties – you as a guy on what you can offer in terms of life and life style and for her to tell what she expects. Remember, it is the girl who makes the bigger sacrifice of leaving her family and taking up a new home, life and literally a new role. So, she needs to know what she is getting into – make this as easy for as you can.

My dad helped me with a half a day session on this – and now I'm passsing it on. Happy meeting and hope what I wrote helps you.

Movie Review: Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na..

-Akshay Ranganath

Today, I went to watch the much-hyped movie, Jaane Tu ya Jaane Na.. There two reasons for watching the movie:

1. It was a movie that had Aamir Khan's name associated with it AND
2. I'd got engaged and needed a nice romatic movie to take my fiance to..

And so, we went to watch the movie..

The movie's about love – or rather when do you know that you are in love as against being “just friends”. It delivers on the promise of being a college romance flick with not much serious overtones. However, if somehow fails to evoke any empathy for the actors. Somehow, you don't feel the passion of the love, nor the pain of seperation that the confused souls face when you are in that situation where you don't know if you are in love or not..

The movie has its positives. Imran comes across as a nice college teen flick actor. So does his gang of friends. Mr and Mrs Naseruddin Shah are as at their best. However the main heroine, Genelia comes across as someone who just fails to talk in Hindi. Her dialogue delivery is to be fair is like someone taking a Hindi orals in a South Indian school. It better when she doesn't talk.

The best part about the move were the hilarious moments when Mr & Mrs Naseruddin Shah speak to each other. As against melodrama of a widow who's lost her husband, in this movie, there is no sympathy asked nor needed towards the widowed mother of the hero. Instead, the father is always shown to be present as a living potrait – and someone who does not just give fatherly advise but dances and jumps around with joy about his son.

Paresh Rawal as his typical Marathi speaking police officer is quite nice. You sort of expect his Hindi to be Marthi mixed so not too much of a surprise there.

One place where the movie seems a bit far fetched is its portrayal of friendship. Somehow, it seems like the movie is not based in India at all. Guys and girls are shown as friends with guys hanging in their girl student friends' homes even after 12 at night. After being engaged I'm not allowed to meet my fiance beyond the time when sun goes down. In a society with these rules, the behaviour in the movie seems to be a bit too over the top.

The sad part of the movie is the heart of what it should have been about – the quandry of “''Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na..” ''That is when in a deep relationship how do you know that you are in love. Here's where I was expecting the “Aakash” style of confusion from Dil Chahta Hai. The pain, confusion, anguish that Aamir Khan portrays in that movie evokes a sense of deep empathy in you in that movie. However in this movie, Imraan is shown hanging around with his own girlfriend Meghna while Gnelia is shown hanging around with another guy. Sure there are some sparks but, you just don't feel that sense of confusion at all. Even the break up scene of Imran where his current girl friend just comes to him one fine morning and with no tears or confusion breaks up – that is a bit too unrealistic to believe, if they were in as deep a relationship that they are shown to be in. The only redeeming thing is the beautiful songs by AR Rehman. "Kabhi kabhi" sort of haunts you all along.. Again, the nice music is wasted on untimely songs and at times bad picturization. Somehow the songs don't seem to fit in.. The nice lyrics of "Kabhi kabhi Aditi.." is for cheering Aditi over a dead cat. Somehow that doesn't gell well!

Overall, the movie is worth a watch for the humour content. It does make you laugh and the comedu is decent. But, if you are expecting a movie that makes your heart cry out for the tender love of the two people on screen, be prepared to be let down. Its a nice fun movie with no message and nothing that evokes any sympathy but a nice bit of laughter, especially if you've gone to the theatre with your own sweet heart around.

Arranged Marriage Blues 3 – The First Meeting

The Funny Side of it..

There comes a time in arranged marriage when you finally feel that you may just have met the person that you were seeking, the one whom you thought would be your soul mate and the partner for life….. but, there is the lingering question, “Is she or isn’t she the one?” Well, to make up the mind, there is the process of the first meeting.

Generally, this meeting is supposed to be safe. So, it is not to be held in any secluded place. It is also planned in such a time of the day when the girl can feel safe to be around with an animal like you. So, it is generally planned for after noon. In case you are looking out in summer, hard luck. You’ll just have to bear the heat and talk about your heart in a crowded place where you’ll be more concerned on watching your feet than her eyes.

Anyway, without being a bit encouraging (??) let me get back to the meeting. So, you, the prospective groom will go to some pre-determined place. Sometimes, it can be some area like the main bus stand in the city or the railway station. It is generally a safe place in India, still. Or it could be a bit different. You may need to meet her in her third cousins’ fourth aunt’s second sister’s house which will be right at the heart of the city. So, you meet her.

At the first meeting, it is generally very confusing. You see, all your life you’d be drooling at all the girls around you. Suddenly when you are in the midst of the one who you think should be yours, you will be tongue tied and tame like a mouse. The fact that you are also in your best white full-sleeved formals in the middle of a blazing day does not help. But, let this not get in the middle of your romantic tryst. So, you meet her, say a silly ‘hi’ and she goes “What?”. You see, you need to speak up loudly – in case you forgot, you are near the bus stand or the railway station… It’s generally safe.

So, you decide to increase your decibel level to be heard over the din of the droning noise and start explaining about your work, your childhood and so on and on. She looks at you, you believe with lovely eyes, trying to absorb everything. All the while she’s like, I wonder if he already has a girl friend. And so, you explain everything impersonal to make it feel comfortable for her. And she speaks for the first time – “Do you have a girl friend?” And drives you speechless. You are in a predicament. You always wanted a girl friend but, with the charming attitude of sponge-bob square pants, let’s say hitting on girls is not one of your forte. Yet, it is a question of ego – how can you accept defeat? Well, you mull over it and finally decide that telling the truth is the best option – anyway she’ll find out later. So you say, “I have of friends who are girls..” Oh yeah, how original a line!

Anyway, she sort of measures you up and decides that you are not so bad after all. At least, you don’t look as geeky as the dubara mat poochna- ad model.. She gives you a chance.. and you take it. For the first time, you drop all the sham and tell her what you really are (well, almost.. the data on the password-protected hidden drive on you computer.. that’s still a secret for your private pleasure :-)

So, you take her to the nearest Café Coffee Day outlet. Barista is out of question – you see we are near station or bus stand – not near the posh M G Roads of India. Thus, your first date begins.. and life’s never the same again!

Oh yeah, the date planned for just one hour stretches out to over 2 hours.. and by the end of it you’ll come back feeling like it was all just a magic. If so, then you are hooked for life. Congrats! Your upma eating sessions can thus come to an end!

Disclaimer: If this bear any resemblance to anything that has happened to anyone, especially the author, it is purely coincidental. And if you find an incidence too coincidental, just assume that the author got inspired by the incident just like all our music directors do in Bollywood!

Arranged Marriage Blues – Part 2: Rejections

For those of you who have read my previous post, Arranged Marriage Blues, the following post is a continuation – though a bit serious.

I am writing this post after having shot off 4 rejection letters to 4 different prospects. Yes, 4 people on the same day! No, I never met anyone, nor did I speak to the girls. The way it worked was: Parents call my parents and send the photograph. If we like it, we continue, else, we reject! The girls never had a chance. She could have been the most charming person, the most sensitive being on earth, the perfect soul-mate. But, she never gets to talk to me or speak to me. Reason: The Process!

I know, that I sound like a complete chauvinist here. Though cliched, we are looking at beauty in the oldest sense of the term – beauty as being skin deep. No character, no personality, no education – just photo and skin deep beauty. And unfortunately, this is the way the process works!

The fact is, in this process, you don't get to meet the girl unless you are totally serious. It is a nice concept but, carries a lot of burden. Any meeting will happen in a very formal atmosphere with all the parents, relatives and friends present. Every meeting carries the expectations of all those present, the hopes of the two lonesome mate-seeking people and the burden of the parents to get their wards hitched into a marriage. Such a scenario is just not conducive in getting to know the other person! The only reason to go through this is you feel a sort of a connect with the other person – since there is absolutely nothing else to decide on the match, we just fall back on the only known thing – the looks! (Considering that almost all girls are now engineers, MBAs, etc, education is hardly a differentiator anyway)

My friends tease me that I am lucky. I get to see so many girls. Honestly, I believe that it is not exactly a cake walk. Every time I have to meet a girl and (God forbid) I have to reject her, it is a horrible time. Every rejection means a lot of hurt for the girl, the girl's parents and the whole family. It is not an easy situation for us too. The whole day, all of us are down. There is a mood of a depressed environment – sense of sadness that we have to say “No” but, somehow, feel so bad about the whole business! No wonder people try to reduce as many uncertainties as possible before the meet – and the horoscope guys mint money satisfying this inherent need for some sort of certainty in the whole process! At least by meeting them, parents can reject each other without going through the hassle of actually seeing each other face to face and then rejecting!

Somehow the meetings too seem more like a financial analysis. I am questioned about my salary, my incentives, promotions and work. If it were the HR of a reputed company, I'd not mind – maybe he/she would offer me a good alternative. But, in this scenario, it is tough to open up so much to a total stranger over your work, aspirations and future plans – that too at the very first meeting. And of course, it is equally hard to even question the girl about any of these aspects while sitting at her place and sipping at their coffee. Somehow it all feels like a power-play. Why can't the meeting take place at some neutral ground – some hotel, some temple, etc. That way, it would be far more comfortable to talk and be a bit more causal and open. No idea why this process was developed – and have no idea how this can be improved!

Finally, I'd just say that given a chance, please find someone. It's a lot less of a mental trauma than to see so many photos and rejecting girls. At least, you'll like someone for what they are rather than what they look like. In case you like upma and don't mind doing anything for it, then welcome to the club!

Book review: Social Intelligence

The revolutionary new science of human relationships

Book: Social Intelligence - The Revolutionary New Science of Human Relationships
Author: Daniel Goldman

Review
In this book, Daniel Goldman, author of Emotional Intelligence and Working with Emotional Intelligence explores a closely related area of Social Intelligence. Basically, Goldman breaks new ground saying that the brain of a human being is programmed to interact and pick up emotional cues from others. On picking the cues the ability to adjust our behavior is what signifies as the social intelligence.

Citing various research papers and some really interesting examples, Mr Goldman presents a very beautiful case on what we usually used to hear as grandma's saying - things like "smile and world will smile with you". The book is interesting to read but lacks one thing - actionability.

Unlike the book "Working with Emotional Intelligence", this book does not provide too many practical tips on improving one's Social Intelligence. Although, it does provide some indirect pointers, it cannot be called as a self-help book. Yet, I'd say it's a very nice book to read - at least once.

Following are some of the best quotes from the book. Hope it proves useful..

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Quotes from Social Intelligence: The Revolutionary New Science of Human Relationships

But in a romantic relationship, “power” can be roughly assessed in practical terms like which partner has more influence on how the other feels about him- or herself, or which has more say in making join decision on matters like finances, or in making choices about the everyday life, like whether to go to a party.

When we mentally rehearse an action – making a dry run of a talk we have to give, or envisioning the fine points of our golf swings – the same neurons activate in the promotor cortex as if we had uttered those words or made that seeing. Stimulating an act is, in the brain, the same as performing it, except that the actual execution is somehow blocked.

..laugher may be the shortest distance between two brains, an unstoppable infectious spread that builds an instant social bond.

Simply paying attention allows us to build an emotional connection. Lacking attention, empathy hasn't a chance.

..self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts, our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller and we increase our capacity for connection – or compassionate action.

Even though we can stop talking, we cannot stop sending signals (our toneof voice, our fleeting expressions) about what we feel. Even when people try to suppress all signs of their emotions, feelings have a way of leaking anyway. In this sense, when it comes to emotions, we cannot not communicate.

Empathic accuracy seems to be one key to a successful marriage, especially in the early yeas. Couples who during the first year or two of their marriage are more accurate in their readings of each other have higher levels of satisfaction, and their marriage is more likely to last.

Our experience of oneness – a sense of merging or sharing identities – increases whenever we take someone else's perspective, and it strengthens the more we see things from their point of view. The moment when empathy becomes mutual has an especially rich resonance. Two tightly looped people mesh mingles, even smoothly finishing sentences for each other – a sign of a vibrant relationships that marital researchers call “high-intensity validation”.

The three major systems for loving – attachment, caregiving and sexuality – all follow their own complex rules. At any given moment any of these three can be ascendant – say as a couple feels a warm togetherness, or when they cuddle like a baby, or while they make love. When all three of these love systems are operating, they feed romance at its richest: a relaxed, affectionate and sensual connection where rapport blossoms.

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Importance of a secure base
Caregiving between romantic partners comes in two main forms: providing a secure base where a partner can feel protected and offering a safe heaven from which that partner can take on the world. Ideally, both partners should be able to switch fluidly from one role to the other, providing solace or heaven – or receiving it – as needed. Such reciprocity marks a healthy relationship.

We provide a secure base whenever we come to our partner's emotional rescue, by
helping them solve a vexing problem, soothing them, or simply being present and listening. Once we feel a relationship offers a secure base, our energies are freer to tackle challenges. As John Bowlby put it, “all of us, from cradle to the grave, are happiest when life offers us a series of excursions, long or short, from a secure base.”

The sense of loneliness, rather than the sheer number of acquaintances and contacts a person has, correlates most directly with health: the lonelier a person feels, the poorer immune and cardiovascular functions tend to be.

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In a nourishing relationship, partners help each other manage their distressing feelings, just as nurturing parents do their children. When we are stressed out or upset, our partners can help us re-think what's causing our distress, perhaps to respond better or simply put things in perspective – in either case short-circuiting the negative neuroendocrine cascade.

The best bosses are people who are trustworthy, empathic and connected, who make us feel calm, appreciated and inspired. The worst – distant and arrogant – make us feel uneasy at best and resentful at worst.

People who feel that their boss provides a secure base.. are free to explore, be playful, take risks, innovate and take on new challenges. Another business benefit: if leaders establish such trust and safety, then they give tough feedback, the person receiving it not only stays more open but sees benefit in getting even hard-to-take information.

Even having just one person who can be counted on at work can make a telling difference in how we feel. In surveys of more than five million people working in close to five hundred organizations, one of the best predictors of how happy someone felt on their job was agreement with the statement, “I have a best friend at work.”

The leader need not necessarily agree with the person's position or reaction. But simply acknowledging their point of view, then apologizing if necessary or otherwise seeking a remedy, defuses some of the toxicity, rendering the destructive emotions less harmful.

Technology makes it easier and easier to disconnect from other people, and from ourselves.. Civilizations is in the midst of a vast singularity. What was once meaningful has been wiped away. Lives are lived sitting in front of a computer screen, getting personal connections at a technology. But the issues that matter most are families, community and social responsibility.

Arranged Marriage Blues - Part 1

Entrapment!

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be an animal in a zoo? That too, if you are a star attraction at the zoo – maybe something like a Chimpanzee or a Gorilla? Do you know what it would feels like to see people sticking their face at the glass window, making strange faces – literally reversing the position of who the animal is? Well, I suddenly realized what it feels to in such a situation!

On Sunday, the 16th of December, I had to undergo this horrendous trial of having to sit through a tormenting situation – a situation filled with extreme pain and mental trauma - the pain of having to *see* a girl.

You see, I am planning to get married. So, I have to undergo this ritualistic trial of *seeing a girl*. Essentially, the process is quite simple. You go to girl’s place. You sit with all the people gawking at you with wide-open eyes boring into you – as if they want to literally see through you and enter into your mind – something like Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter. Then enters the girl. By this time, you are generally keeping your throat from going hoarse by drinking copious amounts of water. If the girl is a knock-off eye-catching beauty, you gulp the water and sit up with a bit of hiccup. If not, you gulp down water – something like flushing the contents down the drain. But, you see – in my life, things seldom happen as they way it should. And so begins a saga – the saga of the Parrot Dad.

Parrot Dad arranges the meet
You see, in this story, there is only one primary character, the dad of the girl. He is the ever-present, all-knowing being who is perpetually in a hurry to get things completed. So, the saga begins when this dad noticed my resume lying around, unused, unseen and unheard of at one of the temples near Jayanagar. He looked at it and was stuck instantly by my beatific, gullible and vulnerable look. Instantly, he noted down the details and no time, he was on a walk to the address given in the resume.

You see, the address given in the resume was for my Uncle’s house. So, this girl’s dad went to my Uncle’s place. Unfortunately, my Uncle wasn’t at his place. Not to be put down, the determined dad knocked on the doors of the owner – who happens to be one of our distant relatives. So, sitting there at an unknown person’s house (for him that is), he regales the hapless owner about his job, his wife, his beautiful daughter. He then tells how he has nurtured his beautiful angel like a little parrot – never ill-treating her and always ensuring she had her dose of chilli for lunch and dinner. By the time the story ended, my Uncle had returned and there was a repeat telecast of the performance – this time for my Uncle and Aunt. And so, my relatives impressed by the stellar performance duly informed us about this wonderful girl whose proposal had just come through their wide open doors. We too were hooked. And so a decision was made to make the two love birds meet to strike up a harmonious chord.

(Please note, there is a lot more to the story wherein the dad called my dad some 2 times daily with the side-effect of nearly driving him bald – but, that’s digressing!
Oh yeah for the uninformed, in kannada, we ‘maglina gini tara belisidde’ meaning, I nurtured my baby girl like a parrot – so the title.)

The fateful meeting
And so, on the auspicious day of 16th of December, 4:15 pm, we entered the zone of the all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present dad of the girl. It was his house, his lair, the nest where the beautiful parrot of his had grown up.

Well, the house was near Kanakpura road and to get there, we had to go through a spine-breaking journey over near-roadless pathways. Our host though had arranged for a car to tide us over the journey.

And so, we went into the house and were sitting expectantly. Everyone was pretty excited – my mom, dad, uncle and aunt. Strangely, I wasn’t. Somehow, I had sensed the ominous clouds that were hovering over our heads….

The meeting began with the ever-present dad firing away a rapid slavo of questions: So, where do you work? Oh consistent technologies is it? How many people are there in your company? Oh 45,000 is it? So, where did you stay in Hyderabad? What was the rent? How many brothers does dad have? By then, it was too much. The Dad had never spent so much time trying to know someone else. When you have an ego as big as the Eiffel Tower, it is tough seeking answers from others. And so, he reverted back to his story.

He was working in Amsandra – and knew my uncle for all of 20 years – such good friends no? (My Uncle had met him 20 years ago and again the previous week – how this qualified as 20 years of friendship is a point worth debating on. But, in the presence of Dad, there was no question of debates. Everything was a fact to be accepted as an axiom). He had written papers on mining of gold that the bloody suckers from Poona University and Delhi University had copied away! Tsk. Tsk. The politics in job was horrible. The promotion cycle is screwed up! IT is better no. No matter. Dad was a busy person. He had to go for a conference to Hyderabad. He had prepared a CD for it. “Do you want to watch it?” asked the hard-working Dad. Graciously, we said no and escaped from a horror movie.

Upma and tea
At this time, I was feeling a bit restless. You see, the point of us going to the house was to see this mythical beauty of a parrot. Instead, all I had seen was the Dad and the 1.5 seat mom. I was already wondering about the plight of the poor son-in-law who would fall into the clutches of this beastly Dad. But, I was proved all wrong. My misjudgment had never been worse! The Dad proved that he was more beastly even beyond imagination.. Just read on..

And so, after having told us all about work, job, politics and enquiring about consistent technologies (do anybody of you know any company by this name?) Dad asked us a question. “To see or not to see?” Well, like good guests, we said, anything is fine. Big Mistake.
So, Dad proposed that we eat. And so we ate. We ate Upma. You see, in arranged marriages, the Lord in heaven has pre-ordained that whenever a guy accepts that he is tired of being alone and wants to have a companion, he should pass through a cathartic treatment of purging for all the sins that he has committed as a bachelor. And the only way to do it is by making the guy eat Upma.(See Principle of Arranged Marriage)

Priciple of Arranged Marriage
The basic principle of arranged marriage is simple. You see a girl. You eat upma. You either keep seeing a girl until you find the right one, coupled with eating upma. Or you keep eating upma until you tire of it and decide on the girl who happens to be the reason for you eating the upma. So, you see, the deciding factor in arranged marriage is the upma and not the girl. You last till you crave for upma. By the time you are done with arranged marriage, the word upma will trigger sever emotional trauma. I wonder if Human Rights group have heard about this horrible treatment. Maybe, I should tip them off!

And in case you’ve always wondered why Divorce rate is low in marriages – it is because of Upma. Think. Who with a right mind would want to go through the trauma of upmas again? Thinking over this horror, husbands make do with wives and live happily ever after!

So, coming back to our story, upma was served minus the girl. Normally, you eat upma, stare at the girl. Girl generally does not eat upma but only stare at you. So, your throat that is already constricted gets still more narrow. You generally get hiccups. There is a drama and questioning if the upma is so spicy. There’s the sheepish smile and the red-faced reply that upma is not spicy. And life goes on. Not so at the house of Dad. Here, I ate merrily. Dad was too engrossed in his talking. So, I ate upma and jamoon in peace!

Then, tea was served. The Dad does not like tea. And we heard a 10 minute lecture on why his wife’s side prefer tea while his family prefers coffee. This lead to a discussion on the innumerable brothers and sisters of the girl’s mom and the Dad. By this time, I was full and looking forward to get up and go home. After all, my job was done! But, as fate would have it this was not the case.

Enter Parrot
Finally, the Dad realized the purpose of meeting – making the boy and girl meet. And so, he dispatched his wife to unlock the cage and get the parrot out. And so came out the parrot. The beautiful parrot looked like a sleeping beauty – meaning she looked like she’d just got out of bed, hair rumpled, clothes crumpled and face disgruntled.

She sat down on the sofa infront of me but, never even meeting my look. She was engrossed in the Mummy Special dance program on Sony Entertainment Television. And so, Dad graciously said,. “Here’s our beautiful (?) daughter. You can ask any question you want?” Well, I wanted to ask something like, “So, you brushed your teeth?” But, I was not entirely convinced that this would be taken in the right spirit. And so, I gave my famous “I am shit-scared of this drama- I want to get the hell out” smile and wrenched my hand.

Since I did not venture to ask any questions, the Dad took upon this responsibility too. So, we, the audience watched Dad the interviewer ask questions to the Girl who could not be disturbed from Mommy Special. It went on like, “So, where do you work?” “zzz” “How many people in your company?” “I did not count” “What do you do at work?” “zzz”

Gathering an iota of courage (probably from the Upma that I just ate) I ventured to ask one question. “Since I am non-IT, can you tell me what is the work that you do?” To which, my dad who seemed to have taken a cue from the Dad replied for the entire period of time. And so, with one sole question of mine, the Q&A session was interrupted by the door bell. Girl got up and walked inside.

Visitors to the Zoo
When the Dad opened the door, there were a few neighbors. They had come over to hand over wedding invitation. The Dad being the ever gracious host told us about the neighbors – these neighbors suspiciously looked like relatives of the Dad. Auntie visitor sat down and gave me one good look with the question, “so this is the boy?” To which the Dad replied, “Yes, he is an engineer. From consistent technology”. Eeeks!

I-am-the-greatest Uncle was looking down at me. The Dad told us that this Uncle had written books on horoscope. No idea who read such horror. I was staring more intently into the dregs of water in my tumbler lest the penetrating eyes of Uncle scorched me! After about 10 minutes of mutual talk, Uncle wanted to leave but, Aunty who wanted to have milk stay put. Only after milk did she get up and leave. By them, I had undergone three examinations by the three visitors, Uncle, Aunty and the ever-grinning Uncle’s friend.

Next started the walk in of the Dad’s brothers. Enter brother 1. Again, the same gawking look. Same introduction – me working in consistent (Eeks again!) Enter brother 2 – repeat story. Enter brother 1 & 2 – some more story on how IT stressful. By the end of this discourse, I was thanking God that I was not already resting comfortably 7 feet under the ground but, hey, I was marked (oops destined) for the parrot and I had to be the Lucky One.

Next came in Brother1’s two sons. Then came in Brother2’s two daughters. Same introductions. Then the trickle of visitors turned into a tide of relatives. It was like a sitting in front of a cinema auditorium – you see one person, then another and suddenly a deluge of people rushing out. We were all amazed. How on earth could all this cinema-full crowd remained inside the house without uttering a sound for such a long time?

Oh yes, for all this time, the girl was nowhere to be seen. Maybe it was time for her evening chilli. Don’t know. When relatives aged between 7-10 years started to trickle in, my mom told me to get up and flee. And so, I got and fled. Without casting a glance back at the house of the Dad and the Parrot Girl, we escaped out and rushed back to civilization where people were quite normal, not too intelligent and all knowing. Now, I am waiting for the Dad to call us and ask what our opinion is. Do you, my favorite readers want to hazard a guess?

Life of a modern nomad

It all started on 911. My life took a sudden turn. Peaceful existence at Feltham suddenly went for a toss and life became a cauldron of change after change, leaving me grappling with so many issues with no permanent address to turn to!

Before starting my cribs, let me start the story at the beginning…

In the beginning
My father had applied for a voluntary retirement and after a lot of politicking and other tactics, he was granted the retirement. This happened at the end of July. August went off in dad trying to get our house vacated in Mysore. The guy residing there kept saying he would vacate by September and parents were happy with the deadline.

In the meantime, my life in London took a sudden turn. Clients decided that they wanted to reduce money and send one of us back to India. Since I’d asked for a release, I was the chose one. This was clear. But, the clients and our management were just not able to make up the mind on when to send me back So, I was left in a sort of limbo as to what would happen next – and more importantly, where will I be returning – to Pune or to Mysore?

And then, it all happened at once. On September 9th, parents decided to send over the luggage to Mysore. September 11th, they departed from Pune to Mysore. When they were in transit, I was given the message that I was to return to India in a week’s time! So here I was with my parents going to Mysore, with no house to stay and to top it, I was returning *home* when I had no such thing left!

Back to India
I returned back to India on 19th September and stayed in my Aunt’s place for about 3 days “vacation”. I had a full 15 days of vacation to take and I could not utilize it simply because I had nowhere to stay. With the MBA submissions looming over the head, it was a hectic time, trying to balance studies with the rest of life and the changes happening all around. Focusing on studies was like a mammoth responsibility!

After that, I was back at office and in my favourite office of Hyderabad. It was supposed to be a great home-coming. Yet, this too did not feel the same. Almost all the people I knew and worked with were either working elsewhere or they had quit. The whole crowd appeared to be new and the huge populace of nameless, faceless entities seemed like a completely new place to me with nothing to anchor me to the office of the yore that I was familiar with. Suddenly, I was forced to confront yet another change – a change in the very people whom I knew and worked with and the new environment in the office.

The only solace during this period of time was the nice guest house provided by Cognizant. It took off some of worries and I could focus on work and studies. But, like they say, things always don’t last forever. Before I knew it, it was time for me to move out the guest house since my two weeks was coming to an end.

So, I went for house hunting trips to Madhapur, Miyapur, Kondapur and KPHB Colonies. The houses kept improving with the search. Maybe it was not really true or maybe it was due to the very low expectations that I started out with!

The first few houses were a complete fiasco. One house had a room without a room. (‘Saar, it will be cool saar!,’ was what the agent told me. How it was possible was left to air or lack of it) The next house had a bathroom where either a bucket could fit or a human could fit. Not both. I tried to visualize the daily ablution process and came up with a naught. The third place had a single room. It looked really old, worn and badly maintained. The agent said, ‘Saar, just pay us the money and this house will have false roofing, marble will be gleaming, kitchen will be shimmering..’ You get the drift. At least, the guy had good imagination. I probably did not.

The next few houses turned out to be okay but, were looking only for *family*. Oh yeah, and a 11 months bond. 11 months? I could not give that commitment to my own company – how did they expect it for a house? And so, I was literally locked out of house again! With nowhere to go, I shifted into a “Working Men’s Hostel”. That saga was another terrible one.

Hostel Horrendous
So, after a 4 year and 3 months, I was back in a hostel. It felt like the lowest point in life. It was almost like being thrown into a jail: the small room, the confined space, the inhumane service of food and the mercenary behaviour of the hostel owner. When I entered to have dinner in the common room on that day, I felt so completely alone and so very desolate. For some strange reason, I was almost on the verge of just getting up and screaming out and lashing out against everyone on why I was being treated in such a way. Without being able to eat any of the cold stuff, I just got up and left. That night I barely slept since I was pre-occupied with my desperate situation. I so wanted to just take a week off and go home. And I had not home…

Well, just when you think you’ve reached the bottom and the only way now is up, things happen and people dig a hole at the bottom. And so, entered our hero from engineering college, my room mate in the hostel. This guy had college from 9-3. He’d sleep in the evening and switch on the TV all night. With a fever and cough, I was already half mad. This was the last straw. I could take it no more. The next day, I went to HR and centre head and told about my predicament. This is when the situation started to improve.

Light at the end of the tunnel
After all the mess, I was finally asked to shift back to another guest house. I was also promised a transfer to Bangalore. The timeline was as soon as I was released from the project. Once done, I would be able to return to Bangalore. The plan was to get an idea of the centre and ask the parents to find a house and keep everything ready for me to shift in!

The new guest house is like a movie set – awesome 2 bedroom room for just me, a television, a huge table, wireless internet! The food is great and the luxury is truly something that I could get used to 

So, now me waiting for the news on my final departure to Bangalore!

Quotes from The Long Tail by Chris Anderson

The Long Tail

How endless choice is creating unlimited demand

Chris Anderson

Recently, I completed reading the book, The Long Tail. I was quite impressed by some of the points. I was planning to make a presentation in my organization and created notes for it. Here are the salient points that I found interesting. Hope it's useful to you too!

Buy the book, India Only


Strength of broadcast vs unicasting

The great thing about broadcast is that it can bring one show to millions of people with unmatchable efficiency. But it can't do the opposite – bring a million shows to one person each. Yet that is exactly what the Internet does so well. The economics of broadcast era required hit shows – big buckets – to catch huge audiences. Serving the same stream to millions of people at the same time is hugely expensive and wasteful for a distribution network optimized for point-to-point communications.

Increasingly, the mass market is turning into a mass of niches.

Observation of Long Tail

The three main observations:

1. the tail of available variety is far longer than we realize
2. it's now within the reach economically
3. all those niches, when aggregated, can make up a significant market – seemed indisputable, especially backed up with heretofore unseen data.

Weakness of broadcasting

The curse of broadcast technologies is that they are profligate users of limited resources. The result is yet another instance of having to aggregate large audiences in one geographic area – another high bar above which only a fraction of potential content rises.

Observations of Long Tail in real life

In fact, as these companies offered more and more (simply because they could), they found that demand actually followed supply. The act of vastly increasing the choice seemed to unlock demand for that choice. Whether it was latent demand for niche goods that was already there or the creation of new demand, we don't yet know. But what we do know is that with the companies for which we had the most complete data – Netflix, Amazon and Rhapsody – sales of products offered by their bricks-and-mortar competitors amounted to between a quarter and nearly half of total revenus – and that percentage is rising each year. In other words, the fastest-growing part of their business is sales of products that aren't available in traditional physical retail stores at all.

When you can dramatically lower costs of connecting supply and demand, it changes not just the numbers, but the entire nature of the market. This is not just a quantitative change, but a qualitative one, too. Brining niches within reach reveals latent demand for non-commercial content. Then, as demand shifts toward the niches, the economics of providing them improve further, and so on, creating a positive feedback loop that will transform entire industries – and the culture – for decades to come.

Young people don't want to rely on Godlike figure from above to tell them what's important. They want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it. (Rupert Murdoch)

Response rates as low as 1 percent could still be profitable.

Assumptions for the Long Tail:

1. There are far more niche goods than hits

2. The cost of reaching those niches is now falling dramatically

3. Simply offering more variety, however does not shift demand by itself. Consumers must be given ways to find niches that suit their particular needs and interests. These 'filters' can drive demand down the tail.

4. Once there's massively expanded variety and the filters to sort through it, the demand curve flattens

5. All those niches add up – so collectively they can comprise a market rivaling the hits

6. Once all this is in shape the natural shape of the demand is revealed.

Significance of blogs and social media like sites

Consumers also act as guides individually when they post user reviews or blogs about their likes and dislikes. Because it's now so easy to tap this grassroots information when you're looking for something new, you're more likely to find what you want faster than ever. That has the economic effect of encouraging you to search further outside the world you already know, which drives down into the niches.

There will always remain a division of labor between professionally and amateurs. But it may be more difficult to tell the two groups apart in the future.

Once upon a time, a talent eventually made its way to the tools of production; now it's the other way around.

From filmmakers to bloggers, producers of all sorts that start in the Tail with few expectations of commercial success can afford to take chances. They're willing to take more risks, because they have less to lose. There's no need for permission, a business plan, or even capital. The tools of creativity are now cheap, and talent is more widely distributed than we know. Seen this way, the Long Tail promises to become the crucible of creativity, a place where ideas form and grow before evolving into commercial form.

That's the root calculus of the Long Tail: The lower the costs of selling, the more you can sell. As such, aggregators are a manifestation of the second force, democratizing distribution. They all lower the barrier to market entry, allowing more and more things to cross that bar and get out there to find the audience.

Like the chain retailers, Amazon also connects centralized supply with scattered demand, but the genius of its model is that the store and customer don't have to be in the same place. Ironically, this makes it more likely that the supply and demand will actually connect. Regardless, even if they don't Amazon bears none of the cost – the surplus stock simply depreciates on the shelves of a third party.

Peers trust peers. Top-down messaging is losing traction, while bottom-up buzz is gaining power.

For a generation of customers used to doing their buying research via search engine, a company's brand is not what the company says it i, but what Google says it is. The new tastemakers are us. Word of mouth is now a public conversation, carried in blog comments and customer reviews, exhaustively collated and measured. The ants have megaphones.

In world of infinite choice, context, not the content is the king.

Probabilistic logic of information and accuracy on Long Tail sites

The advantage of probabilistic systems is that they benefit from the wisdom of the crowd and as a result can scale nicely both in breadth and depth. But because they do this by sacrificing absolute certainty on the microscale, you need to take any single source with a grain of salt. Wikipedia should be the first source of information, not the last. It should be a site for information exploration, not the definitive source of facts.

The same is true for blogs, no single one of which is authoritative. Blogs are a Long Tail, and it is always a mistake to generalize about the quality or nature of content in the Long Tail – it is, by definition variable and diverse. But collectively blogs are proving more than an equal to mainstram media. You just need to read more than one of them before making up your own mind.

The point is not that every Wikipedia entry is probabilistic, but that the entire encylcopedia behaves probabilistically. Your odds of getting a substantive, up-to-date, and accurate entry for any given subject are excelled on Wikipedia, even if every individual entry isn't excellent.

With probabilistic systems, though, there is only a statistical level of quality, which is to say: Some things will be great, some things will be medicore, and some things will be absolutely crappy. That's just the nature of the beast. The mistake of many of the critics is to expect otherwise.

On why Long Tail is a non-zero sum game

On a store shelf or in any other limited means of distribution, the ratio of good to bad matters because it’s a zero sum game: Space for one eliminates space for the other. Prominence of one obscures the other….

But when you have unlimited shelf space, it’s a non-zero sum game… Inventory is “non-rivolrous” on the Web and the ratio of good to bad is simply a signal-to-noise problem, solvable with information tools. Which is to say it’s not much of a problem at all. You just need better filters. In other words, the noise is still out there, but Google allows you to effectively ignore it. Filters rule!

You can think of the Long Tail starting as a traditional monetary economy at the head and ending in a non-monetary economy in the tail. In between the two, it's mixture of both.

On mass markets

The compromises necessary to make something appeal to everyone mean that it will almost certainly not appeal perfectly to anyone – that’s why they call it lowest common denominator.

Why Long Tail changes Pareto rules

1. You can offer many more products
2. Because it is so much easier to find these products (thanks to recommendations and other filters), sales are spread more evenly between hits and niches.
3. Because of the economics of niches is roughly the same as his, there are profits to be found at all levels of popularity.

Whether people will pay for niche content

So bottom line: Human attention is more expendable than money. The primary effect of the Long Tail is to shift our taste toward niches, but to the extent we’re more satisfied by what we’re finding, we may well consume more of it. We just won’t necessarily pay a lot more for the privilege.

If you think about it, today’s hit is tomorrow’s niche.

About how a article can be accessible even when it is not the latest

What’s particularly interesting about time and the Long Tail is that Google appears to be changing the rules of the game. For online media, like media anywhere, there is a tyranny of the new. Yesterday’s news is fishwrap, and once content falls off the front page of a Web site, its popularity plummets. But as sites find more and more of their traffic coming from Google, they’re seeing this rule break.

On Infinite Shelf space

But we are entering the era of infinite shelf space. Two of the main scarcity functions of traditional economics – the marginal costs of manufacturing and distribution – are trending to zero in Long Tail markets of digital goods, where bits can be copied and transmitted at almost no cost at all.

Social media

In short, we’re seeing a shift from mass culture to massively parallel culture. Whether we think of it this way or not, each of us belongs to many different tribes simultaneously, often overlapping, often not. We share some interest with our colleagues, some with our families, but not all of our interests. Increasingly, we have other people to share them with, people we have never met or even think of as individuals (e.g. blog authors or playlist creators).

Effectiveness of blogs

What really sticks in the craw of conventional journalists is that although individual blogs have no warrant of accuracy, the blogosphere as a whole has a better error-correction machinery than the conventional media do. The rapidity with which vast masses of information are pooled and sifted leaves the conventional media in the dust. Not only are there millions of blogs and thousands of bloggers who specializes, but, what is more, readers post comments that augment the blogs, and the information those comments, as in the blogs themselves, zips around blogland at the speed of electronic transmission.

Effect on news journalists and media

But news and information is clearly no longer the exclusive domain of professionals.

With an estimated 15 million bloggers out there, the odds that a few will have something important and insightful to say are good and getting better. And our filters improve, the odds that we’ll see them are getting better, too. From a mainstream media perspective, this is simply more competition, whatever the source. And some audience will prefer it. Like it or not, fragmentation is inevitable.

On why more information is good then a few “authoritative sources”

Fundamentally, a society that asks questions and has the power to answer them is healthier society than one that simply accepts what it’s told from a narrow range of expers and institutions. If professional affliation is no longer a proxy for authority, we need to develop our own gauges of quality. This encourages us to think for ourselves. Wikipedia is a starting point for exploring a topic, not the last word.

Secret of Long Tail

The secret to creating a thriving Long Tail business can be summarized in two imperitives:

1. Make everything available
2. Help me find it.

Creating a successful Long tail aggregator

1. Move inventory way in… or way out
2. Let customers do the work
3. One distribution method doesn’t fit all
4. One product doesn’t fit all
5. Share information
6. Think “and” not “or”
7. Trust the market to do your job: “In abundant markets, you can simply throw everything out there and see what happens, letting the market sort it out. The difference between “pre-filtering” and “post-filtering” is predicting versus measuring, and the latter is invariably more accurate. Online markets are nothing if not information-rich, it’s relatively easy for people to compare goods, and spread the word about they like”
8. Understand the power of free

Chak De! India

Yes, folks, I finally watched a Shah Rukh Khan movie on the very first weekend! It was none other than the hockey-match fervour of Chak De! India.

The movie is loosely based on reality of an Indian hockey player who is accused of being a traitor. The player then comes back as the coach of the India team to lead it to greater glory and redeem himself of the black mark on his career. (See Wikipedia)

One thing that stood out in the movie was the focus. There was no emotional melodrama and no unnecessary dialogues on varied topics. The movie is about hockey and sticks to it. Considering that the movie is from Yash Raj films, this was quite amazing! There was no regular naach-gaana, US Flag based dance sequence, heroine-hero rain sequence - nothing! There was just the hockey matches, hockey match strategy and hockey match training.

Various other points too were raised in the movie but, it was played down and subtle enough so as not to bore the viewer. The typical bharatiya naari - holding belan is renounced against a self-confident, self-esteem filled world-beating player.

The constant bickering and Hindi-Punjabi-Tamil-Telugu divide is also nicely highlighted. The scene where the Manipur and Mizoram girls are welcomed as mehmaan was amusing and at the same time, a bit sad. In the nation where they are citizens, people literally treat them as aliens! Come to think of it. As an Indian, I can clearly tell you which areas in UK are filled with desi janata, Indian restaurant and good places to visit. How many of us can claim to say the same about the north-east states? Or for that matter, apart from weather forecast, how many of us even care of the north-east? Hmm.. Point to mull over.

The highlight of the movie was the coach, Mr Shah Rukh Khan. For a change, he's not into his 'k-k-k-' mode of heroine haunting or love triangulation. This time, he's focused and he wants to redeem his loss. Nothing more, nothing less. He's played the role with a good deal of subtlety and control. There are a few areas where he is almost on the verge of breaking into his formula dialogue delivery mode but, the director has restrained him to deliver a good performance. Good job Mr Director.

The matches in Australian World Cup are quite well shot and believable. The only issues is that the movie tries to go through each match of the league and quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals that it seems to lack some depth. One area where the Bollywood catches up is the last minute pep-talk for the last match. The coach declares that "I'll not tell you what to play. You will go out and know what to play". And yet, he's there on the scene communicating with the goal-keeper via telepathy. This looks a bit out of ordinary - yet not all that incredible, considering we have Rajini movies running on the other screens... :)

One area where the movie failed is in showing the technical brilliance of the coach. He's shown as a man on mission and motivation. Yet, his skill as a hockey player is not really explored. The coach is shown playing with cups and saucers, etc. yet, never is he really shown explaining the strategy and game to his players. The players are shown as simple students agreeing to whatever "Coach Sir" says. This part somehow leaves you a bit saddened since you come out without having learnt anything much about hockey.

The other area which I felt a bit unnecessary was the cricket bashing. No matter what, every country is mad about one men's game. It's football, baseball, soccer or cricket for most nations. No matter what, the sheer power, speed, raw animalistic team hunting spirit is laid bare in these games and it commands a viewership that's not surpassed by any other games. Needlessly cavilling about the lack of support, or the "hockey mein chakke nahin hote" type of dialogues are not really needed. In a country separated by so many divisions, cricket is literally the only unifying factor. Let's not to try and destroy that!

Despite all this, I'd say it's a movie worth watching. The humour in various languages, the mixture of literally unmixable team mates and the wide-eyed girls in Austrailia make up for the lack in other areas.

So go on. Say Chak De! And start watching.