Spew notes

The Internet is going to be BANNED.

2016-07-31T23:32:00.001+05:30

The internet has over a billion people connected to it today. Engaging with it, driving it, learning from it, conducting commerce and relationships on it. Its easy to think of the internet as one common, global identity which lives on facebook, google and twitter but of course that’s not the case. There’s the commercial internet, the information internet, the science internet, the pornographic internet, the internet of cultures and sub-cultures, the dark internet and so many others.

I feel we are still in the early stages of the internet — relatively elite, billion users who like to believe that the internet has rules, where we know UPPER CASE is rude and we are easy with our digital slang. Its easy to think of the internet then as a relatively calm forum, some unruly elements here and there but overall a place that can be open and peaceful forever.

I think we are wrong.

The next billion users are going to be a mass billion, driving the shape and nature of the popular and mainstream information internet - facebook, twitter, youtube. As the internet connects to the hinterlands of the world, we are going to see another kind of billion connected and that billion is going to be crude, raw, earthy, passionate — creating a “mass internet” and bringing to our stark attention the kind of world we really live in. That our society is not the really just our friends and family but a mass of possibly illiberal, local views. The next version of the information and social internet is almost bound to be ugly, seeing that the mass of people especially in populous parts of the developing world are still very ethnic, deeply-rooted, conservative to a local identity and as such are vulnerable to a crisis of a local identity — a crisis of custom or community. Not that the rest of the world is immune from these crises but what’s different is the sheer number.

This internet is not really built for balanced debate and equivocal, nuanced views but is driven instead by sheer numbers, and this is getting hard to control and manage without regulation.

Before we had the internet, we had the press, and it was relatively simple for a mass leader’s voice to be amplified to many by controlling or managing few information sources. Media was used intelligently, articulately even by leaders good and bad. Some chose to shut it down and have a state-sponsored vacuum. It was possible.

Today, the forces between leaders and masses have equalized. It’s harder for public leaders and governments to manage information flow, avoid personal attack and rise above the debate. This is going to get much, much worse.

Is this necessarily good? or just plain bad? I can’t really say. All I know is that it’s unmanageable. Especially in populous, semi-literate countries, its easy to spark debate, rage and conflagrations over almost any kind of issue. The very power of the internet — its virality becomes its death. Governments routinely shut down cellular communications in areas with unrest. How long before we see almost daily unrest in various parts of the nation flaring up over the internet? Twitter and facebook are platforms that can topple governments today. How long before we start to see them being regulated? Or Banned.

I hope I am wrong but If I was a leader , even a liberal one - I would see no other way to govern a nation but to manage the internet. Shut down mainstream parts of it where people connect and can address each other without barrier — and keep alive only essential parts of the internet- the commerce, the research and so on.

We liberals will scream ourselves hoarse about rights of free speech and debate heatedly about how history has shown that muzzling of the people has never worked. How its important to let people speak freely to let a nation breathe. As the mass internet grows and we start to see the ugliness parade on all our popular feeds, I am afraid we will start to feel differently.

Sometimes its hard to remember there never has been an internet in our planet’s history. And I am beginning to think there will never be.

Talking to your 20 year old about Careers — is it time for the Learn-Earn-Learn career?

2016-07-31T23:30:00.002+05:30

I was talking to my 20 year old niece -an Economics grad about “career advice” and “job opportunities” and I surprised myself. Surprised myself with how boring I sounded to myself. And it got me thinking — this is old hat. The world is going to be very different for a 30-year old in 2030.

I thought about how much the world has changed for India in two decades. And how much more so for skilled Indians — Lawyers, Doctors, Engineers (software engineers), MBAs and even artists. There has been economic hyper-growth for skilled Indians who are seeing their incomes double every 3–6 years. And it might jump even more in the next two decades. With it has come so much economic freedom and financial security — yes even for the notoriously doomsday predictors — incomes are far outstripping expenses, and if you net out the asset building mentality (read houses, gold and more houses), most Indians born north of 1980 are / will be very well-off (relative to what they grew up with). In no small measure, due to the fact that for most Indians, beyond a certain point they remain relatively frugal in their spending.

What then of our children? our 15-year olds and our 20-year olds? Do they have to go get hyper-educated and then “build a career” like we had to?

For the large part, building a career=do meaningless work for the first five years of your career, find your sweet spot, earn money, buy a house, get married and then earn some money, hit vice-president or senior consulting physician or and then earn some more? Until you pretty much hit a wall of cholesterol and stress and general irrelevance before you go into hyper-retirement consisting of chess, arthritis and the odd mentee meeting.

I think we can do better than that when we talk to our 20 year olds. And there are a few reasons why they are different from us.

A) Zero Drive to buy homes: One of the biggest drivers for a lot people so far has been the ability to own a living space. Today, there already exist multiple homes in the family, and they just don’t know the ownership scarcity that we grew up used to. They don’t have to have the “home EMI” or even if they do, I doubt they will maximizing square footage. What this really means that notions of “security” are changing. From assets to… ? something.

B) Hey, Look at my Ferrari ..errr.. NOT really: We don’t realize how used to we have gotten to ‘competing’ for respect and how old hat its gotten. These guys have grown up with relative wealth and more importantly, their entire ‘social status’ set has moved online. Its far easier (or tougher?) to carve your niche and gain respect with your own life story than it used to be.

C) Its about Skills: I think peer respect has moved from a paradigm of “what do you own?” to “what can you do?” or “what are you world-class at?”. Being an accountant or an investment banker just isn’t cool enough any more. Coding, Science, Engineering, Psychology, Photography, Design, — so much to choose from — and why choose only one?

Something else is happening in a parallel universe.

Learning has gotten ridiculously accessible and democratic. Average students are getting into good universities — there are enough seats to go around, as long as you know the tricks. The elitism of red-bricked premier education is not as intimidating as it used to be.

From remote learning programs to short duration, high intensity courses from good institutions, learning doesn’t have to be the long decadal grind that it used to be. I believe its a lot easier to super-specialise and I also believe there is more of a market for niche skills than there used to be and lot easier to earn money deploying just skills as opposed to a resume.

So what then?

Career — In a nutshell, I don’t see careers as defined as long accumulation of skills experience and reputation as being as relevant going forward. (Caveat: hard skill guys — Lawyers, Doctors? A scarier thought is what if the caveat doesn’t apply!) I think the new age Gen-Z “worker” won’t really work as an employee who will “invest” years into an organization to earn her equity and respect by climbing the intricate hierarchy we built and nurtured.

It might instead evolve to a cycle of deepening skills in a “Learn- Earn- Learn” cycle with a working life of say 40–45 years being split over 5–7 year bursts of earning in various organizations, roles, ventures interrupted by a few months of deep learning or sabbaticals.

Its sounds blasphemous to say but money and career is not going to drive the next generation employee in countries like ours. Human labour is going to be a lot, lot more valuable than we imagine it today. Among other things, happiness, learning and freedom are going to count for a lot more.

So what are you telling 20 year olds today?

The way we think about death is broken.

2016-07-31T23:29:00.001+05:30

Actually, the way we think about life is broken. How many of us think about death and life anyway? Why should we after all? Isn’t death inevitable? Why spend time thinking about something that is going to happen any way? Besides, we aren’t wired to think about death. We push it away. We are wired to think about life. About survival. Which is why we may be missing the bus on an incredibly important thing.

Once you get out of your teens, and arrive at reasonably stable identity for yourself, your mad rush, in the next four or five decades or so (for the majority anyway) is to fighting the fear of running out. You work very hard to provide for your family and yourself for a time period that is damn near infinite in your mind. If there are children in your family, you are almost certain to feel the responsibility of providing for them and their children. To put it bluntly, you are feeling the pressure of creating wealth for an infinite period. Which means you will push the daily and final boundary of your productive life.

It is possibly natural to think that way. It’s possibly also very foolish.

Is there another way to think about this? Yes, and its been around since mankind itself. At least the theory exists. Practiced by a rare few.

Choose your time to die. At a certain age.At a certain level of physical health.There are a million ways to think about it. But choose.

And once you are past that age, why wait for an illness or a truck or a fall down the stairs. why not choose a day? Spend it with friends and family. Have a glass of wine. Go to sleep. Go away laughing. I know I have decided. I know I need to let everyone important know. But I need this to be my choice. I need to be in control if I can.

I have been spending some time with seniors of late — and it shocks me how much rationality can erode with age. People I have known all my life seem to change with age. Some literally fall off a cliff after a certain age. A lot of fear seems to set in. A lot of “irrationality”. These are of course qualitative judgments and there is so much to correct for. But one thing is blindingly obvious — I cannot take my mind for granted.

I think I was prepared for physical frailty. But seeing myself thirty years on, I am shocked at how much I am going to degenerate even in relatively good health. It is like all the inconsistencies and eccentricities, which I smooth over and manage today to present a reasonably consistent personality, are going to be magnified and find explosive expression. I am not going to be able to trust myself to stay on as a being of relative reason.

It’s a shattering realization.

And I know now I need to plan for it. And the more I think about it, the happier I find myself. In fact, I find oddly clarifying. Like someone with a terminal illness, it makes suddenly every day quite valuable. It makes me think about my self-inflicted cages. It makes me think about breaking them.

The cage of money

For long, I seem to have thought of money as a surrogate for how smart I am. And like most people, I want to be very smart. Of course I have rationalized it a thousand different ways. But at the end of the day I know there’s a thrill about earning money and power. It’s like beating other people to win a video game. And what’s funny is how much I am going to give up for it.

Now, If I choose to live a certain number of years, I need to have X(money I want to spend every year) x Y(Number of years I plan to live). It’s a simple equation. Like fuel left in a racing car at the end of a race, anything left is pointless. For people with healthy children, I don’t know if I am simplifying but it seems to me that it isn’t our job to provide for their whole lives. The first couple of decades ought to be enough.

For many of you who haven’t ever done a financial planning exercise, every planner worth his salt will ask you to put down your life goals on a piece of paper. And he will strive very hard to get you to a finite number for wealth, however ridiculous it may be.

It’s a healthy exercise for every one. It also asks you to assume a certain age. I think everyone says eighty in the sheet. Like thinking about anything more may come across as greedy and anything less may be just too morbid for polite conversation. It’s a daft thing to do and not a little worrying that these are the only transactional conversations we actually have about death.

I now find that if I shave a decade off the assumption of eighty years as my life time, my present life gets dramatically easier. How about five? Or what If I stay at eighty? Even if I stay with eighty years, I find that I now need no “buffer” for those awkward I-am-now-past-eighty years. And what it does is lift the pressure. Like exhaling a breath I have held in for too long.

The Cage of Time

This cage is much more closer than money. It probably afflicts fewer but it binds you tighter; till you can’t breathe — the need to be productive and doing something. Or die of guilt. It’s a legacy of the scarcity economy we grew up in, drilling into our minds from a very early age the virtue of being purposeful, preferably economically purposeful. It’s scarier to give up for we don’t really know what to do with time if not work and clean and rearrange.

It’s as if it would reveal us for who we really are –lazy, somnolent asses who are happy to consume packaged art and packaged food in perpetuity. I think we do ourselves an injustice but my point is that we have an incredible opportunity to find out what we really love and could create or experience.

I fantasize all of us at a small cozy pub at the end of our lives, sitting by the fireside sipping ale and raucously telling each other our most fantastic experiences on this planet. I think that’s the metric for time I would like to use. Of course that’s just me.

These are just two cages but there are many, many more.

So that’s it? The secret to life is planning your death? Of course there are unanswered hows, what-ifs and why-nots. My point is that thinking about death will make you think about life itself. And it’s a long deep delicious thought. We have the time for it.

What are you getting paid for?

2014-02-27T16:47:00.002+05:30

Organizations are made of two kinds of people: People who are compensated for Competency and People, who are compensated for change.

How am I defining a competency person? People who define their contribution by their functional competency and make themselves valuable by showing improvements in their job every year.

These guys will turn up and say at the end of the year “We executed our plan well and clocked 22% improvement /growth. We’ll do this better next year and am confident of 20% gains again. I am a top performer.”

Change drivers? People who don’t define their contribution as their competency but instead their ‘delta’ value as people in a business that needs to get better. These guys will say “well, I changed our working model and we got 20% growth. Next year, we should go up/down/sideways in the chain and see if we can change things there to get 40% next year. I am your best bet to do this and I am a top performer.”

What’s different in the two is an ability to step back from your competency and work across and question surrounding elements to drive the business better (as opposed to just his process).

Let’s take this case for a sales person. A competent sales person will manage his territory well, nurture his channel relationships and keep them interested and their working capital locked in and growing. Occasionally, he will turn a blind eye to his dealers shipping product off into another sales managers territory. Hey – its not his fault that the sales guy there isn’t running a tight ship.

A change driver sales guy will do all this, but he will keep trying out new ways to sell more. He will say ‘can we bill my biggest customer directly? It will bring us more business.” Or he will motivate his dealer to open two more stores and get more organized. One of our sales guys set up a crude consumer referral program for 300 key consumers in his territory and it was years before we even got around to finding out. We are now considering scaling it up to a 2 Mn $, 50,000 consumer program.

HBR has this to say about change agents “ People who bridged disconnected groups and individuals were more effective at implementing dramatic reforms, while those with cohesive networks were better at instituting minor changes.”

I love that. And if you think for a second about how and why change agents are bridging disconnected individuals - its with a purpose to drive dramatic change to improve business as a whole– not just a sole function or a competency. Would it matter then if this person were HR or IT or Legal? Wouldn’t you want this person doing similar things at more senior levels for bigger impact? And then, wouldn’t you, by definition, be paying and promoting this person more?

So, what needs to change? Our communication of a ‘role’ to a potential new hire. Stop giving Job descriptions and start giving out change targets.

If you are an employee who’s wondering why promotion cycles are skipping you, ask your self what have you fundamentally changed for the business? Am not talking about what’s gotten better – am sure your collateral is now better designed, and reaches sales teams at least it in the middle of selling season (as opposed to after its over). What have you changed? Do your sales teams now have a way to get their collateral printed and shipped themselves?

Let's talk about impact on compensation.

Too many good people wonder why they don't get promoted enough or get high appraisal ratings often enough. And I can understand that. Here is some change related perspective - you don't get rated highly for just doing your job well. Even if it is very well.

You are still high on only the competency line. For you to score and score big, we need to demonstrate change. Purposeful, directed , positive change. Change that means the system works with less dependence on people. Or lesser people. Or has an expanded growth boundary.

While this is almost certainly a better paid skill set, it is totally okay to not want to invest the effort in driving change necessarily. It doesn't mean you are not valued. It doesn't mean you can't do it. It may be that you are not motivated to. You may be investing the delta effort in your personal life with your family or your interests. Just to manage expectations though, you will be called a successful performer but probably not a top talent at work. And that's okay. You are being paid for keeping the lights on. Someone has to.

Disclaimer: All the images shown are illustrative - and not meant to be necessarily the right examples of what's higher order and what isn't. Apply them to a situation of your choice and see where you bucket yourself.

Put them out in the sun….

2013-10-11T07:26:00.001+05:30

This is going to sound ridiculous, but it happened. Apologies for the long story, But I am reliving this as I tell this and I still panic.

14 years ago, back when I was a 22 year old garment chemical salesman in a small company, I managed to win an account with a notoriously demanding French MNC. It was a reasonable account but was prestigious for our small company
. In the day of crowded, smelly sweatshops, their manufacturing plant had rolling landscaped lawns, outstanding work conditions for their uniformed workers and a demanding but fair management.

The plant head was this tall handsome Frenchman, Guillaume who would ask salesmen for the chemical formula for the products they sold. (I am a polymer engineer, and I knew enough to sound intelligent - He said to me "if your company had hired bright people like you earlier, we would have been a loyal client by now".)

It was a fun visit - I got friendly with all the plant engineers and even ran into the Guillaume's super glamorous wife, Louise - she looked ten feet tall to me - with high cheekbones and gorgeous clothes. I heard she handled the front end of merchandise and schmoozed with clients all over Europe. She looked the part for sure.

Anyways, two weeks after they started buying our product, I got a call from my GM - "Prameet, you have to run to Guillaume's plant right now. He has a problem and he doesn't want anyone else but you".

I didn't know whether to feel flattered or sentenced but I knew my job was on the line. I raced to the plant where the mood was grim. Guillaume came out to meet me holding yards of printed fabric "Your product has ruined an important shipment for me! this fabric stinks!" and by god, it did. It stank of a combination of rotten eggs and dying fish. "I have got a 100,000 units of this - " "Is this the guy from that damn company?" Louise stormed in - cigarette dangling and as tall as a skyscraper "I am going to SUE you guys - I am losing 900,000 Euros on this shipment alone! Get out and fix this or you are not going to leave this plant."

I made my way out to the massive shop floor - where all the equipment was shut and silent (The worst sight to see on a shopfloor) with yards of stinking fabric everywhere like some sort of horrible germ attack. The tech guys wouldn't even make eye contact with me. I got them to start running the machines so I could tinker around. Was like a death row request.

I walked around the shop floor for the four loneliest hours of my life. Changing temperatures, chemical dosages and whatever else I could try. I must have looked a sight muttering to myself, looking under

equipment runs, taking pH at different points. And the fabric line just kept humming. And stinking. It was late afternoon and it started to finally to get better, and the smell had come down to a mildly unpleasant odour instead of knocking you out. I still didn't know what I got right, but at least something was working.

I met Guillaume and explained my theory and what I had done. He was a tech guy at heart, and in spite of himself he got interested in my abstract explanations of how polymers cross-link and some times don't. I actually made it sound that it was because he was using a GOOD product that he had process issues and his tech guys and his equipment needed to be calibrated to it. In the state I was, I believed it myself.

But he ended by saying "okay I understand this and think we can make it work from here. But Louise will kill me if don't salvage what we have already made. The shipment has to leave tomorrow and it takes three days to make all this again".

It was then that I said it - the six words that were either going to be genius or put me in prison.

"Put them out in the sun."

He blinked at me. "Wot!"

I don't know what made me say it - the green sunny lawns that I could see from the windows probably. But I knew it was the dumbest thing I could have said.

Promising a do-or-die simple solution instead of getting him to re-run the fabric with some satisfying changes in process or dosage - which may or may not have worked but at least would have looked intelligent - is tech support suicide.

I decided to push on and built a whole reasoning behind it and to my amazement, he agreed. The next half hour saw about 20 workers scurrying out with hundreds of yards of fabric and laying it end to end across the beautiful lawns. I stood there and supervised this ridiculous operation trying to look calm and cool and like this was an everyday thing but honestly I was in danger of collapsing from the panic I was feeling.

In the midst of all this, Louise came out and her eyes went wide in shock "what the fuck are you doing?" I began to splutter before Guillaume explained to her very quickly in French that I had a solution and was trying something that could just save them from their irate customer.

She looked like we were trying an African tribal ritual to save them. I guess it was a measure of her desperation that she didn't throw me and Guillaume out (At this point, Guillaume was suffering from a version of the Stockholm syndrome - we were well beyond a client-salesman relationship now. We were saving the world together).

She shrugged "I don't believe this. I don't care - you have two hours to try whatever the fuck you want. After that I am calling your company management"and stormed back into her office.

There hasn't been any other day where I willed the hot Indian sun to be as hot as it could get. I just sat there watching the fabric gleaming whitely in the sun. I didn't have the guts to walk out and smell it to see if it was getting better. If a miracle was going to happen, I wasn't about to review its progress every 20 minutes. Best to give God some time and space.

Guillaume couldn't take the stress and skulked back to his office to read up a couple of chemistry books and smoke his pipe.

Two hours later, Louise walked out - "how is it looking?" I had no heart to say anything "why don't you look for yourself?" trying to look as assured as I could.

She sent a woman scurrrying out to get a patch of the fabric. Guillaume walked out as the woman came back. My heart hammered like a dam as Louise snatched the fabric from her and sniffed it.

"Its still smelling!"

Guillaume took it from her and sniffed it deeply. Paused and broke into a broad smile "C'monnnn louise! its not!" and turned to me beaming. "You were right".

I just shrugged. I might have looked calm or whatever but honestly I just couldn't say anything. I just wanted to collapse. I took the fabric to smell it for myself but honestly I can't say if I smelled anything or not. I had smelled a ton of that fabric day and my nasal sense was dead as a doornail.

All I could feel was relief and a feeling that I needed to get on my motorcycle and ride back before I passed out. I stopped at a pay phone on my way back and called my GM who was waiting for my call "It's solved. No problem any more. They are ordering some more product" and went home and crashed for 12 straight hours.

An argument for love…

2013-03-24T18:14:00.000+05:30

I play squash. I obsess about it. I train. I play. I wake up mornings and play till its time to go to work. I spend money on court fees, racquets and gear. Money which should rightfully be spent on more productive things or earn a sensible interest in a bank account. I have no idea why I do this. I am not particularly good at it. I am not quick enough on my feet,my head isn’t still and my reflexes are slow.

And I think its okay.

I do it cos I enjoy it. I enjoy learning about it. On days I can’t find a partner, I go and knock the ball on the wall. On good days, the ball will fly sweetly off my racquet armed with a pace and a direction I don’t remember giving it. I like working at it and getting better, bit by bit. It’s a better other people don’t see. I do and that’s enough. It’s not a better nearly enough but the fact that I it is better wakes me up on cold mornings.

Some day I’ll play with the gift so many people seem to have – moving with languid ease and have the ball sing off my racquet. That day is seven years away, give or take a day.

And that’s okay.

A man and his vegetables

2013-03-24T08:30:00.002+05:30

I don't know about you, sir, but I really think vegetables should know their place in life.

(if you are south indian or a vegetarian or a woman or varying combinations of those, I think you will avoid yourself a lot of angst by skipping to other sections of this wonderful site.)

I don't know what it is about vegetables of late, but really it seems they are fashionably in focus - a manner that is unbecoming and not dissimilar to the whole media obsession with the role of the minor spinning allrounder in the Indian cricket team.

It is ridiculous - no matter what food article or culinary blog you read -you cannot but avoid long flowery (excuse me) references - its either wonderfully leafy this or fibre-rich, green that or lovely juicy tomatoes or flavorful gherkins ..good grief. in

Try it - go see some food content - this salmon recipe from the Aussie Masterchef - a line in here goes - Potatoes and cucumber salad make delicious accompaniments to the honey mustard salmon" - Eh? Potatoes?) or Eatopia's headline for chicken soup - "Chicken Shorba is a light, clear, flavorful broth, infused with Indian spices and herbs." infused with spices and herbs - where's the damn meat eh?

My lovely wife insists on making Thai curry with massive chunks of tasteless capsicum - ruining a perfectly good meaty curry- my poor mouth gets shocked every time it expects a nice tangy fish bite or a biteful of lamb dripping fats and flavours and finds the give of a bland chunk of capsicum in its stead. Its like watching the pipsqueak Rahane come out to bad at 45/2 instead of the masterful Tendulkar.

If you ask me -and no one does, sadly - the ideal place for these fellows is to not jostle with the kingly meats for buds and attention, and instead bring up the rear of the dish - make up a nice, unintrusive base, add some crunch here and there to bring out the contrast to the rich, luscious flavor of the meat. Any thing more - I still shudder at that capsicous memory - imagine a horrific potato that dwarfing a nifty cut of lamb in a bengali jhol - that leaves enough scars to keep three shrinks in the gravy (excuse me) for life.

Now, don't get me wrong - veggies are good, necessary even - those are dues you must pay if you want to revel in the sensous pleasures of the flesh - but really that's about it. Any meal north of eleven am has got to be an organized place, with the rank and file in, you know, rank and file! So make sure you run a tight galley when you are dealing with these infernal fellow - cut them down to size even, and let's have some pomp and ceremony in that delightful chicken curry you are making for your friends or that lovely lamb Rindang you plan to unleash on your in-laws.

SD

2013-03-16T12:09:00.000+05:30

“China Jaayega?”

the two words that started my love affair with SD - a raucous, good-looking Bengaali - and one of the most insightful men I ever met. These words are mostly unremarkable in today’s world of globe trotting companies and individuals, but miraculous said as they were, to a callow 22 year old lab scientist over the day's second goldflake and cup of tea in an dusty industrial suburb of Bangalore in early 1999…. The proposition representing a small company’s international ambition with a budget in the 100s of dollars rather than the buffered millions we speak of today….

Whether it was raw potential or budget constraints .. we never ended up discussing… SD always made me believe it was the former. He introduced me as a prized talent in meetings with our competitors and partners… companies ten times bigger than we were, sent me on hundreds of days on travel costing scarce dollars in the bylanes of Asia ...dollars that needed him to justify every penny of that expense (in a company that would have preferred its employees work for free). Always with a smile and boundless faith ….. with results and jobs uncertain….I heard later that he went to the dispatch dock and choked up when he saw a 16 MT container being loaded with my first sale to a customer in Guangzhou…. the fact it meant so much to him...that we were managing to survive.. told me that his faith could not have come without some fear.

SD encourages dissent - especially passionate dissent. He looks at you with an animated expression when you speak...its the passion that's making him curious... in moments like this it seems he is wanting to understand your very soul.... he's reading a thousand things about you... testing different theories about you in his head.... fitting them in with people he's met before... he's tireless in his curiosity... and expressive in his amazement and surprise at your thinking. It makes you reach deeper ...think harder and express more....stringing little thoughts together....into a bigger and bigger thought.... incredibly indian in its to and froing..with its animated 'absolutely's' and "of totally'' ....its an energy filled frenzy even about arcane concepts like business and "dhanda" .... ending in an expression filled orgasm of insight and conclusion.

SD learned his life lessons I think as a teenager…. Selling movie tickets in black to buy booze and smokes….well down a path no self respecting middle class Indian boy ought to go….. but ended up developing a rare love of humanity in all its forms. I do mean all its forms. This father of two lovely boys and husband to an incredibly beautiful wife he kidnapped when he was 23, shares his joie raucously. He throws his heart, home and family open to all….. His wife V plied us with home cooked food and intensely intellectual conversation… both of them dissecting your quaint personality with insight and finesse and laughter…. open with their attitude…. All the while deprecating of any praise coming their way…secure in their world and knowledge of themselves. Even today as I write this, I feel almost treacherous… talking about a relationship that we have referred to in joyous mostly unsentimental terms.

I didn’t hear a word of criticism in the four magical years I spent with SD…. Not even when he made write a business email to a customer for an entire day, dissecting every word.... nudging me from self involved flowery to the useful…gently… ever so gently. I have seen SD transform people like this …. people drained of verve by a harsh life …from cynical jaded view to one of enthusiasm and possibility.

I have no idea what lies behind this…he still remains one of the most enigmatic people I’ll ever know…. Whether it was his unconventional teenage years in Shillong….or ten years in Mumbai of the 80's in what I am sure must have been a culture shock for 19 year old from the east…but this I do know – He does it with love of people…one from incredible faith and amazement at what they can do… its clear eyed and objective yet unconditional… I think its that faith from people like SD which makes people assess themselves objectively…harshly even…creating a hunger that pushes you to do better for yourself. SD and V make me question a thousand times in the ten years since.. … how much can you love humanity? with all its quirks and failings .... can you truly love it?

If you want to change lives, start... start with one.

Is your dream good for you?

2012-06-25T12:43:00.002+05:30

If you, like me, have spent much time in the late eighties and nineties's brought up on a steady diet of stories like Roger Bannister or phrases like 'burning the midnight oil' , you probably have this Victorian affliction of believing that incredible success comes with incredible hard work.

Malcolm Gladwell weighed in and estimated this effort to be about 10,000 hours of rigorous work and a couple of Texas sized oil wells. But here is the thing - how do I know if I want to put in those 10000 hours? How do I know if I do, I will be successful and happy? (See what I did there? managed to sneak that happiness bit in? I am clever like that but more about that later.)

Let's back up a little bit. Let's think about the time when we were sixteen (if you are sixteen and are reading this, you are incredibly lucky - I wish I had the internet around when I was 16) and had a Dream - to be a dashing fighter pilot with a Clark Gable moustache. Or an sultry actress wrapped in intrigue and mystery. Or an artist. well..you know.. The Dream.

Most of us are romantic about our dreams - we have the dream that we do because something about the dream appeals to our soul in a deep, stirring way.

For some its a clever turn of language and the imagination that's the style and world of a Terry Pratchett, the speed and instincts of a MIG fighter pilot reacting in split seconds, the rush of flying a machine that's faster than sound and sleeker than light. For some, its the sheer mystique of a Madhubala or the ability to make millions believe or lust. Warren Buffett as a benevolent and genius investor is the substance of (some) dreams. Roger Federer makes me fall in love with him a little every time I see him describe delicate arcs to carve out winners of breathtaking finesse.

I think that romance is incredibly important - its what wakes you up and puts you to sleep - sometimes its just pride in yourself and your ability to 'do' and 'be', sometimes its a faraway dream, but there's romance in that dream. That romance is fuel. it is energy.

There's a way of getting to that dream - and for the luckier ones, we actually find the way - what do you actually do for every minute of those 10,000 hours to get you to that dream - the 'process' of getting to that dream. For anyone wanting to be like Roger Federer, its countless hours of training, hitting a shot thousands of times a day to get that effortless arc right, thinking about small things like racquet weight and grip, wrist position and sugar levels - you know, the process? For Pratchett fans, its possibly less about being clever with word play than about being very meticulous with the piecing together of many little sub-plots, taking great care that they add to create a delightful little story, thinking and being emotional about real issues about humanity and weaving them in a way that delights but provokes as well - and then maybe the sharp phrasing - the style- kicks in.

I wish I knew more about these and other dreams to talk about the process of these dreams - but what I really want to ask is - are we in love with the process?

I have seen many many people be incredibly successful - quite a few in that grim, stone-faced, chin up martyr kind of manner - but people I have seen successful and happy - those have been the ones who love the process - loved it and lived it with verve and energy - fought it, engaged with it , maybe even changed it.

That six pack - probably has a better chance of happening if you love 'being' fit and enjoy testing the limits of your body - that business brainwave - probably will remain that unless you love and enjoy the journey of putting together a team and the processes of delivering that value to your customer. That stand-up comedian in you - to let her out, you have got to be in love with life's eccentricities a little and enjoy framing that , you know?

And I think that's the real test of your dream - a dream that goes beyond the infatuation of imagery and glitter - and lets you find love in the process.

And sometimes, just ever so often, a love so true that the dream doesn't even matter.

If Women were Alcohol....

2012-02-15T15:31:00.004+05:30

It just hit me. Alcohol are people. Different kinds of people to different people. To my mind, I think they are like women. Or kinds of women to be exact. (Btw, if you are the type to take offence , especially on behalf of other tribes, you should stop reading this now!). So here is how it all goes down for me.

Scotch, to my mind, is a discreet mistress. Preferred by men in positions of power who know she'll keep their secrets and their dignity intact. A woman you spend a gentle evening with in mellow companionship, thinking out loud and who keeps up with every undulating thought, probing gently , un-layering gradually. She's a little cold though and is vicious if abused.

Bourbon -she goes where the money she looks good on your arm....tastes good....easy with any man if the price is right... She can be a party girl or the girl you show off to your friends. She's at home in any ambience...any mixer...she's pricey but easy.

Beer..is your classic girl next door....as good for afternoon chats as for wild bingeing....she's yours whenever you reach out...willing..giving..undemanding....you don't own her...she's no one's and everyone's sweetheart.

Dark rum..is the stranger you find yourself waking up next to, with not the foggiest clue how you met or what happened after. She seems easy but so you never really get to know her beneath her easy friendliness. She doesn't infuse you with warmth. She's there when no one else is. She's the mistake you never want to make again but probably will.

Vodka...is that strange acquaintance...friend of friend's ...you run into her in strange places .. sometimes you talk to her to look good ....sometimes to feel good....its never really totally comfortable.
but you can really luck out with her but strike out as often. Just that wild card girl who you can have incredible chemistry with on some days but on other times, you can never really get going.

Cocktail drinks are foreigners.... with that touch of exotique. ..some are funny and sexy... some just tasty and dark...you have no idea where they come from....no idea where they go...they leave you feeling a little exotic and touched by fantasy but never at home.

Who's your drink tonight?

Book Review: Open by Andre Agassi

2011-12-09T10:38:00.001+05:30

“I look up. I'm lying on the floor beside the bed. I remember now. I moved from the bed to the floor in the middle of the night. I do that most nights. Better for my back. Too many hours on a soft mattress causes agony. I count to three, then start the long, difficult process of standing. With a cough, a groan, I roll onto my side, then curl into the fetal position, then flip over onto my stomach. Now I wait, and wait, for the blood to start pumping.”

These opening lines from “Open” – grip you and send you into the world of a champion sportsman and a tortured human being. The sweat-ridden years of ball bashing and a childhood measured in sets of six games. You realize the price a human being pays for being gifted – the agonizing pressure of being squeezed tightly into a shape and destiny molded by your talent. And you feel the serrated fear of giving up even this one gift.

(“But if tennis is life, then what follows tennis must be the unknowable void. The thought makes me cold.”)

Open is at its least, a deeply moving story, and at its best, a transformational one, especially for anyone who’s tasted sport and its angst-filled romance. You get a ringside view of professional sport and uber-human beings, who have given up entire lifetimes to play a game at its highest level for a few short years, without any assurance of payback – you see dreams becoming mortal and entire sagas written in a few thousand square feet of real pain and victories all too fleeting. It deconstructs and demolishes the paradigm of effortlessness of champions; you see the painful imbalance of their natures in their compulsion to win, and the price they pay for this imbalance.

The content is deep but the language of this story is surprisingly and happily literary with a modern, staccato style that’s a sign of our times and our attention spans. Some phrases blow you away with their simplicity and some have you nodding in agreement, using words that could have been yours.

While Open does dive deep into the soul of the tale, its also a tale well-told covering lots of ground about Agassi’s life events, his childhood and professional life, his relationships and loves, his much talked about experiences with drugs – it comes across as a mostly honest tale, but maybe that’s a just a happy contrast to the little we had known and the lot that we had assumed.

Open is not a sad story or a happy one, its just real. Just like life, it leaves you at the end a little happy, a little sad but mostly with the fullness of an experience, a little wiser and little more human, with a degree of insight into life’s realities.

I hope you will read this book. For Andre Agassi and his story -he is a remarkable man with a perspective that’s even more remarkable for its objectivity, for Tennis - you will never watch a match the same way ever again, but most of all, I hope you will read it for the same reasons you ever read a great tale – for the way it moves you, teaches you and carries you along for a journey you may not have completely signed up for.

Movie Review: The Dirty Picture

2011-12-05T10:57:00.001+05:30

Watched the dirty picture over the weekend. (Insert Dilli joke here “Maa, main gandi picchar dekhne jar aha hoon.” “Theek hain beta. Ghar jaldi aana”)

Yeah, so it was THE Dirty Picture.

Well, here is the gist of it, the Vidya Balan essayed- Reshma , a sassy village girl runs away to Chennai to make it big, quickly discovering among its streets the repressed sexuality that’s a signature of the Indian male – the thigh-groping old man sitting next to her in theatre or the elderly neighbor. who plugs away at his wife manfully every night and propositions her in the morning. Her genius lies in her curiosity and her eventual embracing of it, paving her way into the hearts and fantasies of larger than life movie-stars and full of life movie fans as the voluptuous “Silk”. Her curves are her grammar and her dance the syntax of a new voluptuous, sexual lingua franca. She drops all pretence of middle classed orthodoxy as she plays the part in real life

“Kya aapko patha hain maine 500 ladkiyon ke saath “tuning” ki hain? “Haan sir, lekin ek ladki saath kabhi 500 baar tuning nahin ki hogi”

The acting is of a high standard and very quickly, you identify with the character stronger than the actor. The high point of the movie is the dialogue – classically spicy South Indian – with crisp double entendres ringing of sassiness and the humor rather than any twisty vulgarity. “Jab Sharaafat ke kapde utharthe hain, tab sharifon ko hi sabse zyaada mazaa aata hain". The imagery in the movie - a Jeetendra era evoking song sequence or the deeply-bloused, bra-peeking south indian female uniform - is artfully created and adds so much tone to this 80's based story.

I wish the script had spent some time on the making of Silk’s psyche - the core of her sassiness and curiosity - but the later half does do justice to her mind - the making and eventual unraveling of it.

Strangely enough, I thought the movie could work better for women than for men, the titles and the promo shots are provocative enough - but it could tap into the Silk in every woman. In the movie, her impact on men and women is her biggest source of herself and she uses that as a weapon of offense and defense powerfully. All in all, an intelligent experience punctuated with crackling humour – It ages a bit in parts from being out there too long- it isn’t one you can’t do without, but definitely better off with it.

...restless...

2011-10-18T13:02:00.001+05:30

Its been a satisfying few years. Work's been alright, friendships are in full bloom, various life altering decisions formed, made and changed, nieces and nephews born, joys felt, all in all life in its grandest version of Maya. Am happy, content and healthy.

Yet, I feel the call.

I am not sure what the call is - I know its nothing morally uplifting like changing the world or anything. But I don't know what it is. Sometimes I think its the feeling of being in a pack of wolves, sharing a sense of elevated spine-straightening, fangs baring belonging and power as we hunt. I don't know if I've ever felt it to miss it. But I seem to know the feeling..can almost sense it on the hairs on the back of my neck.

Maybe its not as feral as all that. Maybe its just the feeling of being in a group - united by our sense of sameness yet differentiated by our quirks and our faces, seen as one by the world outside as we cracked our inside jokes with the shared comfort of liberties granted and taken. Its like living life with heightened senses, seeing and feeling things as a person and as a group.

Maybe its not that either. Maybe its a sense of discovery, a feeling of risk that I miss. Maybe I feel trapped by all the mass of equations and calculations that I've become. Missing the thudding heartbeat as I make choices not knowing with certainty that its the right choice. The headlights of my life working too well, perhaps, illuminating the road ahead with a clarity all too well maybe?

what's this call I hear?

Sexiness and Entrepreneurship

2011-04-11T11:28:00.000+05:30

A long conversation with an old friend faced with an interesting choice: Having been an employee (a very successful one) and an entrepreneur (an incredibly successful one), what should I do now? In a generation which is seeing such a number of “right here, right now” entrepreneurs, I think this is an important question.

Too many B-school cafes and office water coolers around India resound with the prequel to the above question – how do I become an entrepreneur? Precisely these conversations end up elevating “entrepreneurship” to a higher level. Almost like it is the choice for any uber-individual.

While I would hesitate to judge that, I do know this – thinking of this in absolute terms would be wrong. I think it is important to consider what slice of employee life one has seen, and what slice of entrepreneur life one is going to see.

I know a number of employees who lead fulfilled satisfying lives, doing meaningful work with interesting people and are happy doing it. I know an equally vocal set which don’t. What are you going to compare – a great employee experience with a not-so-great entrepreneur one? Or is the other way around? There are levels of satisfaction and energy with both these choices, and it would be incredibly useful to look at this with a cold clear eye.

Apart from comparing the right apple to the right orange, I think there’s another part of the question: Are you choosing “what to do” or are you choosing “who you are”?

Think about that for a second.

What is the question you should be asking?

Everyone wants to be their own, internal, larger-than-life, sexier-than-sexy Shahrukh Khan. That’s the nature of the beast. But here’s the rub -- If you are not Shahrukh Khan in your mind already, it is unlikely that employee or entrepreneur choices will make you one. Don’t make entrepreneurship an identity choice. Make it just a choice of what you do.

My conversation with my friend ended with I think a mutual feeling of liberation. Of the freedom to make a genuine choice between two alternatives.

I think he himself is unique in the fact that in his mind what he does and who he does it with is far more important than how he does it - as an employee or not. I admire that about him.

What is it that really matters to you?

Entrepreneurship is not sexy. And every entrepreneur will tell you this.

The Wooden Ratio ....

2010-12-04T15:36:00.002+05:30

So..back to my favourite topic of nuclear disarmament and political instability in the middle east. Yeah right.

Kondi expostulated this beautifully precise theory of what it takes for a guy to score in this day and age of frenetic electronicry, short attention spans and the dawn of the e-reader.

17 women and 2 Large shots of Vodka.

I am not kidding. That's what it is.

Here is how it pans out. (Kondi, once again - respect.)

Invite seventeen women to a misty evening party in a house in downtown. Clean behind your ears, dress well and be polite.

Now, as you circulate in the room with your scotch on the rocks, you'll probably find that leaving alarming filters of beauty and intelligence aside, ceterus paribus so to speak, 50% of the seventeen women are married. Hmm.

You move on.

8.5 women left as a possible set (told you - this is precise).

You circulate among these 8.5 women and find that another 50% of them are 'Engaged' - leaving…(I hear whirring calculators here) ...4.25 potentially scoreable women.

Still good odds, you think, while stirring some more ice into your scotch.

Hold on though.

You go on to find another (and I pause here to extend sympathy for the plight of the eligible Indian male. But rings true, doesn't it?) 50% of these lovely women are (or think they are) dating "The One", leaving (best leave the calculations to us from here on) 2.125 fantastic women to score off.

That's right. 2.125.

Still good odds…50%? Heck, you think, I can live with that, you think. Until you realise that one of these 2.125 women is a hardcore feminist and a confirmed man-hater, dragging, wait for it, another woman with her into this phallic morass (In case you didn't know, no woman can never love or hate by herself. She drags her soul sister along to hold the handbags) leaving 2.125 -1 (the feminist) -1.000 (her gullible friend) = 0.125 women to score with.

Damn! , you think, you were looking to score but hardly in decimal points.

But there is hope. And here is where the story of the Indian male gets redeemed, and in one elegant sweep, adds the dash of realism which takes this theory from mere bar banter to a hypothesis worthy of academic contemplation.

10% of the original set of 8.5 married women aren't happy in their marriages, and are looking to score "out of bounds", so to speak, bringing back, rather grandly, 0.850 women back into the forlorn equation bringing to an almost-there sum total of 0.975 women.

Er, you think. I knew the gender ratio in India is screwed but didn't really expect that to translate so literally. But wait.

Remember those two large shots of vodka? Here's where they come in. Serve those low on lime and high on ice and a potentially unscoreable 0.975 woman becomes a rip roaring cauldron of vodka-fuelled, sexually available woman with a probability factor of 1.000.

There you have it - a finite, precise Wooden ratio of 17:1.

Recap: 17- 8.5 (married)-4.25 (engaged)-2.125 (dating) - 1 (feminist)-1 (assistant free rider) + 0.85 (married but unhappy) + 2 large shots of vodka.

Drunken Corollary: If you know seventeen women and haven't scored, you are the eighteenth one.

Life after ISB

2010-11-20T11:16:00.002+05:30

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Or so they say.

Not true for life after ISB.

My priorities in ISB? Getting a job, a hot chick and the next meal at Sarovar.

Five years, two jobs and one marriage on… My priorities today?

My wife's next idea of a meal, traffic and of course…. what to do with the loads of dosh sloshing around in my bank account.

Seriously speaking though, I must say life's been very good post ISB, and from what I see around me, true of most people in the batch.

On the job front, you learn very quickly that the things that make you stand out in college have only a weak correlation to how you do at work.

You see that it takes a couple of years to figure out the delta between your dream job and your dream.Most do find an amicable balance between the two or if not, have the resources to reach that balance.

You learn that it's not the company you work for, it's the people you work with that makes a difference to how you feel about life.

You find money on its own has a short half-life, and you find yourself making choices where money isn't among your top priorities.

You also find out that fancy designations don't really mean fancy work – lots of money doesn't mean lots of work and that the big roles are in the small places.

People puzzle you with weird choices but you know it's a different game for everyone and the happiest people are the ones that know this.

Finally, there's a whole lot more to life than ISB and its aftereffects – you move on from being a hotshot MBA to being many different things – a wife, a father, a son (better late than never), a student - all of them equally important.

Good luck to all of you. Breathe easy. It's all good – whether you ace the next term or not.

The Great Indian Novel

2010-11-11T15:39:00.001+05:30

I don’t know about you but I don’t like Shashi Tharoor. Blame it on shady alliances for IPL teams or the very non intellectual head of hair that he wears – I’ve pretty much placed him in a category of authors who aren’t ..well..authors.

Then I read the Great Indian Novel.

It’s a quiet, unassuming book with no grand declarations of timelessness on its blurb-zone, neither does it start with a bang going into whirlwind chapters or breathless action.

It starts with a conversation between a quirky old man and an assuming young man. Its only as you read on that the characters unfold merging multiple times into people you have heard of and people you think you have heard of. You worry a bit about whether you are placing the characters right, and you move uneasily on, peeling back pages ever so often, but you end up moving on.

And then you get caught up in the events that pages unfold for you, and you realize that you have got the characters right and that its all beginning to make sense. Often you are caught unawares by the clever turn of phrase and often by the rhyme. The pages make you smile and make you frown but it never fails to touch you.

The book is about India, the creation of it, the fragility of the events that led to it. It surprises you to see the very human and very mundane conversations and emotions that could have led to its creation, and how it could all have ended up very differently. The fight for independence, you realize, was about greatness and sacrifice but also about petty matters like ego and pride, willfulness and sloth.

Shashi Tharoor ( I am tempted to knight him on the fly, never mind the hair) is a giant intellect who has brought an immense amount of knowledge about world history and affairs to bear very lightly on a subject that touches most Indians in the most parochial of ways.

He uses the Mahabharatha’s familiar contours to take us into the lives of eminent personae of the independence struggle, and brilliantly uses the it’s remarkably tolerant view of human strengths and frailty to bring us close to these leaders, to make them more human without judging them.

In Tharoor’s book, the characters of the Hindu epic stand for people - Bhishma becomes Gangaji Datta (Gandhiji), Dhritarashtra is Nehru while sometimes he uses the characters to stand for institutions and values – democracy, then Indian Army and so on. It’s great fun to decode the characters so I won’t spoil it all for you here – the wikipedia has a list if you are still tempted, but I would suggest you read the book. Its in the various characters you will try on each character that the book holds its truest joy.

In the end, the book will leave you a little closer to the idea of India – and also to the leaders who helped create her, you will feel more intimately connected but also more than a little sad for the streak of mortality that you will see. Enjoy this book slowly – am sure you will find a number of flaws – but you will come away richer, none the less.

A DSLR or a digital camera In India?

2010-11-01T13:35:00.002+05:30

Spewnotes will take a slight detour from its avowed goal of purposeless rambling and meandering tales to delve into a supposedly useful topic (instigated by the blog's collective readership of one and half souls). My apologies if the post below is solemn and takes itself too seriously - a heinous crime in my view.
Should I buy a digital camera or a DSLR?
Well, assuming good pictures is the goal, one has to start of saying that buying a good camera is no guarantee of a great picture. (as author has found out with recurring regualrity - Editor). So, choose a camera with care. For a DSLR, I think a Canon is a fair choice. Simple to use and takes good pictures. Also, very popular in India and the US.
Deals: Best to get from the US or Singapore -cheapest there. You will get a basic DSLR for about 20-25K.
Canon 1000D is probably what we could call a basic DSLR (also known as Rebel XS in the US) - 550-650 US$. In India, retail prices have dropped quite a bit but should still be about 20% higher than the US. If you are adventurous, you can go to Palika bazaar and get the DSLR for an in-between price(I know a guy here I buy from ). Chandni Chowk is the place in Delhi where you get the camera cheapest, but its a wholesale market and may not be great for service. Its a "buy-it, forget-us" price.
For a nation-wide view, cameras generally get imported into Chennai from South East Asia and hence, the grey market prices are lowest there, followed by Bangalore. Of course, this is about DSLRs.

But honestly, I think the rush for DSLR's is a little misplaced and not necessarily for everyone. I'll put it like this:
Low-end digitial cameras >>> Low end DSLR >>>High end digital camera >>> High end DSLR

This is a simplistic view and to be taken as such.
Point I am making so laboriously is that a DSLR is not a necessarily a better camera - its just more accurate in terms of positioning and detail.

For someone not into fine detail photography, a high end digital camera is probably a lot better and a lot cheaper than a DSLR, simply because it has got outstanding flexibility in terms of zoom in and out, Liveview etc. Do check out Nikon or Canon digital cameras and image quality - they cost about INR 20K in India. (Price info applies here as well).
DSLRs, for every new zoom range, you need an extra lens costing INR 5-10 K upwards. The Nikon ones now come with a projector capability - you can project pics directly onto a wall from the camera! For INR30 K you will get an outstanding digital camera or basic DSLR.

The great thing about DSLRs of course is that you can dive deep into the world of photography, learn a lot about it and experiment with different quality lenses (an expensive hobby - my spend on lenses since I started shooting about six months ago is upwards of 20k INR now :))
All in all, buying a camera is a labor of love - else you could find yourself with yet another cool gadget (read all cellphones other than the iphone, thigh massagers, feet scratchers, etc) that you don't use all that much.

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/should-you-buy-a-dslr-or-point-and-shoot-digital-camera

Dilli Game

2010-10-30T20:33:00.000+05:30

Dilli's never been home to me - surprising me in ways that I ought not to be surprised in, throwing up the unexpected with frequent regularity and on much rarer occasions, does me the bizarre.

Its 11.30 p.m. on a warm Saturday evening in Dilli, and the trance beats at Mojo weave their way into my body. The cold club air washes over me, the energy is crackling out of my fingertips - I am feeling good, and am about to let someone know it.

I see her at the bar, nursing a scotch on the rocks. Dressed in a long black dress, the smooth shiny fabric clinging on to every curve like an old girlfriend - she looks cool, calm and confident as she tosses her long hair back in one sinewy motion as she brings diamond studded fingers to her mouth, to drag deeply on a Camel.

I catch her eye - and her gaze lingers for a heartbeat before washing over the rest of the gyrating crowd. I know its my night. The beats accelerate as I seat on the empty bar stool next to her, nod over at her emptying scotch glass and say "buy you another of those?".

She leans over, sending a wave of Bvlgari up my senses, clears a curtain of black shiny tresses from her shoulder, tucks it neatly behind her ear in one sweet motion and says "Henh-ji?"

The beats stopped.

RIP

2010-10-28T10:13:00.002+05:30

Sitting on my armchair, looking over the balcony of a crowded apartment complex in a Mumbai on a Thursday evening, I found myself wondering (among other things, of course) about how times have changed. Well, yes its the economy, stupid and yes, sure the green cover has depleted and of course urban congestion needs to be addressed right away, but I held our collective social horses on these weighty issues and settled down to think about how boys and girls have changed in our lovely country. More specifically, the relationship between boys and girls in India, or to drill a hole in it, about the sheer lack of sexual tension between boys and girls in India.

Now before you get all agitated and start throwing statistics and hyperlinks (damn! how I hate it when someone sends me a link like its supposed to be the answer to everything - imagine a sage looking all inscrutable and handing you a leaf with hieroglyphics in response to a complex question about directions to the loo - god! I even got a link on SMS yesterday) about fall in average age of people "getting some" for the first time and percentage of teenage abortions ad neveryoumindum, am not talking about actual sexual incidence here -I mean, that was bound to increase with global warming (another story) but am talking more about the utter sexual tension in a teenage environment. Remember, for instance, going into brain freeze when a that sweet girl from E&E rubbed shoulders with you in rush to get to the lab, or if she leaned close to ask you which class was going on and leaving behind a teasing peek that straightaway clogged your brain. Well, anyways, I think that's all over now.

Platonic relationships are on the rise, poisoning young minds, subverting them into weird relationships which men and women were never supposed to engage in. We have buddies, pals, unisex clothing (the nerve!) and even room-mates, for heaven's sake.

And, as far as I can see, the real cause for this is the Bra.

No, really, I mean this. Think about it - especially you bro-folk growing up on "how I met your mother" ( I feel a little like Ted here), there used to be a time where the bra used to be less an item of clothing and more a weapon of mass seduction. I recall the days (and i have to say, those were the days!) where the bra used to a flimsy piece of clothing held together by no more than a couple of pins and a fraying thread. While dismaying engineering this might be, it made for fabulous viewing pleasure - though, offering the wearer little protection, and doing charmingly little to hold things together.

Girls walking on campus would try to add support by folding their arms in front of them at every given opportunity but it did get a bit limiting and while I have no way of knowing this for sure, I think they stopped caring (especially after the first semester). Leaving us boyfolk with untold joy in viewing unrestrained staircase jiggles, brain-whooshing wobbles and of course the soft, pliant hug - the 'give' was unmistakably inviting, leaving the lingering hug as more a sign of sexual invitation than the disgusting symbol of bro-dom that it went on to become. Even as you got to base, all you had to do was wave your fingers in the air behind said pliant chick, and the bra would drop off from her body out of sheer fatigue, leaving you looking a like a hero.

All this changed irrevocably, with the grand entry of the bloody Tee-Shirt bra.

I think its known by a few other names as well, but I think (and I choke up with emotion when I do) this invention is solely to blame of the rise of bro-chick buddydom. The bra underwent a transformation from a peeky nothing to a heavy-duty, multi-component, full fledged garment padded up with what feels like (quite literally) layers of Kevlar -the same material used to block bullets and other metal-laden shrapnel, leaving women traveling in what looks like elevators around their lissome bodies, utterly impervious to cold weather (sigh!) and the titillating (how I love the English language) Dave Barry breeze. A hug that's now more GI Joe than Pam Anderson, with a sameness and uniformity to the most titillating of body-motion combinations, which we so scientifically call cleavage, that makes the eyes glaze over.

Parents world over sleep a lot easier, knowing how well protected their teenage daughters are, boys find a lot more time to listen to their I-pods, playing pool on Iphones blissfully unaware of the various chemical reactions could have occurred during what they probably thought was an uneventful day at school.

And I think the biggest damage has been done to women and girls, who now spend billions of dollars on (or steal from their aunts) beautifying gels, creams and doctors, sweat zillions of buckets at gyms to get the perfect body to get male attention when, as Dave Barry put it (in another day and age), just a stiff breeze would do.

RIP, The Great Indian Bra.

More dilli...

2010-02-08T13:32:00.001+05:30

And this can happen only here.....and you will not believe me, but this actually happened...

Smart young purchase officer of BLC (Big Large corporation) saunters into the cabin of his boss - a balding, pot bellied general manager (PBGM)
"Sir, here are the - " he stops and stares at PBGM - "sir, pardon me, but dont you think your hair looks like Shahrukh Khan's today?"
PBGM blushes embarassedly and self consciously pats down a decidedly scrooge duck-like tuft at the back of his head..."really?" ....more patting..." ahh..hemm..well...i ..er...DID get my hair cut yesterday..."

"I swear sir....! my heart almost stopped thinking I am giving my leave application to Shahrukh khan" ....he shuffles a piece of paper unobtrusively onto PBGM's table...
"well..my wife has been making this special egg yolk based henna, y'know...." PBGM scrawls enthusiastically

"Sir, its WORKING...you look YOUNG"...pockets the paper...." I will come after my leave for this recipe sir!"

Told you...this is dilli ...!

and more chaiiii...

2010-01-05T23:54:00.002+05:30

Its a wintry morning, Singhsaab and I have decided to go wild and walk down to Kamal tea stall instead of the pantry for our 11 o clock cuppa. I am in deep in thought about global warming, megan foxxxy and whathaveyou while Singhsaab has just taken a break from building another complex BI query.

We are walking along companionably when singhsaab nods his head vigorously in response to nothing in particular and announces "Medical doesn't cover OPD charges, y'know". "Eh?" I go. "Swines" he carries on smoothly "its all a scam...!" I am now utterly tongue-tied at this scholarly holding of the forth. "you tell me, how many times will you get a brain tumour?" he looks at me and before I turn my fuddled brain to the actual mathematics of the knotty problem, he thunders on "and how many times will you get a viral fever?" I close my eyes and shake my head in amazement at one more of singhsaab's unbelievably profound conversations. I open my eyes to find him calmly looking at me.

"Chai?"

Chai!

2010-01-05T23:50:00.005+05:30

Dilli has a vigor and zest all its own, most of which even the sweeping surge of modernity is hard pressed to contain.

Picture this: its about 11 a.m on a thursday morning and my first day in the offices of a busy large corporation (BLC). Hundreds of worker bees hunched over flickering screens and busy excel sheets, the hum of profitable conversations counting millions of rupees of buying and selling, I trundle over to the office table size pantry room where weary old kattoo is hunched beside the coffee machine. I am about to politely interrupt his reverie when something large and busy bustles past me into the pantry room rubbing his hands in utterly undeserved glee and booms "Kattoo , yaar - ek BADHIYA si chai pila de..!"

Kattoo bursts into action as if called by Dalai Lama to invade China and turning purposefully towards the coffee machine, with as much zest as his twenty year old body and 7.2 mm of turning radius will allow, pushes the big red button which says TEA on it, watches intently as weak tepid tea dribbles into a cup and produces it with a flourish. One sip by big bustling man and he erupts "waah kattoo! mazaa aa gaya!!" and trundles away happily.

Its inane - a meaninglessly celebrated and overinvested moment of the day and yeah, its incredibly Dilli!

the truckdriver and the cellphone..

2009-04-14T22:32:00.003+05:30

“Hanji Sirji”…
Omkar screeched amidst the grating noise of the gearbox "Damn!” he thought “cheapskate Nattoo!” he thought of his pan chewing, Laajo-wooing, potbellied owner of the rattletrap that used to pass for a truck about twenty years ago….the rattletrap which Omkar now drove …. “that whoring Nattoo spends thousands on lottery tickets but hands me a hundred and twenty rupees for the truck’s maintenance “rakh le yaar” he would go as if Omkar could buy the Tata factory with the spare change…

But he had to be polite. Ever since he quit his secure job as a clerk in the garment factory citing ideological differences with his work supervisor, becoming a driver for Jai Mata Di transport brought him more prestige in his native Lakhana than a clerk’s job which paid him twice as much (at least officially). Omkar mused for a bit while he screeched up another gear up Khanki ghat and concluded that the people of Lakhana had an unnatural respect for size. The villagers were fascinated by Gangoo who was rumored to be the tallest boy in the entire district. Speaking of size he thought his neighbour Gomti had the largest, milkiest ….”CLANG!!!” his musings about the lush Gomti were interrupted as he heard the unmistakable noise of a policeman’s lathi clanging on his trucks’ bonnet. He slammed his brakes…slammed in manner of speaking since the truck didn’t do anything even remotely as urgent instead dissipating speed like a vessel of boiling milk simmering down . He managed to calm down the juddering and decidedly nervous steering wheel and clambered down. His heart started hammering strangely and he mused again and realized this probably had to do with the bloody arrack in the back of the truck.

His stomach decided to shrink away from his hammering heart and sink down to his knees, which were setting a calm beat of their own. He remembered the SP had decided to clamp down on arrack ever since Khaderbhai had had decided to stand for elections.

The policeman rushed over with his lathi raised and face set in the kind of mean scowl that policemen are trained to use in the middle of a potentially fatal raid. He stopped and looked over at Omkar and glanced with a curious respect at Omkar’s left hand. Omkar himself sportingly decided to share in the cop’s curiosity and did some glancing himself. He realized the cellphone was still in his hand, and now that he thought of it, he remembered the burning sensation in his left ear from the tongue lashing Natwar had given him. “Malik hain ya driver?” the cop murmured in an almost seductive baritone. “he-enn?” Omkar murmured nervously, not quite matching the cop’s chocolate-rich tone.

“Aap Malik hain ya driver?” the cop repeated. The ‘aap” triggered off a whole chain of chemical reactions in his body, which calmed the knees and sent his tummy back to its original position. His body seemed to enlarge and steel crept into his tone “Tere se mathlab?” He almost convulsed as he heard what he had just said. But the cop reacted, in almost a mirror image of his earlier physical change and he seemed to shrink as he said “Aa—aapki gaadi…” Omkar decided to seize the moment much as his mother always said he was born to do and replied “haan hain tho? Akkal nahin hain tereko…ghaat pe gaadi roktha hain? Patha nahin hum kiske kaam se jaa rahe hain?” Omkar himself had no idea who he was referring to but decided that calling on a invisible higher power was called for. “phone lagaaoon kya?” he waved the cellphone menacingly.

The cop paled, as much as the madhya pradeshi sun allowed him to, “sirji …one look at you knew you were not a driver..! I was just trying to alert you about the dacoits in Khanki..!”

He clambered regally back into the truck and rested his head on the still-trembling wheel. After a minute, he got up, sent up a silent prayer for Natwar and his next seven generations. If it weren’t for Natwar’s suspicious nature, he would have never had the cellphone…he jumped as the phone rang “kaahaan pahuncha hain? Maa ke shaadi pe jaa raha kya?” as the familiar honeydewed tones of Natwar screeched.

Life was back to normal.

entrepreneurship in india....

2008-04-18T14:40:00.001+05:30

Big board meeting of big company in big bustling metropolis....

BigBossManfromBigcompany (BBMFBC): "We need to look for entrepreneurs in this country…to kickstart our business model..that will earn us untold billions...."

Many hundred miles and a dozen grazing cows away.....

an Ageing woman entrepreneur (AWE) in the hinterlands of S. India hears of big company's intentions and new business, and calls up BBMFBC.

AWE to BBMFBC: "Dear sir, I am an AWE - wanting to invest in your big compani's big bizness. We even have son with MBA working in esteemed but lowly position in your big compani."
BBMFBC: " yes yes…we are looking for budding entrepreneurs like you madam…..well …the investment is like in XXXX zillions of rupess…revenues of YYYY Gazillions of rupees and RoI of a mindboggling 14.28% - almost a FULL percent above what you would get by parking your money safely in the bank."
AWE: "Thank you thank you sir....please do let us know what else we need to do"
BBMFBC: "oh its simple.....please set up a private limited company with XX millions rupees as paidup capital, and email us details with sales tax registration etc. If you have no email, you can even fax! we will duly consider."

AWE to MBA-son: " son - BBMFBC from your compani has given us permission to invest in your big compani big bizness. We are planning to sell off all our cows for this investment and - "

MBAS: "Amma no..don't believe in these big companies - "

AWE: " son - you are educated but not wise. We are taking risk we know but for your future only!"

MBAS: "please don't sell off our cows - they are all you are leaving me in a diddly-squat inheritance!"

AWE: " don't worry son - we can double number of cows if we invest in this business now. Tomorrow, you can be a cow-king!"

MBAS: " Lord shivaaa - "

AWE starts marching to the market every day for best price to sell her cows, and meet investment criteria of BBMFBC.

After a few weeks......

AWE to BBMFBC:"Sir, our shiny cows gauri and kaveri are fetching good rates in the market, we are almost ready with investment- and wanting to invest - -"

BBMFBC: " oh madam, after deep consideration, we have decided that due to family relations with your son working our big company, we are unable to entertain your request for entrepreneurship in our big business.

Many regards".