Coming of age of Indian Advertising

I have never been a big fan of adverts aired on Indian television. However, creativity in advertising is reaching a new high these days. I have been particularly impressed with the recent Maruti ads, chiefly the one having a potent tag-line - "India drives home in a Maruti", so true when you consider that  until very recently maruti would have been the first car of most individuals, somewhat of a first love. I am no marketing guru and lack the articulation and intellectual depth to describe the advertisement's appeal and technical brilliance, but I can certainly sum up by saying that it is a real example of the great application of some of  the classic marketing principles. Another example is that of Maruti's advertisement of Estilo. It's an example of creativity meeting marketing intent. Estilo is a  redesigned zen estilo, a struggling car, needing an image boost and making a comeback. The advertisement certainly scores in my opinion and creates an urge and desirability for anyone buying a new small car. It creates a cool freshness about it for a buyer to take a second look. Another advertisement that comes to my mind is the Scooty ad well articulated by the punchline "Go babelicious". It is an awesomely targeted advertisement and scores a bulls-eye for its target market. Another neat advertisement that I have came across recently is the Alpenlebe Eclairs advertisement. An amazing depiction of the desirability of the chocolate in a fun an humorous manner. I wouldn't say  it conjures up emotions  anywhere close to that of the ever immortal cadburys' "Kuch khas hai jindagi mein" cricket ad, but it creates a splash, an impact and neatly delivers on its objective - placing alpenlebe eclairs firmly into the consideration set if not as the top of the mind recall. I have also been a long time fan of Havels' adverts. If I were to ever hire someone for an advertisement, I would hire the agency who does Havels' ads. Amidst  all these nice ads there are numerous "also rans" (quite literally,) and terrible drags which irritate audiences indefinately, inducing channel flipping. However, my general impression is that the standard of advertisements in India has gone up overall. I am sure, as I sit back and think more, I will come up with many more examples to support my hypothesis.

3Rs

First up, I must say that I am disappointed that I have not been able to write much since I left college 7 months ago. Not that I have been too busy to write anything or too unimaginative or insipidly and nonchalantly occupied with something more important during these many months. It is  just that I did not get enough positive "force"  to displace my inertia of laziness to write  (rather compile my "story" because essentially that is what this blog is - a historical account of my life). Surely, my experience post MBA of working in an organization under revival post survival could account for a truckload of blog-able content. However, I don't want to belabor about this intervening period, one of bountiful frustration. It will take too much time to compile if I were to do sufficient justice to the magnitude and seriousness of it. So without more digression let me turn right back into the topic that I really wanted to write about.

One fine day, while ruminating over the modalities of arguably the most important "next step" in my journey I realized that I needed to understand what my values really were. It eventually led me to my usual "idea" moment. I came to a quick conclusion that my values can be encapsulated into "3Rs" as I would like to describe them. Yea, they are distinct from the traditional 3Rs of reading, writing and arithmetic while being as important if not more  because of their equally universal appeal  in my opinion. If you are still wondering what the 3Rs are, let me dispel the mystery. They are relevance , reasonableness and responsibility. These 3 best describe the universal values that I would like to identify myself with. I hope that they will guide me through all the moments of indecision that I may face in my life. Let me describe each one of them in brief.

1)"Relevance": Relevance in my opinion is perhaps the most important of human values. Every thing that we do can be examined using a "relevance" lens. For instance, I need to ask myself, is the work I do relevant to myself, my family, my company, my country, the society  and ultimately the world at large? I think every person and organization must ask itself the question: How can I be more relevant to the society or the world at large? Relevance can be more effectively and better understood by examining examples of irrelevance. An instant one  that I can conjure up is that of the likes of "Paris Hilton". With my limited knowledge about her, I would like to know how relevant Paris Hilton is to our society or  to the world at large. If I discount any charities that she might be supporting actively through monetary contribution or otherwise, partying 365 days a year would not account for much relevance in my opinion. Most hedonistic pursuits like drinking, drug abuse etc. would in some way come under  the irrelevant category. More than the  well known faces like those of Paris, I am more concerned about mindless followers of hers and their  ilk. Another classic Indian example would be Rakhi Sawant. I am not for a moment suggesting that people should not enjoy, but majority of the work that we do in our day to day lives and in every major activity of ours we must ask ourselves, where is this all leading to? If I can remotely relate it to the greater  human goal I would continue to pursue that activity. One many now ask quite rightly, what is this "greater human goal". It is difficult at this point of time for me to describe what the "greater human goal" is and what it should be. I am in no position to proclaim what it should be. However, a fair idea of what  could generally be accepted as a greater human goal would be -  "Maintaining evolutionary progress through preservation of overall ecological  balance".( I may be excused for drawing this conclusion from my excessive indulgence in  watching NGC, Discovery and Animal Planet ). There are many examples which I can draw upon. If  our observations of nature were to be taken as a lodestone, "evolutionary progress" emerges as the only ultimate goal. Numerous animal and plant species come together only at the time of mating and never meet again.  Animal and plant species have developed extraordinary adaptations for survival. They have employed strategies that will beat the shit out of all the fancy "blue ocean" strategies of the business world. ( The examples to demonstrate this are simply too many and I would like to write a separate piece to describe them one day).

 2) "Reasonableness": The second most important of human values according to me is "Reasonableness" which  essentially describes the attribute of fairness in dealings. Reasonableness derives itself from the first value which is "Relevance". If I were to accept my hypothesis of evolutionary progress as the ultimate human goal,  then  "social living" could be described as a means to achieve that goal. Whether one chooses to call it "division of labor" as described by Adam Smith, the fact remains that living in a society greatly enhances our chances of survival and evolutionary progress. And it is in this need for social  living that "Reasonableness" finds its "Relevance". In most situations we as individuals are aware of what is fair and what is not. It is to an extent tied into the "social living" concept.  If we consider that man has been gifted with unique gifts by god then the gift of conscience - the ability to judge to oneself " the wrong from the right"  would be the most important of all. I cannot remember a single instance in my life when I did not know what was fair and what was not. (Whether I  tread the fair  path is another matter and one of regret). Thus, "Reasonableness" constitutes the second in the triad of human values. Without reasonableness, there would be anarchy, reflected so vividly from time to time in various coups and revolutions.

3) "Responsibility": Last but not the least, responsibility both personal and for the greater society at large is the third most important of human values. Taking responsibility of one's own actions goes a long way in establishing a sustainable world order. Whether it is parking the bike on central stand in a parking garage or driving in your own lane or avoiding driving while drunk, avoiding wastage of electricity or water etc are some of the examples of responsibility. It is an element of personal responsibility we need to endorse for the collective good of all.

Finally, while, I am convinced that these are necessary to describe my values, I am not certain if they are sufficient. With limited rumination over them and true to my nature of not going too deeply into most philosophical pursuits, I hope they are necessary and sufficient.

Frustrations with some things in life......

internet speed,
no auto/public transport
no internet
no live matches on tv
Even though have the money to spend its frustrating that you cant get what you want sometimes....

7 Years

7 years ago on this very day, I had ventured into an unknown uncharted territory. I started my career in the IT industry not knowing what future lay in store for me. A year earlier, in my 3rd of year engineering, I remember practicing interview questions with my friends. "What do you want to be 5 years down the road, 10 years down the road 15 years down the road?" I must acknowledge these questions have no meaning in today's world, where we are governed by Moor's law and where facebook did not exist 5years ago and google  was just a project 10years ago and yet today they have become part of our lives.. A 3 year horizon is at best the smartest bet today. So, back to the question, I am almost half way down the 15yr journey today, and I am sure I am nothing of what I could have ever imagined back then. It is not often that I look back at such a long period of time. I hope to use this blog to recollect and reflect.
7 years ago, I had no clue of what the "Software" industry was all about. Being a mechanical engineer, I always believed that companies made and sold products. Little did I realize that there was an industry that was many times bigger called the "services" industry. I had no clue what a software "product" meant and looked like.
I would love to look back and think about my learning, achievements and failures. So let me first talk about the learnings.
Year 1 - First few months went into learning the building blocks of software programming. I still was not able to visualize it all together. It was only somewhere down the end of 6-9 months did I first realize that software was all about 3 things, a UI, a database and a logic engine that tied them together. I hadn't spotted the generic misunderstanding I had and only realized it later that I was dealing with Software "Application" programming. It always rankled my mind when my friends who had studied computer engineering were so enamored by operating systems, networks, device drivers and digital signal processors. I had no clue what all these were, and maybe I still don't, and felt as if I was a dimwit in spite of teaching myself how to write a program.
Year 2 -  I was part of a software "product" team. It was the first time I understood how a software product is developed and what went behind creating it. In typical 'IT speak', it was my first experience of a  complete SDLC (software development life cycle). I learned some basics of quality, configuration management, software architecture etc.
Year 3 - For the first time in my life, I was in a foreign country and I spent my first few months at a client location. More than the work environment, I learned a lot about the cultural aspect of work. I learned how to carry myself in a client environment. It was also the first time I was seeing software programs in actual end use. The year was an eye-opener for me both personally and professionally.
Year 4 - Of all the years on the job, this was perhaps the year I must have worked my hardest. It was a pleasure executing my first implementation project and a go-live. It was also a year where I learned a lot about real team-work and leadership. I still rate my client manager as one of the best bosses I have had and needless to say, I learned a whole lot from him.
Year 5 - This was the first year I did a consulting assignment and interacted with the business more than the IT staff. It was an eye opener for me. I realized how useless our code was going to be if it did not solve the problem it was intended to solve in the first place. I spent countless hours raking my brain about the efficacy of software applications for end use. It also led to a disillusionment about the software industry in general. Nevertheless, I realized how important it was to keep in mind who the end customer was and what his needs were.
Year 6 - This was the last year in my job before my MBA and it was a transition from being a business analyst to being a complete solution provider. It also brought me closer to the business of "software services" in its entirety. Now that I look back, my journey had perhaps reached a full circle.
Year 7 - Enrolled for my MBA and joined XL. Learned the background and fundamentals of my 6 previous years of work-ex. I suddenly started finding meaning in many events that had baffled me during my years at work. Had it not been for my work-experience, those lessons would have seemed very much like null variables without context.

If I leave aside the learning from each year and try to think back at the the single biggest aggregate learning experience so far from my job, it has to be team work. All throughout my life I have tread the path as an individual. Whether it is scraping through tough exams or cracking the easy ones, all the risks and rewards were individual. Suddenly, when you are in a job environment, you are part of a team. Even though there are plenty of group projects during school, it is nowhere close to the "On the Job" experience. I passionately feel that we must have more of group projects to prepare young minds for what they encounter in their job lives and beyond, because we are in an industrial era post Adam Smith where division of labor is a reality.

One of my friends, Debasis with whom I did not work directly on projects but became good friends with at office, once said, it was good that we were not working on projects together, else there would to be friction between us affecting our friendship. I thought for a while about it and realized that it was quite true. When two friends come together for a project, their destiny  in some ways becomes a shared destiny, their success intertwined. Both are affected even if one of them screws up. When they were just friends, they sought advice from each other and wished the other well, but their destinies weren't tied to the others performance. It is when they start working together that they hit a roadblock. Therefore, I sometimes feel that people with whom one has had a great experience working together, make better teammates to look out for partnerships in future work than just your old friends from school with whom you spent a good time. It appears counter intuitive, but is something I have started believing in. Having said that, it does not mean that you will not have a good working relationship with a good old friend you played marbles with, either.


It has been an exciting journey so far. I hope I can write about more exciting stuff about my job post M.B.A. This time my horizon is going to be a more appropriate 3 yrs.

Search results! frustrating

Have you every been frustrated with the search results that you get using google or any other search engine? If my guess is right, it would have been more often than not. I should rather ask have you ever been satisfied with the search results? The answer would be a big NO in most cases. The answer is even more obvious if the content is India centric. More often than not, information is simply  not available in the public domain in the electronic form. I had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Vajpayee's speech writer once, and I described him my peeve that corporate communication is a much neglected and underestimated area in Indian context. He pleaded that that was not true. I still stick to my argument even though I was pleasantly surprised by the websites of Thermax and Triveni Engineering recently. Coming back to the search frustration, I wonder if it is because of the choice of words that I typed into the search window that gave me trash. I do not know of the search language syntax if there is any to search effectively. For instance I am not very much familiar with the use of a (+) (||) in searches. Maybe there is a lot to them than I know off. Maybe I am search illiterate.  But then, isn't it google's problem that a dumb person like me cannot use the tool for what I intend to do? It is for this reason I believe that google should not rest on its laurels. A better search engine and google could be history. But not that google isn't trying. Solution to a long long identified need appears to be taking shape. Today I happened to see a new menu bar to the left of my google screen which I found could prove to be useful for context specific search. It has been a long held dream to have something like this as a user option. At last google seems to be working on it. I have similar gripe about gmail. An example is sorting of folders for instance based on names, which I am so familiar doing. Hopefully they will add it one day....

Mind your language!

My language skills are a bit muddled up and although I am quite good at all the 3 languages i.e. Hindi, English and Marathi, I am most comfortable while speaking in Hindi, writing in English and thinking in Marathi. If you are wondering what thinking in Marathi means, it is similar to the funny grammatical construction  you  get when people think in Marathi, "Mazya bapacha kai jatai?" and translate it into English while speaking as "What goes of my father"...

Album art, Apollo 13, Lagaan and banking for the poor

Came across this audiovisual commentary about a chap called Storm Thorgerson who designed many of Pink Floyd's album covers. I have been trying to develop some understanding of art for some time now and need to dig much deeper to figure out what the covers really mean.

In connection with Apollo 13 completing its 40th Anniversary, I happened to see a video of Jim Lovell, the real Tom Hanks.  A couple of his quotes really stand out for me. They exhibit the spirit of  much of human society's evolution as I would like to put it.  It can become a nice opening line for a speech somewhere."I think one of the things that (Apollo 13) showed the people of the world was that even if there is a great catastrophe, good leadership and teamwork, initiative and perseverance - these things make for getting an almost certain catastrophe into a successful recovery,". Smell classic American Hollywood movie fare anyone?  One can argue.. but I will leave it there. Jim Lovell  was most certainly a brave man. He goes on to say, "Our philosophy was: had we not been successful, we would have continued to broadcast our indications of what went wrong, what's happening - either until the last battery had died or the last bit of oxygen was gone." It is such brave commitment to charge forward without the fear of consequence that most of the times leads to progress. And speaking of the scrapping of Nasa's current plan to return to the Moon, Lovell delivers another classic line :"Mankind is meant to explore. There is a certain group of us that live on the edge to do that sort of thing. And I think over the years regardless of budgets up or budgets down I think people will find a way of eventually going to Mars, not in my lifetime probably, but we will set foot on Mars one of these days." India's cryogenic engine technology failed in its first attempt to launch a communications satellite into orbit a few days ago. The team at ISRO can take heart from such powerful words of Jim Lowel and his Apollo 13 team. Hopefully, India will be able to launch its own cryogenic engine next year. It will be a worthy tribute to the people who spent 18 years of their lives for one dream!

One more interesting video that I saw yesterday was the performance of a Miami school based on the popular song "chale chalo" by A.R. Rehman from the movie Lagaan. I think music is one among certain things like sports that can transcend cultural boundaries. The video on Miami school's attempt at the orchestral composition is a great example of that.The other good thing about the song is that can act like a motivational or an inspirational song like the "eye of the tiger" with the only exception that while 'eye of the tiger' is more individualistic in nature while 'chale chalo' is more of a group motivational song. (Ironically, I know I am back to the tiger debate.. quite intuitive isn't it...tiger=individualistic). I liked the treatment to the song  sung in the orchestra performance because orchestral performances also happen to be of interest to me off late. I am not sure if each school in US has a choir  where school kids learn music and participate in an orchestra, but I sure am an advocate of such a thing in Indian schools if it can be done. The song "Chale chalo" also led me to the discovery of a fantastic film on the making of Lagaan. I have been impressed with Lagaan ever since I saw it for the first time, however my appreciation of Aamir, Ashutosh and the film has gone up tremendously after watching the making of Lagaan.

Finally, to conclude, here is something about another interesting little video that I saw on banking for the poor by Andrew Hinton of pilgrimfilms.com. It is an amazing video about how a South Indian bank manager called J S Parthiban has transformed the lives of many poor villagers in Tamil Nadu. It was heartwarming to see the compassion of Mr. Partiban and it reminded me instantly of the TED video I had seen about Aravind Eye Hospital sometime ago. A line from that video by Dr. G. Venkataswamy the founder of Aravind Eye hospital will remain etched in my memory.

"When you grow in spiritual consciousness, we identify with all that is in the world so there is no exploitation. It is ourselves we are helping. It is ourselves we are healing." -Dr.G.Venkataswamy

For me these are very powerful lines and they have a strange appeal which I can't explain. They appear so simple yet so deep in meaning that I can only hope to understand  it completely some day. J S Partiban's voice was as compassionate as that of Dr. Venkat's and I wish him well. Interestingly the video ended with a special thanks to many people including Sarosh J Ghandy. Mr Ghandy taught us Ethical leadership in XLRI and I am not surprised to see his name in the video. Mr Ghandy also happens to be one of the nicest people I have seen in my life.

collage of the year gone by in XL

While I was experimenting with picasa to get the photos of my "new look" uploaded, I had an idea... Why not try a collage of some of the different images taken during the past year @ XL.... Here is the outcome of my first try!

Getting Personal: The new look

I have always valued personal space and I am uncomfortable with people getting too close to me unless I allow them to. I have always valued personal space immensely and I (believe ) have tired to respect others' personal space as well. People often misunderstand it as a certain "aloofness" or lack of empathy etc. But that is simply not the case in most cases. I have been an extremely independent person all my life and I believe in the human spirit of independence and self-reliance, something to do with having the world to oneself and weaving one's own life, painting one's own canvas. I think it draws its nutrition from the "id"  part of my human mind as described by Sigmund Freud, the wild side, the instinct, the gut-feel, the "hard wired" human nature. To that extent I can relate to the American way of life which values personal freedom , adventure and independence. My aloofness is borne out of this desire for valuing personal space. This particular point of view is not so well understood and respected in India and most parts of the world which are highly social in nature. I have been very unsocial if not anti-social throughout my adolescent years and early adulthood, so much so that I find it hard to be social in my prime adulthood now. Coming back to the point therefore, I very much get uncomfortable about people showing undue concern. As I have grown older and hopefully wiser, I see some merit, rather necessity in having a social life." Man is a social animal', I remember reading and hearing so many times. I do not know how much of it is really "hard-wired" and how much acquired. Innumerable hours in front of television watching national geographic channel and discovery has meant that I can't help but draw analogies that relate everything "human"  with everything "natural" or wild.  A tiger for instance is a lonely beast while a lion apparently a social feline. My implicit assumption is that wild-life is pure, it is natural and at some level below our social garb we are as wild and as natural as anyone else in the animal kingdom.  Therefore, I think I belong to the tiger-like species whereas the rest belong to the lion-like species. Both are equally good in their own right, both survive in the wild and both thrive in their own den. 

Well beyond the tiger-lion digression though is the original objective of writing this blog and that is the new look that I have had which has grabbed unwanted attention. Here is the sneak peek... 

Audio Spotlight : Listening is believing

A couple of years ago, on a 2000 mile long road-trip across 7 states in USA, I happened to visit the "American Country music Hall of fame" museum in Nashville, Tennessee. I am not a museum buff . So when someone suggested we visit the museum, I had my doubts. Besides, I had never listened to a lot of country music in my life and did not know any well known American country music star. After much thought, I said to myself , maybe its worth giving it a try, 'cause there wasn't much to do in Nashville that day anyway!

I am a very average guy when it comes to understanding and appreciating music and while I do enjoy music of all genres,languages and cultures, neither do I understand the subtle nuances in music nor do I spend much time in understanding it in such detail. When it comes to music I can only nod my head and tap my feet. So going to the museum was a strange experience for me. However there were two things that impressed me immensely about the museum. One was the lighting arrangement in the museum  and the other acoustics.  Different sections in the museum were carved intelligently and designed to help transition from one section to the next almost effortlessly. The lighting  arrangement in each of these sections was unique and helped develop the mood for the genre of music. I salute the curators of the museum who had put in great amount of effort and time to arrange the display in the museum.

It has been almost two and a half years since I paid a visit to the museum, and if you are wondering what on earth made me write this blog, it happens to be a case study that I came across as part of my course at XLRI. The case is about Audio spotlight, a technology that can create a musical spotlight: a small beam of sound that can be heard only by the person who is standing within the beam of  a sound-gun. Imagine standing up in the beam of light of a projector in a cinema theater. I recall the sheer amazement I and my friend Sudi had that day when we happened to listen to music from different country singers playing in the same section within a few feet of each other. We were not able to listen to the other song when we not below one of the speaker phones playing it. We were simply spellbound. Today, after two and a half years, the mystery has finally been solved! It was the genius of Dr. Joseph Pompei that led to this far reaching technology that enabled "American country hall of fame" museum to have so many different songs playing in a small area of a room without causing a cacophony and without disturbing others listening to another song in the same section. One could maintain the silence of a museum atmosphere and yet listen to the songs from different artists on display. Hats off! to Dr. Pompei for his marvelous innovation! Sometimes technology becomes invisible in our day to day lives.  Yet, along comes a day when a  certain technology makes you stand up and take notice. I haven't seen the movie "Avatar" but I am sure it had the same "wow" effect on the audience as the acoustic effect that  the "American country music hall of fame" had on me.

Another experience that will always stay in my mind is the record by  by Jimmie Rogers that I happened to listen to in one of the kiosks. Next to the record player was a bit of history about the song. It said "this is one of the earliest American country music songs to use 'Yodelling'". I keep wondering if the "yodeli yodeli yoho yedli yodli ho" of Kishore Kumar has something to do with the record that lay out there. Maybe he drew inspiration after listening to one such composition. Two years have gone by, but the acoustic experience in the hall of fame museum and the "Yodelling" melody remains as fresh as ever in my mind. The case on audio spotlight has revived some wonderful memories for me once again.

A year after visiting the Nashivlle Hall of Fame museum, I happened to visit another very well-known museum in Paris: "The Louvre".  I haven't seem many other museums but even after seeing the world famous "Mona Lisa" at Louvre, nothing comes close to the magic that "Country music hall of fame" was able to generate for me that day. What they have achieved to do in that limited space is nothing short of magic. It is one of the finest museums I have seen and I would recommend it to everyone, music lover or otherwise. I have never seen a better arrangement of lighting and acoustics in any one place ever. Listening is believing!

Markata kisora neethi

The takeaway from today's class discussions:
Markata kisora neethi and Marjala kisora neethi. Toyota's tough-love Parent Child relationship with its suppliers and GM's Adult-Adult relationship with its suppliers.

Ansuman's Crawlers

Anshuman's google crawlers finally found their way to my unsuspecting little blog today. It was some sort of a coup because although not "strictly for private consumption" my blog served as my personal diary more than anything else. Unfortunately, Anshuman  did not know of this and posted my blog link to the entire batch. Some friendly souls turned up at the blogstep and found that I had written scrolls and scrolls of rubbish. While I am not embarrassed to share my mind-space, it was quite an awkward moment to be caught off-guard. I need to be more careful in future :).

Adios 2009

After the last year's success of my year end blog, I decided to keep up with the tradition of writing a blog on "Me & the year gone by". So, before starting to write this year, I read my blog "Adios 2008". I am not sure if I will be able to match the variety and newness of the things that I did/learnt/discovered last year but I will give it a try. Besides, I have been trying to live up to some of my new year's resolutions. Putting it down on a piece of electronic webspace will at the very least give me some motivation to keep up with one of them.

So, without much ado, after 2 complete months and 7 days I have  found time to complete my 2009 year end blog. The kind of person that I am, I don't quite remember many things a year afar. However, I feel it is important to remember certain things in life. So for that very reason that I do not forget things, I commence my journey through 2009.

1) The setting for the start of year 2009 was something like this: It wasn't clear how long I was going to be in US. My brother was going to get married in March and I had to book my flight for India. I had just returned from a wonderful vacation around mid-western and South-Eastern USA. It had been quite an adventure driving 2000 miles with my cousin and his friends. In the background, I was getting desperate to do an MBA from a decent college. The economic implications were pretty dire. Graduating students were finding it tough to get jobs never mind getting great ones. But with some determination and the help of my brother, I finally applied to XLRi to create the proverbial "option" for myself.( If I had not learnt it by now, as I would learn later, options are dangerous things). I don't remember much from my January days except that I was enjoying the driving experience and my new found freedom in my own car that I  had bought in Dec 08 (a Honda Civic 99).
2) Feb was extremely hectic. As expected, I got an interview call from XLRI and had to write some essays. Luckily, my interview date coincided with my India visit. I had not seen my sister in law Snehal ever before, although I had talked to her over phone and chat. So, I met her, spent a few days in Mumbai with my brother and Snehal before traveling to Nagpur. No sooner did I land in Nagpur than was I managing arrangements for my brother's wedding. I also had to travel back to Mumbai for my XL interview. My interview wasn't that great. I should have done better. But nevertheless, I had other important things to take care of and so I headed back to Nagpur. Abhay's wedding went off well and it was a nice family get-together for all cousins. Everyone was around and it was fun. A small surprise awaiting me during the trip was the good news from my cousin Utpal and his wife Harshla.
3) In March I returned back to USA and had to look for a new accommodation as my roomies were leaving for India. The search for an apartment was harrowing and ultimately I took up an apartment nearby. It was a nightmare deciding which place to rent because I had no clue how long I would be required to stay. Thankfully, the bad economy came to my rescue and vacant apartments were available on rent at attractive terms. Finding an apartment did not prove as difficult as clearing away all the furniture etc that my friends had collected over the years. It was quite a pain but I managed to dump it away to someone piece by piece. Having my own car really helped in the end!.I cannot imagine how I could have done all that without my car. I must mention my very good friend Arup who was of great help to me and was one of my only buddies left in the bay area then. I got to drive a U-HAUL truck and it was quite a scary experience even if it was only for 50 minutes.
4) In April  I had moved to my new place and I was now living in a studio apartment for the first time in my life. But there was something more important that had me excited all over again. I had signed up to run the 200 mile relay marathon from Calistoga to Santa Cruz (http://www.therelay.com/). I was going to run for the India Literacy Project (ILP) team and had pledged to raise 550$ for the cause of education in India. Just when I thought I was training really well I had a bout of throat infection. I was frustrated but determined to make it. So, no sooner had I recovered from my infection I took a bet on running the Santa Cruz half marathon. The half marathon was the suggestion of one of my running mates Suresh and I had registered for it before falling sick. Thankfully, my preparation prior to my infection came to my rescue and I finished with my personal best time of 2:15 mins (approx) having shaved nearly 10 minutes off  my SFO marathon time. The fact that I had not walked for a single minute in the entire race was the most satisfying feeling I had in a long time. I had done it!
5) The next event was the relay marathon. It is one hellawa crazy running event where a team of 12 runners run  3 legs each and cover a total distance of 200 miles as a team. I was given legs 7, 19, 31 of these.  It was the race of a lifetime for me and I will never forget the tremendous fun that I had during the entire race. (I was actually running with great difficulty having suffered a urinary infection just before the race and carried the pain right through the race.) The race course was extremely scenic and we had unbelievable fun competing with other teams. Although our first Van was a bit slow, we ensured that our team made it to the finish line in time for the medals. 35 hrs without any sleep, and having run 18.6 miles I was dead tired at the finish line. My group van was amazing and we had so much fun together. Shovan's one liners like "Feeling the temperature" remain some of the lasting moments of that event. The race had some personal high points for me. Halfway into my second leg, in the wee hrs of the morning, through the golden gate park, I pulled up my hamstring muscle and struggled to complete my 6.3 miles. While my Van mates kept my morale up and I managed to get over the line then, the next thing on everyone's mind was my 3rd and final leg. With a pulled hamstring, I would surely struggle to finish my 3rd leg in that state. (Of course, none of my mates knew about the infection I was carrying as well). We were in danger of getting disqualified for finishing over the time limit. We needed to make alternative plans. Some of the "star" runners in my van volunteered to run on my behalf in order to complete the race. The pressure to finish in time was immense, and I decided to make one last attempt. It was a bold move. With 4-5 hrs of rest, I thought I would be able to breathe some life back into my leg. So we decided, that I would give it one last shot myself. If I were to simply fall down during the race, someone else would take over. My teammates were equally tired, and running someone else's leg was the last thing on their minds so everyone encouraged me to the hilt. With the support of my Van mates and a slightly downward slope, I managed to give one of the most cherished performances of my life. The  run through the green hills of Ben Lomond near Santa Cruz will remain an enduring "blissful" experience for me . It was a painful leg but one of the most satisfying ones. An even more important event running in the background of the relay was the charitable contribution. I managed to collect a total of 800$ for the cause of literacy in India. I learnt an important lesson during my collection drive. I realized that people gave money only to someone they knew well (credibility), or if the cause in question was important to them.
6) My next goal was to run the SF marathon which was slated for July. But I was not sure if  I would stay that long in SF considering the end of my project. I had received a rejection notification from XLRI initially and I was disappointed but motivated to try a foreign school instead. So I was busy applying to universities when out of the blue, I received an email from XL informing me that I had been offered a seat and needed to join in the second week of June. After some deliberation, I decided to join XL. I had no other and better alternative available at that time. Coming back from the US meant that I had the experience of "closing down my shop".
7) In June, time had finally come to send out my LDI (Last day in Infosys) email. I quit on Thursday 04-Jun-09 and was on my way to JSR. I had never been to this part of the world so I was to looking forward to it. I had heard a lot about the region from my interactions with Manish during my college days and it was an intriguing exercise of matching facts on the ground with what I had heard from him before . I found Jamshedpur to be a pretty ordinary town/city. I was either expecting more or was used to the big urban sprawls of Western India. Talking about Eastern and Western India, apart from the vast difference in mindset, attitude, culture etc  my new theory is that Northern India is as close to Eastern India as South India is to Western India.
8) Out of the many experiences at XLRi, three will always remain special for the batch of  96 odd people that joined with me. The first one was the adventure camp near Dimna lake. It was one hellawa experience. Apart from the usual team building games,we did rappling, rock climbing and still water rafting in Dimna lake. My team won the overall team event and my effort was much appreciated. Second was the village trip to West Singhbum district of Jharkhand. It was meant to provide an insight into the living conditions of the poorest of the people in India.  I learnt about some customs about the tribal region that found to be markedly different from the rest of the country. I did not know that tribal people chose their own life partners unlike much of rest of India where it was arranged marriages. There is a tradition of "reverse" dowry among tribal people. The groom has to give a pair of bullocks as dowry to the bride's father before marrying his daughter. Divorces are a common occurance in the tribal region and they remarry quite easily. Tribal women enjoy lot of freedom and can leave their husbands if they so choose to because they are not well taken care off. Tribal people do not believe in modern medicine and treat themselves through "Zhad Phuk" (witch doctors). They indulge is excessive alcohol consumption and each house on the weekend is a "daru ka theka" ( the daru is made from rice and is called "hadia"). Cow and buffaloe sheds were conspicuous by their absence. I was told that tribals do not raise cows for milk as they feel milking cows is tantamount to cheating a calf of its right to it's mother's milk. How could we have never thought of it this way I wonder.
9) The third and most fascinating experience in XLRi was my "International immersion" trip to France in Nov. We  covered France, Belgium and Netherlands. I saw the Lourve, Eiffel tower, champs elysees, EU Commission office in Brussels and Amsterdam apart from Lille. The trip was a memorable experience. Lille, itself was a great little city and its city center is a treat to the eyes. A ride in the 200 mph Eurorail, nightlife in Lille, the strategy project with Groupe Adeo, one-day workshop with the students of IESEG and wine and cheese tasting experience is still fresh in my memory. Now I can safely say that I have covered a decent bit of Europe and US! France will remain as one of the high points of the year. I enjoyed my stay in Lille thoroughly. The last day at the Christmas fair and the giant wheel ride was simply mind blowing.
10) There have been many other learnings during my stay in XLRI. I would tire down documenting all of them here. Instead, I would sum up to say that some of the marketing and finance lessons have been very enriching. I know a few things about a lot more things now. My mantra in life has been "know the pointers". My MBA has been good from that point of view.
 Now that I look back at the moments throughout the year, I think my France trip, my relay race and Abhay's wedding would stand out for me. Getting into XLRI and learning concepts in marketing and finance etc would also go down as significant learning in my life in the past year. Phew! now that I have completed writing this post, I have just realized that it hasn't been that bad a year after all from a learning perspective. It surely is a competition to 2008... Over to you 2010...

New year resolutions

1)Throughout my adult life,(between ages 18-28) I have been criticized for being a serious guy. The nerdy bird, the geeky hick. Of course I admit, I have been criticized for all the right reasons. I did belong to the species of this kind and and it has been only in the last couple of years that I have changed as I have became wiser (I hope). Having said that, I might still be a serious guy, bad at jokes and certainly awkward and insipid at concise storytelling. In short, I suffer from a word I have coined called "dysmilia" : unable to smile enough in life. ;)

So, my first new  year's resolution is - start smiling more! (Now please don't start laughing, I am serious)

2) I have always lacked the discipline to write a blog. I have many ideas in my mind and I forget them if I don't capture them. So I have decided to write something for a start. I remember my good old school days when, in order to develop my language skills and to do better in board exams, my English teacher Mrs. Shahane had asked me to write a page in English/Hindi. I used to write a page a day even before that.It was a time when  my Grandfather coached me for the scholarship exam. Writing a single page essay was part of the English language section of the exam and the lazy bum that I am, I did not like it too much. (I also wrote some pages in marathi for something called as "Shudh lekhan" meaning "pure writing" to improve my spellings in marathi. This is perhaps the only activity ever in my life that my father took some interest in. This is also one of the reasons for my good handwriting in marathi/hindi.)  Over the years, other things grew in importance and I gave up on my writing habit. Well, it was never a habit to start off with, and it was over in a year's time. In those days, I used to struggle to find a topic for writing my page. I almost always ended up writing something around a story I had picked up in the newspaper or the cricket match I happened to watch during that time. After so many years that have gone by in between, I think it is high time that I start creating a bit of my own history.

**The word smile can be traced to sanskrit word "smayate" or he smiles..( I can also think of vismay which I think means wonder.. and I believe when a person wonders, one smiles to Him)

TED & other discoveries

My batch has some interesting minds. One such person is Sachin Rawat a big Machiavelli fan and a practitioner who has many interesting stories to tell from his work in the Uttaranchal power corporation. I have never met anyone who has actual experience of putting in place concepts from game theory, plea bargain, politics etc ( Rawat is also a Union leader). During one of my thought provoking discussions with him, I was trying to explain the discoveries of the famous nuroscientist Dr. V . Ramachandran. Dr Ram was referring to some interesting work on motor neurons, empathy among other things in his talk on TED ( http://www.ted.com/talks/vs_ramachandran_the_neurons_that_shaped_civilization.html ). It is an interesting talk to say the least.. more on it I will reserve for some other day.

TED is the beautiful repository of interesting lectures. "Power of Ideas" I think is a powerful concept. I  also came across Piaget and Vygotsky during a lecture by Sugata Mitra on his famous "Hole in the wall" experiments. I have known about Sugata's experiments for a long time now. He used to present some educational programs on doordarshan. I remember him from those days. Nevertheless its good to know that his ideas are now known to the world. 

Another discovery was that of a designer called  Stefan Sagmeister. I was impressed by his work. Art has been a less understood subject in the technical sense by general population. I feel that people tend to appreciate art more or less like I do music. If it looks good, sounds good.. great I like it. Most of the times one likes art/music and one tends to appreciate it purely based on instinct. I came across an interesting scale in art from Stefan's talk and I think that can be used in many different things especially in marketing. Its called scale of happiness in design (refer pic).








I was impressed with his idea of the difference between happiness and the visualization of happiness.. but more on that later.

I haven't taken keen interest in art, design etc even though I draw OK and do not have too poor a sense of art. So my journey into art also took me recently into an advertising group WPP more at  http://www.wpp.com/wpp/companies  and to an advertising genius called  Leo Burnett and his firm. More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Burnett_Worldwide as well as at their super artistic website http://www.leoburnett.com/.

My continuous rambling also meant that I also came across terms like  conspicuous consumption and conspicuous compassion. Sometimes jargons are very important to know and wow the audience. These neologisms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neologisms) and protologisms are another interesting concept I came across through my readings today. Another discovery that actually led me to neologisms was  the concept of anti-pattern. An organizational anti-pattern that I could instantly recognize is "Analysis Paralysis" more at ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern .)

I think this particular blog very much captures some of the important high-points for me from an intellectual stimulation standpoint. I am pretty impressed with myself that I have finally been able to capture some of it in text.

Economic Crisis: A reflection

Following is my reflection on risk taking that led to the global economic crisis during 2007-2010

The current financial crisis has taught us many lessons. However, the enduring one that has clearly struck in my mind is the one spelled out so clearly by former Fed chairman Allan Greenspan. The current crisis is neither the first nor will it be the last for it is “human nature” at work in each one of them.

Two millennia ago Gautam Buddha, while laying down the principles of Buddhism said, “Desire is the root cause of all evil”. Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street turned that age old wisdom on its head when he proclaimed “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind”. This notion of greed not just at Wall St but throughout the value chain is what one can attribute as the prime reason for the economic crisis.  This greed was manifested in the form of hefty bonuses for bankers, who, in order to make them, created loans with teaser interest rates to trap the not so innocent homeowners, who claimed false income proofs to get bigger homes that they could not afford. Banks never sold these home loans themselves, instead relying on equally greedy agents who got a fat commission for selling home loans. The bigger the home loan they sold, better the profits they made. Banks’ assumption that home prices never fell led them to believe that their investment could never go sour. In their endeavor to make even more profits, they, in some cases ended up disbursing 100% of the loan amount. In the meantime, banks created complex instruments based on these loans and sold them to greedy international investors who wanted to make more money. Greedy ratings agencies, without much clue of the underlying securities gave good credit ratings to these financial products and got away with their share in the pie. Greedy insurance agencies insured these financial products without understanding them and under the assumption that they would be alright: after all the ratings agencies had rated them, so they had better be good. While the going was great initially, it was never meant to last too long. It was too good to be true. The end was strong and fast. Higher inflation and rising floating rates triggered home loan defaults and everything fell like a pack of cards. The entangled economies of the entire world suffered a shock and proved that no market is completely decoupled from the other.     

Thus, this crisis is a reminder for us. It makes us to analyze and question not just the role of intermediaries but also that of the investors under whose pressure banks took excessive risk and brought many countries to their knees. Deep crisis in Iceland, Ireland and Greece are grim reminders of excesses by banks, financial institutions and investors in general. Big bonuses to bank chief executives whose pay structures incentivized them to take excessive risk has been much talked about in the world, but it is strange that everyone is waking up to this so late. Complex derivative products, dubbed as the “financial weapons of mass destruction” by Warren Buffet, are understood by few and yet have grown into a trillion dollar business. Excessive leverages by storied Investment banks and their inadequately back-tested mathematical models based on very few years’ worth of historical data is another reminder of the risk of “unknown- unknowns” and what-ifs of a worst case scenario. To complete the picture is inadequate regulation of financial instruments which has led Governments around the world to “Privatize the profits and socialize the losses”. Further away, huge trade surpluses and exports by high saving economies like China and Japan on one hand and ever consuming import hungry credit card economies of US on the other has led to huge trade imbalances in the world. The world has to address all these issues soon.

To sum up, I think there are many lessons to learn from the financial crisis and we will have to apply them again, for as long as greed prevails, this will not be our last financial crisis.

4 Movies and a Book

One of my biggest weaknesses has been my incapacity as a "social" person, a "people" person, an "empathetic" person. I have been dubbed as "emotionless" or rather as an "unemotional" person. If I were to analyze the reasons behind it,  a lack of exposure to good movies and books would be couple of them. I haven't been good at either. While I regret missing out on both these in my early life, I think the opportunity cost of not seeing  movies might have been slightly lesser of the two. There are a few reasons for that, one being  that I can still try and fill up my backlog, because unlike books, watching films consumes a fixed quantum of time no matter who sees it. Books on the other hand requires you to spend much effort and time, especially when picking it up as a hobby in later life.The other reason for lesser opportunity cost of not watching films is also the extremely poor quality of movies in the late 80's and most of 90's. That was the decade of decay of Indian cinema. If I were to analyze and measure the cinematic excellence in India, I am sure, cinema of this period would stand out as the worst on all parameters of creativity and entertainment value. It was as insipid as a wrinkled cucumber on a cold frosty winter day. While I am no expert on films, I do have a modest sense of art. The boy meets girl, running around trees, rich girl poor boy movies showcased the lack of rigor,imagination and freshness in an industry which thrives on novelty of storytelling if not  novelty of stories themselves. I concede that there could have been a big underworld influence, however that is  no reason for such a poor show. I remember having a discussion with my friend in my 2nd year hostel room. Overlooking the famed peepal tree which had our holi shorts still dangling from its branches, I asked myself "Why is Govinda such a huge star?". Hero No. 1 or some such  Xth   generation "No 1" movie had just been released few days before and had been dubbed as a huge success. In my opinion Govinda is one of the sloppiest actors in Hindi cinema and his movies certainly devoid of any sense. I was complaining that he should be dumped by the audience for producing such movies. What I did  feel at that time however, was that there was a huge audience who wanted to see his movies.  Surely, such movies were being made because there was a demand for it. If Altaf Raja could sell 65Million copies of "Tum to thahere pardesi", success of Govinda or Rajnikanth should have been no surprise to me. It is here that my current reading of marketing and strategy concepts comes in handy. To me this is something  akin to Ford's assertion of "Any car as long as it is Black in color". I was reading a book by Rama Bijapurkar titled  "We are like that only". I see a lot of similarities in the two. In many ways than one, we were in an era where people did not have any choice. They consumed whatever was being dished out to them. With liberalization things changed dramatically. Consumers started rejecting old wine in new bottle. There was a wave of new cinema from RGV and many a nouveau chef d'orchestre who challenged and destroyed the decaying movie making "template". Consumers started lapping up their offerings instantly. They wanted value for their money. If you are still wondering, what the heck is my point, all I am trying to drive home is that, in my pursuit of to reduce my cinematic timeshare deficit I watched 4 movies this week, each of them wonderfully well crafted and meaningful. The movies I watched were

1) "Barbarians at the gate" based on the LBO takeover saga of  RJR Nabisco.

2) "Black Friday"- For me one the best Indian docudramas ever made..... period.

3) "Reservoir Dogs" - Quentin Tarantino... need I say anymore

4) "3 Idiots" - Another masterpiece from Hirani and superlative performance by Aamir Khan.

Lastly, I also increased my intellectual "book value" by reading half of "We are like that only".  The book gives  some insights into changing tastes of Indian consumers. The success of good quality movies and rejection of the old formula is an endorsement of the point made in the book about Indian consumers.  I can cite numerous bollywood movies in the last 4-5 years that I have thoroughly enjoyed watching.  Movies like "Munnabhai MBBS", "DevD","Sarkar", "Swades", "Lagaan", "Black" etc to name a few have been outstanding.

Those were the last 4 days of my life for you. A chirstmas holiday well spent on the good things in life : sleep, movies and books.