Drishti - the vision

2009 will be remembered for all the wrong reasons and may be a few good ones too (the Oscars). It was a year where the humanity as a whole was plunged into darkness. The feel good and India shining and Asia growing sentiments were weighed down by ground realities. Obama took charge and promised a new hope to the World he might not have succeded much but he certainly was a good bet. India found its own Obama in Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh after almost a decade of fractured verdicts proved that single biggest majority party in India is not the stuff of fairy tales. Impact of financial crisis presented some valuable wisdom to the youth of our country. Saving for the future, not complaining too much about how bad their jobs are and realising that hard work and persistence are timeless values. Copenhagen summit brought the Climate discussion to the forefront and although not many people are giving it a chance, it surely was a significant event for the Planet. Sachin Tendulkar and Amitab

What can be more misleading than the title of this post? The immodest title implies that I have failed only once in my life so far. Nothing is further from truth but I will stick to this as it allows a punchy opening to this post. So unless you have absolutely zero tolerance for lies and poetic liberty, please bear with me. I was once appointed (another lie, in fact I was elected through a political process which left much to be desired when it came to fairness but may be more on it someday later) the Secretary for the English Debating and Literary Club at IIT Delhi, quite a coveted position I must say. And for those of you who have been spared the agony of moving through IITs here is a quick description of how these clubs worked. So we had nine of them in areas such as Hindi , Quizzing, English Debating, Dramatics etc and each of them had a secretary who was elected through a free and fair election (now I have really run out of my quota of lies for the next 7 births) and every hostel

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Hello (to anyone who has had the patience to hang around for a long long time to wait for this post). So this one is about winning hearts and minds. Hopefully this post will become progressively clear over the next 300 words or so. I was just talking to a colleague a few moments ago and suddenly I thought I was acting a bit foolish. Helping her more than she would ever expect or imagine. So essentially foolish by our social standards. Now I am not sure if I am generalising too much but I have seen that the society in which we live (or at least untill 10 years ago) valued those who would remain reserved and inapproachable, show up late in meetings and crack jokes that would make everyone else laugh and they themselves would never even acknowledge other'e joke by even as much as a smile. And growing up as corner office aspirant's we tend to copy some of those behaviours as well. Now going back to this colleague of mine, my first impulse was "not to help" and quickly bec

This morning when I was coming to the office, a guy jumped out of a running bus and only by a hair's breadth managed to avert falling on my car. This isn't the worst of such actions that I have seen but this reminded me of something similar from the past and then led to a chain of (un) connected thoughts and finally to this blog. So during my years at college I used to go home on the weekends and generally carried a small hand bag with me. During one such trips in my first year I had done a similar (to the one by the guy above) stunt and jumped off the bus while it was still moving. This was not the gravest of my sins, what I had done potentially fatally wrong was that I was about to jump off the bus in the direction opposite to its motion. One of the guys in the bus (he was probably a labourer or someone) noticed this and shouted "aage ki taraf, aage ki taraf" (face towards the front) - the words hit me like an arrow with a firehead and flamed in me the thoughts - &q

Ok so here is my promised blog on Ahmedabad trip that I recently made. Most of it will be about Ahmedabad rather than the trip (just a convenient filter for some users who might want to carefully choose what they read). A bit of a history here - I have grown up in Ahmedabad, went to three different schools there and spent almost 8 years in that city. So I used to use IIM Ahmedabad as a landmark to give directions long before my fellow-IITians made it their ambition, goal and all that. Not to say that its value as a landmark is anywhere comparable to its value as India's best B-School but thats just how useful it was to me back then. Not only had I demeaned the status of IIM Ahmedabad by using it purely for the purpose of giving directions but also I had sinned against other great institutions such as PRL (Physical Researc Laboratory) set up by Vikram Sarabhai, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) frequented by Abdul Kalam and what must have contributed to the success of Chandr

Apologies to those for whom it is a repeat telecast... My Resume Most prominent was the name on the top, though little difference did it make. Even with a Tom Dunst sitting there, Little notice people would take. All the time that I have spent on this earth Sat right there on the corner of the page With a sense of remorse on the years I had lost I looked once again at my age And the days when I had gone to school, And the days when I had earned some glory. Were right there in a nice looking table, Forming the next part of my life’s story. It was all there sitting one after the other My talents, my interests, my skills and my knowledge And placed arrogantly in a league of its own Was the name of my prestigious college. The college days asserted their authority And demanded a line for every year Courses, politics, posts and grades Was all spelled out loud and clear And here it was, a desperate effort To prove my worth to everyone A verbose and glossy account Of all the work that I had e

I have just returned from my trip to Ahmedabad. It was a great experience but more about that in my next blog. This one is about feedback. I am very particular about safety, so much so that it borders on obsession sometimes. This can be partially attributed to the industry I work in (oil) where all the time you are dealing with a potential mass-destructive bomb and partially to the fact that I believe dying on roads is a waste of life. Anyways, so I took this taxi to the airport the other day. I had ordered a Meru Cab, which is one of the best taxi services available in Bangalore (and also in Mumbai and Delhi I think). They have very high safety standards etc etc (so they claim). But half-way to the airport the driver started to resort to his own ways (which he must have picked up driving call centre cabs - a guess) which included driving at 100 Km/hr without maintaining enough distance from the car ahead and talking on the mobile phone at the same time etc etc. In spite of repeated wa

Those of you who drive will agree with me, that in most uncertain situations 2 nd gear is the best to drive your car in. It gives you an opportunity to quickly slow down and if you have the luxury of a few extra unclaimed yards then you can quickly seize those too by accelerating just a little bit more. No real hassles, not much risk involved, a sense of complete control (just a sense) and smooth ride. OK! before a speed lover points out let me accept that indeed the ride is devoid of any thrill. So what? It is much safer, risk-free and with a higher probability of getting to where I am headed to. So unless you put me in a Volvo with at least six air bags, ABS, obstruction sensors and parachutes I will not speed -up on roads. But what about life? Are we also living our lives in second gear? Trying to exercise that sense of control and making it hassle-free? Are we forfeiting the right to thrilling successes just because we do not wish to run the risk of painful failures. Are we settli

I am a strategist. I like to think of interesting strategies. Pulling things together, understanding trends, making predictions, optimizing activities etc. etc. Sometimes I look at different people around me and try to think of what i would do in their positions. For example how would I launch a car in the market or as a doctor how would i maximise benefit for my patients etc. The most recent role to which I played an imaginary understudy was that of a terrorist. I sat thinking what should be the best strategy for people who wish to destroy India. After lot of deliberation I reached to a conclusion that inaction is perhaps the best action. As an Indian, every morning I get up to the threat of meeting with an accident on the road. Even if I manage to reach office safely I am not sure if I can still be sure of a job. Some whimisical investment bankers up there on the East coast of America can create havoc in the lives of me and my friends just because the idiots thought that they can mak

Everybody likes to be successful. And since most of us do not have the courage to go out there and create something for ourselves we conspire to get successful at somebody else's expense. One of the most frequented paths in this pursuit is the Corporate ladder. Anyways, this blog is not meant to take a critical view of this path. I am more interested in sharing with my readers (I hope there are a few) the dilemma that I face everyday at my office. I call it the Corporate Pendulum. For those of you who never bothered much about the science of simple harmonic motion (and also for those who never bothered about science itself) during your +2 classes here is the shortest course in Pendulum Physics. A pendulum oscillates around a mean position and it does so because there is some stupid force acting on it all the time trying to settle it at that mean position. Off course the pendulum, everytime it reaches that mean position, has some momentum and instead of settling down it overshoots t