India - Driving Benefits

When I returned to India, apart from having a few more pounds in the pocket in my pocket, a lot more pounds on my paunch, I picked up two skills which I thought I would be able to use for the rest of my life – cooking and driving!

I could not be more wrong when it comes to driving. Driving in India is not short of a mission - mission impossible that has many lessons. Driving imparts a lot of learning in India. It also brings about many thriving business opportunities including heavenly massages that may be only possible in India. The Indian “roads” as we call them are spaces which allow people to move from point A to point B with great fortitude, faith providing a mirror to the diversity and progress of India itself.

In terms of lessons, in India driving teaches any human being to believe in an almighty. In the present century, the Indian driver is teaching ordinary Indians the value of faith as much as the sadhus and sufis taught us for many centuries ago. How else can one explain the multitude of inebriated women and men of Bangalore finding their homes within a reasonable statistic? Then there is also the case of people who play loud music on the stereo, talk on the mobile, indicate wrongly and drive without a license – all simultaneously ? If God was not on their side, there is no way, I would be able to go through the roads with my anatomy intact over the last few months. Thank you God for the small mercies J

The lessons in driving do not extend just to faith. They teach one to be patient. Take for example the lesson that “one has to be patient to reach your destination”. If you have not learnt this, try driving through one of the rural roads where countless cows, goats and chicken cross the road ignoring the blaring horns with their caretakers smiling at the cars . They smile with warmth that makes your heart melt and accept that the only way to “move forward” is to be patient! If you try anything funny, apart from all the laws of the land, the landlord of the villages will ensure adequate compensation that will make you baulk. Patience pays!

Remember the adage “The weak will certainly inherit the earth.” Nowhere will this be more evident than the traffic signals where the apparently week make you grovel in agony as they cross the road in the absence of any marked or designated crossing. Mothers with babies, old people with walking sticks, rickshaw pullers all take priority when it comes to crossing the street!

This is not to say that size does not matter! In highways, overloaded lorries occupy both lanes crossing at speeds that will make a tortoise look like a supersonic jet! Then, what choice to do you have except to keep the faith with patience following these huge beasts and believe that the weak shall inherit the earth?

The lessons are endless, so are the roads and so are the pot-holes. In fact, roads and potholes form a great symbiotic relationship. As soon as roads are built, they attract traffic. The roads are never designed for the kind of traffic . Then we have pot holes. The building of roads and filling of potholes continually keep people gainfully employed and a few corrupt officials will be running households with the ill gotten money from the pot-holes.

For the enterprising the potholes present opportunity. Not very far from many potholes, I have seen people with contraband and street vendors approach drivers with their wares tempting goods at attractive prices. Slowing vehicles definitely notice these goodies!

I have two ideas which I will explore once I get a bit more time. The first one is called massage ride. With vehicles of all nature freely available, how about subjecting oneself to a few kilometeres of a ride whereby every bone, muscle and sinew in the body will be tested? Accupressure, tyre puncture, bone strengthening are all side effects of these pothole infested rides. Once I work with my friends in medicine and automobiles , it may be a small task to identify the right route for massging the correct organ of the body. The pot-hole infested massage ride – a normal daily experience when marketed correctly will prepare the rider for a challenging life, make him happy fill in many pockets and keep the rider healthy. I am on the look out for partners.

The other venture is to start on online petition agency to start naming potholes after famous people. There is a long tradition of naming our roads after leaders and famous people. In Bangalore, we have MG Road, KG Road, KH Road, DVG Road and RK Road all dedicated to famous people. With Times of India being the biggest paper and Deccan Chronicle lunching Bangalore edition, there will never be a shortage of celebrities in Bangalore. After all, these dailies know only about celebrities! So how about calling potholes based on well known figures of today. We can have BSY pothole, Dharam Singh pothole and Deve Gowda pothole and so on. The size of the pothole can have a correlation with the wealth they have. With the abundance of potholes , all walks of life and all communities can be happy that there is a landmark dedicated to their leader. If there are short term celebrities like Poonam Pandey and Big Boss participants, small potholes that have a chance of getting filled can also be named after them. This is in view of their contribution to society and the longevity of their status. Again partners are welcome!

The diversity and progress that India has made is evident on the roads. So are the challenges. A decade ago, there would be a few air conditioned cars mostly between Marutis, Hyundais, Ambassador and Premier, almost no-one with a mobile driving a car. Today, gleaming BMWs wait behind bullock carts. Launches of cars and vehicles that are designed for India are common place. Beggers sell laptops near potholes. There are solid four lane highways.

But, what about me? I thought I had learnt a life skill with driving. However these roads have given me lessons for life, increased my faith in the almighty apart from making me think about business opportunities. Could I ask for anything more from the road that is being taken by me? Makes me wonder if India has changed a lot?

Cloud is still too cloudy

Attended a forum on cloud computing today. This was by a body called the cloud circle. Some good stories and some very mundane ones.

Here are some of the key messages I took away.

1. This is the latest hype surrounding the IT industry.
2. This is still nascent and I think we will be through a couple of other hypes before we really have this on the tap.
3. It is extremely interesting to create a lot of hype around this now.
4. The folks who can make a lot of money out of this are surprisingly lawyers and planners.
5. Parties who need to be very very worried – IBM, Oracle, SAP, Indian IT service providers, coders in in house IT, production support people.
6. The next interoperability noise will be around web developed apps.

Of cattle class and rat race

Politically correct words! Morally questionable histories! Rat race.

Speaking like a common man! Fresh perspectives untainted by scandal! Cattle class!

What crass where very rat on the block is crying foul about perhaps the situation where one holy cow is chewing the cud saying what he means and all rat go helter skelter and the stupid meerkats (a k a journos), whinge, moan and provide publicity to all the rats.

In a land where our political animal hones his skills mysteriously through inheritance; or perhaps getting to the pinnacle through the labyrinthine route of the underworld; where we a good percentage of the ruling class with a fat dossier of cases that are yet to be proved in court; where people spend money collection with enormous good will from party funds; where mysteriously the local MPs and MLAs suddenly grow from penury into power in a very short span between the polls; is it time to celebrate the coming of holy cows among the rats.

India is a land of the mysterious and the spiritual, the world of Gandhi, where after six decades of so called independence, there is so much hunger. Check http://www.bhookh.com/hunger_facts.php and http://www.ifpri.org/publication/2008-india-state-hunger-index-key-findings-facts. We have so much gender inequality and poor education. Some cursory reading on the net will provide pathetic facts in bad looking figures. A random walk down the streets of the multitude of towns and villages and cities in India will open ones eyes to these figures. Still it is amazing our meerkats a k a journos are so obsessed with cattle class that the rate race among the great populace has been ignored by perhaps footnotes in papers and fillers on the telly.

A cursory look at the India cinema shows progress of the morality of political class – from dedicated philantrophists fighting English hegemony and serving the community in the early days – to the present where every derided villain is a politician and the large majority of the general public seems to agree.

Should the rats in the present political class who are quite keen on grabbing a chair of any colour appreciate a few holy cows who have come through with distinguished academics; who have a standing beyond politics; whose erudition in universally acknowledged. Unfortunately, we lost the only non political universally loved president the nation ever elected. A telecom guru who is responsible for the telecom revolution was sent back for his association with politics. Let us hope the few cows who some in among the rats are given a chance to cleanse the nation – say what they think – and not become a victim of “rat” think – The absence of thought. Let people stay in 5 stars and call cattle class cattle class not have creative rats who have exchanges suitcases in hotel rooms, have a few status at the cost of the tax payer, have land mysteriously allocated to friends and family.

In the land where the cow is worshipped, let us give the holy cows a chance and not make the rats fatter.

Notes from Egypt

When we open our history books, spread across pages, spawning across ages, are tales of evolutions and revolutions that fascinate. Real or imagined, these stories, narrated by a series of excavations and what would surely qualify as propaganda material in this day of free press. In the extrapolated world of make believe, I have always tended to view history both with cynicism and a sense of caution. I am sure never is any winner as good as some tales tell me nor is a loser as bad as they may have been made out to be. The good and bad of any moment or individual also very much depends on the prism in which we look at them. Clive will always remain a hero to the English just as he will remain a villain in India.

However, there are some tokens from the past that stand introspection over the course of sands of time. Perhaps there are no tokens that stand taller and mightier than the ones that dot the land of Egypt. Whatever ,the karma of the rulers of the great land and whatever the morals of exploitation of perhaps thousands of common men and women, there can be no denial that Nile blessed what is definitely the earliest remnant of civilization.

When one looks at the Pyramids that have stood for five thousand years, I was struck with awe, respect, hatred, fascination and above all a sense of humility. The impression will remain in Luxor. Here, mighty temples and huge edifices greet the present in defiance to the time that has passed them. They fascinate the internet enabled generation with perhaps the same or even more aura than the so called ancient generation when they were built.

Almost any person with a soul will be struck with awe of what is possibly once in a lifetime experience - An encounter with the past - not just any other encounter, but an encounter that will leave an indelible impression. There is no way one can come away from them without a feeling of respect for the scale of imagination , the excellence of execution, and the brilliance of architecture.

When one is brought up in the largest democracy taught to be critical of the actions of the rulers and lives in a land where authority always has to undergo introspection - it is simply impossible to hate the rulers of the time bygone in Egypt. The Hatesputs and Rameses of their times, in their quest for glory would have paid the price of countless limbs an perhaps scores of lives in order to prove their point and leave their footprints in the sands on time.


However, the feeling of humility I found when I went to Egypt is something I hope to preserve forever in me. In our quest for achievements and glory, small victories and large conquests, in our own way, in our daily lives, we may indulge in games, arguments, politics, acts of greed. No matter what we achieve, however, small or large, the fact remains that we are completely insignificant droplets of water in the ocean of time. What we have will not remain - what we lave will not remain - it is best to be humble. Rameses for all his glory and pride looks better as a lifeless statue in Cairo and in the temple of Luxor than the insignificant mummy in the museum of Cairo. The other aspect of humility that I took away was that every time we say that we have moved ahead of the past, we should question ourselves, do we know enough? In today's day, when there are huge cranes and Egypt itself has humiliated the Nile and created a dam in Aswan, will we ever have the brilliance , the ability, the desire, the capacity to imagine and execute projects of the size of the Pyramids of Giza or the temples of Luxor. I want to enjoy every moment. In the background, I know every victory gained at the price of another individual may not be worth it. I definitely will always believe that we know what we know, but can never claim to have conquered the past.


After all, history is make believe. History in Egypt is and will be fascinating.

The cup that ups

My grandmother at the age of 75 would get up in the early hours of morning at 5:30 with the energy that would make Wayne Rooney look lathergic. With a few milimeteres of muscle to cover her bones, she had the energy of a dozen Sven Goran Ericssons (not that Ericsson’s energy level should be even considered for comparison with anyone who can walk from his bedroom to bathroom) ;she was capable of working harder than even Steven Gerrard in his Liverpool shirt. She wouldn’t provoke anyone like Materazzi even in the toughest of times and she would be better behaved than Zidane even when provoked. She would work incessantly from morning 5:30 until the late hours of the evening.

She never was bothered about football perhaps unaware that people would fork out thousands of pounds and millions of man hours to see a sphere filled with air being kicked by twenty two people. She never had the football world cup or the Ryder cup or the Cricket world cup or any other cup to hold up her energy and spirit.

However she had another cup that has thousands of years of history behind it. She was one among the millions who get their zest from Coffee. It is the cup that ups and what a contribution has the humble bean been to humanity? Let me take you through this fascinating journey of coffee.
A goat herder in Ethopian province of Kaffa noticed goats getting frisky after eating red berries and a thought struck him. If this made the goats frisky, think about what it could do for the lazy good-for-nothings? Thus this experiment led to the discovery of Coffea Arabica. On a slight detour here, he could have given a few berries to the English football team in the just concluded world cup in the second half.
Anyway, his tribe managed to dry it and transport it to other parts and the first drink was made with these berries, honey and water and called Qawah meaning wine. The Arabs near the port of Al Mukkah on the RedSea, on their own, under some desperate circumstances boiled a berry and drank it thus starting the mocha family of coffee that gets its name from Al Mukkah.
The Arabs got a good feel for the drink and prevented its export. Perhaps if the Arabs were successful until today, the course of history as we see it may have been different. However, that was not to be and a Muslim pilgrim from Mysore called Baba Budan stole the beans and started his farm there. The Dutch stole it from the Arabs and Ethiopians and started growing this bean in their colony of Java. Thus was born the Javanese coffee. For anyone with any inkling of information technology, this cup has inspired Java, the very familiar environment and language from Sun Microsystems that has a cup of coffee as its symbol.
Around the same time, the smart traders from Venice started shipping it their part of the world. This drink was so exciting that people with interest in tea requested Pope Vincent III to get it banned. He was like my grandmother. He enjoyed it very much. He enjoyed it so much he baptized it, saying "coffee is so delicious it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it." With blessings from the pope, it became a very popular drink and coffeehouses were born.
In another part of the Mediterranean, a coffee house called Kiva Han was born in Turkey in 1453. This is the first historic coffee house in the world. Along with the Venetians and the Turks, the Viennese benefited from a war between Ottoman Turks and the Austrians and managed to get Central Europe’s first coffee house opened. In 1607, Captain James Smith who founded Virginia in the United States introduced coffee in North America.
In 1652, the first coffeehouse opened in England. In fact, all of us in the financial services industry in London have to thank coffee for making London the hub of financial activity; for the greatest financial institutions born in this city owe their existence to Coffee houses. The London stock exchange was born in a coffee house. Edward Lloyd opened his house in 1668. This is today Lloyd’s - the best known insurance company in the world. These coffee houses were called “penny universities” – as a cup of coffee was charged a penny. If anyone wants to look at what inflation can do to prices, see what you can get for a penny in today’s Starbucks! These coffeehouses were so popular that they attracted so many men that Women submitted a petition against coffee in 1674. It is an interesting petition and I present the parts that I found verbatim.
The "excessive use of that newfangled, abominable, heathenish liquor called coffee, which riffling nature of her choicest treasures, and drying up the radical moisture, has so eunucht our husbands, and crippled our more kind gallants, that they are become as impotent as age, and as unfruitful as those deserts where that unhappy berry is said to be brought."
Men came home with "nothing moist but their snotty noses, nothing stiff but their joints, nor standing but their ears: They pretend 'twil keep them waking, but we find by scurvy experience, they sleep quietly enough after it."
Rather than keeping the men from getting drunk, "the coffee-house being in truth, only a pimp to the tavern, thus like tennis balls between two rackets, the fopps our husbands are bandied to and fro all day between the coffee-house and the tavern...for when people have swill'd their morning draught of more ale than a brewer's horse can carry, hither they come for a pennyworth of settle-brain, where they are sure to meet enow lazy pragmatical companions, that resort here to prattle of news, that they neither understand, nor are concerned in; and after an hour's impertinent chat, begin to consider a bottle of claret would do excellent well before dinner; whereupon to the Bush they all march again together, till every one of them is drunk as a drum, and then back again to the coffee-house to drink themselves sober."
Men tried to fight the accusation of impotence by saying coffee "rather assists us by drying up those crude flatulent humours, which otherwise would make us only flash in the pan, without doing that thundering execution which your expectations exact." They also said home wasn't the most fun place to be: "You may well permit us to talk abroud, for at home we have scarce time to utter a word for the insufferable din of your active tongues." The protesting women didn't accomplish anything. Even newspapers and mail were delivered to coffeehouses rather than homes.
Anyway, the petition was worthless and the King Charles II tried to ban the drink unsuccessfully in 1675 thinking that it may cause a revolution. He was along the many rulers who tried to do this unsuccessfully. In the 17th Century, the drink gained popularity in America, France and Germany. In the 18th Century, Coffee travelled too Brazil from French Guyana.
The Americans also have to thank coffee. The New York coffee exchange opened in 1882. Coffee was the favourite American breakfast drink and American soldeiers drank a lot of coffee during the world war.
Today there are 2.25 billion cups of coffee being consumed everyday.
Apart from having a great history, coffee is helpful conversation subject. Listen to this story. A Yokel walks into a cafe with a shotgun in one hand pulling a male buffalo with the other. He says to the waiter, "Me want coffee."
The waiter says, "Sure chief, coming right up." He gets the Yokel a tall mug of coffee. The Yokel drinks the coffee down in one gulp, turns and blasts the buffalo with the shotgun, causing parts of animal to splatter every where, then just walks out.
The next Yokel the Indian returns. He has his shotgun in one hand and was pulling another male buffalo in the other. He walks up to the counter and says to the waiter, "Me want coffee."
The waiter says, "Whoa, Tonto! We're still cleaning up your mess from yesterday. What was all that about, anyway?"
The Yokal smiles and proudly says, "Me training for management position: Come in, drink coffee, shoot the bull, leave mess for others to clean up, disappear for rest of day

If you ever want to be a big shot manager, make sure you know how to make a mess and pass it to others and ensure that you know your coffee. Or even if you want to be an ordinary mortal with great energy and lot to offer humanity like my grandmother, have the cup that ups.

Meetings and fun

If anyone in any situation at work is in a sea of deep trouble, there is always a ship to wade you out of troubled waters – a time tested, never bested solution. This is among the simplest solutions to the most complex of problems. It can take any contours and still be shapely. This can bring up so many solutions and still ignore the problem. This can lead to numerous action points and still no action. I feel that anyone who uses this tool to the best potency can rise in any organization. This was arguably the first management tool available to civilized mankind that is still widely used, researched on and debated about – This management tool is called meeting.

If civilization had not discovered this wonderful tool, then we would have been resolving differences with force like animals. They oil the engines of global conglomerates. They help thrash issues and brainstorm ideas and translation of these ideas into action. However, like all tools there are a number of less known benefits. These are some benefits of meetings that most corporate citizens are loath to admit. This is an attempt to bring these out into the open.

The first benefit is the opportunity provided by meetings to dream endlessly and in large groups have a siesta in a perfectly legitimate situation in the portals of the office. I know one group where the meetings were always held at a perfect time of 2 o’clock in the afternoon. These meetings were done through the telephone and provided the added advantage of anonymity for all the souls who use this opportunity to catch up on the previous nights sleep. Good bless the kind souls who had the infinite wisdom to organize these teleconferences! I had the good fortune of sitting in some of these conferences. There was a gentleman supposed to be a leader of the call who was conducting these meetings. He would be in an endless trance. He had to be reminded to move on when someone stopped mumbling on any item. Being a good-natured soul, the conference leader pardoned this interruption to this reverie and announced the next topic and would move to his next reverie until someone reminded him again. As the conference leader announced the next topic, no one would notice it until some lone ranger out in the telephone space who had inkling into the train of proceedings called some name. The person whose name was announced would with utmost difficulty try to recall what to say and ultimately say that he would provide an update to the group ‘offline’.

This lands us to the next of the benefits meetings of this nature provide. Meetings are excellent wrappers for all round ignorance. In any one to one session, it is hard to say, “I don’t know” if one is supposed to know. In meetings complete ignorance can be camouflaged most effectively. The common corporate lingoes for these are - “I need to check with my staff”, “This needs further analysis and I will update everyone later”. One can do something more interesting such as blabber some mumbo- jumbo and then say “I could go on, but considering the wider audience let me send something to everyone in detail”.

Coming to everyone involved in meetings, meetings especially help post-mortem of any milestone. Depending on the success or failure of the milestone, meetings can effectively help faultfinding and glory hunting. At the end of most of these meetings, everyone involved effectively takes his share of the glory. If anything goes wrong, effective collective responsibility is ensured and everybody does just enough to blame someone else.

While meeting provide the perfect platform to improve their fault finding and glory hunting skills, meetings can also help develop another extremely useful skill. - The art of avoiding work. In meetings, one can always hunt for excuses. I will mention an anecdote here. I wanted one of our partners to do some changes that would improve processing. As this group was well versed in the art of meeting, they made me fill in a form and attend a meeting. I was briefed about the meeting saying that a number of people would have many changes and in order for my request to be given due weightage , my presence was mandatory. I waited patiently as a number of changes were mentioned and when my number was announced, I eagerly presented the case. I was told that this committee that looked into the changes was convinced about my case and this case would now have to be presented to the manager of the team that was supposed to do this change. When I contacted the manager, he said he was very busy attending several meetings and he could spare me some time the following week. The next week, in his office, he got some of his directs and patiently attempting to hear my case mentioned that as his team was very busy attending meetings we would have to wait for another year before further analysis could be done and depending on the situation at that point in time, this would be acted upon. How wonderfully was this beautiful tool of meetings used to avoid any work!

In the course of my meeting with this manager I learnt another use of meetings – the art of feeling and being of importance. This manager in the course of this meeting never wasted any opportunity to drop any names. Also by mentioning his staff was busy attending meetings he did make it clear that the root of their importance was in attending meetings. He ensured that this meeting was recorded and his version of being busy was sent to everyone interested or uninterested in the proceedings and everyone could see that he and his staff were very busy to anything as they were attending meetings.

This email opened my eyes to another benefit of meetings – keeping people employed and helping these people and their families happy. There must be a vast number of corporate denizens endlessly sleeping performing as conference leaders, a wider number attending these conferences, a good number of people typing meeting minutes to a very wide audience, a number of people who maintain these servers who keep minutes of the emails.

Meetings help many sleep well, help the ignorant, reduce work and still keep everyone employed. Isn’t it time that everyone prayed for more meetings? Let there be more meetings everywhere.

The Monkey and the Mango Tree

Peter's Principle: In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetence


There are enough entries on the web that speak about this principle- 100000 of them when I tried on Google. There will be a number of normal office-goers, fresh graduates, labourers, doctors, teachers and every other ilk who work sincerely believe that there are idiots who are above, around or near them. Face it! For all the talk of the all “being surrounded by brilliant individuals who work as a team to surmount any challenges”, there are individual feelings of ‘someone else’ in the team being ‘completely useless’. The most pressing and frustrating feelings involve those in the hierarchy who by providential dispensation are in a position to manage people. If these so called ‘managers’ have little idea of management and have “indeed risen to their level of incompetence” , then there is a major issue for all the others who work for ,with or around them. How did these guys get there and what can be done about it?

First, let us look at a fable. There was a monkey on a mango tree. His speciality was picking mangoes. He was good at picking up and throwing the juicy mangoes. He would jump with alacrity and devour the mangoes as soon as possible. He was oblivious to all the other aspects of the wider world and believed that mangoes were all that mattered. His world was picking up and throwing mangoes. The farmer who employed this monkey was extremely pleased with the mango crop and the results the monkey provided. He believed that the best candidate to manage the mango tree is the monkey as the monkey got the juiciest fruit quickest.

Alas, the juicy fruit lasted for a couple of years after the monkey took over. Then, the monkey being a monkey who had no idea about other aspects of the tree apart from mangoes found there were fewer mangoes. The mango tree had no manure. There was not enough care, no one to think about it beyond picking up mangoes. The monkey rose to its level of incompetence, but at what price?

That is a question that everyone who promotes people and who plan for succession management should carefully look at.

This must be one of the most classical dilemmas in management. When people are promoted on the basis of what they have done in the past, will they be doing the same tasks they did in the past. If not, are they capable of doing what a new role demands of them or will they monkey around?

The first key question that “Is the monkey too greedy and that will he pick all the mangoes leaving other monkeys with no fruits”? Then the other questions follow. How can the monkey pick mangoes with others in the team? Does the monkey insist that all monkeys choose his style of mango picking? What happens to those who do not ascribe to his mango-picking style? A lot of other monkeys will be offended if a really bad monkey takes over. So the monkey’s greed and style must be considered. Greed, ambition and drive are very close!





After the “greed” of the monkey, it is time to look at monkey’s evolution. Will the monkey remain the monkey he was or will he evolve beyond the role of a monkey. Many times, the monkey is asked to be more than a monkey. If the monkey is asked to do tasks beyond monkey business, it is vital the monkey is trained and capable of assimilating the training beyond monkeying. More often, the monkey is judged for being a monkey, elevated beyond a monkey. Will the monkey last the height without injuring himself and destroying the elevated view?

If the monkey cannot stand the height and the monkey is good at picking up juicy mangoes, it is important that the monkey gets and opportunity to be a good monkey. Very often, there are no tracks for the monkey to pursue his life and career being the great monkey he is. Being a good monkey is justification enough to have a good life. Whatever, ones career – a good architect, a programmer, an accountant, or a surgeon, most places do provide a career track where one can continue to do a similar role for a long time.

There is always pressure on the monkey to evolve though he remains a monkey. Monkeys need a hand. One can get into “monkey traps” – of becoming unhappy monkeys and being trapped by all around. To go beyond Peter’s principle – One needs to identify the monkeys, provide enough space fro the monkeys and make sure that the best monkeys are allowed to pluck fruits comfortable. That is what monkeys do best.