book book ki baat hai

I have had an amazing run with books. I went through 6 to 8 books in a row that were “unputdownable”. I have learnt a few things. When it comes to books, don’t listen to too many reviews. What some people praise to heavens may not be for you and what some people deride may be just up your alley. Also books have a timing problem. What I might hate today might be just the book I want to read ten years hence. Some require a level of understanding and openness; some just are something’s that cut across all ages. There is probably no bad book or good book. It’s either the right book or the wrong book. God knows which one you like or find useful. There was one book which I found too superficial to read. I kept ignoring it. I ran out of books one day and picked it up. One of the chapters spoke about employee communication and the need to communicate the P/L in simple. At the same I was doing a little work for the group finance office. Bango…. Sold them the concept and the result was a much appreciated piece of work. So its just a question of the right book at the right time. Here… this was the stuff that got appreciated a lot. As the boss said:- this time mktg, HR and finance is working together. I replied one back:- we were always here, kabhi maang ke dekha hoga. I can get senti at times I guess.

I have another theory why no books can be bad books. Even an absolutely bad, ugly book will at least help you know understand what’s so bad about it!

ceaseless whispers

Whrrrrrrrrrrr….sometimes its just is difficult to write something. But the trick to write anything and hopefully the sting catches on with one thing leading to another ad another. Khyati, a very dear student of mine is in office these days. She is doing a project with some other department. We are using the time to catch up during lunch time and coffee breaks. We share a special relationship and she comes every day to say hi and bunk for coffee. And I guess that we are pretty close, laughing, talking in whispers etc. I had a doubt but then it came to the fore when someone commented wryly – you are spending a lot of time with trainees, huh?. You dickhead, she is my student from long… ohhhhhhh… some wise guy then says, sir, I am also your student, introduce karoa na. Oh god. Corporate life never changes. But then I guess its their fault. Khyati will treat me like some kind of papa figure, so she obviously is much more comfortable with me and office will never see it the same way. Hmmmmm…. Kaa Karen?

as someone once told me - platonic relationship.. hahahhah new words... how about good friends?

mind map

Once on a lark, when we were in a lift, I just asked Jispa “which lift do you like”. Our building has two lifts you see. Why would she prefer one over the other? Nah. Didn’t expect her to. It just was one of the stupid questions that Daddy likes to ask daughter. Absolutely stupid. She replies in an instant “ I like the other lift better”. Huh!!?!! “why?”. She replies “the other one has a round zero, but this one has an oval zero”. What? I don’t believe that. On closer inspection I saw that this one has an oval zero on the ground floor button for sure. See below.


Then I saw the other lift. Sure enough, that one has a round zero. See below.

Jispa – either you are some prodigy or you just plain whacked

Mom and Dad often sent us on stage when we were kids and made to compete on stage, talk on stage and generally help us overcome stage fright at an early age. Thanks to that I was always ok being on stage and I did not care too much about it. We have been trying to get Jispa on public forums as much as possible. She has to be comfortable with mikes, audiences etc. we go along with her for that as well. There are tons of malls with some contests or the other constantly happening. We keep sending Jispa for that. Now she is quite comfortable with it. There was one in which the compere kept urging anyone to come and scream – I love you mom three times. She asked me if she could go and scream. For sure, what do I care? There she went on her own screamed and came back happy. Attaboy girl! Way to go. Here is a pic of her with Jasmine kissing her 20 times with heavy lipstick on. Yuck! She won something for the effort.

eat a lot

My wife is very rich. She decided to buy grapes. Not just any grapes but grapes imported from New Zealand I think. Reason – Jispa likes them and the normal grapes are out of season. Fair enough. She refused to tell me at what price did they come. Yup they were tasty all right. I happened to see the price sticker and I fell over. 179 bucks for a packet. Each grape was a nice big piece. So since I was at home resting and nothing to do, I counted the number of grapes that came in the packet. Bottom line – each grape costs around Rs 1.75. hmmmm.. oops I dropped a pair – that’s three bucks. Should I eat ten pieces or should just eat one mango. Hahahhahah. Man the last I knew what fruits cost was around ten fifteen years ago when I used to go with mom to buy veggies and fruits. Now I have no clue what they cost. So they always come as a surprise. Jispa, you better like the grapes. And the mangoes.

Jispa can sleep anywhere when she is tired. Here is she sleeping at the Café Coffee day chair.

Wheel-chair anthropology

I have an allergy cold, a bad knee, body ache, troubled tummy, a little rash, a bad morale and a little resilience. I am bouncing back … not so fast as ever but bouncing for sure.

Thanks to the bad knee, I was not going to spoil our family outing to InOrbit mall. We went after checking if there were enough wheelchairs available. My wife’s granny in one and me in another. That was really cool. Its nice to see Mumbai reacting to wheel chairs. Some make way, some smile, some ignore and some don’t care. While getting into the lift nobody cares for your wheel chair. Everyone wants to go in first. Dam cheap. They get out without bothering to see how I can get in. since the doors close fast enough they close before I manage to wheel in. I had to request some one getting out, to hold it open for us to get in. Not happening. But I recommend all the arm chair anthropologists to get on to wheel chairs and see how the city truly behaves with the not so privileged. My final take, Mumbai in a mall is polite enough, but enough to give up on their time for you. Time is this fast city is money. I can smile, talk, show sympathy but I can’t wait. I got to go >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> next time, try and give time to others, that’s the only thing we have a need for. As once I learnt a valuable lesson from Rajesh, his daughter had brought two books to my home with the aim of giving one away. He asked his daughter (Twishi) which one she liked more and to give that one away to Jispa. I saw, I learned but did I conquer? I hope to.

tie me up

I can’t believe that I used to wear ties once upon a time. Today is a big meeting that we are getting done and it’s obviously a formal affair. I got my tie and jacket to office to wear just before the function. On a lark I just wore the tie while still in office. Oh shit man. That thing feels like a rope around my neck. It was off in less than 15 minutes. How the hell did I ever wear ties to office? Unbelievable! How could anyone wear ties to office? How could any one wear ties at all? That too in the Mumbai heat. Then we wear jackets. Oh man. In marketing most of the functions that we organize are in the evening, so I normally get away by wearing a jacket and no tie. But these afternoon functions (HIGH TEA) bloody require a tie. Oh man. Why do we do it at all? Why cant we just wear what is comfortable for us? When I was in sales I used to wear a tie in office as it was expected of you, but I never wanted my sales guys on the street to wear one. What’s the bloody point? The guy roaming around buses and train and oppressive heat has to figure with a tie. Most of the time he was not a tie enthusiast as well, so that made for ugly ties. Most of the heros did not even know how to tie a knot so, they would be roaming around with two three ties, whose knot has not been removed. SO they just wear them over and tighten them. Lengths, knots be dammed. Purple ties on brown pants, green shirts with ties with psychedelic prints and God knows what not. Ah, yes the lengths… some would be longer and would hide the crotch, the others would end above the navel. Some would be broad and some would be “that 80’s” think look. Almost all of them were stripped, and when stripes finally come into fashion they would be prints. They would be worn over every kind of shirt, even the ones with two pockets and a ruff washed look. Oh the death of the tie. So, I just banned them. It’s more convenient, the team loved me for it and the poor fella looked better. Improving motivation was never so easy.

Murals

Jispa did some murals...priceless i say on the walls. She had some finger paints which she decided to experiment with. I sure love her painting the walls of the house. Slowly but surely we would have no bare walls.

Now the problem is I dont think I will ever have the heart to paint these walls over.

Har Ghar chup chap se kehta hai ki andar isme kaun rehta hai

the following one is a butter fly with antennas

Papa, mama joined in to leave their mark as well

The Rainbow lollipop, done with a brush

A tree with a black outline followed by yellow and green outlines.

crutches

Continuing with the cricket series, I learnt something new. One cant be an Australian on Indian grounds. I was fielding in the seven a side tournament and the captain decided to experiment a bit. He kept only one person on the leg side, ME, and everyone else on the off side. Interesting strategy it was, to use the fastest fielder for the covering the most ground. Fair enough. But then the bowler is supposed to bowl on the off stump, full pitched not short balls that can be swung around on the open leg side boundary. I saved one boundary, then some more runs, and then I was running to stop one more when I suddenly felt my ankle turn (uneven ground) and consequently my knee. Oh shit. I twisted my knee big time. Dead duck. I collapsed on the ground. The medic ran in. I know this medic from a lot of matches, all he does is put a lot of spray and some screwed massage. He can’t make out a dislocation from a fracture and he won’t know what to do about it. The only time I screamed was when I screamed at him not to touch my knee. I was scared about a crack and I didn’t want him testing it for sure.
So that way I spent most of time yesterday with the knee strapped up. I was at my in laws and my wife found the sight of me hopping around using her granny’s crutches extremely funny. In office my guys also find it extremely amusing to see me stuck to a chair the whole day. In fact they are dying to see me limp somewhere. They are also plotting on how they can get me to drink lots more water.
I only hope I get some cute chick sympathy in return for all my troubles… aaawwwwwwwwwww.

soul

Barista has closed down their Nariman Point outlet. Sad. The only decent coffee shop in the area. I wonder why there aren’t more coffee shops in the country’s densest and possibly richest commercial district. Coffee probably makes less money than lunch and dinner, thus making a coffee shop unviable. Hmmmm. The NCPA bang in Nariman Point has a decent ‘campus’ with a few gardens thrown in. it must converted to a coffee shop during the day with some decent food for the lunchers. That might work. When developers develop land as a commodity it will purely price it self out most of the time. You cannot just sell land to the highest bidder. You need a good mix of all genres. Mall development is not about just leasing out the land and keeping it clean. It’s about getting your mix right with the complete package with some loss leaders and some winners. If Nariman point has to thrive as well, it must see itself as a one big entity and not as some disparate parts that make a whole. But our town planners will never understand that, I am sure. Nariman Point has no soul. What a pity. It is perfectly poised to have one.

Jispa at a movie….

tararumpum

I saw tararumpum over the holiday. It’s a movie that I will feel a little ashamed to say that I enjoyed. But fact of life is that I kinda liked it. I like any movie that shows struggle and triumph against odds. No matter how humbug it might be! Down and out, resilience and victory. Seeing this movie made me think that some day I must write about the various companies and the bosses that I worked for and my learnings from the same. I started very bad in corporate India. Very very bad. Some day I will write it about it and what I learnt from it. I almost got fired from my first job. The reason I did not get fired was that I resigned in time. Oh man. How wrong could I be in understanding job requirements.

In any case, the movie is quite ok. Not too hot. Might be a decent forgettable movie. But not irritating on your senses. Which compared to many other movies seems like a stand out. At least the stunts look nice and real. Jispa is slowly getting used to movies. Till now she could see only movies that were happy through and through.

Typically I have always had short closely cropped hair. For some reason I am growing it. Not that it is very long. Even remotely long. But it’s longer than what I like to have. Normally I just love the crew cuts and I realize that I need a haircut if I have to comb hair. So if I need to comb it then I NEED to cut it!