small buckets of life?

In many free advice blogs on the internet – one common one along with travel is – learn a new skill. So what if you are 40! Well I am not yet 40 but I still have it in me to learn a new skill. And as I always say at 40 – its your brains doing the skilling!

Jispa wanted a wave board this vacation. She said she was reasonably good at it and she wanted to enjoy the wave board. Sure. Her friends have it too and Jispa learnt to balance with it at her friends place. Interesting! Skate boards are largely a guy thing but these wave boards seem largely unaffected by gender. When I was in dubai, dad had got us one pair of roller skates. I think these were meant for my sister but one between all three of us was enough. I skated in them. My dad supported me when I started skating. I remember skating the most when we moved back from Dubai and for one vacation we went to Abu Dhabhi, were dad took up another job for a year. There, a promenade was made at the sea side called the Corniche, which was great for skating. I would skate a lot. I practically learnt to skate there.  One incident I especially remember; I slipped and I was about to fall on my bum and one foreigner who was running right behind me caught me in an attempt to protect himself. He too was taken by surprise. I do remember that those days I really enjoyed myself. What was it about having wheels on legs that made me feel really nice, I don’t know, but it was amazing.

Jispa too never asks us for too many things. She is largely a satisfied girl. So when she asked for a wave board I was more than happy to oblige. I told her we would get one before her vacations start and sure enough, we bought one just in time for her vacations. She tried it at the store. The sales guys corrected her a bit as she had problems starting off. He said ‘put your front foot forward first and then you can take off without support’. Jispa needed support in terms of a rail or a hand to start off.

We got it home and Jispa has been fooling around with it at home. Lying around the house – I too tried to ride it. The wave board is an interesting piece of invention. Unlike a skate board you have only two wheels. One in front and one behind. It very cleverly uses the twisting of the board to somehow convert that motion into forward motion and propels you ahead. It’s a nice one. So I climbed onto it at home with support. Then I did something that I am proud of – i just suddenly decided in my head that I have to start without help. You simply put the front foot forward and step onto the wave board. Of course – this is a two wheel thing – it can only be stable if you are moving. So you just step onto it pushing it forward and get your second leg on – there- -ho gaya. I knew something even Jispa didn’t.

Yesterday I took Jispa to the garden to try her waveboarding skills. It was pretty cool. I told her how she needs to simply trust herself and walk onto the board. That’s it. Its like a cycle. You need to be in motion to be stable. And she managed pretty soon pretty well. She was skating all over the palce. The paver blocks are a pain in the compound and the tar has too much gravel that’s not been swept. Luckily I remembered one part of the garden, which was supposed to be a water body with a  water fall. Obviously these things are not what gets maintained in India. The pond was dry as a bone and this stupid pond was all cemented making it a perfect thing for waveboards. Smooth and with slopes on the sides, making it fun to approach and learn as well.

Then shen she was a bit tired – I tried my hand (or leg) at it. I am really scared of the dam thing. Not so much at failing or falling, but I am shit scared of my knee. So I cant put my right knee forward. I put my left knee in front and then I take off – confidently. Confidence in the mind is the key to take off. The problem is the twisting motion. I just cant get that right. That is bloody difficult. I kept trying and kept trying. Jispa tried helping. I fell off every single time. rather – I had to step off. Only once I fell hard on my butt, but I picked up and started again. Am I proud – at 39 years – doing this fearlessly – I was proud. At the end – I did manage to get the hang of it for a few meters. The twisting motion is still proving difficult. I have to get that one. I managed in the end to twist myself to a few more meters, but is still difficult when the initial momentum wears off.

So now I hope in this vacation – I learn to play with this waveboard. The greatest joy will be just stepping up on the waveboard in front of others – especially in a shop – where they are only expecting young ones to know this. I haven’t seen anyone my age knowing how to ride this stuff. That will set a few guys wondering on how the hell has he managed to pull off this stunt. Hah! Lets see.

There are a few things on the sports thing I still have to learn:

1 – wave boarding

2 – learning the tumble turn in swimming

3 – tennis – basic level and serve

It’s like a simple bucket list – but I am satisfied from it for now. Lets see how long I take to figure these.

quit

I had a skype meeting at 8.45 am today. So I was telling Jispa to hurry up as I drop her to school. I told her I have a meeting and I was getting the car to zip. She looked at me and asked me what I was doing in jeans and a t shirt if I had a meeting. I told her that I have meetings every day and I don’t need to wear formals for all meetings. She understood and she was asking me why I bother wearing formals at all. Jeans are so comfortable. ‘shouldn’t you wear what you are wearing everyday rather than being who you are not’. Yup I agree with her completely. I can’t understand formal clothes. I find them so bloody irritating. People should wear what they want to wear. I had no real explanation on why we have formal clothes culture in office. Why should we force people to wear formals? People should wear what they wear regularly and what they work the best in. Formals are definitely not it.

I quit. I quit wearing formals. I can’t handle any more formals… please.

Fine… I am getting carried away. But I really want to quit wearing formals for good. I am inspired by the this quitting thing. I was listening to a podcast of a Freakonomics episode where they explain the upside of quitting. It’s quite interesting. They say that people normally gravitate towards an average happiness of 7 on 10. No matter how bad shit has hit you or how much you might have been luckily happy. Over a period of time – you hit a 7. So if you want to quit – great – do it. It doesn’t matter. You will hit a 7 in no time. It also talks about why you must quit something fast. If it’s not working for you then you must quit fatafat. It saves you so much time and effort.

I look at Jispa – now this is going to be severe – I hope Jispa you understand what I mean here. Jispa has been swimming for many years now. It has defined her and her identity. She defines herself as a swimmer. She has hit state level but has yet to break it into the nationals. She trains hard and long but – when I see her and I see the others – it’s there to see. I think that for now – this is her level. It would take an extraordinarily large amount of effort for her to break further in swimming. I would want her to quit and take up something else. Something other sport, some reading, some cycling or whatever else that catches her fancy. India does not have swimmers and a swimming culture nor the infrastructure. To break through I would have to send her abroad and across the world to learn more. Then she needs to forget studying or anything else. Too much to go nowhere… and most importantly she is giving up her childhood for this.

Kids can grow up and blame their parents that we did not push them enough. This is a double edged sword. Do I push them enough so that they don’t really love their childhood or should I push them so hard so that they achieve what they are meant to achieve. What to do is a mystery. But one thing we must teach them – which is the most difficult thing to do – is to quit. Quit when is not going for you. Quit when you don’t like it. Quit when you think its enough. Quit when you think that inspite of everything you may not make it. Quitting is a thing we don’t really like,. We have been taught to go for it, to push, to never see reality. The top industry titans carried along and refused to quit when everything was against them. They kept going. Tales of champions are filled with messages of don’t quit. When the going gets tough the tough get going. Whoever heard of when the going gets tough – take a reality check.

I wish Jispa quit swimming. I wish she spent that time reading, watching movies, roaming endlessly. I wish she picked up another sport, played some tennis with me or badminton. I wish she quit and started something else. She has achieved far more than what I dreamed of. She represents Mumbai for heavens sake! What more. She wants to hit the nationals once. Once – she says. Oh god. I hope it happens fast – for her. Then I hope she takes on something else, till she finds something she really enjoys – like swimming perhaps :)

loose talk and love

It’s difficult to deal with the bitch in office. Human tendency is to bitch and find a common ground to bitch on. People like to bitch. Often associated with women, men too bitch like crazy. But somehow I have seen more women bitch about than men. I think men play the games that are more virulent than the women. They get Machiavellian and start plotting. Actually all this I think is ultimate Bull S. I think men/ women – they are all similar. They all bitch, they all talk ill about others and all try to find common bitch stories. It’s pretty painful in office when they bitch about you and amazingly fun when you are bitching about someone.

Till a few years ago I too was quite affected by all the bitching that was going around. I too wanted to be loved. To be loved is an interesting but not universal tendency. I have seen guys who don’t care about being loved. They are way too much in love with themselves. They think that they are it and that people should naturally love them or don’t even care whether people love them or not as, long they fulfill their own objectives. And then there are the others who want to be loved. It affects them if people don’t love them and don’t understand if people don’t love them. Why would you not love me? They are on the ones who like to give love to their fellow beings and be nice to all around them in the hope that the people will love them back,. These are the guys who we call the nice guys and as in most real life stories… nice guys finish last. These are the guys who invariably get upset when people don’t like them and talk ill about them… after all that they did for everybody – why would they get this shit.

I was the latter. I always wanted to be loved. Then life teaches you a lot. I think fatherhood, public service, jobs and generally interpersonal relationships taught me that no one has a guarantee on love. Nothing is compulsory – no love is generally expected form anybody. I learnt that I cannot be the first type and the second type is really up for a disaster. There is a third type. Love for the sake for love. Love that is in essential selfish. I love because I love to love, because that is the thing that makes me happy. Getting love back is also happy but you can’t expect it and you don’t when you are going to get it back. Of all the people you love some will hate you for it, some will call you a fraud and some … some are worth all the trouble. They are ones who give you a lot of love back. But the timing is also in your hand. I see a lot of my kids every year grow up. Some kids keep in touch and some just drift away. Some in some vague ways give a chance to feel their love and some just go away… and you can’t predict one from the other. So the only policy is simple – love all, but stay nicely disconnected from all that love.

This is difficult. Can you love without expecting anything back? Is that real love? Can you have the intensity without expectation? This is the real test but it’s impossible for me to follow. I can preach it but I cannot live up to it. So I have found another way around this. I love, I expect but I don’t let the expectation burden my love and my loved ones. It’s easier around the office and society but of course more difficult when the intensity cranks up in office. But I am learning every day, I promise you that I am learning every day.  I am trying my best and it has helped. When you do something because you love someone and because you expect something back from your loved one – then believe me – the loved one rises to the occasion and give you a lot back and loves you amazingly well. This is the truth – the bets love is always the one that you get unexplained. The love that is there because it’s there (sorry Mallory).

That helps deal with expectations and of course frees the loved one from the burden of your expectations. They are free to express (or not) their love in ways that are unique to them. Sigh..

I was talking about office bitch and I landed here. On the office bitch – expect it no matter what. Laugh at it… have fun – they are humans after all and most of the time bitching is a way of team building and solidarity. Some are viruses that need to be removed – these are the negative people spreading the negativity… but largely the rest of us are well meaning bitches letting off a little steam. You can’t control so much in your life – if you can’t control your love and the love you get back – then what’s with these simple bitches….

sixers? mood pe hain.

After two years I played cricket. I had given up on playing cricket after my awe full knee that is impossible to contain on the field. So I was missing in action, till my building guys ganged up and gave me real emotional gyan for me to play in the team. This was the league organized between buildings in the complex.  The last time while batting my knee folded and it was impossible to do anything. This time I thought my knee had improved and I thought I could manage it.

It was obvious that these guys did not know much about field placement and when I took the field I could place the fielders correctly. And this one always works… when I change one fielder and ask him to move a little bit and the next ball comes directly down his throat for a catch. This one happened here as  well and the pretender was clear – I was to set the field and the others simply followed. And that was good fun. You choose who the good fielders are and figure where you want the better guys to stand – who might be a good runner to stop the boundaries and who might be good enough to stay within the circle and who is likely to take skiers that get hit…and of course where are the skiers likely to go to. All this without really knowing who really does what. I have met these guys just about a week back and I hardly got to play anything with them. Once just judges from body types and posture if the guy would be a boundary guy or an inner circle guy.

When I was much younger I wanted to bowl field and bat. Slowly I stopped wanting to bowl. I knew my limitations. I wasn’t too much interested in bowling in any case. With a bad knee and back – I had stopped bowling some time back. Also I hated this no ball issue. I would bowl amazingly well in the trials and the nets where there was no real issue of no balls but I would be horrible in a match situation. Here all hell would break free. I was forever scarred by one match where I kept bowling no balls. So it was only batting for me. Now as an old man – I did not want to go out to bat I was happy sending people one after the other. These guys wanted me to bat but I kept refusing in the two starting games. In a stupid four over game we lost enough wickets for me to go in. I promptly went and ran myself out. What else do you want me to do in the last over of a four over match? Next match I got myself bowled. I was out of touch. Then came the third match. this was against the top team.

Our team got me to place the fielders but we still had two captains. One guy who was the enthu guy who got the entire team together and another guy who was the good player who the other captain. Who was the captain? Between them they were making a mess of the bowling changes and the batting order. In a bloody four over game they were deciding the batting order and the idiots wanted to go one down or two down… same thing in the bowling – some idiot wanted to save his over for the last over as he was expecting some pinch hitting in the end. They actually take the logic of a 50 over match to four overs. In a four over match you just keep hitting. The best batsman come in first and then you use the best bowlers up front so that you take wickets and stop play. So in the third match some idiot gave the worst bowler the second over so that he preserves the best bowler for the last – that too against two in form rampaging batsman. They murdered us. I tried to switch the fielders a bit and get the field right. I got it spot on and got the field right – but all the shots went for sixers – right above the fielder I had kept. There were no boundaries… straight sixes. I was pretty irritated with these idiots.

So while batting first the opposite team made around 65 runs, with bowlers bowling no balls which went for sixes. I came off the field in a different mood. I asked who took decisions and people just shrugged. I saw the team highly demotivated and down. I just got really pissed and asked for the bat and went opening. And it was fun – I smashed two sixes! Then I was out but it set the tone – we still lost but respectfully.

I wondered what made me suddenly perform. It’s the same in badminton – I refuse to raise my game just for no reason. Why should i? I think I behave like this in office as well.  It’s difficult for me to keep my game at a raised level through the game, through the day or through the year. Something has to tick me off or tick me right or some stimulus. I have always been an aggressive person – very very aggressive but I have learnt that aggression is something people use against you. It fundamentally hurts us especially our own health and then it hurts all those around us.

But still I enjoyed. I still hit two more sixers in the next game and I took one really good catch that I was proud of. The team wanted me to lead them the next year. That was fun. But who knows what is there is store next year. Let’s see. But that’s why I like the game. It teaches me a little about myself. And it keeps me constantly guessing. In one match we dropped 4 catches. I kept seeing what I could do. I kept looking around… the fielders were placed in the right places. The miscues were going to the wrong guys and the right guys were making the wrong mistakes. So that felt nice – thinking and making decisions and seeing the results. Once I saw the field, the batsman and thought to myself – oops – a mistake. But I realized it too late and I couldn’t change the field and the next ball went exactly into the area I knew was the hole…. Aaarghh. It’s a bitter sweet then. Bad because there was a boundary and good because you predicted it. hmmm….

I could be your hero!

With Jispa growing older it’s a big thing for me to adjust to her growing up. It’s not the same thing! I remember coming home and my daughter jumping in joy and running to hug me… we had a puppy at home! Now of course I believe she is happy to see me but it takes a large effort for her to show her love. She is growing up and I don’t know how to treat her. It’s going to take some doing from my side, to grow up at 39 and behave older :)

It’s been so much growing up after being a father. A lot of fun and pain and love and laughter and tears. I never did know that it would affect me so much emotionally. I remember the day I was in the room when she popped out from Jasmine. She was so small and she fit into my hands. Her head was smaller than my palm. I saw her eyes open as she was put on the weighing scale immediately after birth. And I gave Jasmine a hug and told her – its Jispa! We had the name ready for a girl!

Cut to when I traveled a lot. I used to get her a plastic spoon from the airline. She would be happy and I would be the cheapskate getting away by hardly spending a penny.

Cut to when she was so small that I would come home and insist that I would give her a bath. I would wash my legs and then place her on my legs while giving her a bath. The face I would leave for Jasmine.

Cut to when I would wake her up and take her to the loo in the morning to give her a brush and then give her a bath so as to get her ready for school

Cut to when I she would need me to sleep next to her when she did not get sleep and I would fall asleep alongside her and Jasmine would wake me up to sleep on my bed.

Cut to when she would wake me up in the middle of the night saying she had a bad dream and I taught her to solve it, and she would then wake me up when she couldn’t solve it

Cut to when I invented the naanu motu game with me being the naanu so that she had to hold me to take care of me and not the other way around.

Cut to when once I was dropping her to school and I slipped on the stairs and I was safe as I held on to her

Cut to when I first took her swimming with all her floats on

And cut to the point when she tried in vain to teach me tumble turn while swimming. I just couldn’t get my bearings right.

Cut to…. Me feeling emotional whenever I see this video below. It’s so difficult not to shed a tear. While of course these soldiers face grave danger while away from duty… a travelling sales man or even a corporate warrior on offsite hates to be away and feels so nice to be home and hug your family!

Here the bonus video – nice song – almost (if you remove some bits) a fathers song for his daughter. I would love to be your HERO

crow away

There are many things that as a child you imbibe and no matter what the mental make up many years hence, some things wont go.

My first tryst with a birds nest was in my granny house. In the good old days the deck up around the house consisted of having simple sofas and a panel that ran around the wall, around six inches from the ceiling. I think it was called the pelmet. In my granny’s house this pelmet ran all around the wall and not just near the curtains. It was on this pelmet that the pigeons and sparrows made their nest. They are irritating birds. The pigeons especially go coo coo through the morning and irritate you through the day. Pigeons like to make their nest inside homes as I guess they offer the best protection from the outside predators. It used to be made of hay and grass. My granny would try to keep the place clean and rid the house of the nests as they are being made. In variably one might just get made and before we realize it – an egg would be placed. Now we are Jains, we like to keep our house really really clean. The idea being that if you keep it clean, you won’t have the insects and birds coming in and then you won’t have to have the burden of removing them. The rule was simple – you keep clearing the nests so that they don’t lay the eggs. But once the eggs are laid, they you are done for. You have no option but to bear the dam thing. You don’t remove a nest in which the egg is laid. Once when my aunt was removing the nests from the pelmets one nest came out with the eggs and the eggs fell and broke. That time I saw repent on her face and she exclaimed, only if she had known. That was my imprint on how and when to remove nests. You have to keep removing them beforehand itself. Afterwards as a Jain you have no option.

I remember once the eggs were laid and the chicks came out. They were all scrawny looking ugly things. My mom woke me up early to see the nest and the babies inside. We would come in from Dubai not having seeing any animal life except the humble Camel. Even a crow, a pigeon or a sparrow was exciting and pigeon chicks…. Wow that was national geographic epic.

In our current house, we have three places where the nesting happens. One we managed to stop this year by putting a bird wire as that window was largely shut in any case. And now we have two places to manage. One near the bathroom window was where we had to let go last year as the eggs were placed. This year some determined work ensured the crows got wiser. The one under the big hall window is now the place where the some dour work is happening by the crows. It’s Jasmine versus the crows now. She keeps removing the nest and they keep building it. It’s an epic battle. They use metal wires to build the nest. They have adapted to all the construction activity happening in Mumbai to build tough metal nests which they later put soft feathers and material in the center cavity.  They weave the nest through the grill outside and make it very difficult to dislodge. Jasmine keeps removing the nest. She has to tug away and pull hard to get it out. while she does it, the crows (around eight she says) take turns to attack her. They fly away to the opposite building and then fly in crowing menacingly… kaw kaw kaw. Its an all out attack on Jasmine is pretty scared that they will peck her, so she gets her maid to remove the nest and she stands guard shooing the crows away. Over the weekend, Jispa was on guard. This week end they were especially prolific. They kept building the nest and we kept removing it. I think we removed the wires around 6 times in a day. Their season was really approaching. It was a fun battle. At eth endof eth weekend the pile of wire was three feet high. I also think the crows know whom to attack. They seem to attack less ferociously if I am around. I can remove the nest without external help. It’s crazy how fast the animals adapt. These crows know male from female and they have started using construction material. It’s like the militant monkeys at Matheran. They know whom to attack and when to attack. They go for the right foodstuff inside the bags, they like their colas and chips and candy!

It’s a fun thing!

pasta at the movies

We had a long weekend this time and we got a chance to catch up with the new Avengers movie. It was quite a disappointment. The story went berserk and the action went even weirder. Well what do you do when you have Hulk on your avengers team. The guy is out of control and indestructible. You can nuke him or shoot him or anything else. Anything you do only makes him madder! But what the hell. A movie that I could finally discuss with my daughter. She too thought it was a bit over the top. Then I tried to explain to her what the artificial intelligence they show is and how the basis of AI in the movie is in reality. It’s quite interesting how clued in good quality fiction writing is. They can take an idea from reality and close make it work with the story. Basically take the most simplest of future gazing and take it to its ultimate mess. Even hulk and the others were all products of the nuclear age where you needed to be radiated to  have super human powers.

Talking about radiation, when men discovered radioactive substances we went berserk. We thought that this is cool new scientific stuff and therefore lets sell it as the next best thing to sliced bread.  We put radium in toothpastes and even in water. In fact we sold a canister which contained radioactive substances mean to radiate the water before we drank it. Obviously people drank this to die! Don’t believe me – try this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Ore_Revigator. The revigator was the big thing in the 1920’s.

But forget that… yesterday I got Jispa to watch the movie ‘for a few dollars more’ with me. this was the movie I had loved to watch. It was a cult with the guys and Clint Eastwood was the ultimate cool hero with a billion dollars of attitude. This was Jispa’s first western and as I explained to her – it was her first Spaghetti western. These were called so as they were western movie produced with American actors but largely meant for the Italian market. They were shot without sound and then the lines were in Italian. The English versions were an afterthought. Released in 1965, these movies had an indelible impact on the movie loving public. And of course a ton of filmmakers. These westerns in their plot were inspired by the Japanese – especially Kurosawa and his band of films. We in india got inspired and made a few movies. One was a decent hit called Khotey Sikkey, which starred Firoze Khan in the lead and directed by Narendra Bedi. Narendra Bedi was the brother of my mom’s best friend and that’s why I knew some of this past story. It seems they all around the same time watched these westerns and decided to make movies. Narendra Bedi made Khotey Sikkey but the movie that created the maximum impact was – what else – Sholay. Sholay while being an absolute super grosser and a great movie – it still to my mind was a well made rip off. It seems to me that the villain in ‘for a few dollars more’ was an inspiration in many ways for Gabbar. The hairdo, the built, the beard, the laughter, the madness, the brooding – everything seemed so Gabbar in the movie. A la Gabbar, this guy too smashes insects on his hand, while brooding over. While I knew Sholay was inspired, watching this movie took a little sheen that I had in my head for Sholay. Of course Sholay was well picturised, they had some amazing dialogues, love story, music, everything… but still, it was copied.

Even the background score by RD was heavily inspired by the movie, the shots, the wide angle landscapes, the signature tune. I had taken Jispa to watch Sholay and when this movie was being played, I kept reminding Jispa of the similarities.

You can see the amazing title sequence here which sets the tone for the entire movie.

Jispa and I were having fun with the background score and the tones of attitude the movie oozed.  The full movie had hardly anything that made sense. Everything was just a lead up for a large dollop of attitude to be served up. Of course as teen boys in our time, we loved it. Jispa enjoyed it but couldn’t understand what the huge fuss was about. She found the shoe scene particularly dumb. Which Shoe scene? Oh dear – see this scene, where the two heroes face off against one another. One is obviously trying to better the other! And who of the two is really the Big Boss! And you really have to be a teen age boy to get the real fun kick behind putting sand on another’s shoe. It’s so stupid that’s it so much full of attitude. Complete spaghetti with sand!

side nahi bola!

I see this cricket pitch marked out on the ground near office. I really really miss playing cricket. Cricket was an important part of life. It mattered to me. Playing cricket mattered. It taught me so much about life and about leadership and about the qualities of men! It taught me about playing to your strengths, field and to the strength of you team. Right now I am playing badminton. It’s an interesting sport as well. But it’s nowhere near a team sport like cricket. Here you play to your partner’s strength. The big learning is that you have no option but to trust your partner and pray they play to their strengths. You keep encouraging them and keep giving them tips and hopefully your partner encourages you and keep giving you tips. Cricket on the other hand has a complete huge team that you are playing in. as fielder you are on the move at all times. You are reading the game, the bowling, the batsman and you are trying to predict what is going to happen. When you bat you have to bat for yourself, your team, the score, the batsmen left, the bowlers bowling, who all are left… the complexities are enormous. That’s the reason that a captain is so important in cricket than any other sport. He takes decisions that can impact the game at every minute. Not taking a decision is also a decision. Letting the play drift a bit or speeding things up or sending the right person etc… A captain is almost the game! That’s why it’s a bug thing to be a captain in the Indian cricket team. He gets the best sponsorships and the big deals.

Of course galli cricket is never as complicated. You just go with the flow. In fact the captain’s job is only to win the toss and take batting first. People’s roles and positions are well marked out. Every guy has his pecking order in his brain. Everyone knows who is the best batsman and what is your rank relative to him. So you know before hand whether you will get to open or go one down or where you are going to field or if you are going to be given a bowl. Over time holy cows get established and no captain dare change the holy cow. At best sometimes a little shuffle happens and a little innovation happens but largely everything is set in stone. If the big opener is asked to sit in and go one down, it could cause a huge uproar… but only from that guy. The rest will only be happy to oblige and get first batting. The toss also has a strategic significance. It is extremely crucial to win this toss. This determines the entire game in galli cricket. It is a very simple rule at the core of it. You try your best to win the toss. Because if you win the toss - you bat. Simple. Any captain who wins the toss and fields will get removed from the captaincy. Of course – the team decides the captain. Hence the poor captain in this case is answerable to the team itself. Now the strategic answer to the reason why we bat first – always… its simple you only field for how much you have batted. You bat first, score as much as you want and then you field only that much. Everyone in galli cricket wants to bat. Bowling is a chore and fielding – the greatest boredom known to man. It is quite often that the entire team will get out for a paltry score in single digits. Then the batting team is even more ecstatic. This mean they got their batting, got out and now you don’t even have to field for long. Such are the travails of galli cricket.

In Mumbai galli cricket as the name suggests is played in the gallis – streets. The pole or the wall or a cardboard would be the stumps and one the other side is typically a stone. The topography of Mumbai dictates the rules of the game. The aunty who is ready to stop the game will have her wall  direct shot being given out. So the rules are complex – if you hit the wall one bounce or more – it’s a boundary. If you hit the ball full toss on the wall – it’s a six. But if by chance you hit the ball full toss outside the wall – oops – you are out. In fact most of the time the batsman wil drop everything and start running if he hit a shot too good for anyone else. He better run fast and search for the ball or else the game will simply stop. Other weird rule start coming into action depending on the game. Certain places you get declared runs, certain times LBW is not out, some times there is no stumping, wide has one run or simply a reball and so on. The wide and LBW are the most contentious ones, as they depend completely on judgment and there is no real metric to this. Since the umpire is almost always that of the batting team, the scales are always loaded in favour of the batsman. Hence it makes sense to nullify this for all. No LBW and a wide is simply a chance to ball again without the run penalty. The other fights happen over run outs and catch behind – those are the worst. They result in huge fights as it gets tight.

But the best is when your own batsman is struggling to score at the crease. Here your own team will boo you and in extreme cases the captain, keeping the team spirit as the primary motivation, declares the batsman out. He gets his own batsman back. You can get out, you can hit a bad shot, you can do anything but you do not ever waste balls and make the game boring. Everyone wants excitement. Running between the wickets is also a fun thing. if the two guys have a great chemistry then you can keep running or else, more often than not, you get to witness the most comical of run outs. The most amount of run outs will happen when you will see both batsman stuck on the same crease. One guy will run, the other guy will respond and then realize that it’s not working and then he rushes to beat his own partner to the crease so that the other guys run out. It crazy – because then the both team members will start fighting on the pitch itself, bats will be thrown and the choicest abuse will be hurled while the fielding team will be laughing their guts out. You get the best laughs in these comical situations. The only worry here is that if the fight snowballs and the batsman walks out and goes home – the game could end. Especially if he is the one owning the bat. You never piss off the owner of the bat or ball. NEVER.

I remember one other weird one during the summers. When the game went on in the morning or evening and you were thirsty – you go anywhere but your home to drink water. If you went home then invariably your mom would ask you come back home and then you are doomed. So you never go home to drink water. You always ask a friend.

The funnies of cricket:

Many times you play full catch both hands allowed and one bounce only one hand allowed

Run out on the bowler end is by touching the stone with your leg and catching the ball or by hitting the stone directly.

A half line is drawn across the pitch for knowing which end to throw to get the last man run out if you bat without runner. Otherwise a runner is used on the other end who cant bat.

Sometimes a joker is used if there is an odd number of players. He plays for both the teams but he can’t go in to bat till all the batsman are out and most of the time he cant bowl. He is largely the wicket keeper.

 And the most irritating rule that umpires of the batting team love – if you bowled with out specifying the side you bowled, then it’s a no ball. So basically before bowling you will walk up and tell the umpire – right arm over the wicket – and bowl – otherwise it’s a no ball – side nahi bola!

world war in a bottle!

I am sitting outside in office these days and I have a new best friend. The youngest member of the team is a guy born in 1992. Wow. That is young. To put things in perspective – he was born after Manmohan Singh started liberalizing the country and born a good one year after I started college. That also makes him born after I met Jasmine. Age - after a  point of time is very funny. We are old. I am Uncle. When some entrepreneur friend talks to me – I think it’s my experience that he is after.

So this boy here is right now soaking everything I say like a sponge. I explain stuff to him and he tries to understand it. He googles stuff, learns and then thinks. He tries to ask questions and I am more than happy to teach. I can teach forever. Just yesterday I had gone to the supermarket near my house and bought a lovely French jam (the pack says preserve). Whatever. When Jispa was much younger we tried buying the normal Indian main stream jam that was available. Soon Jispa stopped eating it and we had to finally throw or give it all away. This kid hated jam. But I then later realized that it wasn’t her fault. Our jam is crap. There is no fruit in it. It basically sugar, pectin, color and flavor. Just to call it fruit jam they put some fruit pulp in it. It is crap. So we now buy these jams which have at least 50 percent fruit content in it. It tasty and nice and flavorful.

So when I bought this bottle yesterday, my young neighbor asked me what it is that I have bought. I explained to him that this is World War 2 in a bottle. The second world war was fought outside of eth Americas. I think only one Japanese bomber managed to bomb the mainland (Nobuo Fujita). Fujita later made several goodwill visits to the place of his bombings and was later declared an honorary citizen of the area in US. Really a lovely story. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/03/world/nobuo-fujita-85-is-dead-only-foe-to-bomb-america.html Though it seems there have been a total of five attacks on US in WW2 read this interesting link, http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/5-attacks-on-u-s-soil-during-world-war-ii . The most curious of them all is the fire balloons. Ww2 is full of interesting history and the limit (or lack of thereof) of the human mind in the face of crisis. The fire balloons were thought of by the Japanese. The idea being simple. The Japanese realized while flying that there was a current of air flowing towards American mainland at high altitude from Japan known as the jet stream. So someone thought of putting bombs on balloons that would be carried away by the current and drop on the mainland. It required some clever science and engineering as the day temperature and the night temperature would be different and the hydrogen balloon would need to be at a constant altitude to reach across the ocean. So they put in place altitude meters that would drop the sand bags to gain altitude and a valve to release hydrogen to loose altitude, and finally a mechanism to release the bomb in roughly three days by which time it should have been roughly over the mainland. Very very cute and clever. They released 900 of them with the expectation that 900 of them will reach America.  Around 300 of them were spotted and the rest seemed to have landed in the vast open areas causing no damage. Only one incident has been reported where 6 people were killed thanks to the balloon. They were largely ineffective. The funniest part was that the Japanese made the balloons from a paper made from mulberry bushes and they had to be glued together using edible glue called konnyaku. The poor and hungry Japanese workers used to eat the paste while making the balloons. Hehehe. This is the reason I love WW2. It’s full of interesting anecdotes and insights into the craziness of human mind in the face of severe hardship and stress.

So largely the mainland America was unaffected by the war. The war for them was fought on a different front altogether. They had to cross the seas, thousands of miles away and fight. Their supply chains extended across continents. Unlike the Europeans. These guys fought the war in and around the home land. They fought the war in their backyards and in their cities. They fought in in their farms. So the US industry grew around making canned products which essentially were soft and reduced to a calorie and taste devoid of all texture. The Europeans retained the texture in their food as they did not have an industry set to mass produce canned products.

As Indian poor grew a little richer they began to have demand. This demand was essentially fulfilled by big firms trying to give a ton of calories at the lowest possible cost. They turn to the American model. Reduce anything to the lowest common denominator, remove all semblance of texture and make it easy to swallow. I have written about this – the favorite foods are Maggie noodles, pasta, margarita thin crust pizzas and cream biscuits. Nothing with texture.

So when I was asked about this preserve bottle, I was actually explaining about WW2. After such an explanation there was no way I was going to get home without opening the bottle and sharing with everybody. So I ordered for bread  from the pantry (sadly it was the simple white sliced soft loaf) and gave jam sandwich to all. I asked them to feel the texture. The berries, the seeds, the rough edges to the jam. They all loved it. I was amazed that all of them very so surprised to taste it and they did not realize what crap they were eating all this while. I then got the normal kissan jam bottle from the pantry and opened it and asked them to smell that. Yuckkk… I think I permanently spoiled normal jam for them. Good for them. I am introducing the play of texture for them in their mind even for while eating a humble jam.

Here – who would have known that between these two bottles lies the history of war conflict and countless suffering. Just dig in and enjoy the smell, the texture and the taste.

travel woes

Off days and on days. Today morning was an off day. Yesterday I did a morning evening Delhi trip. Obviously I was off color at the badminton court today. I hate flights and I hate travelling. I find travelling in flights very very depressing. I can’t think of a worse thing than a lonely flight. And to add to all this – the cumbersome checking in process and the entire experience. First thing is that you have to reach one hour in advance. Then you have to get your security check done. Why is that there is always a line for the security check. Why can’t airports build for scale  and capacity? I think boarding a flight must be done as painlessless as possible. I book online and then I get my seat online and then I just simply walk in to get zero lines. All check-ins must be open across airlines. Why do you need dedicated counters. This is an absolute waste of space and resources. Just let the airport authorities check you in on their systems. No line and a 30 second check in. Then you proceed to security which is another 30 second check in and then board the plane. The plan has strict door open and door close timings. Suppose I have RFID tags for my luggage and on me, then I don’t even need tickets or check in information. These tags will allow me everything. Entry / exit everything. Simple. Then you just reach the airport and, boom you board in 10 minutes max.

Of course the airports have really improved over the years. Now you have nothing short of a five star experience in most airports. The loos are those you can go in, even for the big stuff. I remember five years ago, I was coming from Delhi and suddenly I had a really bad bout of diarrhea and vomiting. Really really bad. I went to the airport loo at least 4 to 5 times. Extremely tough. I remember thinking only one thing – wow – at least these loos are really clean. It was so bad that I puked just before boarding and then once on the flight. Thank god for air sickness bags and then once just as I landed, I ran into the loo for one final time. Crazy crazy time. Also the number of loos have gone up. Otherwise  there was invariably a line whenever you get off the plane. Now most airports are large and lovely. At the Mumbai Airport I even noticed a family bathroom. A larger room with enough space for a small family. Perfect if you have babies and you need help with both parents doing their bit. Also the airports have enough seating, wifi, shops and eating places. Some airports have a better array of shopping than others. I think shopping and eating are important entertaining points for travelers. Of course along with TVs. With sports and news being broadcast 24x7 there is never a shortage of entertainment. I think now they should install large screens beaming sports. That would be one huge plus for travelers. The other point where the travelers would rate you highly -  keep a large section for discounted brand outlets. People will go crazy. For some reason people think that airline travelers have tons of money and therefore everything is highly priced. You only get expensive brands. My view is the opposite. These travelers are completely bored and need some entertainment. Cheap prices will induce them to binge beyond what they would have normally wanted to and boom – you will have people coming in and carrying off cartloads of stuff. Pile them high and sell them cheap. The first guy who gets this will make tons of money. And brands can always have a sale at airports as people don’t travel so often to airports. It’s not on a call for most people, except idiotic business travelers who do a morning evening to a city.

But still nothing can be done about the stupid airline seats. We want them cheap and the only way seems to be packing us like cattle into the aircraft. What a pain. And when you take flights from Delhi and you have an idiot who just likes to take more arm space than is legitimately his. Why does that always happen on Delhi flights? I hate the hand sticking and hence when I travel by flight I ensure I am wearing a full sleeves shirt. At least you don’t feel iky pushing the a-holes hand back into his seat. I pity the women travelers here.

If I am ever rich or in a position to dictate, one thing is for sure – I will strive for business class for travel. It makes the travel much more bearable. Good seats on flights are a huge thing. Vistara has just started for the first time in India the concept of premium economy. I have to get around to checking out how this works. They seem promising at least in the leg space provided. I think it costs around 30% more. I genuinely believe that if an employee comes back same day then its only humane to offer that choice to the employee. But then… I think moment I become a position of authority I think I will get all completely corrupt in the head and see only cost. Benefits be dammed. I don’t know why this happens. I think the best of intentions go crazy when one is in power. I struggle every day to remain reasonably stable in dealing with my band. To keep saying that these kids are good and you have to trust them. People will behave funnily and in ways you don’t want them to. I have noticed that when I am in office till late, invariably the band is in office till late. When I am gone early, the band has left early. Is it that I keep them late, is it my doing, or is it a psychological response. I don’t know. We corporate types are designed to be complete jerks.

But nevertheless – travelling is a pain. Especially alone. If there is someone alongside it makes for much better journeys. I realized it especially when I was travelling to London. With my family next to me even the arduous 8 hour flight was completely bearable. Alone is impossible. That’s why Kolkata is never on the radar! And with airports being so far away from the city it is another one hour of travel to be added at the bear minimum. So catching a morning Kolkata flight is the greatest torture known to travelkind. And if by mistake you are travelling to Bangalore then you better budget for traffic jams at peak hours. Oh dear oh dear… I so hate travelling alone. I abhor it. I hate it, I don’t like it, I don’t want to do it. But….

why the age of ultron is the age of Jispa

I remember when Jispa was little, she hated violent movies. She would cry if there were movies in which there was fighting or had cars blowing up. Her movies had to be very very clean. She cried in Finding Nemo and she hated me and hit me in the middle of the movie for taking her to watch Ratatouille. She only wanted happiness everywhere.

My big memory was of her waking up in the theatre while I was watching Die Hard 4 and she hated me for taking her. She refused to understand that I was only taking her as it was a late night movie and I was expecting her to sleep through it.

Then she grew a little more when she could watch these Disney movies with dragons and fire and everything else. Whew. I could finally watch a few movies. Recently I was so happy when this little kid got started on to the Superhero series.

I had first tried to get her interested in SpidermanI wanted to see the Spider man and to convince her that it was pretty cool, I got one of the Spidey movies home. It was the one with Tobey in it and was a largely cute version of the movie. Not so dark and but quite happy. She was ok and then when we went for the movie I realized that it was a new interpretation and there was enough conflict in the movie. It was dark and full of crazy violence. Spiderman comes home all bruised and hurt. She was not happy with me.

Suddenly in the last year or so she took up to watching the Avengers! Was it her cousin brother or was it the kids at school or what it was no one knows. But I am not complaining. I am enjoying this. She is now hooked on to the X men series as well. So now when the new Avengers movie is getting released, we have started a countdown to it. She is excited. Jasmine traditionally has been damp water on all these efforts of mine. She doesn’t care two shit about the super hero movies and she would only just about see it because I wanted to.

Hopefully this weekend I would be watching the movie with Jispa. Jasmine is pretty much optional on this one! Today Jispa seemed interested in watching sci fi movies as well. Now what more can a father ask for. There are tears in my eyes as I finally see my daughter grow up and enjoy the simple pleasures in life with her daddy!. Yahoo…

Watch this clip. If you feel the goosegumps you are it and if you don’t… well

growing growing ...

There is a lot of bull shit and child pschyology everywhere. I too believed in a lot of bull shit. There is only one truth. No one really knows anything. I have two three very close kids that I have seen up close and personal. Both these boys according to me have had not so great parenting. They should have been better read, better exposed and made to have sweat a little more. At least that was my egoistic view point. Both these boys have grown up to be amazing people. One nephew has become a boy that I like to talk with. I can converse, he understands and responds. Another boy took a job as a sales guy and by sheer hard work and persistence is climbing up the sales ladder. He takes charge of things in his hand and then attacks the work and gets it done. I like his drive and his dedication. I am impressed. Another hero grows up and reads and learns and grows well. Things change and they change fast.

I am now less and less worried about the real long term implications that we think are caused by our minute bits of parenting. I am sure  parenting makes a difference. Of course. A lot of fundamentals can get ingrained. Some dos and don’t get implanted but… they are also giving more importance than is due. So many kids fight their way on their own and mold their own destiny. I was asking Jasmine – “you know me since I was 15, haven’t I changed a lot?” Jasmine looked at me, thought for a bit and said “yes, you have”. People change. Circumstances force people to change. There are many ways to respond to change and in many ways ‘stressfull change’. Change is stressful and people don’t do it willingly, but people change. How many times can you get slapped for something? Life will keep slapping you again and again. After a point you stop making some mistakes, you grow up, you meet the Buddha in you and boom.. growing happens.

I love to able to talk to these kids. They teach me stuff I never knew. I understand much better when I chat with them and when I discuss with them. There is so much to learn. I understand their issues (I hope to), I get their perspective (again hope to) and I learn. Learning is forever constant and the best learnings are from those much younger to you or much older to you. The youth have so much to share and the old have so much to learn from.

But one thing is clear – I am learning form these guys only one thing. That no matter how much I know, I don’t know a thing. Things are different. Things change and people change. Possibly their cores remain constant. But you never know what the nuance of that core is. The way they exhibit some of that to you changes. And it could be just that little bit that changed it all as far as you are concerned. And when that happens – god only knows.

omnidigi

I don’t think people still get it. I have been trying to shout on the top of rooftops and to everyone I meet. Digital is going to eat your lunch and you don’t even know it. You idiot! There is digital everywhere and in meetings and interviews I stand out like an anarchist. In fact there were two such instances. Once at an important meeting with the super boss Uday, he turned around and asked us what is the future and how do we compete with our rivals. He swung around and asked me first. I think I destroyed the conversation soon by explaining to him that I didn’t care about our known competition. The broking industry is a shitty highly unimaginative and boring space. It’s easy to beat the shit out of your competition because here the people are boring unimaginative and highly lackadaisical. We sit on our laurels and reminiscence on the past days. Knowing that when the market turns the people have no choice but to come to us and invest. Bing bong… here comes the money.

So I looked around, my bosses, egged me on and told me to speak my mind. And I did. I told the gathering that the competition is going to come from some upstart app that will reach out and get the eyeballs and then suddenly one day it will put a buy sell button and we are all doomed.

At another forum, actually it was an interview with a large insurance firm, they ask me about my digital antecedents and boom – I get them all riled up with my ‘digital is all in’ theory. You can’t have half measures in digital. You have to be all in. You have to commit to it completely. Having one stupid digital product guy or having one digital marketing guy is not it. Digital is the mandate of the CEO. He has to commit to it knowing that there is no choice. It’s all in. only a fool would waste money on traditional activities. I look around me at all these other idiots and wonder what on earth is going on. Why cant people see the truth. And then I speak to all these guys from the digital industry, all these startups who are doing some great stuff and showing some real traction. They are loving this and the fact that the older entrenched guys are sitting on their heads and wondering what on earth is going on.

Look around me right now. I was explaining to Jispa that how the taxi business has changed completely. At first we had the simple black and yellows. We would always haggle with them, we would wonder where to flag them down and we would wonder how dirty they were and would wonder if we would get any in the morning. Then came the radio taxis. They came and challenged the status quo. You could book them in advance for a particular time. they came with airconditioning, uniformed drivers and were generally on time and reliable. Most of these guy’s revenues came from airport pick up and drop. I guess the guys who go to airports like the AC and want to keep their travel as airconditioned as possible. And then comes Uber service. No radio calling, no number, no office and hell… no taxis they own. They simply own the app on which you can check on the taxis nearby. No you cant book in advance. you simply start the app and  request for a cab. Strategy is often saying NO. they refuse to take cash. They only take a direct charge on your card. So you jump in and out of cabs without touching your wallet. When the RBI got in and said that’s not allowed… you need a double authentication at the time of payment, they simply tied up with an e-wallet and started doing what they do best. Get a ride without touching your wallet.

Look at all the side effects, the happy stuff. Now people will pay with digi money. All that money leaves a trail. And when you have a trail you can charge taxes. Taxes help people  come into the white and into the economy. Balance sheets get made and balance sheets mean access to credit, means means for growth and leverage. Leverage means more stuff can be consumed and hence produced. Its good for growth!

Digital is good. It Makes the economy more efficient and productive. It allows for boundaries of exit and entry to be removed. It allows for goods and services to reach all corners of society. I genuinely believe that digital will allow more people to grow out of their current situation. Its great.

Here is one type of example

It gives these people a shot at fame and success! They have an equal chance of grabbing your eyeball as Salman Khan. What more an equalizer do you want?

Here a bonus video once we talk about Salman Khan

an old boy's tale

My brother put his lovely old parsi cupboard in my garage. Well actually half of it is his garage and he kept it for ‘safe keeping’. Since both the garages are connected and in front of the building, the building idiots often take our garage for their community dinners. This time they took the cupboard and put it behind in a corner of the building. When my sis in law came to take it, she was shocked and so were we. Somebody had painted it white! Jasmine was sure someone was trying to flick the cupboard by painting it white. We raised a stink with the supervisor and he promised to get to the root of it.

I remember as kids we used to play in front of the garage space in the buildings. The garage that we were playing in front of was abandoned and in a mess.  Then one day on a mission – you know how kids are – we cleaned up the entire garage and threw the mess. It was awesome. Now we could play properly. Some idiot then promptly parked his car. So we bought some paint and wrote on the wall that parking your car is not allowed in here. Now that was something. We did not know whose garage it was and whose car it was… we just took charge. After a few weeks, the actual owner came in and then got inspired to put a gate there and was about to stop us from playing in front of his garage. Only timely intervention by his neighbor and a friend of ours who told him that we cleaned it in the first place allowed us to continue playing. It’s pretty stupid.

Back to the present. We later came to know that the kids painted the cupboard white. One of them apologized to me. I let him be. Kids… vandals…. Yesterday as I was parking my car when I saw this kid who came in and was opening the door of this cupboard. I asked him what he was doing. He said it was his cupboard. I argues with him that it was ours. He said ‘it is ours. We even painted it’. oh dear. This was a throw back  to the garage days. We just took ownership of the garage and took charge and cleaned it. these kids were doing the same  to our cupboard. They did not mean to vandalize. They meant to clean it. Oh dear.

It good that I remember my childhood. Of course I did not shout at them. But I did give them a smallish but cute lecture. I don’t want them in my garage. They scratch the cars… but its good that I remember J

Here is the legendary cupboard. they did try their best!

this too shall pass

No matter what. This too will pass.

Many years ago in my firm we had an ass who joined in who did not care too much about others and was just throwing his weight around. He believed that everyone reported to him and wanted to control everything. We had a few run in’s with him and my reportee had a dotted line reporting to this idiot. Dotted line reporting… that is the stupidest thing in the world. These corporates have these matrix structures. Made popular by the multinational companies, in which you have no clue who is really reporting to whom. So as the marketing head of the business you have a ‘hard line’ reporting to the business head but a ‘dotted line’ reporting to the marketing head of the group. Or in many cases it can be vice versa. No real boss who is responsible for you. With so many bosses and so complex structures, the challenge is to ask the question – who will take care and be responsible for you and your career. The answer – go figure. I think they cause too many issues than they really solve. I hope that someday when I can change the system or if I can put in a system, I will put in a clean and simple system.

But coming back. So that was a real ass and I remember that my colleague was completely stresses and then we complained to the boss. The boss was very understanding and told us that he would take care of it, but at the same time he told us that ‘ no matter how big the problem seems now, in a few years as time passes by the problem will seem very small. Then you will wonder what it was about the problem that looked so big at the time”. Those were wise words indeed. It’s really true. When you face issues they look huge and look insurmountable but over a period of time, they end up looking so small and insignificant. You wonder why you took so much stress in resolving the issues. Another boss told me a fable of a general who was suddenly in the bad books of the king and was about to be put to death. When eth king visited him the general was crying. He told the king that his only regret was not being able to teach the kings horse to fly. The king said that there was no such thing. The general assured him that in a year the horse would fly. The king gave him a grace of one year failing which he would be put to death again. When eth general went home, his wife confronted him saying that she knew that he was fibbing. At which the general said – relax my dear – one year is a long time. In one year – I might die, the king might die or the horse might die. One year is a long time.

That’s so right. one year is a long time. when shit hits the roof for me, I sit back and think a bit. What is it that I need to survive the next few minutes, hours or days. Relax. What’s the worst that can happen. Then I sit back and think through the steps and breathe. The complex decision tree gets done in my head till I reach a point that I know that my decision is this and then I have to wait and see. Then I sleep. Sometimes stress can disturb your sleep beyond imagination. I remember that as an idiot who did not really prepare for his exams in the final year of college, I had nightmares of getting a bad result. The worry was simple, I had a girlfriend whose family I had convinced that I was a super stud. And failing was a real no no. So I had convinced myself that if I fail then the pass percentage of the entire board would be 30 percent. So that was not happening. Then came the next mountain. I needed at least 50% in the aggregate so as to be eligible for the MBA  studies that I had sold to the world that I was going to do. That was crazy. I remember waking up and then calculating what is the bear minimum marks that I thought I would get in each subject and inputting those on the calculator to get the final score. I convinced myself that I would be there! I ended up with 62% - a first class!

Problems are around us every day and they create such a mess and get our BP high, they rob us of our appetite and our sleep. But the truth is simple dear lad – this too shall pass. This too shall pass. After all – one year is a long time J

worth its while

In life a public service post is extremely critical for a whole rounded experience. A not for profit, free charitable public service post. That is the toughest thing to do.

My friend and I got involved with the swimming department at the gymkhana a little over a couple of years ago. The pain is immense. If I thought that the idiots at eth office were a bit, these guys at the gymkhana are to be seen to be believed. Everyone and his grand dad would have an opinion and most of the time they are not controlled or driven by facts. Most of these guys come from business backgrounds and used to running their businesses in their own way. Controls, processes and scale is something alien to them. Most of them haven’t run retail customer centric business and have no clue on anything. These guys then get elected to various posts and then all hell breaks loose.

They don’t understand service, the ability to keep your audience first and they definitely are alien to marketing concepts. All the bums are a legacy of the Nehruvian era where the man who controls the resources is hell bent on preserving his control over them and believes in the scarcity of resources. Anything is looked upon as a privilege that is given to the members. Hence they will put barricades everywhere. They will first put in rules that don’t allow stuff to happen. They will never bother about the demand side of the equation. Creating a  demand is alien to them. In fact in many ways it is an anathema. They are those people who have bought membership cheap and then want to extract the maximum benefits exclusively for themselves. They like their empty pools, empty courts an dempty spaces. Buzz? … that is an alien concept to them. Attracting youngsters to the club? OMG that is the greatest sin on this world. Guests – let’s stop the members from getting them. Let’s charge higher! What will you give for that in return… oops that’s another bad question! The next thing we know – they ban shorts in the restaurant… hell knows why! I got thrown out of the restaurant. They tightened the rules about guests along with raising the fees… and boom – now the restaurant is empty. Now sit and enjoy eating in a ghost town. The quality of food will suffer, the service will suffer and the menu will slowly shrink. Who will bother about that.

They started redesigning the restaurant.. and no one is bothered about redesigning the menu. So whats the experience going to be? What is the theme of the place? What is the average serving size and the number of people per table that we are talking? Is there going to be a peak and a non peak time… how are we going to maximize revenues and have bar nights with live music or match screenings. Is the place designed for that? Nothing. If we have larger tables should we also have a few larger portion plates? Should we have enough starters and do we have enough on follow-throughs. Are we using light to generally zone out the place? Wow… I told them all this and they didn’t have a clue.

Then on pricing… they wanted to increase the pricing for using the general facilities. The club has a reverse problem. we have a large corpus that’s sitting and doing nothing. Just… a large corpus. So we DON’T need the money. And in any case, from all the monies collected to run the place on a daily use basis doesn’t pay for the maintainence. This comes from the interest on the corpus. So your biggest revenue is not this stupid yearly fees but new members who have to be suckered into coming in and joining. In fact you need more BUZZ in the gymkhana. More use of pool, more use of restaurant, more use of bar and then more use of all the sports. You must have training programs that attract the bets talent that attract the best money from people who want access to this talent for their kids and themselves. So you problem is different. In fact I was arguing that reduce the fees, reduce it drastically so that more and more people are tempted to pay off and believe that they will use it. and get people to use it… You need a problem of plenty and not scarcity. And this is the only option. If you believe that you should build walls around your scarce resources then these resources will only deteriorate and will eventually die. You lose in the long run.

But alas.. I am tired of these jack idiots. But I also learnt that this is the Indian Democratic system. Nothing moves. There is a log jam everywhere. And there is merit in it. I mean, I am the secretary of the pool but I report into the Chairman who reports into the general Secretary who really has no powers over the swimming pool directly but can stop us from doing a lot, who reports into the managing Committee which consists of all the chairmen, which in turn reports into the trustees who really don’t really do anything. So who is in charge… really… no one. So it does take a lot to move the system and precedence is king. So if you have done something in the past then its ok. Doing new or changing it is a problem. That’s why in legal and democratic systems past precedence is a great thing. This reduces the new thing you can do but also stops all the shit that can possibly create havoc. Its difficult (not impossible) to create dictators, its difficult to have idiots blowing up money, and every risk is answerable to almost anyone who asks a question. But I have also learnt to game the system… you can keep asking questions and as long as I am replying them and following due course, you cant do jack. And there is no limit to the number of replies I can give to the number of question you ask. And to add -  I can keep whining on in the replies and it can go on forever. Plus there is no real time frame in which we have to reply. In fact there is no real compulsion in which I have to reply. I can always defer and defer and just let matters sleep.

But at the end, it’s been frustrating and enriching. I know exactly why the system is designed so and I know how it works and its loopholes. And I leant to deal with more nitwits! And not lose cool…Worth its while :)

man... statesman!

Lee Kuan Yew. The great statesman and the father of Singapore passed away yesterday. Singapore was the second country that I went abroad as an independent adult. It was a part of an offsite that we were going to. I was just inducted in the international division of the firm and there was an offsite planned in Singapore. I thought that was so cool. And I remember the day when the secretary just asked me for my passport. I heard it from her that we were going to Singapore. I think it was for two or three days. I promptly bought the Lonely Planet and read all I could about the city. I asked around as well… and yes… you are Indian so you will have to stop at the mecca of Singapore – the Mustafa shopping centre. And to cater to tourists who enjoy the city during the day – the dam store stays open 24 hours!. Wow that is super cool.

From the first experience that I received while landing – at the Changi airport – I was dazzled by the city. Clean, orderly, and everything works to the clock. People walk on the amazing pavements, travel by the metro or the MRT as they call it. The busses are air conditioned and the malls are amazing and the people and service is great. I remember one instance where at the crossing, I was letting the car by but the car stopped and allowed me to cross first. It was absolutely a city in order. And then in the free time I went around the city. We were staying at the Sentosa island which itself had tons of fun things to do. The first thing I did was see the aquarium and the first thing at the aquarium – the touching tank! OMG. In India we are used to seeing barricades that stop us from going anywhere near the exhibits or animals or anything. But here we are free to  - of all things touch the fish. These were the Ray fish that we were experiencing. Then I roamed around the city and saw tons of things. I was a crazy wide eyes tourist with a mission to soak in as much of the city as possible. Mind boggling.

As an adult my first international visit was Bangkok and then this. This was my first experience of what a modern city feels like. I remember walking along their main road which was Orchard Street and not feeling any pollution at all. I swore to take my family along the next time. And sure enough, with the next bonus I was in Singapore again with Jasmine and Jispa. What a city! Organized and orderly and great living standards. How this happen? Who made it happen? Is this really true? The amazing Bird Park, the zoo, the island, the beach, the airport. How they make it happen? That’s when a friend of mine told me about the Man himself – Lee Kuan Yew. I read about him and then chanced upon his two books. One is about the way at 35… only 35… he led his city country to merge with Malaysia to only cede within a short time due to race issues. This book is ‘My Singapore Story’. It’s a bit boring but you get a sense of the resolve of the guy. The next book is an absolute mind bender. “from third world to first”. This book talks about the various issues he faced and the various challenges he resolved while he transformed his island country. My god. That man at 35 had an amazing vision. He resolved race conflicts, understood Singapore’s geo strategic positioning and built a modern efficient city. He ruling with a  strong arm but with a benevolence of a father, an incorruptible man of the highest integrity… he transformed Singapore in the magical city that we see it today. And he started at 35.

What an inspiration he is to all. The ability to fight off opposition, impose a fair just society and build the highest living standards for all. He talks about how at the start, Indians tried giving him a planner to help him and how he quickly realized how useless it was. He use of corporal punishment and banning of chewing gum was felt as suppressive to the world but you need to just look at the pavements of London to understand the impact. Every pavement of main street London has black spots that bear testimony to the ugliness of spat out chewing gum! Banning Chewing gum is good! though the real reason he banned it was the MRT. It would jam the doors.

The tourist magnets that are available for sale mock Singapore’s fine culture by calling it a Singapore -  a Fine City. Fines for smoking in public, spitting, not flushing etc etc…

But you can’t take away anything from this great guy. Lee Kuan Yew. Amongst those that lived while I was alive – to me he ranks up there with Nelson Mandela. I don’t think that for their people they were any less than great founding fathers! I salute you guys! You guys were awesome and to rephrase the words of great in memory of another great – generations to come will scarcely believe that a man such as this walked in flesh and blood on this earth!

We will soon deride them as our memories fall short as we do for Gandhi and Nehru. But what leaders of men these were. I need to someday think about what’s common in all of these? Possibly Lincoln as well. That makes me think. Time to read up on George Washigton!

random musings of a disturbed mind

This is the first time in a long time that I don’t really want to write anything and I am really forcing myself to pen down my thoughts. I find myself very very shallow. All my thoughts seem to be shallow. There seems to be little meaning in what I am writing.

I think it’s just a question of getting into the mindset and writing. Writing has helped me think, has helped me learn and has helped me clear my head. Why on earth can’t I write then. Why should I give up. Jispa got her report card a couple of days ago. I told her that I want her to focus on only two things. Math tables and writing essays. She needs to write essays. Essays help you think, help youw rite, help you weave a story, force you to think, force you to be creative. It helps yes it does. You can talk for hours on end but if you don’t write you are nothing.

I must teach myself exactly what I taught Jispa. Right now work is also pretty much uninspiring. I remember in the 2008 financial crisis, I had virtually no work. I used the time every day to read and think. I think it was 2009 when I wrote a blog for every single day at work. First thing write and then read… read read till lunch and then work some little and go home. I spent so much time thinking and reading that it helped me for years to come. Right now the mindset is missing. Am I growing old? Am I losing the edge that I have or should I say had? Of course my ego won’t allow me to admit that same or even I think not allow me to deteriorate that much,. all I need is a little nudge knowing that I am probably not as good as someone else in one specific aspect and then… boom… I will go for the kill. But now I am not even being challenged as much I think I need to be. But then as you grow older you realize that challenge comes with its own share of issues. No challenge comes without its fair share of risk. And the older you get risk changes in meaning. When you are younger the biggest risk is that of being embarrassed. You are insecure and you are always wondering what is it that will make you feel funny. But as you grow older, at least as grew older, I changed a fair deal. Now embarrassment doesn’t really bother you. I know how to deal with it, how to have a sleight of hand, how to laugh at yourself, live with it, pick up and move on!

That’s amongst the best learning I have had. Relax, deal with the barbs being thrown at you. Swing it, move it, duck and laugh. Also important is that fact that you realize that moods are transient. They flip, they change, they swing. You learn to deal with them and you learn to manage them and you learn to just let them be without thinking too much about them. Jispa is now 13… almost. She is a big girl. This time we went on a vacation to Diu and Gir, she was an adult on her own. She knew what she wanted to do, and she knows how to talk and how to get by. She is in a dam cute phase right now. She is a child, a lovely child and she is also a young adult. She feels bad, she doesn’t like being told and she doesn’t like ‘taplis’. She gives it back. She also needs to realize that she has moods and swings and she will also learn that her mommy and daddy have these moods. Yesterday night she got a scolding form me but when she went to sleep, I went and made her smile. She is quite an adult but I shudder to think that one day she wouldn’t smile that easily back at me. She will get angry and genuinely so and then not want to talk to me for a few days, a few months… a few years as well. God knows who will have how much ego at that point… Hope it doesn’t happen. Hope we remain adults.

yo skeptic

Ever since the Modi government has been sworn in, there is some great euphoria in the market. Everyone is speaking optimistically and the promises and hopes of the people are crazy. In this melee any sane voice is obviously hastily pushed aside. I too supported Modi over the choice we had. On one hand we had a congress rule for ten years which by the end of their second term was like a stand up’s comedians dream come true. We had a lovely and great former finance minister who became possibly only non-politician PM and served two full terms! He was just unable to stem the rot in the system and ended up being silent and ‘status quoist’. Fingers were raised at the all-powerful party president who it seemed controlled all the strings. Then there was the scion of the dynasty, with Rahul who promised so much till he went on an interview with Times Now and then he looked like a duck, with nothing to offer.

Sure I supported Modi but I also warned of the dangers of a right wing PM. He won with an absolute majority and swept into power. I worry and I worry. People were (are) going mad in supporting the man. He talks big, he has these broadcasts across schools and colleges and is winning the state elections like none other. Seemingly smart and intelligent people are being swept by the public relations spin tsunami that is being generated. It makes me worry a whole lot.

I have been interested in world war 2 history and after reading up a bit on Hitler’s rise to power and his madness that led a country into war, I see the parallels between his machinery and our PM’s. It unnerves me. Both talk loud and full of rhetoric. They have concentration of power, big grandiose schemes, talk tough and have huge PR machineries to support them. It scares me. I see no action but lots of talk. Of course they also have another issue – the Congress controls the upper house and refuses to pass the bills creating another sort of mess, so one must need to balance that view as well.

 So in many casual meetings I sit in one side and ask polite questions to all the Modi bhakts. Empty rhetoric must meet cold hard questions and reasoning. People who don’t tolerate criticisms must not face criticism but questions. Questions that stem from their rock hard support and shake their foundations. So surely, is support him compared to the lame duck but questions must be asked. This is a democracy and the greatest value in it is the skeptic. The loyalists has little value in a democratic set up.

In all that the same voice is that of the RBI Governor. He writes about how economic politics interplay for growth. He talks about the four pillars – Rule of Law, Democratic Accountability, Strong governance along with free markets play such an important role in a countries prosperity. And he talks about Hitler. I am been trying to explain the Hitler example to so many people. I keep making the same point, hitler was a tin pot dictator but he was elected democratically and then suspended elections and then became a force onto himself. He enjoyed the unwavering support of his people. People were ready to die for him – in millions! You would want to read the entire text of Raghuram’s speech here http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_SpeechesView.aspx?id=941. He explains how having one pillar less destabilizes the entire process and puts a country into peril. Economics and politics are completely intertwined.

Yo man! I love the skeptics. The Yo Skeptics. People who are skeptic but move ahead. They realize that whole hearted support may be stupid but you surely require whole hearted action. I love his ending paras as well.

“An important difference from the historical experience of other countries is that elsewhere typically strong government has emerged there first, and it is then restrained by rule of law and democratic accountability. In India, we have the opposite situation today, with strong institutions like the judiciary, opposition parties, the free press, and NGOs, whose aim is to check government excess. However, necessary government function is sometimes hard to distinguish from excess. We will have to strengthen government (and regulatory) capability resisting the temptation to implant layers and layers of checks and balances even before capacity has taken root. We must choose a happy medium between giving the administration unchecked power and creating complete paralysis, recognizing that our task is different from the one that confronted the West when it developed, or even the task faced by other Asian economies.

For instance, a business approval process that mandates numerous government surveys in remote areas should also consider our administrative capacity to do those surveys well and on time. If it does not provide for that capacity, it ensures there will be no movement forward. Similarly, if we create a multiple appellate process against government or regulatory action that is slow and undiscriminating, we contain government excess but also risk halting necessary government actions. If the government or regulator is less effective in preparing its case than private parties, we ensure that the appellate process largely biases justice towards those who have the resources to use it, rather than rectifying a miscarriage of justice. So in thinking through reforms, we may want to move from the theoretical ideal of how a system might work in a country with enormous administrative capacity, to how it would work in the actual Indian situation. Let me emphasize, we need “checks and balance”, but we should ensure a balance of checks. We cannot have escaped from the License Permit Raj only to end up in the Appellate Raj!”

I tried to explain some part of the speech to Jispa yesterday, and we were having a decent conversation on this when Jasmine ticked us off and told us to sleep. We have a skeptic at home as well :)

cobbling up some knowledge

I hate going down alone. I like to take someone with me for a short walk and possibly eat something or finish some work or something. This time I wanted to go down for getting my shoe laces replaced. They had frayed and I was worried that one day they would just snap. I took Dixi along and at the cobblers, he asked me which ones he wanted me to put  - the cotton ones or the nylon ones. This was all the invitation I needed to get as much information on them as possible. The cotton ones are the ones that look a little old and not shiney. They have a dull matt finish about them. The nylon ones look cool and shiney and you can clearly see the weave pattern on them. But the cotton ones are the ones that you want as they have the necessary friction to hold your boots together. The nylon ones keep opening up as they are too smooth. Hmmm. And everyone goes for the nylon ones as they are the ones that look good. He sells 10 times more nylon than cotton! Ah. I too would have chosen the nylon one without thinking. The cotton ones do look very old worldly.

Then I got him to polish my shoes as well. I was in the NCC since I started college and thanks to that I learnt the art of polishing shoes. We used to have a routine that was passed on. Every Sunday was parade and hence every Saturday evening was the ritual. You sit down with a  brush and a tin of polish and you start polishing your shoes. You polish and polish away. Then you take nylon cloth and then shine your shoes. And if that’s not enough, the rule was to then use liquid polish and put a layer on top of that! Wow that was colossal use or waste of polish, depending on the way you see it. It was a similar routine for all the brass that was there on the uniform. There were brass buttons on the cap, brass buckle for the belts and brass on the shoulder insignias. Here also I had brasso liquid and a cloth dedicated to this. A full 40 minute ritual every Saturday night. I think that’s a good discipline for a 16 year old boy. Some of that NCC discipline stayed on for a long time.

Now I find the process very messy and hence I just step down the office for a quick polish every time. So when the guy picked his nylon cloth to give the shoe a shine, I was wondering why the squeaky noise was missing. He said – it depends, sometime you get it and sometimes you don’t.  Stations in Mumbai were famous for having shoe shine boys. I sure that would a legacy of the British in India. These guys are officially there in every station. Left to our own we wouldn’t have ever thought of having them here. It’s the marriage of the British love for trains and shiny shoes. I told the cobbler that the train guys make a huge squeaky noise when they use the cloth. He said they use a different cloth. I wondered that possibly those guys would have a special secret on the type of cloth to be used that made the sound.

I told Dixi that the noise is a call to action, like a ice cream cart bell. It tells people that come an dget your shoes polished. IN any case, Dixi was reeling under the amount of information that we got while getting a simple shoe lace. One should always ask. These kids call me Jugal… who is Jugal – brother of Google. Because I seem to know so much on so many things. I told Dixi that you guys call me Jugal, but the answer is here. It’s just that I am curious on everything and I ask and hence I know. So next time a topic on shoe laces comes up I will know, how a cotton shoelace is better than a nylon one.

Everyone has something to give as value to someone else. If someone spends time doing something as a profession it’s obvious that they will be knowing some angle of it better than anyone else.  The key is to ask the right questions. And their inner secrets will be exposed to you. ASK