First Letter

Maybe we can start talking about the weather,
and share the monsoon clouds together

The dewy paths that lead through this forest green,
Maybe we can negotiate together

On lonesome evenings with windswept eyes
Maybe we can see the sunset together

On cold misty winter nights
We can sit and soak the moonlight together

Maybe, just maybe, we can walk together.

If..

If I had a heart,

It would roam

The wilds, the subways

Nightclubs and meadows

Rise, fall , skip a beat

But remain tethered

Against the storm of transcience

If I ever had a heart

It would sing

The song of spring

Desolation, Hope

Shrill, hum, whisper a note

Still paint the lyric

Into perpetual life

If I ever had a heart

It would fly

Stable as a Gull

Winged as a bat

Sail in the wind, coast

And be tugged still

By the warmth of my nest

If I ever had a heart

It would cry

Puddles, Rivers

In spate, invisible still

Burn, cleanse, foment

That one sunrise

Of purpose, unquenched

Gandhi on Google

Pleasant surprise on an October 2nd morning in the UK. MK Gandhi's face adorns the now iconic "G" of the Google logo on its search home page. Other than Santa Claus, i haven't seen any other person living or imaginary scribed on what is perhaps the most expensive "carpet space" in the online world.

This start to a 2nd Oct birth anniversary prompted me to contemplate the mixed feelings that most Indians nurture for "father of our nation". I like so many others have had an almost paternal relationship with his persona. When i was younger the feeling was of hatred, at his humility, his abject adopted misery and his stubborn countenance. As time grew, i understood him better, like any youngster understands his father. Today he is closer to the heart, i can understand him for his little faults and his towering greatness in the same breath. Despite his life and message being so far removed from what i practice and represent, he is still "Bapu" to me.

On seeing "G for Gandhi" in the Google home page today, i was left wondering......what could he contribute to this world of ours? Where does one start?

May your memory live long "Bapu".

School Memories - Fancy Fair

Preparations would start a week before. Ashish Dey, our senior and enfante terrible had a Fancy Fair commemorative bath exactly 4 days before the event. The southern part of the dormitory knew that for Ashish a typical body wash day comes after every 2 months. He explained convincingly that very morning while puncturing a zit on his face, “on a time continuum it is like shaving daily”. Ashish and a few of our "house" seniors made note of all the desirable items the juniors wore for work throughout the year. Leather belts, Terricot shirts (was a rage then), Stylish Mocassins, Sneakers, handkerchiefs, socks, ties and blazers to mention a few. In the days leading to the fair they would routinely accost the noted owners of such items to build their trousseau for the occasion. They would try these new things on, look at themselves in the mirror, sing a song, smile, and talk late into the night as the D-day approached. We proffered to this tradition by wangling a tie or a sneaker from our juniors. In our case, since the authority was far from absolute, this transaction was an acrimonious one and involved calling names and spewing threats aplenty.

The grand day cometh, we trudge down our respective hillocks, pockets brimming with false paper currency for the day. Girls School descends from the steeper slope. For Junior School a less steeper, albeit a more disciplined one. For the Senior Boys, a relatively longer raucous trek down to the valley. The layouts of stalls were identical every year with little changes here and there. We look out impatiently towards the valley swathed in the mild afternoon sun, with stalls dotted across its green.

Ribbons cut, we enter. To the left is “Lucky Seven” run by Mr.Chimwal. Mr. Pande ran a roulette wheel beside it. Walk along the pushta to the left, across the still visible 100 meter finish mark chalk, and one comes across little food eateries run Italian family style by our former teachers from Junior school. “Dahi vada”, “Gulab Jamun” and “Chole Chaat” are the fares on offer. It is meeting time with our former teachers at Junior School, and a strange inexplicable ego trip too. Driven by loyalty and some unknown bond, we decide to spend our first buck on Miss Tomar’s stall. I make a mental note of the fact that Miss. Sahni still wore unsuspecting maroon polish on her ear gorging nails. Delicacies savored, our favorite old school teacher’s acknowledged, it is time to move to other things. “Panikkar, bring in the rest of your classmates too” came the refrain from Miss. Thapa as we left.

We usually dug into the food first, then played the sundry money games and as we got down to the last few coupons had ice-creams near the juke box. By this time, the eyes very slyly start trailing our counterparts from the girls school as they inched their way towards the cricket pavilion. This was the usual pattern which could be broken by an unprecedented rush of luck on the “Roulette” or “Lucky Seven”. Junior school folks with their limited allowance are the first to run out of money. They divert their attention to gainful begging from friends or become cheerleaders at other events. Games that were openly meant to fleece the unwitting students had an aura of respectability to it. Mr. Naqvi and his real world assistant Mr.Das, for example manned a game station which included throwing a ping pong ball into a aluminum bucket that was impossibly angled. The ball, understandably, would not stick in. The kids from Junior School, having lost all their money in such games, were taking devious delight from watching others walk into the trap. We tried to keep a safe distance, but then Mr.Naqvi sent a few flacks to round us up for this sham. Another stall people visited out of purely obligatory reasons is Mr.Shukla’s “Treasure Island”. As our Housemaster, a visit to his stall was obligatory, although losing money there was never an imperative. His brother, affectionately called “Junior Chol” was lazing somnolent on a chair beside. This adventure game comprised of a fancy scenery of hills and rivers, mud made, gaudy green painted on a wooden board, atop which little flags were hoisted. I stopped for a moment to take in the dreariness of its annual journey to the valley every year from Mr. Shukla’s garden shed. Everyone was bored, no one was playing for treasure, but Mr. Shukla looked suitably sporting.

Arguably the busiest stall in this fair. Mr. Chimwal who ran the “Lucky Seven” counter was a class act. Years later when I saw the movie “Casino”, the Robert Di Niro character reminded me of him. A lifelong affair with Mathematics put paid to a budding career in the gambling industry. There he was, goading, taunting, thumping the desk, cheering and shouting as hooligan like as the kids surrounding his stall. A roar of delight ripped through the valley as soon as big money was made out of the “Seven” bet.

The other hotspot was Mr.Khanna’s roulette. He routinely used to ban people who won regularly at his wheel. If there was a secret behind the way he spun the roulette, only a few people knew it. If you won big at his wheel, the follow-up history periods in school will not be as pleasant. That will be like his hand behind your neatly shaven head, a wicked smile on his face, the odour of tobacco all encompassing, as he explains the historic moment when Louis the XVI was to be Guillotined. Everyone's idea of fun, and for the victim, a sense of overwhelming Déjà vu.

I never understood why they used two Roulette wheel stations in the fair, but Mr. Pande operated the second one. This one was more equitable. You could spend all your money here and for every loss you will see a sly grimace form up on his face even as he counts up all your money and stacks it away.

Mr. Bagchi had a monopoly over the coconut shy. The balls were from the cricket season last year. The coconuts were placed about 30 feet away perched on iron hinges. This was a favorite with Jharipani locals because they could take away coconuts in sacks with their accurate throws. That is, till the time Mr. Bagchi clamped a ban-order on them. From among students who won coconuts, the ignominy of carrying two sets in their hands was too much to bear especially with increasing attention being diverted towards the Juke Box and the girls therein. The only time I won it, it stayed in my hands till a local guy unburdened me of the ugly thing.

Mr. Pant’s Housie stall near the Juke Box was a very nice place to start conversations between girls and boys. In our class some guys had been paired with girls from the other side. When they found each other, it started off with gingerly “hi’s” and hello’s” between housie number announcements. Then there were sidekicks who bent over, arms around the guys who were chatting up girls. Taking in bits and pieces of conversation, spreading them around, buying Mazaa for the girls all the while trying to look important to the whole event.

The music is already blaring from the “Juke Box”. No, it was not a place where you slotted in a coin to hear the song of your choice. In OG lingua, “Juke Box” meant a maroon cloth hung along all the four sides, taking up a part of the cricket pavilion. So a box it was, with a gramophone LP player in the corner belting out Kenny Rogers, Michael Jackson, Boney M and Cerrone Love in “C” minor. As the girls and boys made their way to the Juke Box, their hangers on followed clicking photographs, pretending to talk, actually talking, and then serving ice creams as they come. Then there are "heroes" who just love to blaze the dance floor, displaying their wares as if no other such opportunity will arise. With the pairs, they are now trying to find little corners for themselves, talking idle, “I did not see you during the chemistry practicals last week”, “when are you girls going to Mussoorie?”, “I love Gabriela Sabatini, do you?”, and an occasional “I like/love you”. A hand touched, a smile exchanged it was enough to last till the next meeting, which will probably be in Platform Number one of Dehradun Railway Station when they depart for their respective homes for vacations. Still others found more intimate corners where they promised love and commitment to each other and sealed their affection with more than handshakes, but about that, another time. Shaken up hormones, subdued by propriety and juvenile first steps in the mating game, synchronised by rehashed music - that was the Fancy Fair Juke Box atop the cricket pavilion.

As evening sets in, students, their pockets empty, teachers, their stalls wrapped up, talk in groups informally as they move towards the Cricket pavilion. The cupid stricken souls move their ways but have eyes still for each other. The Juke Box is now a flurry of activity as it prepares for the raffle draw. A hollow metal cylinder with a handle is cranked, the chief guest fumbles inside to pick up chits. Lucky raffle owners are awarded, Cameras, Table Fans, Torch Lights, Pressure Cookers and Vacuum flasks accompanied by the sound of loud applause. Fancy Fair had ended.

As we tread up along our hillock, I cast a longing glance at our glorious valley green. The setting sun had cast long eerie shadows of Oak Trees through the middle. Will the valley ghosts from times past celebrate their Fancy Fair tonight?

First day in Junior school

We completed admission formalities at the school office and trudged up the steep climb leading to the Junior school. The weather was heavy with gloom, as was the case in all the subsequent years too on school joining day. The school building was built of huge square cut silica stones, colonial style. There were occasional cemented intrusions on the façade courtesy the Inspector of Works, Indian Railways. The arched grey classroom windows were highlighted by red brick lattice work over the top. The boundary wall of the school also accommodated an amply spaced ground space dotted by oak trees. This ample front yard was prohibited for the students for some unknown reason. The entry to the portals of Junior School was simple, three steps that lead to a landing which was again a small step away from a covered verandah. From the verandah through, into the dimly lit interiors. I was left by the leg, so with some prodding from Mom, put forward the right one across and into my new world. My heart was a churn of fear, trepidation and overbearing loss. It felt as if I had left a few things behind in just getting here. I turned back to look down at the path behind, and the few steps that would have taken me back outside again looked so impossible. Shubha chechi walked a few steps ahead, greeting all and sundry, while I took in the surroundings. The walls had just received a whitewash, with a red band separating it from the three feet high blue paint coming up to meet it from the base. The smell was musty, of fresh paint, and curry, the last one coming in from the kitchen at the far side. The clock straight opposite the entrance thudded 11:30 AM, perhaps in acknowledgement of the companionship that I would provide it over the next three years. It turned out that extremely “fidgety” students would be asked to stand under the clock during evening study hours. It had two framed art pieces on either side. The first, an embroidered girl with a flowery basket in her hand, the other a solitary sunflower. Over the next 3 years I will have spent hours under the clock thinking about the artist who put together the embroidered girl. Sometimes thinking up elaborate stories etched back in time, behind its conception.

Pappa, went with Shubha chechi to one side of the corridor to enquire about what should be done next. I and Mom stood aside under the steps with the coolie who had already deposited the trunks up the flight of stairs. Mom used this opportunity to instruct me, “Be good and smart, don’t lose the handkerchief, greet your teachers………” Shubha chechi came in a rush, took Mummy’s hand and lead the charge up the stairs. They then disappeared into a hall that announced “Girls Dormitory”. Opposite this was the boys’ dormitory. The coolie had left my trunk, and tuck box just inside. Neat green counterpanes spread across ten horizontal rows of beds. Mrs. Thapa came sailing down one of the aisle’s greeting me with a business like smile “What is your name?”. My father answered “Manoj Kumar” with a strong malayalee accent. “Do you like this place?” She went on, and I responded with a polite smile. I will be in her “Cupboard”, she informed. This in short meant that she will be the keeper of my effects, distributor of cold creams, manager of my personal inventory and arbiter of dormitory discipline. Pappa was asked to take out my personal effects from the trunk and arrange them on the bed nearby. I was starting to notice other parents and kids by now, trooping in to a similar kind of welcome by Miss. Thapa and a few others. Some guardians were almost genuflecting before the “Cupboard” in charge. A few others were trying our beds by sitting on them and then sizing up the local powers that be for better beds and mattresses. The wards themselves were busy piling up stuff on the beds, while a few other parents indulged in small talk. Pappa, was bent over, counting every item, verifying and stacking them neatly and I was holding onto the wrought iron bed stand observing the goings on, around.

Miss Thapa, re-appeared, this time with a grim look and asked pappa. Are you ready? An older woman, looking heavy and matronly ruffled my hair and smiled down at me. She was Ramkali ayaji. This was again portentous. Starting from tomorrow, she will catch us in our towels outside the bath tub and even as she will be discussing little house hold matters with Santo ayah nearby, make a little pond like intrusion in her palm and pour smelly Amla oil clinically into it. She will then proceed to apply the same on our heads. In later days, I would routinely attribute my fast disappearing hairline to the lack of Ramkali ayah’s generous helpings of oil and her firm motherly hands through my scalp every morning.

The counting was brisk. Everything was strictly as per specifications. It had to be. It was all brand new. By next year though the quality of inventory will have suffered badly. It will not be as easy to explain off the dog collared shirts, the quick mended pants and the eroded green base under the tennis shoes. I could sense relief, when Mrs. Thapa approved the stock, asked us to leave it as is on the bed and took us around for a few introductions. Mrs. Singh looked through both of us, Miss. Saxena was warm and beautiful. Mrs. Sahni giggled at some joke which neither I nor pappa understood. Next stop. Headmistress’s office.

As we came out, we found Shubha chechi sharing details about her summer vacation with one of her classmates. Mom was looking on indulgently and she was glad that everything went well with us. We met the distraught Nag uncle outside. His son’s monsoon shoes were rejected by Mrs. Singh. It was not as per specifications. He then went ahead murmuring and was later seen making enquiries about the next bus to Mussoorie.

A thing that impressed me about Mrs. Bhaskar in later years was the personalized attention she would give to each guardian. In my case, she asked mom “did you brush up his knowledge about planets?” referring to the question I was asked during the admission interview. Then even as she was scribbling on some papers Pappa had put before her, “Shubha is a well behaved girl, you should be like her.” She then pulled out a list from under her glass paperweight and announced, “Manoj will be in Mrs. Mathur’s class, III B. You will have to see Mrs. Mathur and hand over the pocket money. It is already lunch time though, and they will have to line up for lunch at the bell.”

Big Bang 2020: Birth of the Trillion Dollar Technology Megalith

Will it be the Web Services bellwether Google or Microsoft, IBM, HP, TCS, Infosys or a new entity we have not heard of as yet, that will breach the trillion dollar market capitalization mark? Will we have to wait till 2020 or will it be as early as 2015? Microsoft leads to race today as the world’s most valuable software technology firm with a market capitalization close to the $ 300 bn mark. Google has been the notional leader though, with its growth from the garage to $ 170 bn market cap within a decade. So will it be Google then?

Possibly, and possibly not. Google has rushed in to fill a void as a search engine pioneer and quickly grew into being a web services supermarket. It has you and me in its pocket. But does it have the rest of our known world, enterprise applications, infrastructure and the rest of the commercial software world eating out of its hands? Guess not, and but who are the leaders in this space? IBM, HP, Microsoft, TCS, Infosys, Accenture and their like. I will call them collectively as the “vendor” firms here.

I have theorized on this and I can say with a degree of confidence that the trillion Dollar Technology firm will execute significant hold on the consumer services as well the enterprise applications and technology markets. With organizations trying to evolve leaner means to succeed using technology as an enabler, providers will have to innovate and imbibe the global ethos completely. The Trillion Dollar organization will not be the so called “flat” organization of today, by its capability to execute from 30 different locations in the world. It will be truly global because, weaved into its 30 or more offices infrastructure will be a matrix based two dimensional or multi-dimensional excellence framework, across technologies, services, domains and functions, which will enable it to bring together a team across various geographies based on identified competencies to deliver on any project. It will not be like embedded work out of China, Software Engineering out of Ukraine and BPO put of India. This approach is not actually about going global, this is plain tactical and regional. It becomes strategic only when we can merge them into one seamless execution whole, leverage competencies from where they lie, and scale the model to a requisite size to deliver for a project.

With free float of all major currencies it is implicit that a correction will happen. Wage growth rates of companies that offshore will show a southward trend, while the same for vendor countries will see double digit growth annually. “Vendor” countries will see technology and infrastructure investments from “client” countries which will put an upward pressure on local currencies. Some of these inflows can be managed through macro economic policy making, but the days of nappy feeding technology exporters are far behind us. I will not extend this theory to conclude that outsourcing will stop. It will not. The “Vendor” countries will be the first movers still in the “level” playing field, because over the past 20 years of outsourcing they will have developed the scale and specialization to execute business out of any corner of the world qualitatively better and with a reasonable amount of value arbitrage. Enter then, the truly “Global Corporation”. By 2010, some major consolidation within the IT services niche will happen, and in-organic growth will see at the very least 2-3 IT “Vendor” firms breach the $ 250 bn cap mark.

Riding a parallel growth track will be companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple and a few others who will be doing great things with technology, wireless, web, robotics, bio analytics and generating newer revenue streams. Google and a few others will evolve newer ways of monetizing web assets that they have acquired judiciously over the years. Somewhere down the middle of this, the “vendor” firms, driven by growth pressures and shareholders will find themselves hurtling towards the technology leaders. The “quick on the feet” technology innovators will meet with the Globalization honchos. From the resulting big bang, one or perhaps two Trillion Dollar Megaliths will emerge, all encompassing, in your personal computer, phone, credit card, corporate networks and your grand child’s robot Barbie mate.

Interesting theory isn’t it? Meet me in 2020, and I will “I told you so” you.

This blog is also featured at http://mglunplugged.wordpress.com/

Great Indian Hustle?

How important are brands and their re-call for you? I did not consider it till the other day that Brands are like people within your homes. The well behaved ones merge seamlessly within the household setting bringing back better top of the mind recall. The problematic ones linger in memory as mistakes or the ones that you fell for with dire consequences. I recently brought the second “Samsung” in my house. The first one a TV has been a work horse, patiently taking in the rigors of movement from Trivandrum to Pune to Chennai. The second one is an Air-conditioner. On hindsight, what reaffirmed my decision to go for this particular AC brand (besides the aggressive pitch of the salesperson, who probably knew as much about air conditioning as me), was the good that I associated with this person called Samsung, a mute spectator who has jovially switched off and on to my commands and catered to all my television centric whims and fancies without a trip to the service center or a call to its call center. When I go shopping for a DVD tomorrow, the shiny flat thing with Samsung written on it will shine brighter than other brands on the shelf.

How does good experience foster brand loyalty? The concept is simple, yet there are thousands of companies, spending billions of dollars in advertising revenue without understanding this simple truth. Take the example of Reliance. I had an allergy for this business group. But then Reliance is what it is, all encompassing and inevitable. I realized this when in my last job, the company offered an official Mobile connection from Reliance. I asked if their were other options. They said no. So I ended up being a Reliance user despite my reservations. To compound matters we also took a Reliance WLL phone at home (that one-number-talk-time-free-carrot did me in). The corporate service was functional, anyway I was not at the receiving end, my company was. On the personal connection side, the sales guy duped us (apparently) by asking for a deposit of Rs. 1,000/-, which was not reported in their books. As usual getting the deposit back was a nightmare and we still haven’t got it. Then the experience of going to pay bills to a Reliance Shop was another nightmare. The Reliance world shop was like a fish market. The guys manning the helpdesks were a verbally abused lot. Customers were furious for being over-charged, their connections being cut, their bills not being posted, the general service and attitude of the service staff and what not. Since the bills were shooting through the roof, we decided to switch to BSNL. Letting a client go is an art, and the interpretation from Reliance’s side of this art was to have their manager talk to me and throw some discounts at me, when the basic reason why I wanted to leave was the loaded perception that “you guys have cheated me”. Now who in the world likes to be cheated? “Being conned” is a very infuriating feeling, because i have to admit implicitly to myself that I was foolish enough to let that happen. Tell me, which discount will address this grievance. The postscript of the story is that when I “switched” the bills came down by 50%.

When we moved to Chennai, we decided to go TATA. Now TATA is an institution known for its steadfastness and values driven way of doing business. We ordered two offerings from them, the DTH service and the internet service. The internet service does not work for 12hours in the evening, although the scheme that I subscribed for is “Un-interrupted broadband connection”. What is worse they waived off the installation charges when I shelled out 4 months of payment in advance for the connection. Now I want to opt out, but they promise to fix the matter time and again to no avail. The DTH service was another scam that I gleefully walked into, once again. They offered 4 months of free service if I booked on that particular day through a credit card online. I did it, and am yet to receive the DTH box, or any call back from them despite it being more than a week since the booking was done. I called up their call center today, and the manager lady their amidst profuse apologies politely tells me that it actually takes a couple of weeks to deliver the box, and that the sales guy who spoke to me had mis-guided me. What a manager!

I stand on the rooftop and yell to the service providers in the India of today, “Here I am the average gullible, keep it simple, non-intrusive customer who will pay for anything though my nose, if you show value and get me hooked by the quality of the recall…..” there seems to be no takers……Scams are all about doing the “one trick pony” thingi multiple times with different people within a specified period of time before the word spreads out and you are put to task by the market……….I am wondering “Is this the great Indian Hustle?”.