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?”.

School Memoirs - Admission Time

My early remembrances of the gloomy little stop was of a dilapilated building just opposite to where the bus-stand was. The fog was so thick that one could see just 5 metres in either directions. Pappa was his nervous self and i could see that Mamma had dutifully imbibed it. He went about getting the huge black trunks down. Two coolies in their typically rugged pahari outfit and cap came running from nowhere. There was just another parent-student set that got down from the bus. Her parents were having a loud argument Bengali about whether they should have come here one day in advance. Shubhachechi was with pappa, her efficient self, helping him unload the trunks and the bedding. The tuck boxes which were filled with dry fruits, chocolates, pickles, Ghee and other kick knacks were the latest, but pleasing additions to baggage clamor that i saw stacked neatly before me. The dim gas light across the far end of the street was Guptaji's shop. At the other end was lalaji's, or as we would later call it Lalaji's laddoo ki dukaan. Opposite the Lalaji's shop with the trademark red post box outside it, was the Post office. This was Jharipani.

Mummy and Pappa talked about in whispers as if the fog would carry along their conversation to the hard nosed wannabes in the school and their children would be denied admission. Yes, they could be denied admission, still. Every little clause in the school prospectus threatened the parents with extraordinary action if not adhered to in letter and spirit. Pappa turns and walks off into the fog towards the lalaji's shop.

Shubhachechi gets busy again, this time with Mummy, running down the list of all the things that will be asked by the dorm mistress. Mummy shivers as she goes through the list, with nervousness. I gingerly sit down on the cold concrete bench in the bus-stop. A coolie comes scurrying back from the edge of my visible world through the fog this time un-wrapping the towel around his waist and then tying it around his head. Pappa appears behind me, gives me a scornful look that makes me stand up and grab onto my tuck box and walk behind the coolie, all in reflex action. We were going to stay at Lalaji's for the night.

It was to be a bi-annual affair. This was the second time for my parents though. They came the previous year to admit Shubhachechi to the school. This year i had made it to the hallowed portals of this institution called Oak Grove School. The name was announced with a ring to it, back in the Railway offices as the proud parents recounted their experience to their less fortunate colleagues about the trials and travails of having their wards at Oak Grove. This time however, Mummy and Pappa did not allow me bid definitive good byes to my young buddies back home. They were not too sure. Their second born had everything going wrong with him. He got through the examinations on the special consideration that her sister was in the school already. They anticipated something to go wrong at the last moment this time too, which as it turned out was closer to a premonition. The count of the underwears ran a number short than what was prescribed in the prospectus, and pappa had to pinch my behind real hard to have my attention diverted from the finger in my nose, as i was being introduced to the headmistress. So here they were, after having taken the bumpy bus ride to Jharipani. Other parents with their children had decided to stay back at the base camp in Dehradun as per convention and practice. They will start early in the morning and get their wards admitted to school and walk away into the fog, with relieved but tearful contenances. Mummy and Pappa decided to come a day ahead and get over with my admission first early in the morning, such that they can then go about tackling the easier part, Shobachechi's admission.

Namesake

That one scene did it….towards the end of the film when Ashoke walks with his 4 year old along the rocky ridge that invades out into the raucous ocean and says “Remember this moment for a long long time Gogol, that we had walked out to a place where the land had ended and we had nowhere to go” The angst captured in that shot welled up my eyes. When they are gone, we usually remember our parents from such ideal snapshots of life, the words that they had spoken on the side, that comment made within the moribund household setting, but that which brings with them a flood of memories which inundates you for the rest of your life. Knowing her oeuvre, this form of cinematic magic is not unexpected from Mira Nair.

Namesake is an episodic canvas that beyond all, tries to recreate the strands that tie us to our roots and home. Although the subject in this particular case is of a Bengali family struggling to find its moorings in the America of the 70’s and 80’s, the story itself is universal. But no tale is complete without a set of characters that nuanced and scripted out eminently. Ashima (Tabu), the typical Bengali girl in from a culture conscious Kolkata household of the 60’s, who simply waltzes into a marriage because she like her prospective groom’s shoes. Ashoke (Irfan Khan) the studious, gentle and lost-in-the-worlds husband who together with his wife built this poignant strand of understanding between themselves and who, as a father could not be more expressive than being able to present his son with a book on Grad day. This is too close to life. We have seen and known so many people, parents of our friends and relatives, who continue to be that invisible rock without anyone ever noticing it. Ashoke’s exit midway in the film, was a script written by himself, understated, very much the way he lived his life. The subsequent turmoil tit wrecks on the Ganguli’s and the evolution of Gogol (Kal Penn) as a person is captured immaculately. The scene in which Gogol visits his fathers pad in Ohio after his death and sees the bed undone, the way it was when he left it for ever, is a blowout. The old memories come flooding by, this man who has given you this world has after all just lived like a shadow and for the last proof of his existence you have the bed which could still have that residual warmth, that you never could partake during his lifetime….....

If to write a book, Jhumpa Lahiri has woven a surfeit of emotions into words, Mira Nair has accomplished the almost impossible task of bringing the characters to life and making them live their parts. “Gone with the wind” on celluloid does not look as impressive as the book itself, because it is this sense of empathy stirred up by cinematic elements, it lacks. In this Mira Nair/Jhumpa Lahiri epic, if the book weaves it, the movie creates it.

Jarring Notes: Why did Gogol and Moushumi (Zuleikha Robinson) break-out into an impromptu jig during their Suhaag Raat?

A must watch. Brilliant performances from the cast Tabu, Irfan Khan, Kal Penn (he should be getting more than just ethnic two bit Hollywood roles to play now), Zuelikha Robinson and Jacinda Barrett.

Movie Review: 300

The battle of Thermopylae. 300 Personal Bodyguards of King Leonidas I face the powerful half a million strong persian army. "Come get them (arms)" Leonidas tells the messenger that Xerxes dispatches in the hope of an arms surrender and a pre-battle truce, as the two armies meet along a mountain pass where "numbers count for nothing". Historical accounts tell us that Leonidas took his personal body guards to the battlefield because Spartan customs did not approve of a mainstream army being engaged in war during the auspicious festive season. As per historical accounts 2 people survived that war. Hollywood, with its well known potential of casting to celluloid the most heroic of stories, had not stumbled across this story yet and one wonders why. When it finally discovered it, courtesy a Novel written by Frank Miller, it told this story....and how...

First things first welcome to a genre where post production work takes over more time and effort than it takes for the film to be canned. Every effect is larger than life, and where it departs from a Matrix or a Jurassic park is that visual technology is embedded into each and every nuance and expression in the film. In order to tell this story larger than life, Zack Snyder has taken the movie frame by frame, touched up every facet of the character, the background the score and the camera angles with post production genuis. So if you see the pectorals of King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) twitching even as he screams "This is Spartaaaaa", you will not be surprised that it takes little more than his exertions to twitch them in that particular way. So for us it looks like a whole new canvass because there is no "this is celluloid" and "this is animation" speculation. It is all one seamless whole.

That said, the film presents dollops of gore and graphic violence to the unsuspecting audience. The "special effect" feel though takes some sheen off the gruesome battle scenes. Creditably, just when you feel that the bloodletting is getting to you, the screenplay seamlessly integrates the confrontation of the political establishment and the Queen (Lena Heady). I thought one particular aspect of the screenplay was dubious and meant more to tintillate than anything else. That was the Queen submitting to the scheming minister (Dominic West) as his price for supporting her proposal of sending back-up troops for the King (was she just Blonde, one would think...ha ha ha). The depiction of Xerxes and his kinks were too close to the comic book barbarian villainy that we have grown up on. But one can forgive Zack Snyder for that. Why?

This is a pathbreaking movie. A must see for adults. Great Performances. Greater post production work. Huge canvass and a very very well told story. If Ved Vyas were alive today, he would have asked for an appointment with Zack Snyder to discuss the "script" for "Mahabharata". It is about time...

Recommended sources of knowledge about Sparta and King Leonidas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonidas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta

Books and Leisure

As a school-going child the Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) was the best gift anyone could give me. Over time, by applying various techniques like coaxing, crying, behaving well, throwing tantrums, i managed to build up an enviable collection of these comics, courtesy my parents. Stories that unfolded before me through those illustrative pages were that of Nal Damayanti, Shakuntala, Bhagat Singh, Rana Pratap, Prithviraj Chauhan, Dashavtaar, Tulsidas, Subhas Chandra Bose. I am not so sure if kids today grow up on this staple diet. If they do not, they are sure missing a very very exciting part of childhood. As i started exhausting my read list of ACK, somewhere in the early 80's came along Tinkle. That was a rage again. Kalia the crow, Supandi and other characters are still fresh in my mind. From my fellow brethren in boarding school, we borrowed stuff like Chacha Chaudhri, Mandrake, Phantom, Flash Gordon, Superman, Spiderman, Asterix, Tintin et al. (all these were a strict no-no for my parents). Chacha Chaudhri and Sabu were hugely popular characters and the guys who brought them to the boarding school after vacations, were assured of king size treatment through the term. Hmm...where did we leave this all behind.

I remember my Mom buying me books like "Stories from the Ramayana". That was a illustrative book, but had long paragraphs of text, which me and my sister lapped up furiously. Mahabharata followed, we read it again and again. Taking a cue, she next brought a collection of
"Bhakti" short stories. That one misfired. Because, we had by then taken up regular visits to the school libraries and had started discovering very well packaged pictorial story books, Cindrella, Alice in Wonderland (i never liked this story), Oliver Twist, Treasure Island, Three Musketeers, Don Quixote. For me the smell of Victorian England still is similar to what a Charles Dickens hardbound library volume smelt like, the first time i borrowed it from the library. When we started raising our bar higher on the classics side, we stumbled across works like "Great Expectations" ( i never completed this book). Time for another inflection.

Asterix made a comeback, along with Enid Blyton (Famous Five). Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys followed. I was in standard 7th or 8th then. Still, coming back for vacations from the boarding school, i used to randomly borrow the ACK from the kid nearby (if the possessive brat refused, i used to appeal to his/her parents good offices). The ACK affliction remained, although it was embarrassing to ask my parents to buy one for me. So, at school it was detective stories, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys with an occasional Agatha Christie thrown in. At home it was either the epics or the venerable "Statesman", "Amrita Bazar Patrika" or "The Illustrated Weekly of India", that my Dad subscribed to. Amrita Bazar was fast, the modern day tabloid, while the Statesman was an institution. Staid, and with a stiff upper lip. Thus started my involvement with Newspapers. From then on the floodgates really opened up, R.K Narayan, Sidney Sheldon, James Headly Chase (with the paper cover atop the book for obvious reasons), Harold Robbins, Somerset Maugham, Charles Dickens (revisited), Maxim Gorky, Ruskin Bond, The Bronte Sisters, Anton Chekov, DH Lawrence, Leon Uris, Robin Cook, Kahlil Gibran, Mulk Raj Anand we read anything that we could lay our hands on. Those were good good times.

The second inflection point was when i was doing my graduation. Politics, Biography, Espionage, History, Trivia, Sports, Movies and the Mystic started appealing. Even if it was fiction, something as staid as Ayn Rand occupied prime space. That was the time of unlearning everything that the politically correct NCERT text books taught us in school. So, be it the World Wars, The Battles of Panipat, The Mughal Rule, Henry the VIII, Anne Boleyn, King Arthur, Hitler, Ceasar, American War of Independence, i saw everything in a new fleshed out version. Newspapers were slowly occupying a greater "Top of the mind" what with political tumult of those times, and the articles of Arun Shourie, MV Kamath, Ashok Mitra, Vir Sanghvi, MJ Akbar, Nihal Singh, DN Bezboruah (the editor of "The Sentinel", the local english newspaper i read in Assam"), Kuldeep Nayyar et al. The mind was in a churn and all of these journos really shaped the political thought process that was shaping up. With Bofors, Reforms -Part I, Mandal and other key political debates raging at that time, it was goodbye to that fantastic old world of books. I took to current affairs magazines and tabloids, as they came. Then, MBA happened. So Philip Kotler, Tom Peters, CK Prahalad, Harvard Business Review and others occupied center stage. And then there was the sermonising world of Stephen Covey. Like everything that has to do with business, i thought that this posturing was skin deep, meant to motivate so called "out of depth" wannabe achievers. I did not spend money on a single such "self help" books, and i still believe that Economics is a nuanced science and Management is an art that is intuitive which challenges you analytically and emotionally. Rest is theory, which is useful, if you can select what will best suit you for a specific decision scenario. What is left is just baggage and balderdash.

Ok, so the world of books are a distant memory these days. Once in a few months, we visit our friendly neighborhood "Crossword" store and try to relive the past. When we come out, we leave that past behind. BTW, i found an ACK at "Crossword" with its seal broken, that was "Rana Sanga". Had fun reading through it. I cannot wait for my daughter to grow up so that we can together embark into the exciting world of ACK, once again.

Kuttanad

Driving along the windswept unruly highway,
On an impulse unknown we broke,
Along a cheeky, grumpy path, on the right
We drove into the fields of Kuttanad, along the highway near Ambalapuzha

The whiff of wet fertile earth, hit our nostrils
Like childhood lost, like our first tadpole in the beaker glass
Along the cheeky path, away from our destination
We drove into the fields of Kuttanad

In the afternoon gloom of the monsoon sky,
We saw it on both sides - the blanket of green
Spread magnificent, amidst swaying palms
We took in the fields of Kuttanad

We sat on the side of the trail, together,
Looking into the expanse and beyond,
Letting the clouds open up, lash us, wet us, elevate us
That lump in our throats, unsettled, in the fields of Kuttanad

And just as the sun went down, we spoke to each other
Not so much in words, but in feelings beyond
So then....there onwards to our destination!
Our bare feet just numbed, by the fields of Kuttanad

An unspoken resolve took root that day
That when the highway lies daunting, grimy and cold
We will take that short cheeky break on the right
Into the fields of Kuttanad, along the highway near Amabalapuzha

India Poised......for me??

I am baffled. At work, I articulate and represent an India that is taking leadership positions in the technology world. Indeed, I run that spiel with my clients everyday. Innovation hub, highly qualified engineering talent, strong legal and institutional and social framework and a supporting political establishment. The message to the “client” is, that this is a growth story that will go on….and on and on.

I come back home and switch on NDTV and I see gruesome black bags of bones surgically separated from 3-12 year old bodies by an ex-Stephanian and his servant. The police and the NGO’s did a fig about reported violations from the accused. Then I read about the killing of a person who stole a hammer from a scrap shop. The man was desperate to save his one kidneyed daughters life. After beating him up in a gruesome manner, the scrap shop dealer and his colleagues raped the mans wife brutally, came back and killed him. I switch to other channels and they are still showing those plastic bags, another set of bones were found. Then there are struggles related to massive farm land acquisition under the guise of SEZs. Industry making inroads into rural India? Or is India Inc. up for sale?

Why do I have this sinking feeling in my heart despite all the “India Poised” sloganeering. One would ask, what have these isolated crime incidents got to do with the India growth story? Dig deeper and you will find that rural India is paying a heavy price for sustaining our in-equitable foreign investments and billings funded growth story. The so called India urban growth story has built a whole unorganized cartel of service providers who need to build up the growth story, to assure the urban consumers that all is well and will continue to be well into the future. Builders turned property Don’s, Industrialists turned Retail chain shahenshah's, Power Brokers turned Politicians and vice versa and right at the bottom of the food chain is the hapless urban consumer, whose only job is to spend, spend and spend, to sustain this ecosystem. And as long as the dollar billings happen, youngsters will get jobs, they would want to buy homes, they would want to party well and eat well. Where does this ecosystem encroach upon, then? The great rural landscape of India. The rural India that is already crumbling at the impact of urban transformation. The young men in villages have long migrated to cities. Agricultural yields are on a down ward spiral. Debt’s are heavy, leading to suicides that invariably leave families with kids and women to bear the burden of survival for the rest of their lives. To this environment walks in our cartel, armed with ready made growth plans, projects, FII's and a promise of eternal prosperity. State Government conveniently looks the other way, as it lets the farmer negotiate with the corporate, the sale of his agricultural land. That is be some equitable negotiation, isn't it? The average farmer does not know mutual funds, not does he have a financial consultant to advice him how to spend his new found fortune. He takes up the modest way to the local toddy shop and drowns his troubles there. When the money is over, he hits the cities, doing odd jobs, or simply ends his life. This could be an illusory account, but as we all know, not far from truth.

Yes, India is poised, for me, because i can get impossible salaries simply because others are getting it (hope my employer is not reading this post). India is poised for me because I can buy a new apartment every 10 years and change my car every 5 years. India is poised for me, because I can take my family for a vacation abroad. India is poised for me because I have the liberty to ideate, think about the future and keep this blog updated (sic!). But guess what, the “India Poised” story does not just end with me.

Parents from Nithari Village who have lost their children, wife of the scrap worker, the nameless debt ridden farmer who is contemplating the noose in Nagpur, the clueless land owner who is negotiating his SEZ designated land holding with a snazzy corporate babu, the tsunami effected family where the woman has to sell off her kidney to keep the home fires burning. India is all but “poised” for them after all; the only difference is that they do not have wings to fly, and they have to take the leap with me.

Guru - Movie Review

Good movies are generally categorized as "Paisa Vasool" types or "fundoo" types. If we set the right expectations, we can sit back and enjoy the flick and not be disappointed. Then there are films like "Guru", where you walk into the cinema expecting to see an equivalent of "A Beautiful Mind" or "Cindrella Man". Not for nothing. The plot is a Movie Director's delight, lifting, inspirational, dark and redeeming by turns. All shades of a great growth story epitomised by real life examples. There is no stereotypical black and white here. Every character has a different shade of grey. To top it the director is the finest story teller in the Indian film industry. How does he treat it?

In the earlier part of the movie he spends some time building GuruKant's character. Impressive start. Everything else is fast forward, except the songs that takes up gruelling 30 minutes of story telling time. When you are treating a subject as real life as this, we don't expect Aishwarya's character to do an introductory jig and then back it up with another one when she has just delivered twin girls. To accommodate all the dancing and merriment, imagine what we missed. The blow by blow account, ostensibly inspired by the wealth creator of our times, who used the system for what ever it was worth and created a business model in itself. Like i said, inspirational, redeeming, dark and vainglorious. Mani Ratnam has sacrificed good film making for 30 minutes of Jhatka Matkas. Which brings me to the question. Why do Indian Film makers think that rooted stories told as is, will not register with the masses? If Bollywood makes a movie on Gandhi, will we still have Mohandas sing songs with Ba? Our film industry trivializes the most appealing of stories and makes it nothing more than Tamasha. The movie can be summarized thus,

Young Gurukant, goes to turkey, shows promise (better part of the movie)
-----Song-------
Aishwarya Rai Intro
-----Song-----
Marriage with Aishwarya, opens factory
-----Song-----
Kids, goes public
-----Song-----
Tussle with his mentor (Mithun - based on RPG??), Guru's struggle period
---Song----
Paralysis & Trial by commission
---Song---
The come back (we are not shown how this happens)

THE END.

From Mani Ratnam, we had not expected this.

Positives: Watch the movie for Abhishek Bachchan. I never thought he had anything going for him other than his father. But hold it, this guy can deliver and deliver with panache. The mannerisms he uses, the accent and the intensity with which he plays the character is amazing. Mithun is competent. Aishwarya is wasted. Maddy and Vidya do not have much to do anyway.

Music: The villain of the piece. Used in-appropriately. A typical AR Rahman dish-out. But wait, there is one exceptional song "Barso Re". "Yammo Yammo" is catchy. Why did Abhishek have to lip sync to AR Rahman's voice in "Dam mast"? Some questions will remain unanswered in Bollywood.

Moral: Slick Editing, pretty faces and 6 songs does not a good film make.

VC Investments in India: Catching the Silicon Valley Flu

Is the much touted transformation finally happening?

The Ernst and Young VC Insights Report 2006 ranked India at number 5 amongst the top destinations of Venture Capital. India has attracted VC investments worth $ 1.1 bn in 2005 and have just followed up with another very successful 2006. Most of the very successful technology VC’s like Sequoia, NEA and USVP have already raised or are planning to raise India based funds. Organizations like the TiE are providing adequate platforms for the young entrepreneurs to network with VC’s and snag big ticket investments. There are signs of success already doing the rounds mostly in the hot Web 2.0 space. Are we looking at a base transformation here?

Before I start putting together this paean, let us do a reality check. The fact is that bulk of the $ 1.1 bn figure was utilized for buy-outs and mid-stage funding of IT Services firms. This is the low hanging fruit. The IT services market has matured and despite persistent threats of the market over-heating and bubbling over, the players have been able to stay ahead of the curve. Some of them, like GlobalLogic and Symphony have established themselves in their own niches (offshore product development services) and have grown dramatically in the past. Still others, have re-invented themselves, got acquired or have pursued strategic acquisitions in foreign stores. As dynamic as this sector may appear, the VC community don’t seem too excited. The reason being that consolidation is already overdue in the industry with mature players looking to either grow through acquisitions or simply capitalize. The critical “Exit Strategy” that most VC funds seek seems to be absent with most players in the segment. We are not going to see a large number of players rushing to NASDAQ for a listing in the short while. Nor are we likely to see a bright and “green in the head” start-up grow and get acquired in the next 5-6 years. The fact is that the VC community was not a very pro-active participant in funding the IT Services off shoring boom, and at this stage, when the industry is pretty much on its own feet, it is not likely to meddle too much with the dynamics of the sector. Examples like Global Logic, Virtusa, Symphony Services, Persistent Systems will abound, where VC’s have opened their purse strings to do aggressive funding, but these set of companies really belong to another planet, the OPD planet.

The story on OPD started, when VC’s stated asking their portfolio companies to look offshore for specialized product development services. In most of the cases the firms needed the required run-way in the seed stage, when burn-rate of cash was high. So they start talking to this “peculiar” breed of service providers who apparently started with the motto of serving ISV’s. I use the word “peculiar’ because, some of these companies were talking about taking complete ownership of product development. Symphony for one, had the courage to tell the ISV’s in America, “Product IP and Marketing are core, Product Engineering, Innovation support and sustenance is context”. IT services had never seen such an interpretation of offshoring. The Implications of this pitch rang heavy in terms of the sheer scale of delivery and specialization in that the client expected out of OPD partnerships. Buoyed by this trend, VC’s started asking their portfolio companies to seek partners in India, then, as if to get a “double-bang” for the buck, they also started adding these OPD firms to their portfolio. Most of the funding that happened in the OPD space was early to mid-stage. The players in this segment already had ISV clients and had longer term contracts that provided them with flexibility on what they could do with the freshly induced funding rounds. So you had, VC’s prompting their portfolio technology companies to partner with OPD firms within their portfolio. This was not a very obvious trend at first, but is increasingly evident as time goes by.

Now, the Million Dollar question? If one can develop products in India for one’s own portfolio companies, what should stop the VC’s from catching a flight evaluating proposals of home grown firms having a global product delivery plan? The success of the OPD firms was significant in the sense that, the industry understood that contextual IT services is not the only thing you could outsource to India. One could actually have products developed from white-board to market in India. Expatriate techies out of the Silicon Valley who had worked in Networking, Storage and Telecommunications space took up the mantle first. They approached VC’s with seed funding proposals based on an idea, 100% of the execution go which would be driven from India. Pune is dotted with such firms that have extremely successful products out in the market today. Much in the model that Israel grew as a destination for Storage and High tech funding, I will not be surprised if product innovation and leadership in certain niche high tech segments is lead by India, fuelled by the new investment interest from the Silicon valley in particular.

The Web 2.0 boom did not leave India untouched. Norvest, Kleiner Perkins and a few others have got their exalted hands wet in the India Web.2.0 race. Leading the pack are travel portals like Cleartrip.com, Travelguru.com, Naukri.com and the real estate portal 99acres.com. There are others who are catching up as I write. Suddenly the leading VC firms are getting enamored with 38.5 million internet penetration number and the broadband adoption that has been growing steadily over the past couple of years. My feeling is that, one cannot go wrong with the investments that have thus far happened. The only worry is, as usual, of overdoing it. Although the buzz thus far is that most of the investments are happening because of the lack of more qualified “mainstream” opportunities, purely from the risk/returns perspective the investments made till now are on the right track.

So, with all the new product development for global markets and the investment in the indigenous Web.2.0 space, is India finally likely to break the mould of a back-office destination for the US? Time will tell.

Assam: The economic discrimination argument that we use....

I have seen posts after posts condemning the exploitation of resources in Assam by outsiders, namely North Indians. A number of articles both online and print, have attributed this phenomenon as reason for the deep rooted alienation of people of Assam from the mainstream. This has been the simmering point of discussion on all forums such as this. My take is that, this argument goes against the basic principles of global economics. Let me give you some background:

Which is the country in the world that has the greatest trade deficit (i.e; amount of goods sold is lesser than amount of goods consumed). United States of America. Everything from Jeans, Cars, Computers, Undergarments, Pet food to Software is manufactured/developed/produced outside the US. The textile, automotive industry all but disappeared from the face of North Carolina and Detroit in the 80’s. They saw this coming, and instead of raising the protectionism bandwagon, looked the problem in the eye and re-invented themselves. That’s what makes a great country and a great community. One can continue to blame problems on the others that we ourselves create and wallow in the self-assurance that we are trying to change the system by raising the so-called burning issues, by taking up arms and asking for a separate identity. The malaise runs deeper. Why is it preposterous to think today that China is exploiting the US, despite the huge Chinese- US trade deficit? The reason is, that US has created these huge corporations that control the channels through which Chinese industry gets its share of business. This means, that while china dominates through manufacturing efficiency, US dominates through sheer enterprise and innovation. There is a lesson for us here.

To say that we are being exploited is like pointing a finger at others, because when you do that, three fingers are pointing towards your own self. You cannot be exploited until and unless you allow yourselves to be exploited. The question to ask is, how many Dhirubhai’s has Assam produced, despite the rich vendor and forward integration opportunities that petrol producing regions offer. From the refinery in Bongaigaon, there are so many process by-products coming out. Which freshly minted bright mind has taken a project plan to this refinery to build on such by-products, a Naphtha unit, a cracker plant…. the possibilities are endless. Why do you have to wait for Central or state government dole? What did Gujarat have at the time of independence? Oil had not been discovered yet when independence happened. But how come they have since become such a thriving petroleum by-product processing hub in the country? That’s the entrepreneurship story within.

We all know that the emotion of enterprise has no borders. I touched upon this fact in the first paragraph. So what prevented people like Bajaj, Birla and the Ambani’s from investing big time in Assam? Since the 1970’s the region has been on boil. Every time an investment proposal came, it got lost in the virulence of the political situation. So Assam ended up having a large number of warehouses and distribution companies for other Indian manufacturers of FMCG, Consumer Goods and Industrial Machinery. This is typically, the lowest and the most obvious end of the enterprise food chain. In-short, Assam became a “consumer economy”. Unlike the US though, the enterprise ecosystem in Assam could not leverage the power of the consumer, because there was no critical mass within. So you bought and bought and bought, cribbed and cribbed and cribbed, while the growth initiative was lost in the war cries that was raised by extremist outfits and their equally blind opponents in the state and centre.We became the people who demanded, the center and the state became the people who very selectively and conditionally dispensed. No one wants to take from a power who is considered to be domineering, so even as we took what we got, the feeling of alienation never left our hearts and the vortex got deeper and deeper.

Now let us pursue the argument that things would be different if Assam was given the right to Self-determination. You could “run” the refineries, the petrochemical plants, the team gardens, the mines etc etc. “RUN” is the operational word here. Very easy to just say, but as any experienced energy or operations professional will tell you, not so easy to execute. Where will you get the experts, machinery, specialized manpower, R&D competence from? To run such businesses you need all of this. Assam has a good ecosystem of such experts, but one would still need outside help. Let us see, not India of-course, the former colonialists, China? Russia? or the US? What makes you so sure that they will not extract their pound of flesh? China today runs a good %age of oil basins in Africa for their Governments. They have the required expertise. Even if you produce and refine, you will have to find export markets, the pipelines to feed the export markets and last but not the least, deliver this at a cost that is competitive with say what the GCC countries produce and deliver at. Why am I making this complicated argument? To prove the point that the “pound of flesh” will have to be given, to make Oil or any other natural resources the money spinner everyone thinks it is. Colonial India might have extracted its own “pound of flesh” through its PSU’s that are operating in Assam, but make no mistake the way it operates is very moderate when compared with how the Oil economy works globally. Find out what Shell did to Nigeria and its West African neighbors, and you will know. Saddam Hussein, and the invasion of Iraq, what was the motivator? The PSU’s have been libertine evangelists when compared to other refinery partners independent Assam might consider, to make Oil a commodity worth making money out of. So the whole exploitation argument does not make economic sense, since it is an emotive issue, it is easy for disruptive forces to latch on and paint it in their own color.

Snapshot, the Punjab of 1985: Terrorism both state driven and Khalistan sponsored. Custodial Killings, Army Operations, Rape, Terrorists killing innocents, exodus by non-Punjabi traders etc etc. Rationale for Khalistan: Step Motherly treatment, Self-determination.

Snapshot, the Assam of 1990: Terrorism both state driven and ULFA sponsored. Custodial Killings, Army Operations, Rape, Terrorists killing innocents, exodus by non-Assamese traders etc etc. Rationale for Assam State: Step Motherly treatment, Self-determination.

Snapshot Punjab in 2007: SEZ, IT Hub, Record Wheat production, Hosiery and Textile center, Spare parts cottage industry. Top 5 in human growth indices


Snapshot Assam in 2007: Still the same as 1990

Albert Camus said “Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better”.

Where will be snatch this freedom from, through the barrel of a gun, though political jingoism or through sheer enterprise and innovation. I will leave it for the “rais” to answer.