a hair raising tale

for some people it is the electric chair, for some it is the dentist's; for me it is the barber's chair... my nemesis for life forever gives me a tough time in society's acceptability list... one that causes my near and dear to join in the fray of shunning me...

i like having short hair... i had always wanted to join the army/navy or the airforce... i was fascinated by their haircut... but since IT needed me, i decided to make that supreme sacrifice, and settled for the local barber to gimme a feel of the army every month or so that my modest compensation package would allow...

but then to my parents it is a sin to cut my hair before it is at least 6 inches long or the time since the last cut was 6 months - whichever is later and that is when it will appear to them as if i might need a haircut... and even if it is longer than that it is a sin anyways... i have tried to argue with them that it is not actually as short as it looks to them and also vaguely hinted at getting their spectacles changed, but no use. a sin is a sin is a sin...

and it is not just my parents... somehow people have this fascination to comment on freshly cut hair... the society is against losing hair... probably it is the inherent fear of baldness that makes people happy that there is voluntary bald cut that they can make fun of...

i am also rarely satisfied with my haircut... very rarely do i get out feeling ok after that last snip after which everything went wrong... right from the point i decide to go for a haircut, my unruly hair seems to behave as if it is a naughty kid frightened to submission by the doctor's needle or the bogey man... i really begin to have second thoughts as to whether i really need a haircut now... but then i tell myself, that once i decide not to go, my hair will grow doubly unruly... so i go on... and the barber goes snip snip snip and i am happy that things are going on fine... and actually my hairstyle is looking much better, though he has not yet done upto my specifications... i even consider asking him to stop right there and jumping out of the chair... then there comes that deadly SNIP... after that there is no turning back... it is a classic case of the 2 cats and the monkey story... then depending on whehter the place has an airconditioner, the damage control happens making u look like you have just visited tirupati or like a football star with that small tuft above the forehead in an otherwise bald pate or just accepting to preserve whatever is left over and maybe next time will come faster...

there was a long standing joke about boys and girls take a fresh haircut... while it is just a polite "haircut?" type confirmation that gets a nod as a response from a guy to the girls gossiping about their neighbor's infidelity for an hour starting with a similar innocent question... but that is not actually true... though the timelines might be, guys can be as nasty as girls in telling you off that the haircut is not good... but then the guys dont realise that they are throwing stones from a glass house and to girls you cant say anything...

i dont claim that my haircut is a perfect one making me look handsome and ready to be cast instead of brad pitt in troy or that ash would fall for me instead of AB... just that it is hair today which will start growing from tomorrow... if it doesn't, there is always the tirupati cut to drastically reduce your sins...

it happened to me !!!

the key to all happiness

it was a very normal day... i got up at the usual 7am (yes that has become usual now...) and caught the bus to work... stayed there from 9am to 615pm during which i did everything possible - wondering why gtalk was not working only for me, trying to understand whether the user manual was stupid or trivial, drank tea, ate a heavy breakfast and an even heavier lunch, refreshed my mail folder a hundred and fifty times etc, not necessarily in that chronological order...

so in a very normal way i reached my drop point feeling all tired after a hard day at work choosing to ignore the make-you-fly-for-sometime kinda bumpy speed breakers on the way back... while walking back that 200 meters to my abode, i slipped my hand into my pocket and frantically searched that 4inch deep cloth bag in disbelief... my key was missing... the only key to the only lock on my only door was missing... the key to my hopes of catching a short nap before dinner was gone... i did vaguely remember a distinctly rattling thud as if something had fallen out of someone's pocket after a particularly nasty bump, but i was preoccupied with my plans for the snooze that i chose to ignore that... now i could not forgive myself for that fleeting moment of weakness...

well, anyways the MBA in me did not let me brood over the spilt milk or in this case the dropped key for too long, and i promptly called up my landlord and told him of my predicament... but then my great overlord Murphy decided to have some fun...

the call got disconnected due to his inability to hear me properly over the traffic he was driving through... but i thought he said something like he would check if the key had a duplicate and would call me in about 15 minutes... so in order to kill time i decided to call up some long overdue friends... the first number was switched off... the second was no longer in use... the third was busy... i got tired... looking around for someone to kill... oops, someone to help me kill time...

there was this poor neighbor who had bunked office as he was unwell... we had a long chat where we exchanged each other's bio-data... then again murphy wanted me isolated perhaps and this guy got a call from his long lost sweetheart to whom he started explaining what insurance was and how he sold it to poor unsuspecting people... anyways i looked at my watch and my cell phone's call register and calculated that there was still some 10 minutes pending for my owner to call back in his promised 20minutes... so i decided to try my luck again with other friends and i dialed... one of them did pick up the call and said he was on his way to a conference call with his clients in the USA... curse the indian economy that is so dependent on the USA that it does not even allow a guy in distress to call his friend...

so then i tried another and then another and then another and managed to squeeze some five five minutes of their time... that is when you realize that everyone is busy either going home or some other work related work... when you have your key the world goes home with you, but when you lose the key, you lose it alone... so i have managed to excruciatingly complete some 15 minutes of my existence... and i decide that my landlord's grace period is over and i dial his number... that is when i get the rudest shock - "the number you are trying to reach is not reachable"... even after 15 trials that guy is still in some unreachable location... was he unreachable by chance or was that his ploy and had gone into hiding hoping that i wud leave my stuff inside the room and return to my hometown so that he can rent it out to somebody else...

i then try the other number, a relative of my landlord, but that is another recorded beep this time - not even the mechanical monotonous voice... the number is busy... finally after frantically alternating between the unreachable landlord and the busy landlord's relative, i finally manage to get through to the relative... who is at an undisclosed location more secret than Area51 some many many miles away and it was impossible for him to come over... and he promises me that he would get in touch with my landlord... but before i could warn him that he was untouchable, the phone was hung up...

that was the last straw... i prepare myself for the worst situation... i anyway live on the terrace, so i can sleep there in the open air... in the early morning it would get a bit cold, so maybe i can wake up and exercise... only it would be a bit uncomfortable but that is alright... i would have to take the next day off and maybe around 10am go hunting for a lock breaker... as in a key maker... i would get him to come to the house and make him make a duplicate, i would pay him some 200 bucks... my friend spent 250 on a similar occasion but i will bargain... shit this 200 bucks is causing a dent in my budget... and i will have to eat at less expensive places... and worse i may not be able to save enough to buy a new bike if i keep repeating this... oh if i cannot even buy a bike i cannot even think of buying a nice apartment on the 4th floor on the outer ring road... the real estate prices are soaring... oh man !!!

while i was just bordering on the edge of hysteria, i see a dark bulky figure moving up the stairs... when the face became visible in the moonlight i let out the biggest phew that i have in my whole life... it was the landlord... my SAVIOR !!! but the suspense was still not broken, and i half expected the door would be... but luckily murphy decided to focus elsewhere and we did manage to find the duplicate...

maybe that dream house on outer ring road is not just a castle in the air... maybe there is some hope yet... and I will make a few extra duplicates of the keys, just in case…

babes bulbs bells booms barsaat breaking mirrors and other bajaofying musical instruments

I recently saw a few movies – no central common theme except that the characters in it find “true love”… what is disturbing is the modus operandi of Mr.Cupid who announces that they have found their destinies… people seem to know the “ringtone” of Mr.Cupid… precisely put, people have set the ringtone of Mr.Cupid themselves…

In some cases it is people playing the violins behind them… then in some cases it is a guitar or the piano or the bagpipes (some arbit musical instrument of their choice)… then in some cases it is a combination of 2 or more senses… like bulbs lighting up around you and bells ringing… and if u are in love and you throw a walnut at a mirror on the wall and if it does not rebound to you broken into 2 neat halves and instead breaks the mirror… or else it might even rain whenever your love is near you, and/or something equally disastrous can happen… and in some cases it is just a boom… a boom as in a bomb blast boom… only this time it signifies the birth of a new relationship and hence it is good. And I think it is imaginary as it happens to only those people who are struck by cupid’s arrow, but I can’t be sure.

And that brings me to the big Q… how do they know it? Almost all the above scenarios have happened to me sometime in my life… like the other day I was at the temple at around the evening aarti time… and then all of a sudden the lights were switched on and the bells began ringing… there was no mistaking… but when I looked around, I realized that I would be better off accepting my mom’s minimum quality standards for the arranged marriage… ok, the setting might have been wrong, but my experience at the shopping mall setup was also not positive… there were just too many girls…

And then the other day I was in a music store on a sudden impulse to buy a guitar… and I had taken a friend along who played the most wonderful piece of music on the guitars he was testing out… sadly the shop had only male customers at that time… and trust me, I am not gay.

The case of the cracked mirror is absolutely a tale of woe – I can be assured of at least 7 days of hard time with my mom if not 7 years of bad luck… let alone me finding myself a bride by saying “mirror mirror on the wall, sorry for cracking you up with a walnut, but use the part of you that is not yet broken and show me who is the fairest maiden of them all…”

If it were to rain everytime you are with your true love, maybe it is better to stay away from marrying him/her… how would it feel if you had 365 days of rain in your city… people would just curse you (unless of course you live in Chennai). And for the disasters there is no place where people would welcome you with open arms… not even Chennai, unless it is rain.

And the boomtime… not a very happy tale either… so how do total non-believing ignoramuses like me get to know when the cupid’s arrow finds its mark… I don’t think the arrow hit will cause a stinging pain or like in many poetic compositions, does it cause a major pain in the chest region? Is it a sign after you see a girl or a sign to see the girl? And is the feeling simultaneous – probably not, because Mr.Cupid can use only the same arrow and if would take him time to aim and shoot… (I would not hurry him, lest he shoots way off target.) if it is gonna be delayed, can we know what is the maximum time lag…

A very depressing situation indeed…

But there seems to be a silver lining… a light showing the path in these very same movies… people who are together (like friends), tend to get the same kind of signs – as in a guy whose friend had a violin ringtone, would get the same violin-wala ringtone when he is struck too… and as in the case of bulbs burning and bells ringing, the only criterion is to find some place that always has these kinds of accessories hanging around like some Christmas shopping area… and of course, a friend who has found his love in the same way…

So, guys anyone who has had a good ringtone assigned to Mr.Cupid (and has got the call preferably) kindly leave me your orkut ID in the comments… I will add you as my “best friend”… and girls can leave any id – maybe we can discover a new ringtone together… or should I ask Rahman to compose one for me… ?

Aa ante arangettram*

For the uninitiated, I danced. Yup, you read it right… anyways just for confirmation – “I D-A-N-C-E-D”… for those who cannot believe it, I am sorry to let you down, but that is the truth. Let me tell you how I got myself into this mess… yes, I chased it and caught it. I take full responsibility for the mishap.

The occasion was our farewell and people were all wired up to do something to leave a lasting impression on others… so that everyone will remember them in a different light than what they have been projected over the last 2 years… and I got to know that the easiest way to do this was to dance… wait… before you decide that my post ends here, I did not jump at this point waving my arms shouting “pick me pick me me me”… that is still a long way off…

I come back from this back-breaking trek from harishchandragad and the next evening I learn that one of the guys is dancing in the world famous telugu song “aa ante amalapuram”… since I am a little well informed, I assumed that it is a fun song (and also the way it was sung out to me seemed to convey the same), I decided to watch the practice session and have a good laugh and go to sleep (I was still tired after the trek remember).

So I hungrily follow this bugger to the emba 4 classroom (primarily designed to serve as a lunch room for the emba gang, ideal for dance practices as this room has no furniture). Then there was a signal from above – the lift did not work that day. I should have known that it was an omen for my impending doom. But did I care? My sadistic hormones were on a high and I wanted to derive the maximum pleasure of watching people practice for some stupid gult song. So I walked up all the way – can you believe it – 3 floors on my tired legs…

Then I am sitting there urging people to start on that dance, when they started the reverse psychology technique on me… and the worst part is they hit me with logic… now no engineer or a sane person can argue with logic… logic so profound that it beats all arguments… the logic was “it is all in the mind da… if you think you can do it, you can… you can even climb mount everest without oxygen if you want to… when people who are less athletic than you (omitted part: but have lived all their life doing nothing else but climbing mount everest) can do it, why can’t you?”

So there I am intimidated by a belligerent group of southies who have also bought the logic of the mind thing and I have no choice but to accept. Then I realize that it wud have been easier getting beaten up.

3 pearls of wisdom:
1) never trust your dance teachers if they say that the steps are sooooooo easy
2) never get into contracts/agreements without understanding why there are no other contenders
3) do unto others as you would have them do unto you

We had 2 really patient dance teachers… yup that was on the first day… the second day we were the patients… the amount of learning that went into it is tremendous… in a span of 4 days I would have learnt more dance steps than I had probably learnt in my entire lifetime… it is not easy when you have to move as fast as 2 steps per second… that was when I realized why there were no other competitors to this song… and each of those steps had a zillion other body parts moving in tandem… it was easy doing them all individually… but when it came to integration testing, none of them resembled the original…

Feedback is a very important thing when you are doing anything for the first time and also racing against time to master it. Pinpointed specific feedback is absolutely essential and a solution for course correction is mandatory from the experts. We got a lot of those. An example is – “you are learning fast da (this is P&P funda – give the good news first). But sometimes somewhere some step you are not doing properly. Do them properly.” If you stupidly ask which step and how I should do it, pat comes the reply “I am not sure, somewhere some step…”

Anyways, there was no time for diplomacies, nor was there for proper education. And of course the drop out of the best dancer in the group of 4 helped… as the hotchpotch the rest of us were doing was barely noticeable in relativity. So our teachers stopped complaining too – threatened that they may have more casualties they in fact started praising us. We somehow plodded through more practice sessions, all of us never being in sync at all tries – sleepy and slow, or forgotten steps, or just plain clumsiness… even the dry runs on the stage turned out to be disastrous…

Anyways the d-day arrived and the choreographers had their own dance to worry about and so we were temporarily forgotten… we (the 3 of us) ran through the steps in our minds at all times, as stupidly flailing our arms and legs and occasionally the rest of the body in the middle of the road or in the mess would spoil the element of surprise (don’t even think that we were embarrassed at being the laughed at). And yes we had a short disturbed sleep before leaving for a warm up session before the event – snacks were served.

The event started and happened… nothing much as a rotten tomato found its way to the stage, and we were euphoric hearing the crowd cheer and bliss of ignorance of having goofed up our steps on stage. We just swept the stage like a hurricane – we were on the stage when it was dark and before people could get accustomed to the lights when they came on we were off.

And anyways it was our farewell and people were forgiving – I realized this when I saw the videos. Pray that nobody else realizes it, else my testimonials go for a toss.

PS. Anyone who wants to watch my great performance can ping me and fix up an appointment. I will point out in the video my exact position and time. Of course there will be a contract signed and will be taken to court if the confidentiality is breached.

*Arangetram is a graduation performance that is the part of the traditional format – the Margam ( path) . It reflects the different stages of the dancer’s consciousness. In Tamil Aranga means a raised stage and etram means climbing. It is also called as Rangaprevesha in Kannada where Ranga means stage and prevesha means enter. Arangetram is test for the Sishya ( student) as well as the Guru (teacher) as the Guru’s knowledge and the Sishya’s talent are judged by the Public. So the Arangetram is done only when the Guru feels that the Sishya is capable and talented enough to perform the Arangetram.

Adios amigos

It is time to say good bye to all those people with whom I have had the chance to be with over the last 2 years… but I really don’t want to. I want this to continue… I mean I did hate the acads part and all those war over the grades and things, but I actually don’t mind doing it now. I am not usually sentimental… in fact I never am sentimental… well even if I do get senti at times it is often mistaken for humor… so well this post might actually be unsentimentalistic but I hope I do manage to convey what I feel irrespective of whether it makes you laugh or wanna belt me with rotten tomatoes…

Well since the first para sets the tone of my emotional state, let me confess the condition I am in for those who cannot read beyond the lines… I am confused… I really don’t know what I want to do… my last 3 months of useless existence (or so it seemed) without the hectic pace of the MBA up to trim 4 has me really wanting to get out of this place… friends turn backstabbers when you want them around… they go home or go into hibernation… just when you need them the most. Revenge was the first thing on the agenda. I should leave too… my family is waiting (ah-ummm on second thought they must have really forgotten their eldest child as it has been 9 long years… but still I got a place to go… )

But wait on second thoughts, do I really want to leave? Yeah of course the point of progress and call of duty and last but not the least the concept of having a regular money supply is enticing. But then we would all become money making zombies… no personal life… no time with friends… not much socializing… no chill out… or worse still our friends would become money making zombies and have no time for you… again that begins the vicious cycle of revenge as explained in the previous para. On hindsight, the reason I quit my job to do an MBA was because I was losing my marbles thanks to the latter situation. But with an MBA our responsibilities are expected to increase and so time spent with friends is gonna rapidly decrease… so if you can’t beat them, join them – become a zombie yourself.

I cannot imagine a life outside of the protected enclosure I have been through the last 2 years. Of course this was how I felt during my engineering graduation, but then at that time I did not run into this place seeking protection from the hostile world. Then it was like a warm place called paradise giving you the power of money to give you the freedom to live a life you wanted. But now I am going back, totally unsure if I am actually equipped for the war as I am portrayed to be. At least during my engineering my lack of experience helped me to be motivated for the adventure that lay outside. But now that I know what lies outside, I am not sure I want to go there again…

But then the last 2 years have taught me to be confident and face things as they come. So ideally I am better equipped than the people I would meet out there for they don’t know that beneath the exterior armor of the MBA, there is actually no protection, but I am stronger because I know that fact. Or maybe I am wrong in my self evaluation, but you know information is wealth, and wrong information is better preparedness and when preparedness meets opportunity it is converted into luck… you get the equation right?

Over the last 3 months that have been tantalizingly devoid of any work and have given me a lot of time to recuperate and reflect (read: sleep and day dream), I have actually begun to hate it… the long periods of dormancy is actually killing me… and having had a taste of the work life, I am not sure why I should expect otherwise here too… at least here I knew that there were others like me who would readily ping for movies and at work I am all alone. Well at least everybody else is cocooned into their own lives to respond to a movie request… and how can we watch a movie in as formal a setting as a workplace… a classroom is fine… in fact the excuse could even be that we are using the movie as a case study.

But I also hated the hectic MBA schedule of so many assignments quizzes and worst of all boring profs and classes… but actually what really makes me want to go back to those torture chambers again is the fact that I want to see the others too in the same boat. I cannot imagine life without IP messages… all those mindless MCs and chatting with your neighbors… well I don’t know if I would even have a neighbor who would know to use a good messenger let alone exploit the features of IP messenger… yeah of course I might get a good internet connection and be able to download unlimited movies and software from some remote person’s hard disk some million miles away, but I might not get the movie that my friends have seen last nite over the small grey window… how will I ever get those warnings and death threats for simple harmless movies like K3G and salaam-e-ishq and Jaaneman…

But actually there is no reason ever for even those friends of yours to actually keep you updated on trivial things in life as the movie they watched last nite… there is no reason for the not so close friends to even remember you even. The few seconds we get to meet on the streets would be lost in the exchange of pleasantries that are common while here… before signing off with a “keep in touch da” without actually exchanging details on how to and moving on… yeah of course, we have the mailing groups which would probably have a grand revival now… but then considering our busy schedules we have to show to our masters, how often would we do a check on those places…

It is all in the mind you might say again… it is just a mental block and you can keep in touch if you want to… and then that argument brings us to the beginning of the post, why all these elaborate good byes… why sign on the t-shirts all those lovey dovey messages… why write all those “god bless you and may you have a great future ahead” in the year book if you are going share my future anyways by keeping in constant touch…

Of course it may not be completely possible to eliminate the cyclic redundancies out here but then life will have to move on… there is no point in living in the past and we got the future to watch out for… but then the past is what we are… now again the confusion begins… I am back to paragraph 1…

water

we indians use water for everything - right from cooking our food to washing our butts and even until recently fighting... recently there was a fwd of a presentation that said something as unbelievable as world wars being fought over water and armed personnel guarding small water reservoirs... at that time it seemed unbelievable and too imaginative... but today it seemed quite real and scary...

everybody knows what the verdict is going to be - release some xx% of water to TN and keep (100-xx)% of water for KN. people are so imaginative that they wait till the verdict to start the protests. and yes coming to the imagination and the ignorance that drives it, i can't believe what i was reading on the posts on the different discussion boards... some were inspired from Mary Antoinette of the french revolution - "let them buy bisleri"... some said Cauvery originates in KN and hence all the water belongs to KN... why should we even share even a bit of that water... if this is going to cause further trouble to kannadigas, we will form our own country out of our state...

ok, i might actually be writing only anti KN comments here, but i never said i am being fair... i am not hearing both sides because the tamils have nothing to say other than "please give us water" in a more authoritative tone as if it is their birthright... well come to think of it, how many birthrights have we already neglected and desecrated to consider this on a seperate plane?

the tamilnadu government to my knowledge is a game of tennis played between the 2 prominent political parties or rather their leaders... there is always the habit of throwing the blame-ball into the other's court... never have they focussed on anything of use to the people of TN, but only on bashing each other when they have the upper hand. this water issue has also been handled in the same way - the focus of the governemnt over the years has been only on cauvery... TN pleads everytime, KN refuses, the tribunal forces KN to release water, the people of KN are agitated by the sympathy created by the KN government, TN people are happy over the victory achieved by the TN government and all the attention focussed away from the apathy every year on and on and on and on... the water problem surprisingly is a comment that i remember being mentioned in a 1952 tamil movie...

a few months or even years back there were talks of distilling the water from the sea, rainwater harvesting, closing out the borewells, and many more schemes aimed at saving water in TN. but all have been just a drain for the money siphoned out by the government. nothing usful has come out of it. a simple request like RWH which is to be ensure the colective well being of the people when implemented well, does not bring any cooperation from anyone. the people dont want to invest that 500 rupees into this simple procedure, the authorities don't care if it done properly or whether it is just a pipe leading nowhere, the neighbours and other people of the state support the intelligence of the owner and copy his ingenuity... there are other rivers in tamilnadu that have either been polluted beyond use or exploited for their sands and rocks during the dry seasons when they should be could be cleaned and deepened, cachement areas created or expanded in such a way so as to minimise losses and use the water that gets drained to the seas during the monsoons as sewage... the bores have touched depths as much as 500 feet and to think that earlier wells were hardly 10-15 feet deep, not even 15 years ago, because i myself have seen such wells and i wont hesitate to say it in a court of law... and on a thought, maybe this water table erosion was the reason that farmers are not getting enough water and cauvery is taking the whole blame...

a google result yielded some more distressing news: there were 4-5 other rivers too facing similar charges... a sad state for the country... considering that the northern lands have a perennial supply of water, even they are not spared of the water problem. the shocker was when i read that cherapunji. one of the wettest places receiving very heavy rainfall is facing water shortages... brahmaputra sends huge quantities of water into the ocean every year, and this amount is aprroximately 3 times the maximum requirement of the 4 southern states... the plan to connect the major rivers of india has suffered the usual lethargy in understanding the importance... it might come up soon, but when the context is so expensive to even think about...

this water issue has been nothing short of been exploited at the cost of all the citizens by the politicians of india to maintain their places. scores of demonstrations and fasts, proposals, meetings all achieving no purpose but to give the right amount of media exposure to the politicians who never have the necessity for river water when they can get the mineral water free-for-life as bribes... the media too has been having a field day passing judgements; winner: TN, first runner up: Kerala, losers: KN and pondicherry... this is going to fuel the ego between the states and result in more violence... and this is crazy as i cannot even have a friendly jibe fearing diplomacy and racial harassment...

however though, not everything is lost... this time the goverments have also learnt some lessons. they have been shrewd enough in anticipating a probability of violence (which is almost as high as the probability of the sun rising in the east) and have posted police force to the tune of about 16000 personnel in bangalore alone... this could be because bangalore being the most IT savvy city of KN has people glued to their computer screens and so once the verdict is out they can immediately post remarks on the net and order weapons on e-bay and rush out of office to burn buses... so all the terrorist IT folks have been sent home before they can cause harm, and the other workers have been sent home too lest they demand overtime for working on a national holiday. yeah i forgot to mention, they removed the expensive volvos out of the roads first.

i am not in a position to suggest anything new to the people or their servants - the government and the political parties. however, it is time something long term was arrived at considering that india is made of indians and that we are taught to be proud of the unity in diversity since the time of our school textbooks... however it is not as easy as blocking the wind by closing the door... whatever is done needs to be done at a higher big picture level... as for example in the cauvery issue, it is not enough if the water is released now... the states have to arrive at better policies and regulations to manage the water and other natural resources effectively instead of having a team of consultants or a tribunal advising them to start using toilet paper.

for this, the people of india need to stop dreaming and wake up... and also think on their own, not just for their own.

Da(m)n Brown

I have no personal vendetta against him, nor am I prejudiced. I am just a kid who grew up reading “The Hardy Boys” and “The Three Investigators” kind of novels. The kind of fascination and awe I had for those novels are not the same as those that I have for the 4 Dan Brown novels… might be because I was a school kid teenager then and now I am a mature adult… but then Dan Brown’s books were meant for adults right?

But let us get into the fundamental question… is he really the great author that everyone portrays him as? Unputtdownable !!! awesome plots !!! stupendous narration !!! fast paced thriller !!! "I love Dan Brown" !!!

Is it so?

Let me tell you how to become a Dan Brown…

Watch a lot of movies… English action ones preferably those on the lines of extreme action Mission Impossible series and Bond movies… here you can get the fast paced narration. The high speed car chases on the English mountains to the amazing navy seal rescue operations can be copy pasted into one of the chapters… you don’t even have to mention the source or fear copyright problems…

Also watch a lot National Geographic and Discovery. Here you will get a lot of information on the most pressing issues of the world right from the historical paintings in Paris from the 800BC to the abnormal rock formation at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Just pay attention to the detail, google up the jargons and you have more text for your descriptive passages. It does not matter if the “facts” are technically correct or if the words actually connect. Just put them in with amazing words just cooked up from around the world like massively multiprocessor data diagnostics for software encryption and decryption to chrondules and vortices and Bernoulli principles used for skydiving (implying actually it is enough if you have studied a little bit of high school physics for jumping off an aircraft without a parachute).

Next, cook up a plot, does not matter if it is half cooked, but it should be really bizarre and location should be even more bizarrely exotic… like the polar ice-caps or the internal storage vault of NSA’s information system or the most religious area of the Vaticans. The plot should be as terrific a president attempting to prove that spaceships actually landed on the earth and that we are aliens, just to preserve his tenure and get re-elected. Only the president himself is only a puppet in the whole drama of deception and deceit and all the mass murders… it was his limousine driver, who is actually a CIA-KGB double agent working to preserve world peace by preserving the secrets that would otherwise be instrumental in creating a nuclear catastrophe.

And mix all of them together to form a khichdi of events from movies, “substantiated” with factual jargons from technology and pull in nature’s help from national geographic and discovery and just follow the plot as the central backbone – and VOILA… you are Dan Brown… oops sorry… not yet, the central character should be a man, and of course he should have a initially fragile lady who changes into a fighting tigress over the course of the story…

If you are still not pissed off and if you still want to read about what I think of each of his 4 books read on. This torture would have been spared if I had had the patience to finish all the 4 books of his in one go unlike now, where I actually found time to finish the last of it after I learnt blogging. I sincerely apologise. (I am also trying to get over my addiction to tea, these outbursts can also be called withdrawal symptoms when I try to do something else to get my mind out of thinking about tea.)

The Da Vinci Code – the book that shot him to fame is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. His other books were not as controversial as this one attacking the celibacy of the world’s most celebrated bachelor. The silly puzzles of anagrams and crazy killings are an insight into the author’s level of imagination – a worthy Hardy Boys plot or some other teenager book. Put in a lot of adult characters and a mention of a sexual orgy, it becomes a novel worthy of the mature adult mind. Thank god, it was not based on Islam, otherwise it would have been war instead of demonstrations.

Angels and Demons – a really forgettable book, though the plot appeared better than da Vinci code… the imagination is bizarre where a man of god can actually murder the pope for the sake of religion… amazing imagination. And the man of god is well versed with flying army choppers and parachuting, which is quite common these days.

Digital Fortress – an amazing tale of software security, but told at the wrong time. In today’s world which is practically running on the assumption that everyone understands IT, the author himself does not; the naiveté of the author to trust the world on non-piracy oriented software sharing…

Deception Point – amazing how simply assumptions are made with respect to tasks… a 8 ton massive rock is just very easily insert up a huge glacial ice land in the arctic… and how a small software bug can actually cost the president his political strength… the icing in the cake… the fish that are so central to the book’s story… absolutely comical end. If you ever read it, don’t miss the epilogue.

15 minutes of fame

He was tired and hungry… or hungry and tired… or maybe tired because he was hungry… the 4 cups of thin cutting-chai he had at various roadside shops didn’t help. He had not had a single passenger since morning. And he was not lazing around. He had woken up at 5am and left the house, if he could call it that, at 5:30. He lived in Gandhinagar, which is what is normally called the outskirts of the city, but at least it had a good sounding name. The house was a small brick enclosure, actually very cheap brick just held together by plain cement and white paint and a tin roof. It cost him 1000 rupees per month just for rent. Apart from that the landlord would take 200 rupees for things like water and electricity that were supposed to be available at the turn of a tap and the flick of a switch; things that happened only in the landlord’s words.

He thought about the golden days when he as a kid lived in the now congested area in the center of the city. His father was not a great businessman and did not earn a handsome income. But he was at least not in poverty, getting a decent earning by selling vegetables on the handcart in the nearby residential areas. They had rented a good house, unlike the one in which he lived now. It even had the red cement flooring. And once in 3-4 years they did whitewash the house. It was in his early 20s when he could no longer find a job for his eighth-class-school-dropout qualification, that he decided to take up driving the auto rickshaw. He had used up all his homes savings to give the deposit to the rickshaw owner, and he had not gotten it without a fight. Luckily he had no sisters.

Then he got married and the wife seemed lucky. Business started booming for him as there were more and more passengers in the city of Bangalore. The government, his dad told him having heard from his customers on his regular rounds, was letting a lot of foreign companies come into Bangalore. And also there was some Bangalore guy who had even started his own company and was competing with them. All of a sudden the neighborhood had a lot of new faces and new kinds of people came in, all in their costumes of crispy full-sleeve cotton shirts and crazy colored ties, typing away in front of big black screens of what was called the computer. His over-worn khakhi shirt seemed real bad in front of those passengers and he started wearing a t-shirt and a shirt on top of it if the cold became unbearable.

And then it happened. The landlord hiked up his rents. What was once a house for 300-400 rupees was now hot property going at 3000-4000 rupees per month in rent. And his dad was no longer healthy enough to work harder to satisfy the gap, and anyways it was too big a gap. And slowly they moved into the outskirts, and as the city started gobbling up the outskirts, they were pushed farther and farther away. Finally it now took him at least 10km of travel to get to his earlier business area. And that distance was hell in the peak hour traffic.

Jolted back to reality at the sound of a blaring horn, he slowed down. He wanted money that day, if not for anything else at least to feed himself a decent meal. And it was late in the night, and he wanted to get home. It was at the beginning of airport road that he saw him waving down an autorickshaw ahead in vain. He was well dressed and wore a tie, carried a leather like black bag which contained a thin computer; technology had improved so much. In the slow pace that he reached he studied the guy’s face as it showed a temporary relief on seeing another autorickshaw. As he neared him, he heard “Marthahalli”… and he did not stop… he was not keen on it. Marthahalli was just 4-5 kms from that place and would hardly fetch him 20-30 bucks… hardly enough for the trouble he had been through the entire morning. Why do people want to travel just short distances? Don’t they realize that he has to travel from very far away to come to the business area? Moreover he had to travel further on after dropping him off to his home… what is the guarantee he would get another passenger at the place he drops of this guy? He felt it was not value for the effort, even though the guy wanted to get off en-route to where he was actually headed… How many people did he have to say no to for short distances? The government should pass a rule that short distance travelers should not hail autorickshaws and waste time and pay a fine if they did. This money should then be shared amongst the auto drivers in the city.

But he stopped hardly 5 meters away from the executive for a small drink of tea. At least something to satiate his growling stomach. The executive thought he had stopped for him… naïve guy… a sarcastic smile spread across his unshaven face. He shook his head vigorously at the harried executive and made his way towards the petty shop. He shook his head again as the executive pleaded with him arguing that he wanted to travel in the same direction as he was headed and he would even pay some 10 bucks above the metered amount. Hmmph… what did these guys think? Just because they earn a lot they can buy off anyone? Of course, there are some extra charges that are charged by rickshaw drivers, but justified by the hardships faced by the drivers depending on the time of the day and the area they had to travel to…

He cribbed to the chaiwala about the condition of Bangalore, those good old days and even the thin watery chai he was being given. The harried executive looked at him with another pleading look which made him look away. This time he chuckled to himself looking in the other direction. Those few minutes that he had over the high earning high flying executives; money can’t buy you everything guys. Probably he would be able to negotiate a three times fare, it is already late, and he could see no other autorickshaw in any direction.

He saw the executive pull out his mobile phone and flip it open with an irate expression on his face. Another display of opulence; where else can these guys spend their wealth? Why can’t they take a simple reliance phone like him? They don’t need that much money. The government should actually tax these people more and give the excess funds to the needy like himself. He heard him chatter away something on the phone in English. The executive must have been a call center guy for he could speak English so well. He himself could have been a call center guy, employed and being ordered around. Instead he had chosen like many of his heroes to drop out of school and be an entrepreneur. He was his own master, and a proud one at that. So what if he were hungry for some time; he had his pride.

The chai was almost over and he thought, he would give the executive a slow hint that he would not mind dropping him off for a fare that is nominal at this time of the night, around three times the metered fare. Then he would watch him hungrily lap up the offer, though it might hit his budget. But then these executives are paid in thousands; so why don’t they pay money which is luxury for them anyways. And he would enjoy the discomfort of his passenger as he would reluctantly agree to his savior, even if he proves to be a bit costly. At that point he would be like god to the executive, who would realize that money cannot buy everything, and the auto-driver, a poorer man, wields the actual power.

He dropped the cup near the card board box provided for it and turned around loudly cursing the guy who had placed the box at the wrong distance. A bike screeched to a halt in front of the executive and another similarly dressed guy takes off the helmet. They exchanged pleasantries and spoke a language that he did not know and hence could not hear them cursing him. Then the two of them looked at their watches and the waiting executive gets on the back of the bike and before zooming away makes a close fisted hand and shakes it at him. He realized it was not actually close fisted and there was one long finger pointing upwards.

The government should fine people for making rude signs at innocent people, he thought.

perils of education

I was reading an article today about supply chain management and I came across a statement that was actually very meaningful… it said “the number of people that aspire to be truck drivers or warehouse workers is shrinking. Our children are better educated than previous generations and want to pursue other kinds of careers”…

Now we are generally made to believe throughout our upbringing that education is the single biggest wealth that cannot be taken away from us… now is that causing problems? A long time back I remember my dad telling me, people used to take up jobs after many days and even months of searching… I have also seen movies related to those eras to prove the general mindset of the people in those times… in these days of campus placements that seems funny and illogical. But really, is it? My brain is still echoing with the words of the student from some remote village who had said “education is the only escape from my poverty”.

Another article in a leading business magazine had two pictures – one a smartly dressed sparkling young man, maybe his late 20s or early 30s and the other a poor looking not-so-well dressed (even to the point of dirty/grimy clothes) with a sad expression on his face, the age unfathomable because he looked tired and old, but at the same time he did not seem to be too old. It said something like are there enough jobs in India? Is India really shining? Not for the second guy…

But then what I felt at that time was there are a lot of people like the tired man… he was not as educated (in terms of the level) as the other guy who was probably a software guy… the poor guy might be having the qualification suiting that of a line worker – more requirements from a physical labor than an intellectually straining job. What was stopping him from investing in a good education and moving above the poverty line…? I personally know of a few people who were initially in the physical labor category and moved on to become software engineers thanks to the boom that happened… sometimes bugs are good, especially the y2k ones…

The question here is the investment… but then today there are a lot of options available to fund education… also the education investment is like a sure shot return category where the centers of knowledge tend to arrange for getting you a job. So what is stopping them…?

But is education going to cause problems to progress…? This is an angle that we had never thought of. What if everyone aspires to become software engineers or management consultants? All the elite jobs are the only aspirations… people don’t even want to consider joining some jobs that would under-employ their education/capabilities? So let us focus the discussion on truck driving (as in as an example… people are not to assume that this is the only profession).

So would a truck driving job sound lucrative to a guy who has say done his MBA and is looking at the Mckinseys and BCGs… now I am not going to reiterate on the skills that an MBA can teach you, but what are the skills a truck driver would want apart from truck driving? Look at the various possibilities that the MBA jargon can throw at you – supply chain management, logistics, taxation, warehouse management, resource management, negotiation skills, hard selling, bargaining, economies of scale, strategic cost management, activity based costing, impact of the crude oil prices on the inflation of the Indian economy, the cascading effect on the interest rates, the stock price of your company, the market capitalisation of the companies you are the logistics partner of, their effect on the indexes, long term market share, share of the customer’s mindspace, 3Ps, 4Cs, porter’s framework for competitor analysis, SWOT analysis, portfolio management, new services offering, services management, sustaining customer value, entry barriers, exit barriers, telecom and IT in truck driving management… and so on… the list is endless…

And let us look at the job description… the role would involve extensive traveling and opportunity to work with the customers, a more functional kind of outlook and the opportunity to gain domain expertise. Networking skills and communication skills are tremendously important when you meet the authorities at the different borders. And then the perks… for a complete auto junkie, you cannot ask for more – absolute power at arms length… what can those SUVs or good looking sports cars compete where it really matters. For travel junkies you get to travel throughout the country, the roads are yours… you visit different cities from Srinagar to Kanyakumari, Mumbai to Meghalaya the choice is yours.

So what is stopping people from taking it up? Well the pay could be one such issue… that is a sadly neglected area in the Indian industry. Compensation has to be in commensurate with the economy and companies should benchmark themselves with the competition. However the competition in this case is not the other truck companies, but any other company. What will happen if all the truck drivers decide to do a course in J2EE… they would be the most sought after guys for the ever booming software sector. Well J2EE is not tough you know, any truck driver with enough money can learn it.

So what is the gain for companies? They can look at hiring part-time employees like McDonalds… students during their vacations… the visibility it will give them amongst their logistics partners… the truck companies will also have to do some hard selling… maybe even come to campus… provide lucrative working conditions, global standards in truck designs and cabin facilities… world recognition in terms of quality trucks leading to future export markets…

What a butterfly effect it can produce with just one small decision to become a truck driver…