The Apple Pie - So Close Yet A Little Shy !!

Far away in the west, under a grey blue sky..
She had set out to buy,
Something’s at home in a market near by.
When she was delighted by what caught her eye..
The crispy, crunchy, tasty apple pie.
And with her stomach almost dry..
She thought let me at least give it a try,
To soon realize that it was an ask too high.
She thought its better that she let it pass by.
However when time went bye..
She couldn’t resist this desire of hers to get by,
And knew that this urge was not a lie.
So she took a deep sigh..
And got her spirits high,
To ask the shopkeeper can I have that as my buy?
Quickly came a reply – a high tone nay-nigh,
As that was to be somebody else’s pie.
Shocked, as she never understood why,
Would the shopkeeper not let that be her buy?
As she knew she had fallen for that glaze on the apple pie,
The first time it had caught her eye.
She did ask again and gave try after try,
When his heart would melt before her cry.
All he said give me my share and then let that be your buy.
She all happy to see that her desire won’t have to die.
Excitedly she put her hands in her purse only to find that she was penny-shy.
Racing hard, while she made it home at the speed of a fly,
Got the pennies from home and hoped to give another try.
Yet when she reached the shop, the shopkeeper a little too shy,
Revealed her that the sweet apple pie..
Was somebody else’s buy,
And probably that was meant only for that lucky down town guy.
Dejection and depression so high,
Yet she did not allow herself to cry.
And having no way to get it pass by..
Reached she home, only to find a mouthwatering banana pie.
The pie, a mom recipe, certainly was worth a try..
Yet deep within, she knew, that the red cherry on the apple pie,
Had blown her away, the first time it had caught her eye.

The I’m Possible Bolt

There was a time when i wondered if some sports personality can take the place of Sachin Tendulkar at the helm of my all time favorites. I also had inkling if ever there would be somebody, it would certainly be a cricketer and that is long after M/s Sachin cricket hangs his shoes. But the lightening thunder – USAIN BOLT, has slowly but surely made huge strides in disposing the God of Indian cricket, if not disposed him off already. Before this sprinter raced, there was Sachin and the second was light years apart, but this athelete has surely reduced the margin at a lgihtening speed. The only consolation is that Usain Bolt started his career as a cricketer and is a huge fan of the great Sachin Tendulkar. The Beijing 2008 Olympics 100 mt. race certainly was a display of arrogance and over confidence, when Usain started celebrating about 20 mt before the finish line and yet ended up with a World record time of 9.69 secs. The 2009 Berlin race was a pure spectacle of determination when he improved his own record by 0.11 secs to 9.58 secs. What more, the Usain Bolt trademark lightening pose is a manifestation in itself.

Usain Bolt’s is not an ordinary achievement if we consider that it required 30 plus years and 7 athletes after Jim Hinnes (first one to race to beat the 10 second barrier) to lower the record by 0.16 sec (from 9.95 sec to 9.79 sec) when Maurice Green ran the race in 1999 and against that it only Bolt and 2 years to lower the record by 0.16 sec (from 9.72 sec – Tyson Gay’s record in 2007 to 9.58 sec – Bolt’s time at Berlin).
There was this interesting comparison made somewhere in UK, that it requires more than 9.58 sec to start and reach the 100 mt mark even in a car. What an athlete this man is!! Moreover the same guy has re-written the golden script in 200 mt. The interesting part is that the last 100 mt of the 200 mt race was run in only 9.32 sec. So one may expect that this lightening would strike again and we would be lucky to watch this guy beat the 9.5 sec barrier pretty soon. While all of us enjoy reading impossible as I am possible, he actually makes it possible.

Yeh Dil Maange More!!

June/July 1999 – This was the time when we had bought the new cable connection at our home – only after both of us; the siblings had crossed the 10th standard hurdle. The new cable connection provided about a debate amongst us and dad, which of the 3 to 4 options for news channel available were to be aired for news. Dad was loyal to the DD news, while we were fans of the Star News which were then produced by the NDTV team. (NDTV used to produce news segments for Star TV, before Prannoy Roy parted ways with Rupert Mudroch’s venture and launched a separate news channel – NDTV 24X7 in Apr 2003). Well I certainly don’t want to get an entry into the news channel TRP fights. Its just that I was not able to get as to how do I start with the topic of the day. This family debate certainly did close with the Kargil conflict. I don’t want to undermine the DD news, but the NDTV team (especially Barkha Dutt and Vishnu Som) did a fantastic job in covering the Kargil conflict. This particular conflict is still best described as India’s first war on TV. Back there in 1962, 1965 and 1971, there were no TVs and people relied on the Akashwani to get the news from the battle frontier. However in 1999, the image of Barkha standing besides the firing Bofors 155 gun and providing us information on the march of the Indian forces against some Pakistani infiltrators is still fresh in the mind.
The war is one of the most recent examples of high altitude warfare in mountainous terrain, which posed significant logistical problems for the combating sides. This was only the second direct ground war between any two countries after they had developed nuclear weapons, after the Sino-Soviet border conflict of 1969; it is also the most recent. There’s so much more to write home about the Kargil war – the cause of the conflict, the politics, dissect diplomatic moves, the saga of the battle and even apportion credit and blame.
But many people have written about all this, instead this manuscript would focus on the contribution of the bravehearts who gave us the famous victory in the summer of 1999, not that this portion is neglected by anybody. I am focusing on these jawans because back then as one who was aging into a tween from a juvenile teen, there was so much stuff around us to distract our mercurial minds and that it requires such an unwelcome battle to keep us - men now, boys then (no gender bias, this sounds better than women now, girls then) on track and lead us into the new century. We, as a budding generation, were really beginning to wonder what India was all about – Was India still only a land of snake charmers and full of poverty and destitute? Did the population nearing billion, the only manifestation for India? Was India only a land of distinct races, castes, communities, languages and what not – where each and every day was something like; one diversity class trying to outdo the other and there were politicians who were willing to breed this hatred? Was India only about the young talent who bid aideu to their kin and preferred the green cards to the ration cards? Was India only about the Khans and others who loved and romanced by dancing around the trees? Did India get together when the so called 10dulkar and the 10others (only for accompanying him on the cricket ground) brought about an out of the blue victory for the men in blue? Back then, there were mails and articles floating which boasted that about x% Indians work for American companies like NASA, Microsoft, Bell Labs etc – I still fail to understand why these facts made Indians proud?
The Indian officers led from the front and the jawans matched them in determination and courage to win us probably the most difficult wars fought by the Indian Army, by any army. About 400 brave warriors lost their lives in the battle on the most inhospitable terrains at an altitude of 17000 ft. Day after day, for eight weeks, NDTV (and of course the other channels too) was airing the exploits of the Indian army – the march up the various cliffs amassing bunkers and strategic points in the Drass and Tololing sectors. There were valor stories which featured stalwarts like Lt. Saurabh Kalia, Grenaider Yogendra Singh, RFN. Sanjay Kumar, Major Padmapani Acharya, Lt. Balwan Singh, Major M Saravanan, Lt. Kanad Bhattacharaya, Captain Saju Cherian, Lt. Keishing Clifford Nangrum, Captain R Jerry Prem Raj, Major Sonam Wangchuk and many more. But one 24 year old officer, Captain Vikram Batra stood apart with his ‘inspired’ slogan of Yeh Dil Maange More!! No he never ever wanted more Pepsis instead wanted more of the bunkers on the various peaks. He led his Delta to the capture of Point 5140 on Tololing which was strategically important in the recapture of points 5100 and 470, junction and the Three Pimples, ultimately leading to the fall of Tiger Hill. It was unfortunate that we lost him right in the slog hours of this hard fought battle.

For those eight weeks, the whole of India lived and breathed Kargil. This war helped India rediscover its underlying oneness. This was one moment when all of those divisions of caste, community and religion that have dogged the country were at least momentarily forgotten. Through out the whole length and breadth of India, there was this sudden eruption of the patriotism that did prevail as India entered the new millennium with a new resolve to become a superpower. I am not saying that victory in the Kargil conflict was the only turning point and I am not disregarding any other causality too, but Kargil did become an inspiration. Up above the peaks in and around Kargil, there must have been plenty of snow falls and there would be plenty more in the coming years – but none would be too strong to cover the blood of those bravehearts. My heart salutes those brave men who regained Kargil back for us, so that we can proucly proclaim our rights on it. OK guys, Yeh Dil certainly Maange More, but not the war and the blood shed, but more love and respect for our motherland - India.

26 Jul is being celebrated as Vijay Diwas, the day when Operation Vijay was completed in 1999.

Silver Lining ?

60 days back if some one would have predicted that I would be able to listen to any one of the 3 news pieces from the Indian government, I would have shrugged off my shoulders and asked the gentleman to stop day-dreaming. To be able to listen to these 3 news pieces on a single day surely seems like a fairy tale. Manmohanics surely is not new to India, as we are still reaping the benefits of 1991 market reforms. The last 5 year term also saw Manmohan bring about some landmark decisions like Indo-US nuclear deal, NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme) and 70000 crore farm loans waiver despite being under the LEFT scanner for major portion of his stint as PM.
News that is coming in is that Nandan Nelikeni has resigned from Infosys board and has been appointed as the chair-person of the Unique Identification Number (UIN) card project. And the post it seems is equivalent to a cabinet minister’s post. This project aims at providing UIN cards to each of the 1 billion Indian citizens over the period of 4 years and is expected to generate mini IT and other outsourcing projects worth 10000 crores. UIN project aims at creating a sort of an identification number analogous to the Social Security Number in US and EU countries. While I know its late coming, but its surely something that we all as Indian citizens can boast of the largest system in the world, when it actually is implemented. The system is all great, but I am more excited about the fact that a top brass corporate brain has been literally uplifted from India’s brightest company. While this is not for the first time that a corporate guy has been approached for a government project, but none can match the caliber of Nandan Nelikeni. While I have listened to Mr. Nelikeni over the years in various interviews, he seemed not all that keen to join politics, but his book IMAGINING INDIA surely threw up few clues that he might be interested in giving something back to India. What was more heartening is the fact that the PM himself had called up Nandan and persuaded him to take up the job. One more pleasing fact that has been brought up is that the entire process took only 3 weeks – decisions at the speed of thought. This might just be a decision when many able decision makers – Manmohan Singh, Nandan Nelikeni, Narayan Murthy and many others justified as to why they are called as able decision makers.
Another news piece that came up was the 100 day plan for education from Kapil Sibal. Kapil talks about abolishing the 10th board exam and replacing the 12th board exam with an All India common entrance test. Huge debate has already been raised whether he has gone overboard in disclosing his plan and many state boards have already opposing it. While I am not sure of Kapil being able to meet his deadline and implementing his plan in full, but Kapil has surely made his intentions clear to stay clear from the path (inclusion of Sanskrit and Jyotish shastra in education and reservations in IIM’s) that his 2 predecessors had followed.
Another newspiece which might not have gathered too much space on the media pages, but is quiet as important as the other 2 news in this blog. PM has asked for transparency and public accountability from his cabinet of ministers. He has also asked the ministers to publish quarterly report on their respective portfolios. No doubt, this is a step forward in the right direction.

Tiger, Tiger Shining Bright ??

It was very sad news that I received from this morning news that Cyclone ‘Aila’ has hit West Bengal and Bangladesh. Along with the news of about 50 people losing their lives in the burnt of Cyclone ‘Aila’, it is estimated that there would have been atleast a dozen tigers have seen their end with ‘Aila’. Sunderbans happens to be in the epicenter of the cyclone and it has resulted into a terrible loss to the Project TIGER efforts in the Sunderbans, which otherwise are considered as the safest among all the national reserves for the tigers. Sunderbans - where the land meets the sea at the southern tip of West Bengal, a stretch of impenetrable mangrove forest of great size and bio-diversity. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Sunderbans is a vast area covering 4264 square km in India alone. The Indian Sunderbans forms the largest Tiger Reserve and National Park in India and is a home to approximately 500 Bengal tigers in 2004 (not sure of the number though as there are contrasting figures available). The Bengal Tigers have adapted themselves very well to the saline and aqua environs and are extremely good swimmers.

The above news piece may be the making of another debacle after the SARISKA Shock for the tiger conservation enthusiasts in 2005. Those of who don’t know SARISKA, The Sariska tiger reserve is spread over about 881 sq km semi-arid region of western India's Aravalli Hill Range in Rajasthan and not too long ago, a trek to Tiger Point in Sariska Tiger Reserve used to almost guarantee views of the big cats and now antelopes graze with little to fear near a redundant sign depicting a picture of India's national animal. This was once considered as an ideal habitat given the plentiful supply of prey -- chital, sambar and wild pigs. The predators have disappeared from the reserve after its population of 14 tigers (controversial figure – many believe that 14 was an exaggerated figure even in 2003; the fact remains everyone has now resorted to the fact that there are no big cats in Sariska) was wiped out by poachers in the period between 2003 & 2005, a massive conservation scandal widely blamed on the negligence of the park and state government authorities. As an “apex predator”, the tiger heads nature’s food chain and holds the key to preserving the air, water and forests of our imperilled planet. By eating about 60-80 animals a year, a tiger keeps a check on the population of herbivores, who would otherwise denude the jungle of its every seed and root. Another tiger reserve going the SARISKA way is the PANNA national park in Madhya Pradesh where in only 1 tiger is reported to be seen last in Dec 2008. Efforts have been made to transship a female tigress from Bandhavgad to see if we can somehow breed tigers in PANNA.
One startling truth for the reason of the dwindling tiger population in the recent years is the paradox of income between the poacher and the forest guard. You could be a poacher, kill a tiger and sell it in black. Bingo! It brings you Rs 30 lakh overnight. Or you could be a forest guard and risk your life day and night to save the tiger from being poached. You could do that 30 years and still not make nine thousand a month. If you don’t laugh off this crazy math it is likely to stab at your brain during the endless silent marches in the brooding woods. I know this is not the only reason, but this can lead to activity among the grey cells of the administrators.









To get a macro perspective of the tiger conservation efforts, I have tried to plot the tiger population over the years. As always, this graph revealed a lot of truths around the TIGER and the tiger conservation efforts over the years. At the start of the 20th century it was estimated that around 40000 to 45000 tigers were dwelling in India’s forest cover. However the first 50 years of the century saw tigers reduced to only 5000, Thanks to the royal ways of the Maharajas and the British Viceroys and Governor Generals. In fact traditionally hunting was always considered a royal sport, however during this period, a special liking was developed for the tiger.
After independence, also the rate of tiger hunting was always on the rise, when the then PM, Indira Gandhi launched the Project TIGER in 1973. With the emphasis from the top and some good administrators, this project served as a silver lining among the grey clouds, India was able to seriously able to curtail the threat of Tiger’s extinction. You can see the growth of tigers in the NATIONAL reserves grow from 268 to 1400 in 20 years. Growth was also seen outside the NATIONAL reserves. However in India, good things don’t always last, the tide shifted back somewhere in the late 80’s and tigers were at risk again. The TIGER protection system had completely collapsed. While officials were busy misreporting the record of tiger numbers, poachers roamed about and cleaned the reserve out. Villagers here regard the tiger, and the park administration, as their common enemy no 1: they live sandwiched between the two, and are bitter about their desperately wretched existence and continued harassment. Due to the ban on tiger skin in India, the demand for tigers had reduced. However smugglers found some demand across the porous Chinese and Nepal border in the form of tiger bones for some Chinese Medicine and also the rich Tibetans buy a lot of tiger skin to show off their wealth and prowess during their local festivals. Also various urban development and mining development led to deforestation, which seriously has impacted the wild life population. One solacing fact is that the Tibetan leader Dalai Lama has urged his subjects not to resort to tiger skin in their traditional festival in Chennai last year and he hopes that the demand for skin would reduce in Tibet at least.






That graph revealed some shocking to the Indian authorities that the forest officials have been misreporting and exaggerating the tiger population; thanks to a primitive method of counting tigers and also did not want the alarm bells to ring. However in 2007, for the first time, a scientific method has been used for the tiger count in the said census, which has minimized the chances of manipulation and the tiger estimate now, is only 1400 tigers across India. It was evident that all was not well with the Indian tiger. It is this concern that led the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, to personally intervene and review the conservation efforts. The Prime Minister described the state of affairs as the worst crisis of wildlife since the inception of the Project Tiger. The Prime Minister also asked for the Tiger Task Force to be set up, with a mandate to review tiger conservation and to suggest a new paradigm that shares the concerns of conservation with the public at large.
TIGER TASK FORCE was formulated under the leadership of Sunita Narain. The TIGER TASK FORCE report throws up some interesting suggestions like improvement in the forest protection force and their equipments, relocation of people settlements from the forest and since this cannot be done, improvement in the co-existence of tigers and people. Many suggestions were also brought up to increase the frequency and accuracy of tiger census. Also suggested was how do we increase the tiger tourism and how do we better utilize the revenue generated from tourism.

TIGER is an interesting animal and unlike most of the predators, it prefers to live alone. The tiger society revolves around the breeding female, who starts breeding at three-four years of age in a relatively fixed home range. She has tenure of five-seven years before she loses her range to a vigorous competitor. The adult male tiger has a larger range, overlapping several breeding females — three on an average. In favorable conditions, females give birth to litters of three-four cubs once every two-three years. When roughly two years old, the young are abandoned by their mother and these are known as dispersing transients (floaters) by biologists. Tigers move 10-15 km per day. Transient tigers can move over hundreds of kilometres in search of new homes. Ideally there should have an increase in the tiger population every year. However, the young tiger, in search of territory, moves beyond the protected enclave to the world outside. Once there were forests outside the reserve, and the tiger had survived. But now the landscape is degraded. Poor people live there. They live on the forests. But no investments have been made to improve their habitat. Wildlife managers say that the tiger cannot be protected within the ‘enclaved islands’ that our reserves have become. In the last tiger ‘census’, more than half the big cats were found not inside but outside the tiger reserves. These are lands which the tiger shares with people. But as the forests degrade in the landscape, the habitat shrinks. The protection of the tiger is inseparable from the protection of the forests it roams in. But the protection of these forests is itself inseparable from the fortunes of people who, in India, inhabit forested areas. Thus, any regulatory or enforcement regime that wishes to throw a protective ring around the tiger must take into cognisance that, apart from the tiger, the protection equation contains two other variables: the forests and the people that live in and around it. This is the unique situation conservation in India has always faced and tried to grapple with. If we work hard, we can protect a few hundred tigers in the protective islands of our reserves. If we improve our enforcement, we can protect a few more. But if we really want to safeguard the future of tigers, we will have to regenerate our forests.

Lets HOPE that PM’s personal interest in TIGER conservation would try and emulate and surpass the results achieved by project TIGER in the 1970’s.
PS: Despite the dwindling tiger population, some good news is flowing in from the Terai region of the Himalayas where the number of tigers is actually increasing! A significant growth in tiger population has been observed in the Corbett National Park, the Rajaji National Park of Uttarakhand, the Dudhwa National Park of Uttar Pradesh and the Valmiki Tiger Reserve in Bihar.

Chronicles of 6/6

As I am going through this most leisurely time of my life (Never would I have ever imagined and nor would I ever of experiencing such a period in my life again), I have been forced to read a lot of stuff from all sources. One of the manuscripts gave me this interesting quote to ponder “A lion wakes up everyday and starts running after a deer to survive. A deer wakes up everyday and starts running from a lion to survive. So the point is that it does not matter whether you are a lion or a deer. You just have to keep running.” So very true!! We as homo-sapiens also tend to follow this maxim inherited from our evolution partners and therefore are always on the run, except when a series of events happen to go against you.
Flashback!! Another of those weekends was approaching and I was pondering over my mind, that it was almost 6 weeks that I had not visited the place of my genesis and it was a long enough frequency that I had not troubled my mom. But then another thought struck me, saying that it would be better off visiting next week end since it coincided with my birthday and it was a long time that I frequented in Belgaum on that special day and the very thought, that I may plan out some outing with my near ones, helped me make that quiet an easy decision at the end. (Wish I did travel that week and it was worth while travelling again the next week end) Well Friday evening, planned out a party with my department buddies (The ceiling amount proposed for each occasion, was such a big hit – we almost had a party every fortnight). Well, this time the venue was Banjara Hills and it was almost midnight that we reached home. Just went through the news headlines on NDTV, before I realized that the results of those tiresome cardio sessions were showing up. No!! I am not talking about the weight, but it was a pain that I had developed in my left ankle (Fortunately, my weight also reduced by about 5 kgs in those 2 months – never knew that I would regain it back again soon). Having the burden of pain in the left ankle, before retiring to sleep, I thought I would skip my cricket game tomorrow (Would have been an wise decision).
Chirping birds – While they did manage to wake me up as usual in the morning, I was late by atleast an hour (Got up at 7:35 am – Wish that I got up further late). I was in 2 minds whether to go and play or rest for the day; but the thought of Tomato Omlet at Roopali and the image of ducking out on a rising delivery on the slippery surface of the pitch after the lashing showers in the last couple of days just pushed me out of the bed (Wish I never succumbed to the temptation) and there I was on the bike, with the Radio Mirchi’s Masakali dhun accompanying me all along my way. The ride in the early morning fresh chill (So what, if it was eight in the morning) as a result of the first showers after a scorching hot summer is just something that cannot be described with words. By the time, I reached the ground, it was almost the end of the first game and I was just resting under the tree behind the wicket keeper. When it was time for game 2, I was selected in the batting side and I was asked out to open the innings. I denied the request to open and opted to bat lower down the order (Wish I did honor that request). Having denied the batting, I thought I would umpire the game and had started my walk towards the non strikers’ end, when I was asked to join the bowling side (just to balance the 2 teams up) and I said a reluctant yes to the offer (Wish I had rejected the offer) since I was very excited to be in the batting side. Fielding close on either side of the wicket was my preferred position and now days I don’t have to fight for it, since people give up that position for me. I took my fielding guard on the leg side, when one of my close mates asked me if he could field in that position and asked me to go to Long-on (Wish I said NO). Four overs later – a dropped chance (a fairly difficult one though) and misfields from my co-fielders on the boundary line had just pumped me up when a ball was hit in the midwicket area. I thought that the ball was close for me to field it up and prevent the second, however when I did run towards the ball, the ball was beckoning me and was hurriedly inching towards the boundary line. I just increased up my speed and just when I thought that I had the chase under my control and would stop the boundary, I was down there rolling myself on the ground atleast 3 times, before I could hear a scream “Abhya” (I suppose it was AJya who yelled) and saw the ball roll over the boundary. Till then I was not sure (am still not sure) what had happened to me in the last minute, but I recall the next moment, the whole team was around me and I was explaining to them that I have just lost my control my right leg. I had a look at the place where I rolled and found a small depression caused by the stream of the rainwater which I believe I stepped into. When 20 plus engineers are given a problem, more often than not, they come up with many solutions and here the problem was how to take me to the hospital. Out of the many solutions, one was quickly finalized and there I was being man-handled (for sake of sanity, don’t take the literal meaning) by 5 people and even the rest of the gang one did a good job in putting across in a Santro – quiet a back door entry literally (I was later appraised by my cousin doctor, as to how critical job was it to transfer me in that condition, since even if I had been slightly mishandled, there was a very high risk of damaging a main nerve - forgot the name and thus I was deprived of yet another of those complicated operations and a very taxing recuperation). We reached Deenanath hospital and I was being transferred to the casualty ward via a stretcher. After the painkilling injections, I was taken to the X-ray room and in about 20 mins, I had that bouncer of my life – I had fractured my right femur bone, (yes the strongest and the longest bone in the human body!!) and had to be operated to insert a steel rod. More bad news to follow, the recuperation time was 8 to 10 weeks – this news certainly was a yorker and it literally blew my pulse rate up in the sky. Phone calls and messages were being used at will to inform all the affected ones.
Long after that 7 hour long mid-night operation, when I was transferred to a private ward and there I was watching a T20 match and an insurance ad was being aired where a girl with a fractured leg sitting in a wheel chair, being mobilized by her boyfriend are enjoying the rain in a lush green lawn.
Jiyo Befikar - Bajaj Allianz Ad

Watching that ad, as usual, I was tempted to write – Wish I had somebody like that; when I realized that instead of one, there were dozens of them who were willing to hold that fractured leg up for me, so that I could walk again. Mates, Never ever in my life (I know for sure, I would never be in the future), had I felt more secure to stand up tall on my feet.

Great Expectations

Today, in one of the many meetings at office, I was queried about a decision, that I had pursued and implemented in the month of September, just before the “Close-to-Great Depression” spread its tentacles over the economically optimistic mood of the globe. I was questioned as to; how can I reverse the after effects of that decision and then there I very instinctively replied back saying that the only option left with me is to personally meet Mr. Obama to plead him and revitalize this economy. While, everyone around had a hearty laugh, I was satisfied that I could fend off a bouncer quiet effectively.
Now, when I ponder over that incident, I think – Obama; what is he got to do with a decision that I have taken in my office and that too, much before he had become a US president. That’s who, most of us novices and even the financial gurus are looking upto with hope. Yes, Hope is the word that he created a buzz around (along with Change of course), ensuring that he generated enough of it among the voter masses en-route to his presidential feather. He must definitely be tributed to the fact that America, after his election, can claim more credibly than any other western country to have at last become politically colour-blind. With such a great victory come unreasonably great expectations. Just before he took the oath on Jan 20 2009, there were opinion polls flashing and sweeping the world with optimism that “only Obama can save us”. I always thought nothing can be compared to the expectations that are being put by the billions of fans on the not-young-anymore shoulders of the great Sachin Tendulkar. But Obama has surpassed these expectations both in terms of the number and the variety of expectations. Phew!! almost half of the 6.77 billion population dwelling on Mother Earth directly or indirectly are affected by Obama and they expect him to bring a magical wand and rescue them from this terrible period. While Sachin has to bear the burden of expectations in terms of what he does on the cricket field on match days, this fella needs to weather the storm from all sides and almost on a 24 X 7 basis. Plus the challenges he face are varied. At home, he must try to unite his country, tackling its economic ills and to raise America’s international standing which sunk to its awful lows under his predecessor George Bush’s era. He also needs to address the never ever so popular demand of stopping outsourcing to other countries so as to increase jobs. In contrast, with a unipolar economic superpower status, other countries expect US to play a big brother role in safeguarding the world from threats of economic recession, terrorism and global warming. Like most politicians, one might believe that Mr Obama will surely fail more than he succeeds. But he is a man of great dignity, superior talents and high ideals. In choosing him, America has shown once again its unrivalled capacity to renew itself, and to surprise. Let’s see if he can prove all us wrong.

Tryst with the Indian OBAMA!!

With the IPL2 season getting hotter with as many as 6 teams slugging it out for the semifinal berths and it seems very likely that the teams would be so close to each other that the top 4 would be decided on the basis of NRR. However tight the IPL series ends up in, the real excitement was with the GREAT IPL – Indian Polling League. And this GREAT IPL does not require no cheer leaders, strategic time outs or any free hits to build up the excitement among the masses. Almost all exit polls, opinion polls (editor’s verdicts and projections as they were termed after the election commissioner put a ban on the exit and opinion polls during the 5 phases of elections) predicted a closer finish to both the top 2 alliances and the third and the fourth front would call the shots in the government formation. Unfortunately there is no NRR in elections, no super over and not even a bowl out to decide on the winner in a close election finish. Each party was busy building up strategies to somehow cobble a government and if it failed to do so, get into an election mode once again after 2 years or so, after the unstable government fails to sail over the troubled waters. This instability would have been a serious blow to India’s efforts to maintain its stake as an emerging economic superpower. Almost all of the media correspondents were in search for an Indian OBAMA among various political parties to save the Indian economy (not sure that Barrack Obama has been able to galvanize the US economy as he was able to galvanize the US voters with HOPE) if not a “HE IS THE ONE” - NEO from the Matrix. None of them were able to find him not even a distant body-double (Don’t have to explain you that for sure). DOOM (read unstable government) for INDIA was pretty much certain.
However the Indian OBAMA emerged from nowhere and he is no one other than the GREAT INDIAN VOTER (GIV). Courtesy the GIV, the Indian democracy decided to give yet another chance to the WEAK yet humble PM – ManMohan Singh. I am not sure that ManMohanomics would get us out of the dark woods but I am happy that at least, there is a silver lining now because there is a stable government at the center. No election pundits and psephologists (a word that even does not find a mention in the Microsoft WORD software, statistical analysis of elections and is supposed to be derived from Greek psephos ψῆφος, 'pebble', which the Greeks used as ballots) was able to predict what is in the minds of the GIV.
I am sure that not even one Congress leader could have privately betted on the number of seats they and their allies they actually got, before the elections. However at the hindsight now, knowing their performance of 2009 after 2004, they would be willingly ready to market the new Sarah Lacy’s book titled “Once you are LUCKY, Twice you are GOOD”
Coming back to the GIV, (s)he, doesn’t require any invitation or pursuit by NGOs and corporate like JAAGO RE to exercise her vote. (S)he also doesn’t require any assistance in registering her name in the electoral list nor any election aspirant to help her find out her polling booth. (S)he doesn’t require a holiday for casting her vote, (s)he would cast it anyway regardless. (S)he doesn’t live in any of the MAHAcities, leave aside the Metros and this has been confirmed by the voting %ages all across the 4 Tier I and II cities as against the rest of the country. (S)he is one who would act when it is needed and also make sure that (s)he does not crib and cry over her non-action for the next 5 years. (S)he comes from various castes, creeds and religions and would follow her own gut feeling to choose any ideology which she believes is right for her and her country in her own analysis. (S)he chooses her own path and more often than not (s)he makes the right decision.
I met VijayaLakshmi, during one of my rare visits to a temple in Tirupati (that makes it even rarer). We were awaiting our turn to visit the holy almighty in one of the waiting halls. This wait was for about 6 hours from 4 pm to 10 pm and this gave a rare opportunity to interact with VijayaLakshmi and also a chance to recall some episodes of Ramanand Sagar’s RAMAYAN (The waiting halls have TVs where in Ramayan was aired). There was nothing common between me and VijayaLakshmi and the only common language that we knew was sign language and she could interpret some broken Hindi words and this aspect made our communication very interesting and challenging. Very seldom were we able to get what she was telling us in her first three attempts and I took even more to convey what I intended. VijayaLakshmi hailed from a village near Rajmundhry and was certainly not my age. She had a son who was atleast 5 years elder to me and had married only 2 days ago. They were visiting Tirupati to seek blessings for the newly married couple. The groom actually ran a cycle puncture shop in their village and his mother went to work in somebody else farm to earn about 30 Rs per day. The groom was busy with his wife but the mother-in-law was in full Josh and together we discussed a lot of issues including Andhra food, their culture, the difference between their marriage rituals and ours etc. However when short of topics to discuss, I thought of opening up Andhra politics to her. I asked her what she thought of YSR - YS RajShekhar Reddy, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. Little did I know that I was on the right path, but entered a wrong way. I say that because she was very much into active politics but was a die hard fan of Chandra Babu Naidu. She was a active member and was occupying a position in the TDP’s village level organization. She had participated in cycle rallies for the campaign of Chandrababu Naidu in the last election. I asked her why she preferred Naidu over Reddy when Reddy offers her so many goodies like subsidized supply of rice and other grains, free electricity etc. She did try her best to explain some of the reasons for preferring Naidu, but I was not able to assimilate very less of what she intended to convey. The only take away that hit me from this discussion, she was so fond of Naidu that she had not availed the facility of the monthly rice quota of 10 kg at a rate of 3 Rs per kg even once, just because it was offered by Naidu’s rival. Such is the level of dedication and loyalty to a political leader. Surprisingly the same leader is always projected by the Indian media as one of those who was pro-urban and anti-rural in his stint as CM. Such a contrast picture from what is the ground reality. The Prannoy Roys, the Barkhas and the Rajdeeps however hard they try would not be able to project the entire Indian perspective. VijayaLakshmi is just one of the billions who happened to meet me in Luck by Chance visit. At the end of my encounter, I just had to salute her and the Great Indian Voter who is just taken democracy to a next level for sure. This encounter is still freshly etched in my memory even though it is almost 30 months since I met VijayaLakshmi.

Incredible Creativity -

Frugality is India’s Tradition. Modernity sees India’s frugality as Poverty



Well saw this picture in the forest office at Dandeli – Just got moved by this one really. What really is frugality – Many mistake it to be miserliness or poverty. Frugality, on the other hand, is a tendency to possess less and what is absolutely necessary. It is this intelligence to understand what is really essential for us – is lacking and this is what makes us co-relate frugality and poverty. Well common sense is really uncommon. Mahatma Gandhi was an apt example for this trait. He always remarked that a khadi dhoti was enough for him to cover his body and in remarking so wore only dhoti for nearly half of his life, after his return from South Africa. Yet many of us very casually remark “Majboori ka naam – Mahatma Gandhi”. He is the same father figure, who is admired all over the world for his principles and values and yet many of my comrades don’t give him his deserved share of respect.

When I read this quote and started thinking over it, I remembered this particular anecdote (Can’t guarantee the authenticity though) from the Cold War era. NASA (USA) spent a decade and millions of dollars developing the high-tech Astronaut Pen, to solve the problem of writing in zero-gravity in a space ship. The Soviets solved the problem another way: They used a pencil. Were the Soviets poor in opting for pencil – a better solution than the hi-tech pen? Theres another example – when Motorola or GE came up with the Six Sigma concept, people started finding examples of Six Sigma processes. Only a handful of processes qualified like the airplane safety / reliability may be. But the most effective of them all had its roots in India – Yes the Mumbai Dabawallahs had achieved a six sigma level even before the quality concept was known to the world. Well, the dabawallahs are now world famous and feature in most of the case studies, but their secret in achieving those quality levels lied in 2 color dots and 5/6 digit code. I bet any consulting company in the world can come up with a better solution to this problem of supplying home made food to the appropriate people in their respective offices. I thought may be – I can have a go at it, so I closed my eyes and started visualizing the process and the intricacies of it and the first thing I saw was barcodes, bar code readers and an RDBMS to support these.

The great Indian elections of 2004 – brought 2 surprises; well the results were a big surprise but this is not a topic of our concern today, but the other surprise was more meaningful. The world’s largest democracy had surprised the entire world by announcing the results in a mere 4 hrs span (Poor Pranoy Roy did not have the time to digest the figures and present the analysis – He normally would it for 72 hours at a stretch). How many of you knew this fact – that India was the first of all the countries to use the fully electronic voting machines. Well there were a few attempts made by USA to start using electronic voting machines, but even the Americans were not able to deploy this across the country. USA had used touch screens, encryption techniques, backup servers, voice-guidance systems, modems, storage cards and a Windows based operating systems to come up with a state of the art of the technology voting machine which were networked to the central server. God knows, how much amount of coding would have gone into it. The Indians on the other hand, came up with a electronic machine – which looked like a Casio music synthesizer may be. The scientists at work never had any fancy expectations from it apart from its basic function of adding those votes efficiently and accurately. These machines were not even programmed about the candidates and only small slips of candidates and their symbols were just clipped besides the buttons. The electronic voting machines were never wired off together and were kept stand alone – This apart from keeping the system simple and cost effective, helped in avoiding problems if any one of those EVMs were captured. It was only one EVM that was vulnerable in case of booth capturing and the rest were unaffected. Now many of my Indian friends would already have a question in their minds – Its true they worked, what was their failure rate. Of the 1 million EVMs deployed, about 1800 of them malfunctioned for whatever reasons – this is an acceptable quality figure, considering that there were spare EVMs available in the booths and in the entire elections, hardly a few of the precious votes were lost in the process. In fact, the same philosophy is being prophesized in the Japanese Kaizen principles – Come up with simple solutions and continuously improve.

There is another example – that I would like to pick up straight from my home town – Belgaum. When we were studying our Engineering, the Belgaum traffic police came up with a novel concept of solar traffic lights – they deployed this across all the major circles in Belgaum. After 2 months, they had to discontinue with the traffic lights in the most centrally located circle in the city – the traffic lights just did not serve the purpose because it would not be programmed in accordance with the complex traffic situation there and brought in new problems of traffic congestion and starvation at the same time. Then, we had thought this to be a backward step, to move away from the traffic lights. In fact we had thought this to be a project for our final year engineering to help the traffic police to get over the problem. Now we realize the wisdom that went behind that decision of going back from those traffic lights. The circle, after 5 more years, still doesnot have a traffic signal.

India has traditionally been a rich country and that’s the reason for all those sieges right from Mohammad of Gazni to the Lord Mountbattens of the East India Company. But our forefathers were wise enough to have never been behind those technologies. This is evident in all our Indian dishes – an Indian woman would never want a mayonnaise sauce or vinegar to spice up her yummy dishes. The Indian home remedies for all sorts of medicinal problems justify this again. Try this yourself, the next time you cut your finger / bruise your leg, apply turmeric – the blood stops more instantly than when you apply Dettol. I am now convinced that the high priced glitzy solutions are no more efficient than their easily found, common counterparts. Friends, after having written so much, let me confess that I am not against technology. I am as big a technology buff as many of you are, but we got to be simple in our problem solving approach, we got to apply that wisdom to justify the use of technology. We Indians have a rich tradition and culture that we got to pass over to our successors – Lets pass this as it is as we have inherited it, if not add any value to it.