A New Life, A New Beginning

Note- This is a Personal Post and if you are not interested in reading about my personal life, kindly skip it.

It is indeed a great feeling when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself. We plan and scheme things but it can only take you so far, destiny takes its own course – something I still haven’t been able to rationalize my way out of yet. Either way although things almost never go according to plan, the way things pan out keeps life interesting and worth living. All this philosophy up here has something to do with the next chapter of my life – IRMA. Supertramp says that happiness is only real when shared, I thought I’d share an abridged version of my journey to IRMA.

The days on the other side of the wall:

Somewhere during the 3^rd year of engineering, among the less technically inclined, a mirror-like phenomenon called “MBA mania” happens. I believe it is still rediscovered in every batch. You read up on the placement figures, read up on the comfy life of post Bschool and finally buy in to the great Indian middle class idea of utopia – MBA degree.

CAT - The predator posing as a house pet

Apparently, the only thing standing between you and your dream life is a pesky exam called CAT. But as it turned out exams like CAT don’t come with humble numbers, basically she is a predator posing as a house pet. Sitting back now I can say that buying the prospectus is a close to home parallel to buying a lottery ticket. In all likelihood you would have already cynically dismissed the whole bloody exam half way through your campaign. Trust me it happens!

Anyway as a risk mitigation strategy, I picked up application forms for all exams I had ever heard of. Of all the exams – 5 or 6 of them, subconsciously IRMA was certainly not the place I imagined seeing myself. Common, I am city bred and cornflakes fed what do you expect? The prelims happened on exactly the day my sister was getting married and I missed the function. I was pissed off!

As providence may have it at the end of the prelims season, I had enough calls from good Bschools and IRMA to keep my campaign alive (by that time I had gathered that IRMA could not be categorized a typical Bschool).

The new dynamic:

The interview season began and I started visiting campus after campus. At most places I managed to encounter flashy presentations, the never ending race – blind, concentrated, continued action with a tinge of snobbishness in style and superficial interviewing. Most places did not really have a soul, nevertheless, I had prepared my self for unadulterated hypocrisy and it paid off for me. I did well at all places I visited.

Institute of Rural Management Anand

Right on the middle of this all was my interview of very average priority – IRMA. I dragged myself to Anand, mentally tired and underprepared. I arrived at the campus the day before my interview – lovely, absolutely amazing campus. I started seeing things better now. I met a few guys from different parts of the country, some people having attempted only IRMA and passionate about joining the institute. I asked them why? They had answers that had me stumped. Quite uncharacteristically I quickly realised that I might be missing something here. Things were slightly slower and meditative, passion and vision defined the air and they didn’t give a damn about the suits. I loved that!  There was more than obvious overlap between my true being and the character and vision of the institute. Now I became desperate to get in. Whomp! The tables had just turned. I played my cards differently albeit more naturally – confidence bordering arrogance with genuine passion. I knew I had pulled IRMA off.

A whole new world:

Now a lot of my worldly wise fellows think I am nuts (not that it hasn’t been suggested before). Right from the entrepreneurial capitalist to the socially oriented, oh the twist and turns keep on coming! I can’t really reason why, I guess I am just following the natural course of my being.

So what is in my mind at the onset of this new detour?

A) I love the fact that I have been able to take a decision out of power and not weakness. I have a lot of worldly wise options before me but I chose my own path. That’s a little more responsibility than I would have liked but the challenge seems interesting.

B) Right at the core of man’s spirit lays a desperate need for new experiences. I believe I am going to expose myself to something I haven’t ever experienced before, the prospects are inspiring.

C) It is a clean slate now, my past has little significance any more.

Blessing myself and Signing off!

PS: I’ve committed the cardinal sin – inconsistency. I resist my natural inclination to reason my way out of this, it is just the way things are.

Delightfully High Thoughts :P

What are the kind of things that a sorry fraternity jobless bachelors rant about when they get – how do I put this nicely -‘delightfully high’? Women. Period. I would be the one to know. I am usually the guy with the orange juice at those snobbish beer parties. But as Harsha Bhogle once mentioned, at times, these delightfully high conversions could become one of the greatest sources of wisdom. So true ain’t it. It’s a moment of unadulterated truth. Genius could befall you any moment.

So when your best buddy turn’s up with a heavenly JW Blue Label (aha, u read it right!) it was like Kerala tourism’s new ad campaign saying “Your moment is waiting.” So here, under the pretext of a druken (Royally, if I may) ranting I am gonna share some excerpts- correction- whatever I can remember- of my true unadulterated self.

The traditional kickstart:

A symbol of excellence - just like virus's pen!

Just as expected – love lost, women, girl friend(s), compatibility damn! Together these words would make a quaint oxymoron for the urban dictionary. The start is always a suck fest for me. I have nothing to add. I mean I’ve been single all my life and not for one second been tormented by the middling bachelors craving need for companionship (f). I think the underlying theory is simple. (ps. Future wife- these are drunken rantings!)

A)     As it is I am plain awesome or as Barney Stinson put it “I am the Angelina Jolie of incredibility hot guys”

B)     In my experience, men in relationships are boring. They are slaves, a shadow of their true selves and just turn the clock back. Who in normal levels of sanity would dream of seeing themselves as a joker?

C)     And finally and more importantly – like some wise man said beautiful women are in the league of the Mercedes Benz, the Blackberry and beach view bungalows. They are just out of the range of the common man!

Then I start of with my “Freedom until lost is seldom valued” types speeches. Of course, I have no idea what it is at the other side of love. I am too much of a narcissist. He fires back – “You’ll eventually find yourself contradicting very thing you say and will realize what a fool you are!” I reply “Maybe…I am cool with that!” Whomp!

Why can’t I contradict myself?

It get this quite often my mom, sis and friends – “You are contradicting yourself.” Well is it a crime? What is wrong in doing that? Ok, let me bring in a bit of perspective in here. Basically it is your life experience that shapes your viewpoint. A different experience is a chance to revisit an idea and subject it to correction or change if necessary. I would rather leave my self open to new experience than subject myself to the distasteful prospect of being a prisoner of my long held views. The effect of which could be cataclysmic by comparison. From where I see it, if at some point of life you don’t contradict your past self, you are just not growing. It’s being stagnant!

The root of this problem is society’s compulsive urge to measure personality in absolutes or rather place him/her in a stereotype. You are not allowed to make mistakes and change. “Once a thief, always a thief” and lots of other ridiculous theories are the cornerstones of the make-believe society we live in. People change and we need to accept the idea that change is possible. “Rewrite rules, Retain values” is Kishore Biyani’s business philosophy. And the only way to change is to challenge your earlier ideas and make way for new ones. So if it involves contradicting yourself, so be it. It’s the price I pay for wisdom. It’s the price of living in the moment.

“So how does anyone trust you? You are a chameleon. What credibility do ya have?”

“Yep that is the whole point; I am not (no longer rather) on the look out for the society’s “ACCEPTED” certificate. So long is I am not a sociopath, I don’t think there is a reason to complain. Some of us- correction – most of us, choose to be a slave of the neurotic social system we are born into. I don’t do that!”

The society has held me prisoner to breed mediocrity!

It has not been long but it has been awesome every since I logged out/ unplugged from the society matrix. Now I am a virus like Neo! I am no more bound by the rules of the system. Frankly, there are few feelings greater than this! You just have to be prepared for scorn, derision and in the highly unlucky case- rotten tomatoes and eggs.

Freedom

Freedom is the ultimate concept. It created legends like Gandhi. But my life experience has been different. Where we live, freedom is a legal concept. It is pure make-believe notion that I am calling the shots of my life when someone/something else actually is. The Indian middle class has a robust value system with deeply entrenched and strong right and wrong. As a kid I’ve had to bear the brunt of the society’s misplaced expectations. You work your back side off while your batch mates were indulging themselves in other kinds of educational timepass (hmm..). You get educated with no idea what you are doing. Then you land yourself up in a job get married, kids, car, house…the keyword here is “get successful (Another misjudged concept –will deal with it later!)”…then die quietly (preferably leaving no stone unturned). Every thing is set up, you might as well have somebody else live your life for you. All you do in life is catering to the system’s need. At no point of time does the system ask you what you want. It only judges you for what you did. Who needs that? The middle class value system is a badge which confers acceptability but also the breeder of mediocrity.

That is exactly my point of contention. The system never accepts you for what you are or let you discover yourself. It just makes sure that you are secure and mediocre. You have to subjugate the self. But I can’t do that! I am not happy with being secure. What I want is excellence and the truth. I want to experiment with my life to reach there. So what I ask from the universe is the freedom to experiment and make mistakes and learn. Because that is perfectly ok as per my value system.

“To hell with the society and its norms. I call the shots of my life and I will not have it adulterated with rules I did not make. I need the freedom to play with my life. So to all judging eyes out there- I am an odd ball. Your prejudice has no bearing on me. Coz I no more give a damn to what you think and people with time, learn how to judge for themselves!”

Challenge Accepted!!!

“ Life is just an opportunity and opening, it is a creative challenge. Life is so spacious that it allows you to be whatsoever you want to be.” - Osho

Spot On Bro! Life is indeed a creative challenge and there is nothing called limit or limitation. The social system just killed the idea. It gave me ethic, etiquette, morality and loads of other fancy terms. It put me in a cage and asked to find meaning of life in the cage. It even defined happiness and success for me. I believe at some point of time you get a choice. Either you live a life satisfying the system into which you were acclimatized with or you break the system and do what you want and be what you want to be. Whatever it is!

“Today I proclaim to the universe. I want to experience the whole richness in life. I want to challenge the boundaries the neurotic system defines. I want to be a slave of my bizarre dreams. I wanna live in a rarefied bubble with absolute freedom -Unquestioned, not in fear of judgment day but only rich in experience!”

On a totally unrelated note, I’ ll leave you with one of my favorites:

Maybe the world is not ready for me or maybe I knocked back more that I can handle. But when you are high there is no way to “Stop the madness”. Cheers!

Image courtesy – Google.

WAR OF THE SEXES: Are the Contradictions actually Complementary?

When a guy says “I have nothing to wear!”, he needs to do his laundry. When a gal says that, she needs to go shopping. As true as my friend’s status message is, so are the differences between men and women. So “are men & women equal?” Hell no! I would argue that the notion of equality of two things so fundamentally different seems very strange. So if equality is not possible, what is our route to the high decibel noise generating topic of women emancipation in a ‘male dominated world’? Is it one sex victimizing the other or does the answer lies within the woman herself?

As a principle I believe, it is always easier to get to the answer to a problem if we ask the right questions. Here are a few of mine related to this issue:

• How different are the sexes or rather are the sexes different by design?
• Does the concept of couple/ family give us any clue in cracking this case?
• How did the women who actually did break the proverbial glass ceiling do so?
• Is the MCP – Feminist war a solution or a problem?

I feel analyzing these questions (one by one) could possibly lead us to something worthwhile. Read on!

How different are the sexes?

Dr John Gray said most problems will be solved if you consider that your opposite sex is from another planet, in his best seller ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’. Now, he is talking of a big gap there! Basically Men & Women think, feel, perceive, react, respond, love, need and appreciate differently. We could enlist biological, parental influence, culture, media, education or history (Or some other factors I could have missed) for this difference. But the highlight is that the difference is indisputable and only the degree varies from individual to individual.

It would be too much of a generalization to discuss in detail character traits of a male and female but we could assume (at least for the majority) males are often associated with aggression, risk, adventure and females by contrast usually embodies the ideals of inner dignity, security, subtlety and compassion. But were these differences coincidental or part of a larger intelligent design? Let us look into how a couple works to crack this one.

What clue does a family/couple give us?

I have grown to believe that ‘family’ is the ultimate concept; we are indebted to our progenitors for conceiving it (particularly in the Indian context). Family is the smallest and most powerful part of any social structure. It is a cell or microcosm of the larger social setup. Ever wondered how a family or

How does a couple work?

couple works? A couple consists of two parts which act or think differently but in the process complement each other. Any phenomenon can be expressed as the sum of two opposing forces and the family is an epitome. The point I am coming to with the aforementioned differences of the sexes is that they (the sexes) may appear contradictory to the intellect but the deeper you dig into it you find that these differences are compensatory. They some how depend on each other; if one disappears the other will not be there. Life adjusts in such a way that it makes contradictions complementary. It is the self compensatory or complementary forces of male and female attributes that gets the family setup working. This is the cornerstone of my argument.

If we accept this argument, may be it might help us understand people who really cracked the glass ceiling in the corporate world in a better light.

How do women break the proverbial glass ceiling?

Revered people like Indra Nooyi, Kiran Bedi and Chanda Kocchar may have become the poster girls of woman emancipation but few have bothered to analyze why they could crack the glass ceiling. People talk about their education, qualification, background and so on (of course they do add value) but why are we not willing to consider the possibility that they made it because they were women and exercised their feminine qualities, which added tremendous novelty value in a heretofore male dominated corporate world? Confused – Let me explain. Indra Nooyi famously said ‘I am a mother first, then a CEO and then a wife.‘ There is scope to take a few inferences from that statement. But I am going with Chanda Kocchar to elucidate my point.

Chanda Kocchar took the reins of ICICI bank when they were undergoing an unprecedented crisis after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and speculation was rife that it was going to wreck the bank. K.V Kamath who preceded her as the CEO was all in for aggressive growth and a bulging balance sheet. He also maintain

K V Kamath and Chanda Kocchar

ed a vast network of collection agents with muscle power as their weapon to collect credit card dues. When Chanda Kocchar came to power she made shockingly contradictory motions like cutting out on unsecured high risk credit and embarked on major internal cost-cutting measures. She placed capabilities ahead of business objectives. She changed the high risk philosophy and gave stability and security its due by working from within. She said “Growth can mean various things. It isn’t just about growing the balance sheet.” What I am coming to with this is that even though Chanda Kocchar’s philosophy seems diagonally opposite to K V Kamath’s it is the best considering the climate of the time because in the long term the high risk growth cannot sustain itself without stability.

So this is how K V Kamath and Chanda Kocchar complement each other over the long term. This is exactly how the cell of society (Family) works with each different element complementing rather than contradicting each other.

This is where the woman makes her way into the male dominated corporate world. You see, they think differently and for all you know that could bring in diversity of perspective, enrich discussion, enhance decision making and make the whole setup more sensitive than an ‘Old Boy’s Club’. So evidently if the world is seeing the dawn of a competent and experienced woman it is because of nature’s law of complementing, which makes it more of a necessity than anything else. Why else do progressive economies like Norway require 40% of the board to be occupied by women? Sadly in India only 5% of the directors are women.

MCP – Feminist war a solution or a problem?

Having said all this it would be totally impractical if we were to close our eyes to the fact that women in India are victims of years of suppression and they still face problems like unequal opportunity, work condition safety, sexual harassment and so on. It will only be fair to say that men on the other hand have been victims (repeat victims) of generations of privilege and superiority bestowed on them by the society. It is also going to take time to change the habits of an entire generation.

Feminism is the retaliation to years of suppression but the question is: is the solution worse that the problem itself? Even though the text book definition of feminism sounds good to read, the concept has diluted itself. May be at the dawn they were able to create awareness and pride towards better acceptance but that is where the glory ends. Over the years it is just become an extremist idea of female sex victimizing the other sex for everything  they face. If MCP’s survive on downplaying the idea of competent women, contemporary feminists (majority taken into consideration) make a career out of  stirring up hatred towards men. If MCP’s suck, feminist suck too! Dilution has killed feminism (Taking the holistic picture). Is replacing the ‘Old boy’s club’ with an ‘Old girls club’ a solution or a problem?  The answer is anyone’s guess.

If men are changing from their MCP ways, it is not because they fear a crazy girl club making noise, it is because the idea a competent woman is an idea whose time has come and this generation is used to it and has seen genuine value in the way thing are. MCP’s and feminists are like two people sitting at two ends of a boat rowing in opposite directions. They either act as agents of stagnation together or sink together. The earlier they sink the better!

Conclusion:

Men and women are fundamentally different by design and that is how the law of nature works. Each sex has its strengths and traits and both these qualities are required for long term sustainability of any venture be it family, business or society as a whole. Over they years an imbalance has been created with concepts like ‘superior sex’ which has resulted in crap like MCPs and feminism. But what is our way forward in bridging this gap and restoring nature’s law?

You can’t brute force your way into a problem of generations. The solution is answering to the need where your strengths are coherent. In a beautiful age of meritocracy we live in time has shown us an age where qualities natural to women are respected and required for any sound practice and debate. Women should convert their natural strengths if they are to gain their due. Neither aping men nor blaming them is a way forward in this predicament. The solution lies within the woman. Chanda Kocchar opined that she dealt with the glass ceiling relying on her strengths. It all the same, nothing challenges the laws of nature – The contradictions are actually complementary!

CRICKET: Did it sound the death knell for other sports in India?

It was back in 1996 that I took up any middling Indian’s craze – Cricket. It kind of  runs in the Indian blood to the extent that cricket almost synonymous with sports here!  Everyone is an expert, if you aren’t you’re a crap bag! That’s the climate of the time. I am being the least bit sardonic when I claim that cricket transcends all human made walls in India. Raichaudhuri of IIMC opined “Cricket has been a catalyst for social transformation.”

Over the years, much like what has happened to the game itself, it is things off the field that has kept me more interested in the game. Yes Cynicism! I can’t help notice that the change cricket has undergone. The muck in the media about our de facto national sport merits no repetition. This is the first of a few post related to the only sport I actively watch. It deals with a trite topic but I still stand to express my opinion.

How did the game capture the Indian psyche to an extent that almost all other sports are non existent?

Let us start off in my own backyard – P.T. Usha regarded as one of the greatest athletes India has produced has slipped into the oblivion while the upstart cricketer Shanthakumaran Sreesanth who has comparably trivial achievement is a media baby. Thinking objectively it seems outright injustice but the question is – did cricket sound the death knell for other sports in India? I am not sure. Can I blame you if I got lower marks for an exam? It happens in all fields – when cinema started making inroads, Drama took the back seat. To understand what cricket is today we need to briefly look at the history of sport in India.

It is understood that badminton originated in India and other games of local importance were kabaddi, hockey and kusthi. The golden period of Indian hockey lasted from 1928 summer Olympics till the 1980 Moscow Olympics during which we gathered 8 gold medals and produced wizards with hockey stick like Major Dhyanchand. The team was nothing short of invincible and the populace entertained them selves glued to radio sets imagining each pass with rapt attention. Cricket was for all practical purposes non existent at that time. After this run of hockey’s total dominance in sport came a bleak period where nothing of significance happened. Then came the surprising win by team India in the Prudential Cricket World Cup 1983. Since then cricket took a radical turn and got engrained in the psyche of the masses. But it was not that cricket had a stroke of luck. It was that the guys in BCCI then had the wit to make out that the 1983 win opened up a heretofore unseen opportunity in cricket as a sport of mass appeal. They built new stadiums and brought in technology. They ran the body professionally and gave their players the share of the pie they deserved, which others sports didn’t. It’s just the case of tapping an opportunity nothing else! Now BCCI is the richest body in world cricket and Indian players are the most handsomely paid sportsmen in the game.

As evidently seen in the history of Indian sport, if the sport is entertaining and the country team has worldwide recognition people will naturally follow the game. The masses follow success and so does money. With awesome infrastructure, the best raw sporting talent is converted to world class material and the team gains further strength. It is kind of like a vicious circle….true to a market economy nature, the rich get richer and the poor stay where they are. So cricket takes multiple jumps economically where as other sports in the country stay where they are.

So the point I am coming to is that for other sports in India, there are some good takeaways from the success of cricket in India:

1. Cricket is not an infallible goliath and it need not be killed for other sports to come up
2. Result is the only way to capture the attention the masses
3. Invest in infrastructure and training facilities big time
4. See the slightest of success as a big time opportunity

Every now and again, when it comes to the question of other sports in India, Cricket is the first guy to take the blame. It is so because it is convenient to do so but it’s just another case of shameless escapism. Just because Infosys is big, it doesn’t mean that other smaller IT companies have stopped growing. Meritocracy rules in any industry and so is it with sport. Let us not hope for cricket’s sympathy for others to grow because it is just not going to happen. If others have to grow we have to work intelligently and systematically towards it (Much like cricket did). And who knows, Cricket is currently in its honeymoon period but the day it stops producing results (just like hockey) the Indian sports window is open again. It is anyone’s for the taking!

Reference:

http://www.anirudhlohia.com/blog/is-cricket-killing-other-sports-in-india/

HOBBIES: In the pursuit of lifelong pleasure!

For a majority of us lower mortals, the very mention of our name ‘XXXX’ and ‘Hobby’ in the same sentence can give us butterflies in our stomachs. Needless to mention, the reason is that there are hardly few things more ridiculous than the absence of the question “XXXX, What are your Hobbies?” in an interview. Based on one’s philosophical moorings,  one can take a Marxian view of end justifying the means and goof up a pretty colourful picture of oneself. But what interests me more is why is this question almost invariably there in the first place. Average reasoning would be that hobbies are good time pass but beyond that what is the draw?  To be very frank, until recently it had not occurred to me why hobbies are of any consequence at all. Now, understanding what really a hobby is and what the repercussions of having a ‘real’ hobby could be seems cardinal as per my ‘value’ system. Read on as I throw some perspective on Hobbies!

Understanding Hobbies:

Let’s kick off with what the Wikipedia has to say:

“A hobby is an activity or interest that is undertaken for pleasure or relaxation, often in one’s spare time.”

While that is good, most of you guys might feel out of your depth if I were to ask you to categorize your pleasure activities as Time pass, Interest, Hobby and Extra-curricular. Actually this could be a good place to start knowing yourself better. These four words though closely related actually refer to four different psychological levels of an activity. What I mean is that no activity can be a time pass and interest or timepass and hobby at the same time. Confused? Ok, let us deal with each of these four words separately:

Time pass:

What would you be doing if you having nothing else to do after reading my blog? Random surfing? A walk ? Yea, time pass is something you do to kill time; it need not even interest you!

Interest:

An interest is at the next psychological level, it is when you have a liking or taste and take interest in knowing more about something. A bathroom singer following the great singers in our country, collecting trivia and other information can be said to have an interest in music.

Hobby:

This is a quantum leap from the psychological level of an interest. Here contrary to the Wikipedia definition, hobby is practiced interest for which a person creates time for, almost on a daily or weekly basis. If suppose a manager in an MNC budgets half an hour in his daily schedule to play tennis, for him tennis has moved from the level of an interest to a hobby. He creates time for it and his

understanding and enjoyment of it is at a much higher level.

Extra-curricular:

Now, when your hobby reaches the dimension involving public or may be economic activity, it is called extra-curricular. For a person whose hobby is gardening, selling Bouquets would be making it an extra-curricular. Kamal Hassan famously said “Acting is my hobby but the fact that it is also my profession is my greatest blessing”

ENTREPRENEURSHIP: How to treat the opportunity dissonance

Throughout history there have been two categories of people – those who create wealth and those who consume it. To consume wealth we require little qualification however the creation of wealth is altogether a different proposition. Luckily for us, a classic high decibel noise generating topic among the budding managers of our country is entrepreneurship. While that is cool to hear, the cognitive dissonance is that hardly 2-3% of the Young MBAs from our talented pool take the leap every year.  Now that speaks some humble numbers. Not that these so called ‘Best in the country’ make the entrepreneur-par- excellence’s of the world but considering the climate of our times, one feels that they have the best shot at making a real socioeconomic impact. The idea of ‘entrepreneurship for everyone’ is admittantly chimerical but what the hell, these numbers suck for a land of immense opportunities like India. So I guess we need to dissect why Indians just don’t have the kick for entrepreneurship and put perspective on how Indians can get into the entrepreneurial Fast Track – Capital F Capital T!

An Indian Dilemma: What is an Entrepreneur?

Just for the uninitiated, ‘Entrepreneur’ is a loanword from French coined by economist Jean-Baptiste Say (in 1800) meaning “One who acts as an intermediary between capital and labour” which essentially means a person who is in possession of a new enterprise or venture or idea and assumes significant responsibility for the inherent risks and outcome. Now that is just a bland definition rather unromantic.

” Entrepreneurs in my perspective are people to whom freedom, individual and capitalism are not words but a way of life.”

It is exactly the kind of mental conditioning that makes them what they are. Unlike the popular social mindset it is not only the corporate Mercedes owners who are entrepreneurs; your neighbourhood smalltime vegetable shop owner is one too. I see both these people in the same light because I consider these ideals (Freedom and individual) above anything else. I’ll give you this in writing- even some of the best educated or the people in plum cushy jobs can’t run a vegetable shop with success if he doesn’t have the spark! Yea, let’s accept it; entrepreneurship requires a much higher level of individual and social conditioning than what India’s ‘Trained –for-job’ education can give.

As we dig deeper into the Indian entrepreneurial dissonance, I feel there are fundamentally 4 questions that can lead us to an answer:

1)      What is the Indian entrepreneurial legacy?

2)     What social impact is an entrepreneur capable off in the Indian context?

3)      What is the skill set required at the individual level?

4)      What can we do to promote entrepreneurship?

ENGINEER–MBA romance : The True Story

Taking cue from the high decibel noise being generated about the MBA degree for engineers theories, i feel much like Gregory Roberts rightly put it- ‘Truth is a bully we all pretend to like’. We just can’t be in denial to the fact that there are lots of engineers who have feelings for the MBA degree. Well, 90% of the top B-schools entrants in our country are engineers for crying out loud! Being an ‘Engineer’ and a MBA aspirant I guess I could bring a bit of perspective to the Engineer-MBA romance. I would like to believe that it need not necessarily be “I know nuts about tech stuff and decided that the better things in life begin with an MBA.” Read on as I try to discern this relation and possibly dig deeper to justify this drama which lots of MBA aspirant engineers stage every year.

Understanding an Engineer:

Ok, now who wants to read something ironical? 2 years after successfully completing a B Tech course, I struggle for words to a potentially stumping question for many of my types – ‘Define: Engineer’. Whomp! It turns out engineer comes from the Latin root “Ingenium,” meaning “cleverness.” Ironically, a majority of the 50,000 (AICTE stat) engineers mass produced in India’s education mafia plantations don’t exactly qualify as “Clever” because for all you know, not even 18% of these people are “Employable.”

Fundamentally a good bachelor of the engineering discipline is expected to:

Plan, Design, Organise and Execute safe solutions to practical problems or improvement to the status quo using manpower, resources, time and money to the satisfaction of all parties involved.

– Industry Expectation 0f an Engineer

The above statement will qualify as the expectation from an engineer by any industry. But an engineer during the four years of his/her professional education is forcibly exposed to only the ‘Design’ factor in the above definition which primarily involves only applying mathematics, scientific knowledge and ingenuity considering technical constraints.

Cultural aspects of an engineer:

No one has mocked engineers better than Scott Adam’s Dilbert. Checkout the knack:

Dilbert opines that engineering is a domain for nerds and he enlists idiosyncrasy of style, hopelessness in dating and obsession with tools and tech products as their classic traits. Another difficulty engineers face with their profession is that average people in the typical run of life don’t have personal dealings with engineers, even though they benefit from their work everyday by contrast to a doctor, accountant and occasionally even a lawyer! Even if we take Dilbert’s theory with a pinch of salt the writing on the wall for a good engineer is the general lack of social skill.

Taking the other side of the coin, an engineer as person is taught to take a scientific approach (systematic knowledge-base capable of resulting in a correct prediction) to anything. Engineering is a science of possibility and imagination and pure science traces the theory behind the application. So fundamentally, an engineer is a person who has armed himself with inward thinking and the ability to ask questions towards a solution. Plus he is comfortable with numbers. He is a utility creator albeit working away from the actual user!

THE LAST LECTURE: Leaving behind a Legacy that will Inspire Generations

A couple of months ago, my Sis presented me with a book called the ‘The Last Lecture’ but for reasons I can’t quite pin down today, I just put on the backburner. Finally when I overcame my indifference and picked up the book it turned out that I couldn’t put it down till I flipped the last printed page on it. It struck a chord with me like few others and hence bucking my usual scheme of typing in the synopsis on the Books I’ve Read page, I am actually going to post why this book is special.

Synopsis (Book Filpside):

A lot of professors give talks titled “The Last Lecture.” Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can’t help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn’t have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave–”Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”–wasn’t about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because “time is all you have…and you may find one day that you have less than you think”). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

It struck a chord : My bag of goodies

Reading this book was a truly humbling and emotional experience. But this experience came with its bag of goodies. Randy talks of what he came to believe in life which might seem like cliché stuff to the some but I felt it was classic! What I have complied below is the stream of thought that came while I read this book. I felt it was worth sharing. Read on!

#1 The Parent lottery:

Most of the things we take for granted are seldom valued till they are lost. We forget to feel lucky and grateful about being born with a winning ticket – the almost perfect parents! The selflessness of a mothers love has never failed to fascinate me. My dad is awesome too. Many a time in life I have found myself channeling my dad, more like recycling a few of his choicest bits of wisdom. They have loved me enough to let me free at the same time being my best critics not letting their love warp their judgement. Wow! I won the parent lottery at birth -  a born winner – Awesome feeling!

GREY PHILANTHROPY: How even cheap hypocrisy gets applause

The mere utterance of ‘Philanthropy’ and ’Hypocrisy’ in the same sentence can make most of my readers uncomfortable, that, of course is because when it comes to philanthropy the conventional wisdom is to think in terms of positive superlatives. Philanthropy is about a big heart and a sincere desire to help the less lucky. But the fact is that few people are qualified for sainthood, the majority of just aren’t born with the equipment. However, as a witness of fraud benevolence, I feel I must serve value as a hedge against complacent thinking. So without further ado, allow me elucidate my experience at an education fund function for 40 underprivileged students and try to explain why this group of sponsors might have had another less obvious selfish social agenda than the outwardly sincere welfare of the students. Read on!

The Scenario: Where hypocrisy is staged

So, incidentally, I went to this function with a cited reason of helping about 40 meritorious students pursue their education financially. I was thrilled at the prospect of being indirectly part of this great initiative, I mean, is there any better way to financially liberate underprivileged families than by education? The sponsors were a club of Neo-rich NRI Mallus with a shade more than 400 families of which close to 25 families had come down to Kerala solely for the event. This event was staged the biggest auditorium in a small picturesque town in Kerala. So much for that. Things from here on are gonna get brutally frank, only god knows how I have been able to keep the below few paragraphs within the parliamentary category!

KERALA’S ALTER EGO: Hartal & Unionism

Kerala, the place of uber smart 100% literates has earned the dubious distinction of being the only state in the country or the world maybe where a shut down call by any group will be a surefire success. Hartal and Unionism are two indelible factors of Kerala’s social psyche and mind you, you would be mistaken if you think anything could be worse. Read on as I try to discern these two social phenomena and the reason behind its stickiness in Kerala. This post by Radical perception is part of the ‘Kerala Unravelled’ series.

Kerala: Hartals Own country?

This is how a normal harthal day looks like: not a bird moves out of its nest, like a graveyard, All marks of civilization are absent, no commerce, no German or Detroit luxury cars, its like going back to the age of cavemen with sticks. It’s like some conspiracy theory to prevent global warming!

10 men with modern ammunition terrorise Mumbai, 5 men in Shirt and Lungi with no ammunition save a lousy tongue can make the whole of Kerala come to a standstill. Oh lord it is a miracle!

Now, the best part of a hartal is that more than 90% of the people don’t know what the hartal is

about. The moment a hartal is announced Keralites start making plans for staying indoors. Playing cards in gangs, boozing and sleeping is how mallus celebrate their ‘State holiday’. Our media helps the cause by beaming their best movies on hartal days.

Success and numbers are indisputable. A total of 168 hartals were observed in 2006 and the stats haven’t improved significantly over the years. This is a definite wealth destruction activity to the tune of Rs 2000 cr every year in tangible destruction. This amounts to a tenth of Kerala’s annual budget! Achievement via Hartal : Zilch!