RootCause

Mahogany leaves

2012-02-19T09:11:00.000-08:00

You know it is the beginning of our spring in Bangalore when the Mahogany sheds its leaves. Indeed, I never cease to be amazed at just how many Mahogany trees there are in the city, judging from the millions of leaves on most roads in the older residential areas. The early mornings are a joy to behold, for all through the night the leaves have gently drifted down onto the road, forming a carpet of shades of brown.

This morning I am out with my son in Defence Colony. He is on his little cycle, while I am on foot, jogging to keep pace with him. We pass an impatient supervisor from the Municipality, who is ordering the street sweepers to sweep the roads clean of leaves, while they grumble and gossip amongst themselves. I would love to see the carpet of leaves remain, but……

One of the sweepers has a little child. He is an active fellow and cannot sit still, which feature draws my attention. I then notice his preoccupation: he picks up many leaves that have been swept onto the side of the road, drops some and collects the rest, comparing them to the ones he has put away, sizing them for colour, shape, form and condition. He pays close attention to each leaf, as if it were a potential friend and takes an instant decision to reject or add to the pile by his side.

“Do you like these leaves?” I ask in Tamil
“Yes.”
“But why are you collecting them?”
He does not have an immediate answer, prompting me to repeat the q.
“Because,” he replies, “I don’t get so many at any other time of the year.”

I continue my walk-jog, marvelling at the reply. A Honda Civic, with a busy, harried owner at the helm, drives past me at some speed and over a leaf-carpet, sending a rush of leaves up into the air. There are a number of morning walkers – brisk, tuned individuals – most of whom have ear-plugs with music on, a tight exercise schedule and certainly no time for leaves. I cross a small group of college students, walking to their tuition class, all with their heads down, their attention exclusively on the the mobiles in their palms.

Fifteen minutes later, we are back a full circle and the boy has followed his mother further down the road, his collection of Mahogany leaves in a plastic bag. He is still looking around, but clearly, with a satisfactory collection, his standards are now high. As i cross them – mother and child – I wonder just how inaccurate English is as a language. We don’t grow to be adults, we regress to that condition.

Srini's List

2012-01-31T09:34:00.000-08:00

Srini was, very possibly, the most competitive loser in our batch at IIM.

I distinctly remember my first impressions of him – a tall fellow, with a big belly that clearly advertised his weakness for all things carbohydrated, a neatly combed shock of hair with a lock of it falling onto his forehead, a moustache that was never allowed to fulfill its potential and a prominent, out-sized bottom much like the stomach but in the reverse direction, which caused much merriment over the two years he spent on campus. Yet it was his voice that was the most distinctive feature. It was a scratchy, harsh voice, much like the drongo’s and more indicative of a rough barrel making its way down a road, a voice devoid of humour, with a flat tone that rose to an unpleasant pitch when his competitive spirit was aroused to a challenge. The overall impression of the man was of a bull in a china shop, albiet one with a rather sore throat.

An early indication of the competitive spirit was provided when the first party was hosted on campus. This was a getting-to-know-you sort of event, where we, the freshers, put up the usual stuff like Hotel California and the odd jamba. Srini was horrified (as indeed any true TamBrahm would like to be) and dismissive, and shunned it with the words “I am here to study, not to party”, words that immediately acquired cult status. This is exactly the kind of thing you don’t say on campus. The one thing that you are expected to do but expected to pretend that you never do is study. Such niceties were lost on him and this, we realised over the next many months, was typically Srini. He would not hesitate to speak his mind, most often saying precisely the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person at the wrong place or publicly dismissing those he saw as inadequate (in front of them, needless to add).

In class, Srini was intensely competitive, scanning the horizon for the brainy and the studious, the ones with a history of ranks and those in the ranks of history. If any of these folks asked a question, Srini's would be the next. When he asked a question, his mellifluous voice was much like the movement of finger nails on glass. The strong willed would clench their fists, most would grind their teeth and cross their toes. Presumably, the faculty felt the same way as they were (occasionally) human, so it was no wonder that his many queries were often answered in a tone of finality, with no second question entertained.

My paths with Srini crossed right in the first trimester, where a key subject was financial accounting. Now, I was at best an average guy at academics, reserving my hidden genius for such intellectual pursuits as putting up posters of events, imbibing midnight tea, practising for a future speech that I would make as a Chief Executive and the like (as you can see, I still don’t admit that I did study). Yet accounts was a forte, having done my undergraduation in it. When I did well in the first accounts quiz, Srini had me in his sights. I recall a moment one evening when I went to his room to pick up a handout and saw a list that he had put up on the wall. It was a neat list of the classmates he considered to be competition, with their grades in all subjects. My name, I was mortified to see, was on it. I went back to my gang of friends, in some agitation, for grades are confidential and about as personal as your toothbrush. The gang, having adequately dosed on spirits, was waiting for me to join them and the list became a subject of intense discussion; some of them suggested that we lodge a complaint against this restrictive and unfair trade practice. In the end, we chose to stay silent (while the next day’s hangover went away).

Interestingly, for all his competitive zeal, his hundred percent attendance, the copious notes, the determined use of the library and the relentless pursuit of past questions, Srini never really was a topper, though he was, I will happily admit, a darn sight better than I could have been. The more he saw himself as a loser the more competitive he became as I discovered when, sometime in the third semester, more by necessity than by choice, I happened to drop by his room again,

The list was there, of course. Some names had been added to it. My name had been neatly scratched out. If there was anything that could have caused greater mortification, intense chagrin and wrenching indignity than having my name on that list, it was having my name scratched out from that list. With my ego in terminal decline, I slunk back to the room determined to undo this affront, this inconvenient truth. My place on Srini's list was my only goal.
The feeling lasted for about a couple of hours after which I slept well and found the next day far too beautiful to spend on a text book.

Srini, of course, did not change in all the time I saw him on campus. Years later, when I thought I saw his form emerge from a chair at an airport, I stood behind a pillar with my head buried in a newspaper till the danger had passed and all was well. He works, I am told, with a large manufacturing company in New Delhi. Some classmates have allegedly met him at airports over the years (and not hidden behind pillars), and most reports indicate that the two protrusions on either side have only grown. Yet, frustratingly, no one has asked him if he still keeps his list on a wall; now possibly a list of potential competitors for the top job in his company.

When Hans Came Visiting

2012-01-08T22:28:00.000-08:00

When Henri Stader III (Hans) called me from Singapore Airport, he was all excited. “I have just met,” he breathed into the phone, “a woman called Cynthia over on the flight from LA. She's fabulous company and gorgeous; we spent much of the flight just getting to know each other and I must plan my return to coincide with hers.” I was hardly surprised, for I had long known that you could get Hans charged up about a telephone pole if there was an attractive skirt draped around it.

“Is your Indian Airlines flight to Chennai on time?”
“Alas, yes,” he sighed, and hung up to go back to his new girlfriend.

Hans was as American as they come. The son of Henri Stader II (who, no doubt, was the illustrious son of Henri Stader I, all of which means that they had a problem with finding a book of names whenever it was needed), Hans was a magna-cum-laude from some US univ or the other and worked as a VP in an American investment bank that was our joint venture partner. He was a tall, well-built, friendly fellow, with a long face that reminded me of Stan Laurel (of Laurel & Hardy fame) and a smile that could be charming, sardonic or entirely artificial. Like most American investment bankers, he had an attention span that varied from about 18 to 25 seconds (on the outside), considerable stated arrogance when needed and a natural propensity to make some really cool presentations. I knew Hans well for, just a couple of months prior to his India visit, I had spent a month at LA in 1996, with him as my host. He had been hospitable and had spent a weekend driving me around, yet my primary impression was of a fellow who was rather vacuous in the head and driven to distraction by just about any pretty face.

Hans’ India itinerary was to land in Chennai, where my colleague, Chandra, would meet him for an hour, after which he would take the Bangalore flight. He would work with us for a week and return. Simple enough. When he landed in Bangalore, it would be my turn to host him, not an entirely unpleasant prospect, for he could make sparkling conversation and be a perfect guest.

Some hours later, I had an anxious call from Chandra, who was at the Chennai airport. The Indian Airlines flight had landed, all passengers had gone past immigration and indeed left, but of Hans there was no clue. I was convinced of course that he had, in his infatuation, done some fat-headed thing, yet there was little any of us could do but wait.

When the call did come, it was three hours later. Hans was at the Taj Hotel, at Colombo, Sri Lanka and a shaken man.

He had quite a story to relate: landing in Chennai, he was told at Immigration that his visa had expired. Just how he could board the flight at Singapore with an expired visa was a flummoxing question that remains unanswered, yet he first didn’t believe it and later, as it became clear that he was in the wrong for not having checked such a basic detail, he began to get increasingly belligerent with the immigration officer, which, you will doubtless agree, is a particularly bad idea. He demanded that the visa be renewed at that moment – a laughable request – and, when that was turned down, that he speak to the American Embassy, which request was also denied. The situation was turning grim: the immigration officer was on the verge of stamping “Deported” on his passport – the ultimate humiliation to any American – after which he would have to take the next flight out of India, when a kindred soul suggested helpfully that the same aircraft that had brought him to Chennai would be flying to Colombo in an hour and that Sri Lanka did not require Americans to have a visa to visit. This was real serendipity (pun intended, for Serendip was Sri Lanka’s original name!).

To buy a ticket to Colombo was with him the work of an instant and, on arrival, he checked into the Taj, a safe hotel in what was otherwise an unsafe country for foreigners at that time. His boss in the US, he said, had given him a dressing down and added that he bloody well stay in the hotel till the visa was done and not move around.
All’s well, we breathed easy, that ends well. My colleague began the complex task of working on getting a visa for the fellow by pulling strings in the right quarters.

I called Hans a few hours later and he seemed relaxed now. “I have just had the most incredible food here at the hotel. Dinner seems inviting as well.”
The next morning, he called in with encomiums about the food again. Clearly, Hans was having a feast.
On the third morning though, when he called, I could barely recognise his voice, punctuated by a series of groans. He was down in bed with a most upset stomach, the result of over-indulgence in spice, fish, sausages and about everything else at the buffett. Mr. Henri Stader III was now terribly ill, the hotel doctor had been summoned and our traumatised friend had stayed up all night, making frequent, emergency trips to the bathroom. Much as I tried to commiserate with his plight, it was, at once, comical and entertaining and so typical of the fellow to goof up at the slightest opportunity. I hopefully made the right noises in sympathy and continued the work the next day as he gave me session-wise updates on his health, thankfully omitting the gory details.

When Hans finally reached Bangalore two days later, he seemed a changed man. Three kilos lighter – not from having thrown his weight around, for a change – he now spoke in a softer voice, and was visibly weak (and not just in the head, so the condition had now spread in some sense). He spent a few days in Bangalore coming to work, but was clearly preoccupied with recouping his health, in which effort, of course, all of us in office had much unneccessary advice to offer.

On the day of his return, I thought some sympathy was in order. “You have had a difficult trip, Hans,” I said, “ and I hope the return will be fine.”
His face, I recall distinctly, was glum. “All this was OK,” he replied, “ but I have missed the return flight to LA with Cynthia.”

Hans hadn’t changed after all.

Reduce : your agenda for 2012

2011-12-10T18:03:00.000-08:00

Sometime in the last quarter of this year, the population on the planet touched seven billion. Many commentators found it an easy subject to speak about, brushing up on their Malthusian economics and making a number of predictions, some optimistic, some dire. Many, in particular, picked on poor Paul Ehrlich, a pioneering biologist and Professor of Population Studies at Stanford, whose only fault was that he errored on the side of caution by predicting doom, caused by a population explosion. He was mirroring the views of Malthus, who had said something similar in the late 18th century, arguing that there were resource limits to growth.

There was, in the media, a sense of celebration about the seven billion figure. Irrefutable data is now available, many said, about how human ingenuinity is solving most of our problems : wars are becoming less, as is cruelty, people have more food per capita and are living longer and there is less poverty than there was, say, a couple of decades ago. The conclusion is that population is no longer a threat to the survival of the planet or indeed our species. Indeed, there is much to agree with in these assertions and the data presented is robust and, hence, trustworthy.

There were pessimists as well. Human ingenuity has its limits, they said, and the stagnation in food production the World over is but an example. Moreover, the population growth is largest in the poorest countries, which only exacerbates conflict, hunger and low life expectancy. It is also a fact that increased populations have put severe pressure on our oxygen tanks,ie, the forests………and so on. There is little to refute here as well.

As you can see, the debate can be confusing and, perhaps, quite irrelevant, since nothing in this is within our control. A good idea then is to speak of just what is within our range of influence and is perhaps a much larger cause for concern : our senseless consumption patterns.

Consider the following :

1. India hosted its first F1 race, a wasteful exercise in wanton consumption as tonnes of material were shipped and airlifted half-way around the World and back again, all for a couple of hours of entertainment for the crowd in the stadium (over 90% of the viewership of the race was on TV, not live, so location does not really make sense).

2. In Kerala, around Onam, about Rs. 240 crores of liquor was sold this year, which works out to Rs. 80 per capita. This does not include the vibrant business of import of foreign liquor through informal channels. Wine is an unusual beverage in India, about which most consumers know nothing, yet its consumption in India in 2010 was about 16 million litres. A significant part of this comes from Australia and the US.

3. A report on the Indian automotive industry noted that the number of car models for a buyer to choose from had exceeded one hundred. There are now 104 distinct models of vehicles in the Indian market. As a result of this bewildering choice, people are compelled to keep up even if they do not really need a new car.

4. The Outlook magazine reported in its latest issue that there were two hundred and fifty two food shows on air across Indian television channels, all espousing the cause of consumption.

5. In a recent issue of The Mint Lounge, a mobile phone by Tag Hueur costing Rs. 13 lakhs was profiled; it had diamonds, mother-of-pearls and white lizard skin.

6. We visited a family who have recently relocated from the United States. In their living room, I saw the largest LCD television set ever. You could lay it on the ground, put a mattress on it and use it as a comfortable bed for a child. They have a second television for their two kids as well.

Such data is cause for despair. This issue of consumption, utterly egregious consumption, is far more difficult an issue than population to deal with, since it involves attitudes, beliefs and, that most indefinable facet of human emotional intelligence, ego.

For the first time in human history, we have a surfeit of products, services and experiences to buy and no shortage of money. This has generated a cycle of economic growth in urban India which is as dissatisfying to consumers as it is environmetally catastrophic – more product sales bring more money to those who buy different products, the sale of which give stakeholders more money and so on – and is best measured by the Gross Domestic Product, a most abused statistic in its use as an index of human well being. As we all know, a smaller and smaller proportion of each middle class family’s income is being spent on necessities and a great deal more on discretionary bits, most of which we could classify as contributing to an unsustainable lifestyle at the expense of the planet. I never point this out to people, since they will in turn ask me to look at all those around them and then say, “ but they are all doing it, so the problem is not with me, it’s with you.” Yet, this is hardly an answer. As Betrand Russell once famously said : “if fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”

The consumption in India has gone up so much and so fast that the resultant inequality in society is engendering a mass conflict. The Supreme Court, in a landmark judgement earlier this year, connected the dots between the Maoist conflict in Chattisgarh and consumption. “The root cause of the problem,” it said, “lies in the culture of unrestrained selfishness and greed spawned by modern neo-liberal economic ideology, and the false promises of ever-increasing spirals of consumption leading to economic growth that will lift everyone (out of poverty)….”

Even as we binge ourselves sick on stuff, Earth is paying a heavy price. An analysis by the International Energy Agency recently found emissions had risen by a record amount in 2010, despite the worst recession in eighty years. In that one year alone, the rise in annual carbon dioxide emitted was 1600,000,000 tonnes (1.6 gigatonnes) – this is just the increase, mind you, the total emission was 30.6 gigatonnes. Each one of us – middle and upper-middle class Indians – have pitched in with disproportionate contributions to this in our own way by buying, buying and, well, more buying of goods, services and experiences (such as travel). As more people join the middle class, and newer products load already-groaning shelves in shops, this feeding frenzy will only increase.

The consumption footprint of each of us is now eerily global. To feed our insane demand for things (and hence, their packaging), the supply comes from everywhere on Earth. Just as most of our electronic goods come from China, some of their material come from, well, India – the Bellary mines, for instance, supplied a huge part of the iron needed for the Beijing Olympics’ infrastructure and Goa’s rich forest wealth is being decimated to export ore all over the World to feed the rich World (of which the reader of this note is an intrinsic part). We spoke of wine earlier; a large part of the apples we eat come from New Zealand, US and China, while the fuel that transports them across India comes from Russia and the Middle East. This is asinine, senseless, profligacy.

In September, the Economist reported that Chinese demand had ended a century of steadily falling raw material costs for rich-world consumers. Industrial raw material prices fell by around 80% in real terms (ie, adjusted for inflation) between 1845 and 2002. But much of the ground lost over 150 years has been recovered in the space of just a decade. Iron ore, for instance, now fetched $ 178 a tonne, compared with $ 13 a tonne in 2001, despite the doubling of iron ore production in this period.

China, though, is not the problem.
Our demand for Chinese products is the problem.

Surprisingly, no one wants you to lead a simpler, less consumptive life. The Government wants you to consume more and increase GDP and the corporate sector, which obviously wants higher profits from higher sales, downloads data on us such as, “the per capita consumption of diapers in India is one-seventh that of Vietnam” or some such tripe. The acute pressure, of course, is from peers and your own family would want to keep pace on the consumption treadmill for the rudimentary, temporary joy it offers.

Yet, we must buck the trend. If we chose to not consume and look back at the many many generations before us who made their money painfully and hence consumed wisely, there would be lot to learn. For the future of our planet – which is now in deep peril, make no mistake - there is no solution, no quick-fix, no counter-balance other than scaling back on our lifestyle and leading simpler lives, by thinking a hundred times before we buy and a thousand times before we throw.

Make 2012 a breakthrough year. Reduce.
It’s the least you can do for the planet.

Apumaan

2011-11-17T03:19:00.000-08:00

Apumaan was unique.

Not for his looks though. If you walk on any road in Kerala, you will see a hundred like him: he was an elderly, small fellow, thin and dark, with teeth that precariously dangled from their perch, a shiny pate protected from the sun by the ubiquitous umbrella and a handwoven mundu that defined his Malu identity.
Not for the work that he did, for he did nothing in particular.
Not even for his intellect, for after many attempts at law, he came to the robust conclusion that the examiners had hatched a collective conspiracy to suppress natural talent.

Three decades after he passed away, Apumaan remains in my memory for his unique, unsurpassed ability as a story teller.

Every year, when my family made the annual trip to Kerala from Assam, my only question would be to know when Apumaan would visit – for I had waited a year for the hour. On an evening, around dusk, he would duly shuffle in, just as we had finished our baths, a crooked smile playing around the corners, a tooth or two at a rakish angle for sheer effect. Apumaan’s entry was always dramatic in its own way. He was the only one who could call my grandmother – his cousin – ‘Mayi’; taking a chair he would rag her with outstanding good-natured ribbing, while the rest of the joint family giggled by the side. My grandmother had a wonderful sense of humour as well and, as I write this, I can see her bobbing up and down in her chair, the loose skin on her hands swaying under the weight of her laughter. Yet this adult talk was but the prelude, the overture, to something more. Turning to me, Apumaan would then say, “so, since your coming here, have you seen Gudugudu Panda walking about outside?” The children would now bunch up together, their small figures erect, eyes as large as saucers, mouths ajar, for it was a name that evoked trepidation, mystery and the horror of the omnipresent evil one. No, we would say, in unison.

“Well, I just met him,” Apumaan would continue merrily, “ and he had the little drum in his hand as always, the one that goes gudugudu-gudugudu and he was asking about all of you. (Involuntary shivers from the audience). I told him that there was a little boy who had just come from Assam,……” as I cringed, he would add “… but I also told him there was nothing much for him here. Did you know what this cunning fellow did the other day?”

…and the story would begin and go on for a long, long time, each moment challenging our imagination and moving us from mirth to fascination to consternation and then back again. As he spoke of the evil fellow's wrongdoing, his face would darken up, the pitch would lower to a whisper (for Gudugudu Panda was outside listening in) and the eyes would narrow. And, as he regaled us with how this same fellow had slipped and fallen in the banana patch of the farm, there would be the crooked smile at the corner of his mouth and a twinkle in the eye. The twinkle, yes, that described Apumaan best.

All of us children would sit transfixed, bewitched by the story and the story teller, while the rest of the family sat at a distance and marvelled at his ability. When the performance was over, the tea sipped, a last little dig taken at Mayi, Apumaan would look at us once with a serious eye, “When I meet Him on my way out, what shall I say?” and then carefully listen to all our answers and messages. He would then shuffle off into the darkness, with his torch and his umbrella, a lonely (and heroic) figure.

Could anyone have asked for more ?

Of Chicken Feed and Ego

2011-10-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

Much of what I know of animal nutrition owes itself to Dr. Venkateswarlu Rao, a most interesting, if eccentric, character.

Dr. Rao owned a company in Chennai (that still exists), specialising in providing nutritional supplement to the poultry industry. As an investment officer in TDICI, a venture fund, I had prospected his company, found it interesting and got my fund to invest a tidy sum of money in it. It was not a bad decision, for the company’s business seemed profitable, its bank was very happy with it and the market was attractive and growing.

The problem was not the company. It was Dr. Rao.

He was (and possibly still is) a man with a colossal ego, with three favourite subjects for prime-time discussion : his achievements, his brilliance and his (outstanding) future. These subjects gripped him and he would analyse himself with delight, much as an archaeologist would dance around mummies. He, in a sentence, could not actually believe that he was real.

His bank manager, Dr. Rao would proclaim, blanched at the thought of losing his client and possibly had his picture up on the wall with the pantheon.. His competitors slept with their lights on at night, his customers stood in serpentine queues to buy his products and joint venture partners crowded every flight into Chennai. His employees, he would freely admit, were rather vacuous in the head, yet the company average for intelligence exceeded the ordinary by miles, thanks to one brilliant man (he would add the last bit with much modesty). Such encomium to himself was often substantiated by examples in graphic detail. Somewhere along this rather tiresome monologue that I was subject to every time I visited, there would be some information for me on the market and the current issues he faced (nothing, of course, was a challenge to this eminent personality). I must add that the man was very good at his business - most such men are – yet the self-praise was way out of proportion.

In keeping with this personality, he had a large house in Chennai, with statues and fountains (and statues-cum-fountains), a couple of nasty guard dogs, many servants and a couple of imported cars that underlined his perceived stature, and was a member of the city’s golf club, where he remained a rather petulant novice, for golf has an abrupt way of deflating self-esteem.

Notably, he liked me a great deal due to my patient hearing of his achievement list every time we met. I would nod politely as he spoke and make the right assertions everytime I sensed he was fishing for a compliment. If this put him in a good mood, I would then begin a discussion on the issues I had planned to raise. When he visited us in Bangalore, he would be escorted right to a conference room for a few minutes with a VP or even possibly the CEO. The hope, of course, was that the hours I spent would translate one day into a satisfactory return on investment for my company.
The company expanded its capacity as a result of our investment and grew well for the next three years to about Rs. 25 crores, yet the stock markets had changed in the period, making it very hard for small companies to raise public funds or provide us a market exit for our initial investment. Dr.Rao had little desire to let go of his baby in any way (this is not uncommon amongst Indian entrepreneurs). He approached us for a buy-back of our shareholding in early 1997. It was a time of change in my company: we had a new CEO who came with strong preset ideas, including a dim view of the animal feeds business. After many years at TDICI, I had got a job elsewhere and was leaving, so a colleague of mine, less used to the remarkable Dr. Rao, was assigned to the task of negotiating with him.

Within a few days of my departure from TDICI, I had a distress call from Dr. Rao. Could I please get involved again, he pleaded. His tone now changed to anger : the new fellow (the dealing officer who was my substitute) and his boss (TDICI’s new CEO) were both hopeless, most arrogant and had had the temerity, the cheek, the bloody gall, to make him, the Dr. Rao who was the gold standard for animal nutrition, sit in the reception before a meeting. During the meeting, his company apparently was referred to as a ‘small’ player in the animal feeds business, in the course of conversation. This was, of course, factually true: the company was a small player, yet my colleague had made a fatal error and undone a careful effort, perhaps in the belief that it would give him a negotiation advantage. When you work with an egocentric chap like Dr. Rao, it is useful to choose your words with care and pander to his self-esteem, as long as you have nothing to lose. Yet this was not kept in mind. If you look at the structure of the neck and head in the human body, it is far easier to look down than to look up and we follow this instinct with alacrity, with little understanding of the other personality.

I politely declined to be involved and made the right noises in sympathy. Dr. Rao’s anger though, was unflinching, “I will show them who wins this battle,” he said. And, while I only heard snippets of the negotiation over the next few months, he was true to his word. Months later, he had made it difficult enough for my erstwhile employer to make a modest return, when I believed then (as I do now) that we could have made a lot more.

A final point : What struck me as most remarkable was an often ignored aspect of a person’s display – his signature. Dr. Rao’s was a lengthy sign-off that took about a tenth of a page’s surface area and had stylish peaks as he wrote his name and a long line in the middle, followed by a flourish in the end. Could his personality be one with his signature, I wondered. Or, to put it differently, was it possible for a reader to deduce a person’s personality by the signature? Over subsequent years, I have tried to study this in considerable depth and must have looked at a thousand signatures. My conclusion is that the signature often tells us little, but there are many occasions, possibly five times out of ten, when it stands out and exposes a person’s personality very accurately.

Dollar Parity to a Pound (of flesh)

2011-10-03T03:57:00.000-07:00

August 13th, 2011 – on the first day of our batch reunion : There was a silence as Prof Prakash Apte began to speak. “As you guys know,” he intoned in a dry voice, his face showing no expression, “when I set a question paper for the senior batch, I hope it will dissuade the junior batch from taking my course in the following year……” There was laughter around the room as many from my batch from IIM Bangalore relived, in that instant, the moments we had spent in the examination room in the monsoon of 1990.

International Finance (‘IntFin’) was the course that defined Finance in more ways than one. The senior batch that had just graduated had warned us about Prof Apte; he was brilliant, of course, and committed and would expect such brilliance and commitment from his students. Take it at your own risk, they warned. Most of us took this warning lightly, for the senior batch had a reputation for being indolent and Hedonistic. When the time came to make our choice of courses for the term, there was a rush to enrol for IntFin.

In my first year at IIM, I was firmly in the middle of the class as grades went, never displaying a spark of genius or capacity for hard work. At the beginning of the II year, having decided to major in Finance, I opted for IntFin as well and hence jostled for my place in the herd, ignoring an inner voice that pleaded the case for sanity.

The course began well enough and I was just beginning to think that there was a particular issue of IQ with our seniors, when Apte moved into second gear. Apte is an innocuous looking fellow of medium height. He would stride into class, the veritable academic, his body stooped and leaning forward as if delicately balancing the inordinate weight of his brain, hands behind his back, hair combed in a schoolboy manner, whistling a low tune. Working on the assumption that we had read all that he had asked us to (a most far fetched assumption, if there ever was one), he would turn to the blackboard and begin a series of arcane mathematical calculations, speaking with passion to the piece of chalk in his hand. The majority of those behind him would be either staring with their mouths open, copying things down furiously in the hope that one day they would understand it all or coping with the morning’s hangover that had just come back, yet student reaction was never a factor to deter him. A precious few, who were both intellectually astute and diligent, were just above the water mark and would answer the odd question he threw. When the class was done, my friends – all of whom were in the middle of the batch academically – and I would ponder on just who could help translate the gibberish we had written into any variant of decipherable English.

If this was not enough, the other courses that I had chosen were demanding as well. On campus, I was known to be happy-go-lucky sort of chap, hardly academic, very sociable and particularly fond of my sleep. This underwent dramatic transformation in a few days as the immediate future loomed over.

Most of us in the class approached the mid term exams with apprehension and some anxiety, when Apte made a startling announcement. The mid-terms for IntFin, he announced, would be optional. If you took the test, it would have a weightage of 40% , with the rest being the weightage for the final exam. If you did not take the test, the final exam would be the one big showdown.

I remember the child-like delight that we all exhibited at the news; the goalpost was now far away. It was time to live life up again. Some, a pitifully small number, took the mid-term exams; they scarcely slept the night before and came back from the exam room with good news – the paper was not difficult. Not easy, of course, but not difficult.

Once the mid-term exams were over, Apte moved into fourth gear. I had now, of course, given up hope of ever understanding the subject beyond its rudiments, but the information we had on the mid-term and his correction style were comforting to know.

Days flew by and it was time for the final exams. On the night before IntFin, I was irritable and tense and, when my friend Chotu played a practical joke (having not taken IntFin, he was in a light, almost elevated, mood), I grew very angry and threw quite a fit. Most of us slept for but an hour and, with a final short prayer, entered the exam room.

Apte was there, of course, with his low whistle. As he handed out the papers, I looked at mine disbelievingly. There was nothing in the whole paper that I could understand, nothing at all. Surely, he had got the subject wrong, for I could not be this out-of-depth. I closed my eyes, tried to calm myself and believe that lack of sleep had something to do with it. A second reading and a couple of lines - out of a couple of hundred – made some sense.
I looked around. Most seemed shell shocked and were staring at the unfathomable language on the page. Rahul, a big, bear of a fellow, got up and walked upto Apte. Submitting a blank answer sheet to him, he asked if he could write the re-exam (IIM offers a student a second chance at writing an exam). Apte took the paper and continued his whistle, entirely non-committal, while Rahul shuffled out of the room. Well, there was one worse off than me.

I must have spent about twenty minutes answering all that I knew on a page-and-a-half of the answer sheet. Over the next couple of hours that I sat silently in the exam room, I pondered on the implication of failure, even if I wrote this damn exam a second time, my future and possibly a lost career. Those hours seemed interminable, the consequences unacceptable, yet real.

What was remarkable was just how little everyone spoke in the hours and days after the exam. Some brave ones said that they had done well. This only compounded the misery of others, as the IIMs follow a relative grading system – your grade depends on the performance of your peers as much as it depends on your own. Most kept quiet and never I suppose has there been a greater call for divine intervention originating from the campus.

When the results were announced, they were predictable : I had got 23%.
As I was struggling to come to terms with reality, a friend fetched up. “The pass mark,” he said, “ is 18% .” That day, I did not just pass, I passed out.

Most of those who did well in the subject were those who took their mid-terms. There must have been a lesson here on why one should not procrastinate, yet, like most Humans, I never learnt it.

ps : over the last two decades, there have been a few occasions when the IntFin paper has been relived in my sleep. I always wake up with a bit of sweat around the brow, and look at the life around me with renewed delight.

A Tale of Two Ambulances, One Doctor, Zero Impact

2011-09-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I was out on the road, travelling to two villages, both close to Bandipur National Park but about forty kilometres away from each other. As we neared the first village, I noticed a vehicle that looked like an ambulance parked by the side of a road in an hamlet. I stopped the car, got off and decided to learn a bit about how rural health care worked.

The vehicle, owned by a foundation, was a rural mobile clinic really, not an ambulance and does a round of four villages a day, covering about twenty villages a week.

The driver of the ambulance was welcoming and invited me to take a look inside. The doctor – a young, thirty year old fellow, who could speak English only with an effort - was sitting by an empty bed, inside the vehicle. I introduced myself and asked him if I could learn more about their work, to which he nodded.

“Are you an allopathic Doc ?” I asked.
“Siddha, allopathic, anything.” he replied.
Anything?
“Yes, depends on the ailment,” he answered.

He sensed the doubt in my voice and shifted his gaze to the cardboard box by his foot, which was full of used syringes – there must have been a fifty or more in there. By his side, were eight bottles of injectables, some of which I recognised as paracetamol, B Complex and pencillin. All these injections were this morning’s work, he said, not without a tinge of pride.

As I spent the next ten minutes watching him as he attended to patients, the conclusion was clear : here was a Siddha medical practitioner (Siddha being a largely Tamil variant of Ayurveda), who was shooting a syringe of allopathic formulation (about which he would know a damn) into every patient who popped in, the indication of his success not being the state of the patient, but being the number of syringes in the box. His choice of injection seemed bizarre and, without any particular line of questioning. This is not healthcare and can indeed harm ignorant, largely illiterate people, whose unspoken contract of trust is being mis-used with nonchalance.

If I take this up with the foundation, I will get predictable answers such as, “Which allopath would want to spend his days in a vehicle in a remote rural area?” or “Villagers have a fetish for injections and do not accept tablets or syrups as solutions.” Both these are right, yet they do not justify doing the wrong thing.

The next morning, I was at Karemala – at the primary school there - and another rural mobile clinic toddled up, this time belonging to another foundation, run by a remarkable man of high personal integrity. At the sound of the vehicle, all the children in class stood up and asked the teacher permission to visit the doctor – every single one of them! It was remarkable to see a line of them standing patiently by the ambulance, even as I decided to board the vehicle from the front.

For starters, there was no doctor inside, only a bored-looking chemist. He had decided that he would elevate himself on this day and had therefore taken the doctor’s chair. The first child – a scared six year old - shuffled in; he spent ten seconds taking the child’s pulse and asked her the problem. She had a cold. Out came a strip of tablets. “Take half a tablet in the morning and half at night, and now make way for the next child.”
Fifteen minutes later, the man had dismissed seventeen patients – all the chidren of the school - and I was suspicious. I went back into the school and, as the children trooped back in, I took the tablets from them. Here’s a sample of what he had given them, other than paracetamol, which he seemed to ration out at the rate of one tablet per child to most of the kids, as if it was some delectable toffee.

• Etofylline – 1 tablet per head for five children. I learnt later that this is an anti-asthmatic drug and would be useless if given this way.
• Amoxycillin 250 mg ( an antibiotic) – he gave 5 capsules to a child who complained of throat pain. This child had no temperature, no white spots near the tonsils, no cough or cold and seemed to be fine otherwise.

….and so on.

In addition to his frivolous dispensation of medicines, he seemed to have touching faith in the ability of the six year olds to remember dosage and regularity; there was no need to write something down for the teacher to monitor or even ask if a parent was around to join the consultation.

I tried to hide my anger and, instead, taught the child with throat pain to gargle with salt water, while the teacher, at my request, took the medicines away from the children. We both decided to work urgently on a better system that ensured minimum quality at least for this village.

What is common to these ‘clinics’? They are both set up by remarkable people, whose integrity and intentions are beyond doubt and who would not tolerate such slack. In their ambition to scale the program, though, they have lost sight of just what it is doing for its target audience.

In the train to Bangalore, I pondered on the old maxim of quality being inversely proportional to quantity. Perhaps, in humankind’s most important needs of healthcare and education, less is more.

My Best Friend

2011-08-22T22:23:00.000-07:00

When I woke up on February 25th this year, I knew it’d be a special day; sometimes you just feel it in your heartbeat, there’s a spring to the step and all seems right, as Wodehouse would say, with the World. After an early breakfast at the Digboi Guest House, my new acquaintance, Raju Sharma, and I set off to search for an old friend.

The old friend was Mali.

Mali was not just a friend, he was my first real friend. He must have been employed by our family when I was but an infant, and he was at least thirty years older than me. Yet, when I was a little child just beginning to understand the World around, Mali held my hand in support as much as my parents did, by my side all the time.

Mali (whose name was Man Bahadur) was a short, muscular Nepali and our gardener-cum-Man Friday. He was a reticent man who spoke little of himself, but would be around for any work that needed to be done, as long as it did not remotely involve the intellect - God had thoughtfully omitted to fill the cerebrum from this creation of His, consistent with the old equation, Brain X Brawn = Constant.

Mali's background was quite a mystery. He once told me that he came from a remote Nepali village and had earlier worked in a beedi factory; this fascinated me and, on the many occasions when my parents were visiting friends or out for a party at the Club, Mali and I would spend endless happy hours rolling mock beedies out of plain paper, while engaged in light banter. He took his job of minding me very seriously and would sit by my side, as I slept. When my parents returned, often beyond midnight, Mali would walk back alone to his servant’s quarters at the bottom of the hill on which our beautiful home stood. He occasionally walked me to my friends’ homes and, during those strolls, would point out the many flowers and trees along the roadside; these were my first Nature Walks in the little town of Digboi. As most children do, I took him entirely for granted and assumed he existed to serve; his uncomplaining nature only made this assumption a reality. He hardly ever went back to see his family, even when my mother would offer to pay him for the while he was away – in every sense, we were his family.

On occasion, we would see evidence of his astonishing strength. When my brothers turned up for the vacation with their large, cumbersome hold-alls – alas, now extinct as a piece of luggage – Mali would simply swing one onto his back, pick up a suitcase and ascend the stairs, his back bent much in Nepali style, while we all watched in amazement.

In those magical years of my childhood, I made friends in school and had my differences with many, as all children will do. Yet Mali was the only friend I could never find any fault with. As for any adult, it must have been trying for him to humour a child all the time, yet he did so with silent sincerity, never asking for a quid pro quo that would have been granted by my grateful parents. When, in the winter of 1977, we packed our bags and left Digboi for good, I was inconsolable because I believed, despite my Mother’s statements to the contrary, that I would never see Mali again.

When I visited Digboi again this year, thirty three years later, I met Raju Sharma, an attender at the guest house where I stayed. It was a wonderful coincidence; he had had known Mali when he was growing up himself, and instantly recognised him from an old photograph that I had remembered to pack.

“I am not sure if he is still alive,” Sharma said, “but he had shifted to Margherita many years ago.” I then remembered that my father had got Mali a job in a tea estate. Raju put his mobile to good use and we were off to track him down. There was a sliver of a chance that I would meet Mali, and all that I had to find my way was an old photograph.

We reached the Margherita estate and spent a couple of hours asking our way around. Up a picturesque driveway and we were on a plateau, close to a large nineteenth century bungalow now occupied by a senior manager at the estate. We stopped about a minute’s walk from a labour line surrounded by tea bushes. I got out of the car, walked across to the few children and young girls standing there and took his photograph out, an old black-and-white one where he had stood next to me and the other servants in our old bungalow.

A girl of about twenty stared at it for a minute and then exclaimed in happy surprise. “That’s my father when he was young,” she said. Yes! I thumped fist-on-palm.

Just how does one describe the emotion of seeing a dear childhood friend after these years? When Mali shuffled in - an old man, bent with age and infirmity - I had difficulty recognising him……and then, I saw his fingers, gnarled and rough, that I instantly recognised from that childhood long, long ago. He looked at me inquiringly, while the girl grinned and told him that his Gopu Sahib had come.

Mali dropped his bundle of firewood, walked right up and hugged me, tears forming in his eyes. I felt a lump in my throat as well, as I struggled to calm him down. The man had changed little, his simplicity and affection intact in the evening of his life. We spent a few minutes in silence and the years rolled away as I went over my few memories of a childhood long past.

We then exchanged updates – after we left, he had got married and had two grown up children. He told me of a serious fall, a battle with malaria and the other hazards of life in Assam, his feeble voice now mumbling more to himself, frequently wiping a tear away. I called my mother from my mobile and gave him the phone. He spoke to her in a voice that was barely audible or even coherent. After the call, when the conversation ceased and the far away look in his eyes stayed put, I knew it was time to go. I kept a smile on my face, and cheerily bid him farewell.

I will be back, I said. And, I meant it.

Post Script : as I post this, it has now been about three months since Mali has been missing from his home. He had been admitted to a hospital for a cataract and, on the day of his discharge, just walked away. I cannot help thinking that meeting me had something to do with this, yet I hope I am wrong and that he is safe.

The Genius

2011-08-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

Thomas Edison famously stated that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Well, he knew his light bulbs alright and perhaps got the music industry off the block, but he knew nothing about genius, even his own. I say this, because he had never met Venu (Venu was born in the early 1950s, after Edison was had been dead for two decades, so a meeting was unlikely).

Venu (not his real name, else I could get into trouble) began his stint in modern history by enrolling for Chartered Accountancy under my Uncle. He was a thin, dreamy eyed sort of fellow, who walked as if he could always fall in a heap on the ground and had his mouth always open in a sort of unhinged way. In the few years of articleship, he acquired a cult reputation for simply being brilliantly clumsy and absent minded. He would be holding a glass of water and would find, for no reason whatsoever, that it dropped and shattered by his feet. He would then wait, mouth open and gulping in air, much as a fish would do, eyes goggling and hands frozen, until the mess was cleared up. When he walked down stairs, spectators watched with bated breath. And if this wasn’t quite enough, his skills in auditing were particularly unique: while going through vouchers, he could fall asleep in the oddest of poses, with his fingers continuing to automatically vouch the bill in the front of him. Fifty years on, the very mention of his name makes my Uncle double up with laughter; it is a laughter not unmixed with some frustration, and, as I learnt later, this was much the common reaction to Venu.

This was sheer genius, unrecognised. His parents continued to believe that their son would pass his CA if he put in the requisite preparation. Sorry, perspiration. Poor souls. Every exam would find Venu working damned hard at his books. He would eschew all pleasure, stop dropping glasses and glare fiercely at the ominous Shukla & Grewal in front of him. His resultant scores in the accounting paper varied from 5% to a high of about 20% and there is little doubt that the examiner had his moments of satisfactory mirth.

The next stop after his articleship was to join my father’s accounts department in Digboi. Those were days when jobs were got largely by whom you knew and my father had his blind spots; Malayalees was one. Venu quickly distinguished himself with some outstanding performances – my father, in later years, recalled watching the fellow spend a couple of hours at his desk staring into nothingness and smiling beningly on occasion, even as passers-by watched him curiously. This was no one-off event. When disturbed from such thoughtful reverie, he would stand up and sit down continuously a number of times and stretch his body and, in general, be all over the place, gulping continuously, the fish impression intact. Amidst all this, he never lost sight of two fortnights in a year, when his CA exams were held. He knew the pages intimately, the answers to all the sums in the book by heart and made the textbooks his constant companions in those weeks, yet the results remained astonishingly consistent. His genius – 99% inspiration and just that bit perspiration while he slept – was in being himself, not in the smaller game of life that is chartered accounting.

His parents saw the imperative in getting him a sensible wife and this they certainly did. My friend, Rajiv, who was their neighbour, recalls the now legendary incident in the early 1980s, when Venu purchased a second hand car. His wife – bless her – prohibited him from ever touching the wheel in her absence. On day, driving with her beside him, Venu got a bit mixed up with the many levers at his foot and, while down a slope, pressed the clutch rather than the brake, despite a screaming wife pointing out the technical error repeatedly. Rajiv rushed out of his home on hearing a loud noise to see a rather bedraggled Venu using all his strength pulling – yes, you read this right and I shall repeat it – pulling at the bumper at the back to bring the car (a two tonne Ambassador) out of the ditch it was now firmly in. The bumper came right off and Venu quickly found himself in the opposite ditch. Both the car and the driver were treated as outpatients in their nearby respective clinics.

Among the few Malayalees in the Digboi-Tinsukia area, Venu became a legend. He was a great conversation starter and my father, who had a ringside view of the fellow from his room, spent many happy hours practising Venu’s mannerisms that could be later used to set the tone for a memorable evening. When we left Digboi in 1978, Venu was hard at work on his exam, as always. Some years later, I learnt that he and his daughter had written the CA exams together. The bets on the outcome were very predictable and, indeed, Venu stayed close to his now twenty-year average.

Yet, Venu did something none of us could ever achieve in many a lifetime. He proved Thomas – the Thomas Alva Edison – wrong.

Doing Business with Friends.....

2011-06-29T03:34:00.000-07:00

…..is a bad idea.

There are far too many things we do not learn in Business School (or any other school) that are learnt later the hard way. When I first interacted actively with Dada, as I shall call him, I knew that two of my classmates, who were going into the stock broking business with him, had made a big (very big) mistake.

Dada was (and, unfortunately, continues to be) full of himself. There is no doubt that he is a smart fellow, knows his Poisson distribution from the bell curve or onion peel, can pattern a technical analysis out of a cow’s random burps and make a presentation on the random walk theory that will stone a professor (but have a somnific effect on the audience). On campus, I had stayed away from Dada, but we now met often, as he lived in a bachelor pad in Indiranagar with other classmates, one of whom was a close friend.

A tall, generously built fellow, with a smile (that superior knowledge of the Poisson distribution always endows) and an infectious enthusiasm for anything to do with the stock market, he always dominated a friends’ conversation. What made his company particularly tiresome were his paens to his three loves - I, me and myself - never ceasing to advertise his proficiency. This made me step back and question the friendship – he didn’t, I reasoned, need friends, he needed an audience.

After a year and a half at a dead end job in Bangalore, Dada mooted the idea of starting a stock broking firm in New Delhi. It was late 1992; Harshad Mehta was on a roll, the stock market was ringing away and all was right in the best of all possible Worlds. One evening, there were five of us sitting in the bachelors’ pad, amidst a sea of stock market reports, magazines and dusty newspapers (that never failed to induce a bout of sneezing). I watched his voluble persuasion - a sales pitch to the gang to join up and start a broking company - affect two vacillating classmates, while the third (the friend I was close to) stayed unmoved. He spoke about the Tata Steel Secured Promissory Notes with a conviction that would have done Newton (or JRD) proud. Research was sniffing out the little gem, he intoned, not re-establishing that a donkey has two ears. Dada had his way; the two came onboard and another classmate joined later.

The company began with much promise. This was actually its problem, for it promised much to all those who chose it to manage their wealth. Dada, as the team leader, had the self-anointed role of the Brains Trust, the Bright Ideas Guy and he backed his ideas with Other People’s Money (that you could christen, OPiuM). This was taken a step further when Dada began to trade on his account – using savings or personal loans to buy shares in his own name.

Now, the problem with the markets is this: when things are going well, a monkey can make money, as indeed it did in a famous experiment years ago, for a rising tide lifts all boats. If you get in then, your success goes to your head and you get in deeper, playing for higher stakes, taking for granted that the music will not stop. This phase is, in the sophisticated language of the sceptics, called the Bigger Fool theory - you are buying in the hope of selling at a profit to a bigger fool.

The music does stop. Always.

A couple of years later, the markets had crashed, the broking business was in shambles, huge amounts were owed to all and sundry, and the fallout began as the company disintegrated, leaving one of the four (not Dada) holding the pieces. Friendship can scarcely outlive such trauma.

Yet, you might ask, how is this different from a situation where the four came together as business partners and not, originally, as friends? Would the outcome have been different?

If, I contend, they were coming together as possible partners (and not friends originally), the three would have been careful before saying ‘Yes’, sizing the others up and listening to their inner voice of caution. Friendship makes ‘No’ much more difficult and its easy to assume that all will be well tomorrow. It gets worse – friendship leads one to believe that the friends-cum-partners will agree on everything. Disagreements, as there always will be, become personal. When, to protect the friendship, a partner keeps quiet, the ‘lose-win’ result does not go away; it lingers beneath the surface. Doing business with those related to you, by the way, whom you know well, is just as risky.

An excellent book by Dan Ariely, “Predictably Irrational”, provides more light on all this (you should read it). Ariely notes that there are two norms for all of us : a social norm and a market norm, both of which don’t really go with each other. Any indication of money moves people (irretrievably) to the market norm. Say, you are a young male software techie who lives by yourself in an apartment complex. An elderly couple live next door : their son is about your age and he lives in the US. The couple tell you that they miss their son deeply; they are keen to build a friendship with you. As you become friends – the chat in the lift, the odd favour to each other including setting Skype up for them – the lady offers graciously to provide you dinner on weekends, cooking a bit more than they need. Home food!
Must you offer to pay?

Ariely says ‘Don’t’. If there is a cash exchange that results, the norm changes significantly to market: is the food good enough, you ask? Is he paying a market rate and what’s my margin, she muses? As the questions increase, the arrangement – a win-win otherwise - becomes tricky to sustain. A far better option is to provide her (or them) a gift occasionally to keep the reciprocity firmly in the social norm zone.

So much for theory. But, what happened to the gang of four and to the Invincible One, in particular? The two initial followers had to toil hard to pick themselves up and have just not met their potential as talented people. The One Who Stayed Back learnt his lessons on crisis management realtime and has done a pretty sound job – always the quiet one, when the going got tough, he got going. And Dada? A tribute to his resilience is the fact that Dada continues to provide advice – generally unsolicited – even as he tosses in the sea of the stock market.

Humans, except the good and the great, never learn.

Very interestingly, relationships where business partners become friends work much better. There are numerous examples, but I cannot think of one better than the equation my uncle had with his business partner, Sukumaran Menon, in Kochi – they ran an accounting firm for, hold your breath, about 52 years together, before this gentleman passed away. Along the way, they - and the families – became friends.

A final note :

I made one exception to my rule of not working with friends. When we decided to build a small cottage in our farm in Javalagiri, I had no hesitation in asking Peeyush, a close architect friend, to help design my home. The final outcome has been wonderful – a lovely home, even better friendship. How did that happen ?

While we set expectations and focussed on each other’s strengths, it was his genial, collaborative nature that was the key. You don’t find many like him.

A Soldier Never Dies

2011-06-06T10:45:00.000-07:00

A soldier never dies, they say, he just fades away. As I walked past the empty plot of land that once had an old house on it, I thought of a remarkable fauji who had lived for many years there.

About a couple of years after we moved to Bangalore, my father was delighted to meet his classmate from college, a now-retired Major from the Military Police, VR Menon. They lost little time in renewing their friendship and found an interest that brought them together for a couple of hours each evening, a passion for brisk, long walks, often followed by a small drink at either person’s home.

Major VR Menon, or VR as I shall fondly call him, was a fauji to his last atom and about as different as could be from my father. He had a luxourious moustache, kept in its place with Brylcreem (alas, no longer a staple in the contemporary bath), while my father abhorred one. If my father was a fun-loving, jovial person, VR was overtly quite the contrary, his demeanour, aided by the aforementioned moustache, forbidding and as stiff as his fauji backbone. When amused, VR’s moustache would twitch a bit and the eyes narrow for but the briefest moment of relief to those around. And, if my father was easy going, only lapsing occasionally into a bout of diabetes-sponsored irritation , VR had a temper that was legendary. Indeed, it was his fury, sharpened by a keen sense of right and wrong, that had plagued him for much of his life.

A story was often heard in the Malu circles in Bangalore of an incident in the 1960s in the Kashmir Valley, when VR came out of his house in the Army base on hearing his elder son yell for help, followed by a dog’s snarl. The dog, a pedigree belonging to the Brigadier of the base, no less, had bitten his son. Now, the rule in the Army is simple: a Brigadier’s dog is to be treated broadly on par with the Brigadier. VR took his son in, brought his gun out, and shot the dog.

The Bangalore Malu circs were unanimous in their view that this incident, possibly aided by other bouts of fury, decreed his retirement at the level of a Major. VR seemed to agree as well. He once remarked, with candour, to my Dad that a donkey that joins the army cannot but retire as a Major. I do not quite remember his tone of voice when he said this. Was it regret? Pathos? Humour? Yet, notably, he never quite saw the need to change. In conversations over an evening drink, he would have the most simple solutions for the World’s ailments, each such solution aided by the liberal use of a Point 22 automatic that he believed was useless when kept in the armoury. As a discussion on corruption, for instance, warmed up, his moustache would move but an inch upwards, the eyes would narrow (that’s the smile quotient) and he would say: ‘shoot the fellow, that’s the answer,’ and the women in the audience would either be in splits or full of ‘Aiaiyoo’s or ‘Guruvayurappa’ or some such female invective.

VR’s family was a study in contrast. Ammu Aunty, his demure wife, was small and rotund in appearance, with a sweet high-pitched voice and open smile. She, so the Malu circs opined, channelled her husband’s behaviour with skilled gentility that no Point 22 could answer. It was impossible to not like her and VR was devoted to her, recognising her ability to moderate his own impulsive nature. They had two sons, of whom I only knew the second. Kichu, as he was called, took after his mother and wisely decided against a career in the armed forces, using his ample grey matter to become a software engineer instead.

VR and my father became so close in the three or four years that they walked together that, when my father died in 1984, he went into a depression, refusing to talk to anyone for days. He must have picked himself up as only a fauji can, for, some time later, I began to see him on his evening walk, now alone. The pace of the walk was brisk, the back erect and, when he saw me, the eyes would mist up for a brief moment (or did I imagine this?). A couple of years later, the family shifted from their rented home in Indiranagar – where they had lived for many years – to a small apartment off Richmond Road. While the families kept in touch, for VR the link had been broken. A while later, his wife passed away.

I have yet to meet someone who has been as devastated by a spouse’s death as VR was. She was getting on in years and wasn’t in particularly good health, so it was not entirely a shock I would have imagined. Yet, the man was inconsolable. Many months after her demise, I knocked on his door and did not quite recognise the old, gently bent man who opened it for me, the eyes half lidded, the expression one of disinterest. He had stopped his walks and, instead, moped about the home in the evening of his life, in search of meaning, avoiding the company of those who knew him well.

I once read a note from a surgeon where he describes a surgery as a partnership between the surgeon and the patient. A surgeon can only, he had said, fix an engine; the patient must provide the spark for it to run. VR had lost the spark and passed away some years later. The fauji had faded into the sunset.

With Malufide Intent

2011-05-18T03:42:00.000-07:00

I find it very hard to understand the average Malayalee, though I am allegedly one. ‘Allegedly’ since I have never lived in Kerala, but visit a couple of times a year. Where your parents come from or what language they speak has nothing to do with your ‘native’, as we Indians refer to our homeland within the country; it is, instead, where you grow up and what you speak that determines who you are.

The Malayalee I refer to here is the one who has had his upbringing in Malu-land (hence, his ‘native’ is Kerala) and, while you could accuse me of a male bias when writing, particularly since Kerala has more women than men, it is the men who are the subject of my note. The reason I find the average Malayalee a tricky fellow to cipher is because he a bundle of contradictions. But let me start at the beginning…..

The average Malayalee is, well, average. You will find the odd flash of brilliance here and there, yet, unlike his counterparts in the other southern states, you do not find masses of people who invent wheels, silicon chips and stuff, the way, for instance, TamBrahms do. His (the Malayalee’s) primary skill is in being street smart, which is quite different from being brilliant. Put a Malu into a difficult situation and he will emerge, generally, unscathed, his white Mundu spotless and quartered at half mast, while others around him are on all fours, picking up the pieces. Take him out of Kerala into a hostile desert, charmingly and inappropriately called the ‘Gulf’, and he will work his teeth out to survive first and then prosper, showering that prosperity on his relations back home and building a mansion dressed in the colours of the rainbow. Transplant him now on the moon and, since he has once read of Richard Branson’s space flight plans in the Mathrubhumi, he will set up a tea stall that can brew a local arrack as well. Bangalore’s kirana stores business is dominated by friendly Malu souls who will not hesitate to smile and have a brief social word, while they do their jobs with astonishing zest. Yet, in Kerala, the Malu will do nothing.
This is contradiction number one.

On second thoughts, I am wrong. The Malu does one thing, when in Kerala – he talks. And talks. In the power of speech, he is second to none. He will hold forth, with considerable expertise, his tone expressing disdain, always animated, rarely laudatory, on a vast range of topics, and offer opinions and advice on subjects on which he hasn’t the faintest idea. I have sat silent (no mean achievement, for there is a small part of the Malu in me), while worthies around me have exchanged cogent, contrasting views on genetic mutations in agriculture. Yet, this never translates into action as long as he stays in Kerala. Contradiction number two.

Malu-land is itself a contradiction – the countryside is breathtaking, yet the towns are an urban planner’s concrete nightmare. Everyone recognises this, yet there is an overwhelming rush to convert the country into the town, so much so that the length of Kerala is today one large town, and, as you drive, a breather of the countryside is visible, before the next nightmare appears on the horizon. On the same plane of contradictions, the birth of India’s environment movement was in Kerala (Silent Valley, remember?), yet the State houses some of the most polluting factories in India (including the public sector, Hindustan Insectidies Limited, that makes the dangerous pesticide endosulfan), and is itching to convert most of its forests into hydro dams for the energy needed to light up its gold malls.

The State has an excellent palliative care program that is second to none and a developed network of healthcare. A significant part of this program caters to (and here comes the contradiction) alcoholics. Why I see this as another contradiction is because no one has the will to reduce consumption of liquor (as it adds loads of cash to the State’s coffers), but the State offers the best treatment in this country to one who has drunk enough and more to help the State balance its budget. One Malu army man once proudly told me that you could take a Malu out of Kerala, but cannot take Kerala out of the Malu. I am convinced that the itinerant Malu-on-song uses this argument while nursing his whisky. Contradiction four.

The Kathakali is the epitome of Kerala’s fine culture, an intricate and evolved dance form aesthetic and subtle requiring the viewer’s undivided attention. This is in sharp contrast, of course, to the Kodangallur temple’s annual festival, where large groups of men and women sing the most obscene songs and recite salacious poetry, composed in moments of heightened creative endeavour, with devotional fervour. Contradiction five. I am told that the common link is that practitioners of both forms of art imbibe the local brew for inspiration.

The women of Kerala are apparently amongst the most emancipated (if you go by statistics) and, yet, on the footpaths of its towns and on village trails, there cannot be more hazards for them, as men, drunken or otherwise, showcase their humour in peer company. This definition of emancipation is an oxymoron.

Malu TV is equally fascinating and contradictory; the most involved discussions are on human rights – reviling the US’s presence in Iraq or the role of the French in the Ivory Coast – yet, in Kerala, the human has few rights: on the narrow roads that weave in and out of the towns of Kerala, private buses drive with maniacal disregard for safety, their speed only matched by the tongue lashing served by unsmiling conductors on their customers, a conversation that adds richly to your vocabulary.

And, the last contradiction comes to mind. The Communist Party first came to power as a protector of agriculture labour, its main constituency. Well, today, there is no agriculture labour. Indeed, there is hardly any agriculture, when compared to other states. Kerala imports a huge part of its food, even rice (Palakkad was once the rice bowl for the state). Seasonal labour is imported from Tamil Nadu, since much of the local labour does not exist anymore. If the average Malu is not in the Gulf or outside Kerala, he is, of course, in Kerala. Where he does nothing (refer paragragh three).

Perhaps there are some that I have missed, but you get the gist: this then is the contradiction that is Kerala. I sometimes wonder if the Malu figures these contradictions out in his quick thinking mind. A travelogue I once read on Kerala describes the Malus as a ‘simple people’. If that is true, then I clearly am Pink Floyd.

2011-05-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

When I first read of Ashok Soota’s intent to set up another software company – Happiest Minds Technologies, he calls it – the feelings were unmixed. Why do the same thing the third time around ? I could not imagine a more daft thing that a seventy-year old senior-citizen-cum-successful manager could do to round off an illustrious career.

Then, additional reports spoke of his desire to spite his colleagues at MindTree, the company he headed until a few days ago, by setting up an acolyte and benchmarking against his earlier baby. Lose-lose. The many professionals who have worked with him speak, in glowing words, of his skills in managing people and yet, I wonder, does he know how to manage himself?

Surely, in the evening of Soota’s life, another software services company is a pointless endeavour. He has an opportunity of a lifetime to be involved in something truly meaningful on a broader national platform – he has access to policy makers, is immensely rich, has a good reputation and perhaps a few years left to make a difference to our country – and he has chosen to blow it, merely to resurrect his ego.
Perhaps you will disagree, showcasing the freedom in our society for anyone to take any path. Yet, today's business leaders - whose success is as much a result of Government policy as their hard work, topped by some good luck - have the responsibility of taking the road less travelled. For paths, as I always love to quote, are made by walking.

Adrak Ke Panje

2011-04-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

In early March, I was at a corner of Assam, at a small eco-camp alongside the Dibru river. In the three mornings that I spent there, there was a regular boat that would come up the river to the roadhead, which was just across from where I stayed. Sack after sack would then be offloaded onto a waiting truck. The work was back-breaking.
On the third day, I summoned up courage to have a chat with the boat’s pilot, who looked to be an easy going sort of fellow. “Ginger,” he pointed at the sacks being loaded onto the truck, “we grow it across the river in Arunachal and bring it here.”
“How far away is the village where this is grown?”
“About five hours by boat…”
“…and you do this journey everyday?”
“Of course. How else will I make money?”

The truck driver, a Sardarji, was reticent, even forbidding. He sat on his high horse, in a manner of speaking, as I stood below, reading the morning Hindi paper.
“Where do you take this ginger?” I asked
“To Delhi.” was the terse reply.
“… and how long does it take to reach Delhi from here?”
“About five days.”
“After which, do you get rest before you return?”
He replied with a sound that was the mixture of a snort and a laugh, short and sarcastic. But, not giving up, I repeated the question.
“I get a day’s rest, without pay.” he muttered. Sensing that I had overstayed my welcome (if that is an appropriate word in the context), I wandered off to look at the Hollock Gibbons in the nearby forest.
So, if you live in New Delhi, remember the farmer in Arunachal who grows your ginger. It truly has become an incredibly connected world.

Earth (H)our

2011-03-25T17:59:00.000-07:00

At 8.30 pm on March 26th, as we turn off all electrical points in our homes for an hour, we could consider this an atonement, albiet a token one, for the economic runway that we have laid out for ourselves, riding on a blasphemous belief that energy – as much energy as we need - is a birthright.
Most people I know will switch off a light when they leave the room, yet this is hardly conservation; this is decency, protocol, the done thing, just as most people I know would say ‘Thank you’ when they were gifted a present. Conservation begins by questioning what could be done to change a lifestyle that is energy intensive and getting worse by the day.
A few months ago, a young journalist, Namrata Nandakumar, did a short study on electricity consumption in two urban spaces in Bangalore city. She first chose a slum which had ‘authorised’ access to electricity, a slum of three and a half thousand homes called Ullalu Upanagara, that houses about five times that number of people, during a post-monsoon month when there was no significant power cut. The monthly electricity bill for the entire colony was Rs. 2.38 lakhs. In contrast, Bangalore’s most popular mall, The Forum Mall, with a sanctioned load of 4 megawatts of electricity, had a monthly bill of about Rs. 85-90 lakhs (which included its expenditure on diesel for generators) for the energy it used with abandon, including the cooling of an enormous common areas around the day.
Recognise the sobering reality that energy is a finite resource currently in acute short supply in India. As the country’s GDP trots along, much more of it will be needed to supply basic energy needs to millions of our people as well as to meet the consumptive lifestyle of urban India. Energy comes at a cost, a cost well hidden from most of us who live in protected urban India and take planes when we travel : the costs, ecological, psychological, financial and otherwise, of displacement of people, damming of rivers, submergence of land and forests, pollution from thermal plants and carbon dioxide emissions and huge consumption of natural resources. Recognise that this is not a historical cost but a running one - for instance, the origins of the Maoist problem and the slums of urban India can be traced to our energy projects - and the true impact of the Mall’s consumption begins to emerge. Recognise, in addition, that the production of every litre of diesel needs 9,200 litres of water and 2-3% of the diesel that is imported into India is consumed in its own transportation to the consumer.
Yet, none of us would seem particularly perturbed with these numbers, ascribing them to a convenient rung on the ladder of development, for we empathise, not with the slum, but with the mall. It is a lifestyle that, though recent and foreign, is not negotiable. The biggest issue, of course, is that we – literate, well-read, well-meaning, intelligent as we are - do not connect the dots. We cannot, often do not, wish to see the impact of our actions on others. Let us then not blame the Americans for the climate mess we are in. Given an option, we have grabbed the ‘pollute’ lever ourselves for the short term gains that accrue from glamorous living.
I have in front of me, two recent articles that are very recent, yet hardly new in content. The first speaks of the protests last month against the East Coast Energy coal-fired power plant in Srikakulam district in Andhra, during which two people lost their lives, lives that were worth much more than any power plant could possibly match. This plant coming up next to a ecologically fragile wetland has, over the last couple of years, damaged the area and put many fishermen and farmers’ livelihoods in peril as the wetland is excavated and filled up in haste. The police were there, of course, to help push this private project through. This incident was merely a repeat: on July 14, 2010, in Sompeta, where the Nagarjuna Construction Company is building a thermal plant on a wetland, three persons were killed in clashes with the police.
The second article concerns a different source of energy that threatens a different species. If you make your way into the Athirapilly-Vazhachal forests of Kerala, as I have done – dense, wet deciduous forests of breathtaking beauty and surprise – you occasionally hear a loud, pitched call, a distinctive ‘tock-tock-tock’ , or sometimes a heavy whooshing sound. Look up or around (if you are by a ridge) and you might see the Great Indian Hornbill take to the air, the most beautiful, graceful, charismatic, even-tempered bird that has ever been. It is a bird that might see its habitat destroyed with a hydroelectric project proposed by the Kerala State Electricity Board that will generate a measly 160 megawatts, for the forty Forum-Mall-look-alikes that will dot the state to sell the resident Malayalee’s sole fetish: gold. The Hornbill, stunning as it is, is merely a representative species of the priceless biodiversity we stand to lose at Athirapilly, a portion of which is not even known to science as more discoveries enhance our sense of wonder at the mechanics of creation.
To set the record straight, the KSEB is hardly the first State Electricity Board to consider habitat of little use except for submergence, yet it was a pioneer in the destruction effort, with a plan made forty years ago to submerge the Silent Valley. It required the determined effort of Dr. Salim Ali and Mrs. Indira Gandhi to scuttle the project.
The destruction of forests, and the biodiversity within it, is a horrendous cost to pay for our lifestyle, yet it is a cost that few of us understand, even as the decision makers do the hypocritical act of planting the odd sapling to mark an Earth Day or a Wildlife Week. Much before additional power plants of any kind – thermal, nuclear or hydro – are planned, there is need, indeed a pressing, vital need, to use a system of incentives and disincentives to get the energy addicts (that’s us) to reduce our need for the fix. Yet, I have little faith in the Government’s ability to promote a culture of reduction and thrift and a lot more conviction in your ability to reason and conclude.
In my few years in conservation, never have I felt this alarmed at the speed of the consumption gravy-train. On March 26th, therefore, I have a request to make : please switch your lights, air coolers, water heaters and all else off, for just an hour. This, by itself, will make little difference, yet it will hopefully provide the darkness needed for a few moments of solitude.
In those moments, do think of just how you could become part of the solution, just how you could change the way you live your life to reduce, dramatically lessen, the need for energy. I repeat, target, not a 5% drop in consumption but, a 50% reduction in your energy demand. …for unless we press the brake now, the energy gravy train will run over the person on the railway track.
That person is you. And the time to heal the Earth is Now.

Stuck on You

2011-02-03T02:16:00.000-08:00

Narayanan was, without doubt, the most interesting businessman I met in my decade-long career in venture capital. In fact, he was the only one who was as interesting as he was unsuccessful.

His background was the perfect formula for entrepreneurial failure: impeccable, pucca pedigree, an MBA from IIM Calcutta in the early ‘70s and many years selling Coke and other muck from the comfort of a big budget office, before he decided that the one thing India sorely lacked was, well, a bubble gum with attitude (ordinary bubble gum wouldn’t do, of course). He persuaded a couple of friends, who looked to me as though they once possessed some common sense, to join him and Gum India was born. A couple of years later, he pulled off his first impossible trick: he persuaded a venture fund that existed to fund high-technology projects to invest in Gum India – this was a couple of years before I joined the fund.

Narayanan had an unsatiable appetite for risk, particularly when there was no reason to take it and carefully cultivated an air of business expertise and creative thinking about him – he liked people to see him as a man of whacko out-of-the-box ideas. But what set him apart (and possibly still does, for he is very much alive and kicking) was his personality.

A tall, thin man, with a reed-like structure and a rapidly balding pate, he combined charm with wit in astonishing measure. The more his companies – all of which we at TDICI more or less owned – sunk, the greater we seemed to want to fund him, each time for a particularly different, yet outrageous, project. He had access to the very top of the TDICI/ICICI pyramid (I was at the bottom) and everytime we met, he would wear a smile that seemed to be pasted on for my benefit: it combined a certain arrogance with thinly disguised condescension, disdain and pity. This attitude was not without reason. I was fresh out of MBA, green behind the ears and part of an organisation that was accustomed to eating out his hand.

In the five years or so that I struggled to understand just what to do with this company, I was allowed to visit the factory only once and for good measure, for no one who has seen how bubble gum is made will want to
1. buy it
2. eat it
3. sell it
4. fund it
5. or use it to plug a leaking pipe.

To Nari, these were irrelevant considerations. He saw India as bubble gum country, his vision being one of children from Mcleodgunj to Mamallapuram clamouring for their daily dose of gum, thus painting a picture of a true India multinational that would be the envy of Wrigley’s. The reality, though, was much more modest: sales were about a few crores a year and falling. Profits? Well, that was for the future, since for the moment the company had a venture capitalist who would fund the losses.

Every quarter, we’d have a Board Meeting, to which we would go - my boss, his briefcase stacked with papers that analysed the pathetic performance of the company upside down and his face beetroot red as he mulled over the extent of financial damage that we had suffered, and I, determined to not take any nonsense this time and to call a spade a spade. Nari would amble over, pull my boss’ leg and joke on just how beaten I looked working with him. He would ask us out to lunch, speak of cricket with some passion, mull over the next marathon he planned to run, advice us on marketing our services better and ridicule Hindustan Lever’s marketing strategy.

Everytime I raised any business issue with Nari, he would give me his famous look and then confidently predict that the next quarter would be sensational. “After all,” he always said, “ this company is yours. Where will you get a bunch of MBAs working for you at this pathetic salary.” …….and the funny part is, I would always come off from the meeting feeling terribly sympathetic for this talented team. “Perhaps,” I would reason to my colleagues at the next internal meeting, “the next quarter will see a turnaround.” Everyone, of course, thought it was hilarious, since no one had the slightest doubt that our multiple investments in the company were up in smoke. Yet, Nari’s eloquence could be blinding.

In 1991, he predicted that a chain of dosa outlets would be the next big thing. In every part of this country, other than the South, he said, there was a crying need for a clean, machine-made masala dosa, the dry batter-and-mix of which would be supplied from a national, centralised kitchen. And since sambhar and chutney were hard to franchise, he decided that ketchup would do the trick.

We fell over ourselves in excitement, writing out cheques and investment agreements in a trice, even before the new company, Dosa King, had an office or an employee. When the story ended five years later, we had a great deal of blood (actually, ketchup) to show for it, a machine that made everything – photocopies, music recordings, ballpoint pens – except dosas. Well, that’s not entirely true: the five prototypes on the field made all of about 400 dosas, of which I had two while visiting the first (and only) outlet in Nagpur on September 14th, 1996. I remember the date and the place, because of the prescription dated that evening for acute indigestion, that I have preserved.

I vividly remember my last meeting with Nari, when I had put in my papers at TDICI. “I have learnt a great deal from you,” I said with feeling. “Thanks.”
“What a shame, Gopa! You are leaving just when Gum India will post record results in the next quarter. In fact, you may even want to invest in it in a few months time.”

'..and when our conversation ended, I had very nearly written out a cheque for my life’s savings.

Manna from Heaven

2011-01-14T20:47:00.000-08:00

April 2010
Bangalore is an exasperating city to travel within and I have hitched a ride, run a fair distance, taken an auto and then run again to the gates of the Chowdiah Memorial Hall in breathless anticipation. I am in luck; there are tickets available. I buy one for five hundred rupees and rush up the steps. It is ten past seven in the evening when I flop into my seat, exhausted.
The musicians, a small handful of them, are assembled on stage, waiting for the Master. I have never seen him before in flesh and blood, yet have long been besotted with his voice, its elegance and versatility, its range, depth and pitch. My earliest memory of music at home, circa 1970, is listening to a record on a new record player, playing his lively, almost hyperactive, song from a now-forgotten film, Bhoot Bungla; it is a song that I grew up with, a part of my treasure trove of memories from childhood far far away.
My reverie is cut short; the Master shuffles onto the stage, as the audience rises to a standing ovation. It is a motley group of people here, largely middle aged and elderly and I (though officially middle aged) feel out of place. He makes his way to the middle, barely acknowledging the crowd, to where his harmonium has been kept and takes his seat deliberately, as the applause dies down and the crowd waits in anticipation.
In the silence that follows, the harmonium began to play, guided by a practised, magical touch and, as the Voice begins to sing ‘Aey Malik tere bande hum’, I feel a lump in my throat, for the years have dropped away and it seems much like the original recording a half-century ago.
Manna Dey is now 91.
In the ensuing couple of hours, plagued by a bad throat and an indifferent back, the old man struggles to keep his composure and his famed temper. Yet, with every song that he begins, the trials of the World fade away as the eyes behind those large, benign spectacles focus on the distance, on a World that he once commanded as only he could. On a different World, when the best music directors requested him to sing songs that all others couldn’t. The magic continues on this day as well: when a song’s pitch reaches a crescendo, he holds his own, and the fans gasp in bewilderment. People who live to his age find it hard to speak; Manna Dey sings, and how!
The moments in between his singing are punctuated by good earthy humour, supplied in ample measure by the compere, Khurana Sahib, whose fluent Hindi, immersed in Urdu, is of Sixties vintage. Together, they make an odd couple, a legendary singer and his compere, in the evening of their life, holding their own in India’s most contemporary urban space. The audience demand an encore, but he is too tired to oblige. The Master stands up, does a Namaste and shuffles off the stage as every person in Chowdiah Memorial Hall applaudes with admiration, respect and awe.
At the end of a magical evening, I walk away knowing that this legend will always live. It’s a nice feeling.

Ad Wise

2011-01-05T01:02:00.000-08:00

This is a story of advice and friendship.

We have been good friends with a couple, for many years. About four years ago, the husband called me and asked if he could talk over an issue that he was going through, to get a second opinion, another point of view. I agreed readily, since I liked him very much.

Vibhu, as I shall call him, is a suave chap, very prim and proper, educated in an olde world British school. After an MBA, he built a career in a large organisation in the sales function. I will mention here that the industry he was working in, is Mumbai-centric – most companies have their Head Offices there and branches in the large metros. Well, Vibhu’s performance at work was excellent and he rose to a level which was about the peak for the organisation’s office in Bangalore – if he needed to climb the ladder any more, he’d have to move to Mumbai, something that no self-respecting Bangalorean will consider, if he has his senses about him. Shortly after his promotion in this company, he quit and joined a competitor at a slightly higher level, reporting to the Branch Head. The salary and responsibilities were higher, though there would still be the inevitable Mumbai-move sometime in the future.

It was a bad decision. Vibhu’s gut (and a couple of colleagues) had warned him against the culture of the competitor, one that encouraged snake-oil salesmen and rewarded short term thinking. To top his discomfort, he had a particularly bad boss, who was as insecure as he was rude and who often alluded to Vibhu’s previous organisation with derision, something that got him particularly incensed.

As we sat down to talk, beer in hand, Vibhu told me that he wanted to quit this company immediately. He had no idea of what he wished to do, yet the stress of working here was taking his toll. His boss in the earlier organisation, on knowing of his discomfort, had sent feelers to him, asking him to come back to the same job he had held earlier, yet……..

“Why don’t you go back?” I asked.

The answer was long-winded. I sensed that he had set high standards of growth for himself and this would reek of failure. He was, in addition, concerned about how others in the old organisation would see him. This was where I had a point or two. “Vibhu, I have done just this. I left CDC in the late ‘90s to join a software product company as a domain specialist, realised that it wasn’t what I wanted and approached my boss in CDC within a month, before he had recruited a replacement. I felt the same way as you do now, but for a few days. My colleagues went out of their way to welcome me back. Don’t worry – our fears are in our heads.” I concluded.

“What about my growth?” he queried.

There was little to offer here, of course. He could choose to continue in the new organisation (“No, no, not a chance”), join his old organisation back (“Not sure of this, Gopa”) or just sit at home and hope for a job (which was most unlikely to come by).

“Here’s what I suggest, Vibhu,” I added, “There are often times when you have to go back to move forward. Go back to your old organisation, bide your time and look to change the industry you work in, moving to one where senior management positions exist in Bangalore.” I went back to my story. “Vibhu, quitting a job at this stage of your career without a Plan B, is not advised. I can tell you with confidence that, if you left a company with mutual goodwill, they’d be happy to have you back. Besides, your old Boss has sent the feeler first, hasn’t he? But don’t stay at home, its very depressing to be doing nothing.” Perhaps, in retrospect, I was being forceful, when I should have been gentle.

As the conversation progressed, he became quieter. We left after a couple of hours, some beer time included, and shook hands, while I wished him the best for the future.

It can’t be hard for you to guess the decision he took. He quit the new organisation, did not join the old one and, instead, spent a couple of exacting years at home, till a new, average job came his way. The impact on our friendship was rather hard as well; Vibhu stayed away, though his wife kept in touch with us. I have only once met him since that meeting and that was on a sidewalk. He has aged a decade, with his hair now vastly peppered, a cigarette in hand and some excess weight and when I reflect on the person I knew earlier it is cause for some despondency. It has made me wonder on the human tendency to self-destruct and, as you can see, how people see themselves has a big role to play in this process of emaciation.

I trust I learnt some lessons here, the prime among them being to not get passionate about solving other people’s problems.

Religion does not tolerate diversity

2010-11-02T09:03:00.000-07:00

I escorted my mother into the restaurant. “The Higher Taste” the sign above door stated in style. ‘Aptly named’, I thought, for we were on Hare Krishna Hill, within the premises of the temple complex run by Iskcon in Bangalore and an eatery in such a place should have a name befitting its neighbouring building, the temple.
The food at the restaurant was good. Not outstanding, but good. There was an abundance of food colour in the souffle and a paucity of walnut in the walnut subji biryani, but one can live with these things. The décor and general upkeep of the place was befitting a luxury hotel, as indeed was the tariff for the food.
Now, the one thing I tend to be particular about is to call people by their name and not by their occupation (how I acquired this value concerns a ‘mali’ who brought me up without my ever knowing his name, but that’s another story). I gestured to the waiter who stood by the buffett counter to get me water and, when he came up to my table, had a look at the name tag pinned to his shirt. ‘Lakshman’, it said.

Something wasn’t quite right; the fellow was clearly from the North East, where Lakshman is a most unusual name. As I looked around, I found most of the waiters to be from the North East, as is common today in most restaurants in the city. Yet, their names were most discordant: Padmanabha, Ranganatha, Aniruddha and so on.

While helping myself to the souffle-and-cream, I spoke with ‘Lakshman’.
“Where are you from?”
“From Darjeeling, Sir.”
“Where exactly in Darjeeling?”
“Kalimpong, Sir.” I knew of Kalimpong, of course.
“So, what’s your real name?”
“Chiling, Sir.”
“Are you Buddhist?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am a big fan of the Dalai Lama.” I said, seeking to keep the conversation going, for I wished to know more.
“I am part Tibetan, Sir,” he said proudly. “And my father works for the Indo-Tibetan Border Police along the border with China.”
“Do you like being called Lakshman?” I asked, though it really was none of my business.
“It’s a nice name.” he replied politely.

Over the course of the meal, I mulled over my little exchange with Chiling. Why did he need to be rechristened to serve at this restaurant? Chiling is a beautiful name, with a lovely ring to it and in the Tibetan language it could have profound meaning.
The answer, perhaps, has to do with the way every temple (or any sacred place, for that matter) works; there is no room for diversity in the interpretation of religion. Chiling may change his name willingly, for he comes from a part of India that is rotting away, that has no opportunity, and he needs a job. Yet, to transplant a ‘suitable’ name onto such a person is, I think, exploitation, for a name is the vocalisation of identity and self-respect.
I wonder how the Restaurant Manager interviewed him: “Well, Chiling, the job’s yours, except for a small matter: can we call you Lakshman, because Chiling is, well, is not, actually, suitable to our audience.”
or,
“You know, Chiling, we want you to work for us, and we need high customer sat scores, so can we call you Lakshman ?”

When we finished our meal, I looked into the mirror in the rest room and saw one customer who was not quite satisfied. Perhaps they don’t quite care.

Rotting Food and a Rotten Minister

2010-10-17T03:46:00.000-07:00

The thing I like about agriculture economics is that most of it is common sense and hence in critical short supply. Listen to the best brains around – Sainath, Devender Sharma, Suman Sahai, MS Swaminathan, even, occasionally, Swaminathan Aiyer – and you would wonder in bewilderment at the absence of common sense and simplicity in the entire Government system around agriculture.

Take the issue – now fading in public memory since it hit the headlines earlier this year – of rotting food. When a conscientious activist filed an RTI application in January 2010 asking for information on just how much food was rotting or damaged in the godowns of the Food Corporation of India, the answer stunned the nation: 10,688 lakh tonnes. Lets put this down numerically: 10,688,00,000,000 kgs.
When I contrast the insistence in most middle class families that the food on the table – mere grams of rice, or an extra roti - not be left over or thrown away, with this wanton, egregious, almost criminal waste, our value system seems terribly pointless. I spent some time reading articles on just why such large quantities of food lay rotting away. Let me give you some of the reasons :

1. Godowns available, but
a. leased out to the food companies such as Pepsi and ITC, who pay higher rents than FCI (I am referring to godowns owned or operated by State Governments, not by private players, so their touching refrain on a godown’s profitability is most unbelievable)
b. used to stock liquor, because of its ‘value-add’.
c. no labour to move material into it. Hence, food kept out in the open, under plastic sheets, while the godown lies semi-occupied. Dampness in the air in the monsoons encourages toxic fungal growth.
d. administrative apathy: no one sees the point in loading bags into a godown and out, when it will not rain (of course, it rains immediately).

2. Food in godown not taken out (in Haryana) before flooding, despite five days notice given on possible need for evacuation.

3. Bags of grain stocked one on top of another in colossal piles, which means that the grain at the bottom is damaged. In this technology age, no State Government has created grain silos, an obvious solution.

4. In instances, lack of availability of space in food godowns.
In other words, a large part of this wastage is hugely avoidable.

So much for supply. Lets talk of the need for grain. The National Sample Survey consumer expenditure data tells that 74.5 per cent of rural persons could not reach the recommended level of 2400 calories of daily intake in 1993 to 1994. By 2004-05, the percentage had reached an unprecedented high of 87 per cent. As importantly, the quality of food they eat is deteriorating as well.

A big part of India’s agricultural and food crisis, including this horrendous wastage, can be attributed to one man: our Honourable Agriculture-cum-Food-cum-Consumer Affairs Minister, of whom it can be safely said that, in the last seven years that he has held these portfolios, he has done virtually nothing to address India’s food security and long term agricultural balance. His decisions (including ones regarding the export of grain when there is a deficit) are bizarre; indeed never has he let reason or wisdom come in the way of a decision (or, indeed, in the absence of a decision). Add to this a rather outsized ego: when asked about the impact of food inflation on the poor, for instance, he said that if the poor could afford to buy soft drinks, then they could surely afford food essentials. His star moments are when he indulges in the politics of cricket with abandon,
Then, why does the Prime Minister put up with this?
The answer: the Hon Minister in question has considerable nuisance value and is an astute trouble maker, fishing with characteristic elan in troubled waters. The late US President Lyndon Johnson once said of a powerful, but troublesome colleague, “It is better to have him inside the tent pissing out, rather than outside the tent pissing in.”
It’s a heavy price to pay for India’s rotting food.

Temple temper

2010-09-13T20:57:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I visited a famous temple off the Bangalore - Mangalore road. It must have once been a simple and beautiful structure, built by those who believed in their work. Over the last couple of decades, though, structure after structure had been built to milk the anxious devotee, until the temple’s own beauty, its ethereal charm, its sense of tranquility had all been drowned by the human mass atop an enterprise. Now, the main thoroughfare in front of the temple has become shamelessly commercial, cheap Chinese toys are sold everywhere and the dirty heaps of plastic carry bags – used everyday in their thousands to carry offerings into the temple and then thrown away - are an environmentalist’s nightmare. It’s hard to focus on The Conversation with the Higher One, under such circumstances.

We – my wife, son and I – nevertheless got into the queue of those seeking that audience of a split second with Him - a priceless second to thank, complain, ask (actually, plead), negotiate, cajole, promise, promise to keep the promise, weep and, at times, berate. It was a long queue that got noisier as we approached the Sanctum, with many craning their necks or hoisting their little ones onto their shoulders, often inflicting, in the process, some collateral damage, as I believe the term is, on those behind.
I have never been a ‘religious’ person (indeed, I truly don’t understand the definition. What makes a person religious or irreverent ?), nor am I comfortable with crowds. I had a tight hold on my son, and spent my time looking at the others in the queue.

Above all of us was a large signboard which stated, rather rudely I thought, that photography, including mobile-phone photography, was banned in the premises. While I tried to think of just why this signboard was necessary, I wouldn’t think of breaking this rule. One accepts what one has to.
…and then someone had to do it. A fellow near me – a middle aged, respectable looking chap – cupped his mobile camera in his hand in anticipation and, in that split second when he had a clear view, he clicked the picture and pocketed his camera with a smug look of intent achieved.
It took about five seconds for a pujari to catch him and then, to use a most inappropriate term when referring to the location, all hell broke loose. Two other robust looking men accosted the photographer and tried to snatch the camera away, while he pretended that he had done no wrong, all the while holding on to his mobile phone for dear life. The argument turned louder and nastier, primarily due to the fellow’s incapacity to accept his mistake and his unwillingness, when confronted with evidence, to delete the picture. Others joined in, of course, as will always happen anywhere in India and there were opinions both ways.

The bedlam around this incident and the crowd jostling for space were just a bit too much for me to bear, for I have no recollection of my moment with The Higher One. I was out of the inner Sanctum in a trice, and took in fresh air with vigour, happy to get away from the argument, but feeling quite irritated at the whole thing. I wonder just how devotees experience true inner bliss amidst such chaos.

On the way out of the temple, I was thinking of this little incident and mulling on just how unneccessary and dissatisfying it was for all concerned. I will never understand why our friend, the renegade photographer, visited the temple. Did he want to Converse, or was he chasing a momento, a screen saver that he could consult everytime he cut ethical corners in his daily living ?
I will also never understand why the pujari – The Representative, one would imagine – made a scene, used force and abused this man. Surely, his time is better spent at a higher level of engagement.

At a broader level, of course, the reality is that the vast majority of ‘devotees’ visit temples as a part of a running contract with The Higher Power, where money is their quid pro quo for the many favours asked, including the assuaging of guilt. In these temples of commerce, priests are the management team (with high performance bonuses) and the products – laddus, flowers, pujas - are profit centres.

I would opt, any day, for the friendly village temple with a part-time priest, who works in the fields for a living and spends his mornings and evenings at the shrine. He may be a bit fuzzy with the specifics of Sanskrit and the nuances of ritual, but his heart is generally in the right place. May his tribe increase.

Akash Mallige

2010-09-08T01:15:00.001-07:00

This is the season of the Akash Mallige. Next to the laburnum, about which I have written earlier in Spring, the Akash Mallige is my tree of choice. If you happen to go on a walk and smell a divine, mild scent, at times inhibited by the smoke from vehicular traffic, but otherwise ethereal, look down at the semi-carpet of white flowers and then at the gorgeous tree that reaches for the sky, its flowers bunched downwards, much like a fashionable set of ear-rings. The fragrance always makes me grateful to the social forestry men of Bangalore who, with much perspicacity, planted many of these trees all around the city – indeed five tall ones stand majestically on the pavement in front of my home.

The Akash Mallige flowers twice a year, the monsoon being its piece de resistance. The flowering begins modestly enough and soon the tree is in bloom. Everything about the flower is delicate, its white with a streak of pink, the fragrance of course, the long stem and the almost entreating countenance it wears as you pick it up from the ground. Much to the amusement of passers-by, I select a few fresh flowers for use as an air freshener. If you do this as well, look into the flower before taking it away and you will often see an ant at work on the nectar within. The gentle thing to do then is to leave the flower alone, for food comes before fragrance.

The thing that I wonder about is how Nature can reproduce millions of these flowers with the same amount of fragrance and nectar. Just what kind of quality control is inherent in this system ? I hope we never know the answer, for Mystery adds to divinity.

Success means.......

2010-08-21T05:31:00.000-07:00

“Success means never having to wear a suit” is the quote on my favourite T-shirt. I believe in it.

Over the years when I have worn it outside home, the comments from friends, colleagues and strangers have been most noteworthy. At the Goa airport, for instance, a foreigner stared at it for a while, walked up to me and said simply, “I agree completely with that statement. I hope you do as well.”

Read the quote again and do reflect on it. I would be glad to hear your thoughts.

Unintended Consequences

2010-08-03T19:20:00.000-07:00

Four years ago, in June 2006, the Government of Tamil Nadu announced that twenty kilos of rice would be available to each family that had a ration card, at a token price of Rs. 2. The Government did it to win votes and the battle against hunger and malnutrition. Lets look at the unintended consequences instead, that are now making themselves apparent.
Listening to Mariappa, my farmer in Javalagiri, is most illuminating. “Sir, “ he says with a mischievous smirk, “there is more money in each home now available for liquor and that is why men support this move to subsidise rice.” And are the full stomachs resulting in more incomes? “No sir, actually farm labour has become far less willing to work. Do you know, Sir, that subsidised rice is the reason for less milk being produced in our area?”
Unable to understand the connection, I look at him in bewilderment. “We don’t get farm labour to take the cows out to graze as we used to (this job is generally done by older farm workers, who are no longer capable of slogging in the field). Since they get their staple at virtually no cost now, and some occasional income, no one’s interested. And milk prices rarely rise, so we all make a loss on cattle. As a result, everyone’s selling off their cows. I see a milk shortage around the corner.”

Lets summarise : More rice at less price. More liquor. Less milk.
…and what has cheaper rice done to nutrition?

Most of the villages in Krishnagiri and many other districts of Tamil Nadu have, for centuries, had millets as their staple food. Millets are healthier & wholesome, and have far more fibre, which means that the carbohydrate in them is released slowly, giving the body time to absorb it well. Rice is primarily carb, and white rice has a high glycemic index (in other words, it breaks down quickly during digestion, releasing glucose into the bloodstream, increasing the pressure on the pancreas to do their job). The consequences of shifting a staple diet based on local millets to one based on rice boggles the mind. Since farming is hard work, farmers eat a lot, lot more than you or I do. When most of this food is carb, the net result we will see manisfest in this decade is rural obesity (and obesity-linked diseases) – a most unexpected phenomenon resulting from the best of intentions. Among the younger men in villages – those in their 20s and 30s - there is little love lost for farming and they get far less exercise than their parents, yet they eat the same amount as their parents do, so they are likely to be even worse off.
More rice at less price. More liquor. Less milk. More carb. Less health.

In 2009-10, Tamil Nadu doled out 38 lakh tonnes at Rs. 2 per kilo. That’s 38,00,000,000 kilos. With such numbers, can you smell a scam ? If you are wondering just how dhabas and street food in Bangalore is so cheap, you have the answer – the rice is being smuggled in. Stand by and watch the menfolk eat their lunch by the construction site nearest to you – the plate has a dour, nutrition-less mix of salt, loads of rice and rasam, the last-named a euphimism for water coloured with spice (and, at times, the odd piece of non-veg of uncertain origin).

More rice at less price. More liquor. Less milk. More carb. Less health. More scam.

And what about the impact on the Earth? Lets just take water as a resource. Rice, unlike most traditional millets, is water intensive; indeed rice and sugarcane are the two most water intensive crops. More water needed means more electricity required to pump it, more wastage, less water to go around.

More rice at less price. More liquor. Less milk. More carb. Less health. More scam. Less water.

In September 2008, the Government of Tamil Nadu reduced the price to Re 1. One packet of gutka more per kilo. Twenty packets per month.
More rice at less price. More liquor. Less milk. More carb. Less health. More scam. Less water. More gutka.

Now in July 2010, the Central Government has new norms. For the poorest of the poor, under a scheme called Antyodaya Anna Yojna, the quota of rice per card holder has gone upto 35 kg. For Tamil Nadu, it means about 6 lakh tonnes of rice more per year. At less price.

More rice at less price. More liquor. Less milk. More carb. Less health. More scam. Less water. More gutka. Meanwhile, more rice at less price just came in.

If Gurgaon is India's future, can I opt out please?

2010-07-19T23:37:00.000-07:00

I travel to Gurgaon only because it reminds of just how lovely a city Bangalore still is. If Gurgaon has a soul, it is well hidden, beneath the monster towers that stick out of the sparse landscape like a sore forefinger. All these buildings – the glass-and-steel offices and the cement laden housing towers – reach for the sky in a travesty of justice, for just outside them lie low, flat, decrepit, asbestos roofed slums of those who provide the menial labour for the elite in the towers. They live in conditions – no water or sanitation worth its name - that can be only described as appalling and soul-wrenching, but then, let me remind you, Gurgaon has no soul to be wrenched.

If you take a walk outside the gated superblocks, the stench of decay and waste – human, animal and vegetable – hits you, but then you would be the only ‘person-like-us’ taking such a suicidal walk. For Gurgaon has little public transport and its ‘community autos’ carry ten humans on average at most times – the cattle class transport model. For the denizens of the towers, there are cars. And cars. And more cars.

Such hyper-development has unwelcome consequences. Not least, as Harrison Fraker, an architect at the University of California at Berkeley, argues, superblocks in effect become gated communities of privilege. The social consequences of such isolation (for those inside and out) take time to make themselves felt; there is however no doubt that such inequality creates deep and lasting divisions, that perpetuate themselves.

Most travellers to Delhi speak with bitterness of the rudeness, brazen guts and absence of manners of the average Delhi-walla (these attributes belonging largely to the city's post-partition residents, who now comprise three quarters of the population). Yet, even Delhi has some culture going for it - in its train museum, its art, the Delhi Haat and numerous other events that mark an urban space. Gurgaon has nothing.
So what do people do there?

Bill Bryson says in his entertaining book on the US : We used to build civilisations. Now we build shopping malls. .....and here's the Gurgaon story again. Each of its numerous malls are about the same - the stale air of Chinese food wafting along the numerous corridors of upmarket clothing stores. On my first visit to Gurgaon, I went to a couple of these malls in the evening, there being absolutely nothing else to do in the corporate guest house where I stayed. They were filled with teenagers and the yuppies of the city hanging around, in a rather poor imitation of post prandial bestial indolence. I am not one to sermonize to teens on building character or any of that sort of thing, yet it seemed somehow so wasteful, to live one's best years away in a mall, simply to belong to a group that did the same thing. All, while their parents made money, so that they could spend more time at the mall.

A proud resident of a gated superblock told me on my second visit that Gurgaon is the future of urban India. As I look around Bangalore and see the seventeen story supertowers in early stages of construction, he seems vindicated. If he is right, then I want to opt out. For now though, Bangalore stays my city.

When Moses sank

2010-07-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

When a child recently killed himself after being beaten by the Principal of an elite Catholic institution in Calcutta (no such British institution can reconcile to Kolkata), the media began this whole beaten debate about ‘corporal punishment’ again. Why is a debate even necessary to punish those who use their force and armour against children?

Perhaps I am impractical. And, of course, I have never taught a rough, noisy, garrulous bunch of children. Yet, I know the pain.

In December 1977, my family left the little town of Digboi and came to Bangalore. I had then finished my sixth standard in a small school (the ‘school year’ then was Jan to Dec). This institution, run by the Sisters of Mount Carmel was more an extension of all the families that lived in the town – after all, everyone knew everyone else. I was considered by teachers to be a meek and studious chap, never prone to take risks, a ‘teacher’s pet’. Of course, i had never been punished.
I first joined Frank Anthony Public School, Bangalore, in January 1978, it being the only one in which I got admission, Mum and Dad (Dad, in particular) aspired to put me in a true-blue, academic-centric ‘Convent’, which Frank Anthony certainly wasn’t. Their opportunity came in June and I joined St Josephs Boys High School, the venerable public school of 19th Century vintage, with a distinguished alumni list and a place of pride on Museum Road . My brother threw his weight behind the decision: in his class at IIT, there were a number of Josephites, but none from Frank Anthony.

My first day at Josephs was the day school commenced after the summer vacation. It was a hot, dusty day in June, and I sat uncertainly amidst thirty five boisterous boys (it was the first time I had left a co-educational classroom), timid and hesitant in a huge, old classroom, the walls, desks and benches of which carried numerous holes, scars and slashes of creative expression; the scene could have inspired Rowling in her creation of Harry Potter’s institution.

The classes began well enough and I remember relaxing into my uncomfortable wooden bench. A teacher named Moses walked in for the Biology class. After taking the attendance, he asked if all students had done their homework, assigned to them before the school closed for the vacation. There was silence and everyone looked around at everyone else. The boy next to me whispered,” Have you done it?”. “No.” I whispered back. “Then stand up.”

I stood up with trepidation (as I write this, I can feel the emotion coming back thirty two years after the event). “I haven’t done the homework, Sir.” I stammered out, and possibly would have added that it was my first day at school, but such explanations could wait. Moses advanced down the aisle and hit me on the face.

It was a brutal blow, in more ways than one. I had never been hit in school before, was in an alien environment and Moses was a powerful fellow, a brute of a chap, and I reeled back and felt the tears swell. He ordered me out of the class, and I stood in the dark and cold corridor for the rest of the session, sobbing into a hankerchief and wondering just what I had done wrong.

It took me many months to reconcile myself to the school and to this man; I would sit in every class of his with fear. Moses was clearly the worst teacher one could have: of average intelligence and education, and lacking in competence, with limited knowledge of his subject and a menacing air that brooked no questions, he was brutal with students who could not stand up to him (he hit me twice in the succeeding years) and partial to those who showered him with goodies (there were many of those) or who chose to flatter him. I realise today that children can be very tough indeed and can adapt, on the outside, to difficult people: I actually tried to flatter him over the next few years, realising that my marks were in his hands, and even succeeded. Yet the scar never ever went away.

For years, I hated Biology as a subject, and have only, in the last decade, been fascinated by it, largely the result of my interest in wildlife. After leaving school, I often fantasised situations where I gave it back to Moses either physically or otherwise…..but abandoned any thought of retribution after reading Mahatma Gandhi’s biography by Louis Fischer.

Did any child complain about Moses? Some apparently did, and it seemed to boomerang on them. For, Josephs believed in the rule that the teacher was always right, particularly, if he happened to be Catholic. Some years ago, I heard that Moses was still there: the loss to human value by having such a teacher is incalculable.

There are thousands of children who have had to endure much more than this. If we wish to have them educated, and not just literate, the first step is to replace the hand that hurts, with the heart that seeks to understand. Calculus and trignometry (or indeed the digestive system) can wait.

When Courage created an entrepreneur

2010-06-23T01:10:00.000-07:00

Most of us live, yet our lives have no story to tell. What story can be more pedantic than the pursuit of security and luxury while living within one’s zone of comfort and constrained imagination. Does your life tell a story?

This note, then, is about someone whose life has a story to tell. As I turned the pages of The Times of India this morning, I saw a touching memoriam to a Fauji, killed in the Valley exactly a decade ago. A few months ago, when I met his wife, it was in my role as a Coach for a program run by the Indian School of Business.
Sangeetha was in her late twenties when she lost her husband. Without an MBA or other professional qualification, holding a little child and overwhelmed by grief, she could well have retreated into the recesses of family comfort and anonymity, as many others have. The Government did what it always does: the unthinkable. It offered to allot her a fuel station in a lower-middle class locality in an unknown city (Bangalore). The circle of family and friends gave her predictable advice: say No, be the quintessential home-maker, live for the child, and so on. If she did the unthinkable and took on the task of setting up a bunk, with little knowledge of this, or for that matter any, business, it was because she wanted to temper the grief and develop an identity.

Eight years later, it’s a job very well done, even though she has little entrepreneurial passion for this business. I spent a few hours understanding the operation and the person – knowing the person is the most important bit – and the question on my mind was: Why was I a mentor to her, and not the other way around? Let’s define entrepreneurship for a minute: courage, persistence, the will to survive in business, the ability to take risks and some business basics……Most of us, particularly us MBAs, have the last part. She has the lot. If she is constrained, it is because of the dynamics of the fuel business, but, as I repeatedly told her, she would be a success in any business she chose to do with passion. The only thing a mentor can really do is listen, possibly praise; I trust I did both in some measure.

As I sat reading the rest of the newspaper, these thoughts crossed my head, as I silently saluted a man who laid his life down in defence of his country, and his wife who had the courage to step up to the challenge of creating a space for herself. Aristotle once said, “ Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” I teach.

Two Stories. One Moral

2010-06-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

Two stories. One moral.
A few days ago, the CBSE results were announced on the Web. On that morning, the garrulous maid who cleans our home came in a bit late, with a grin on her face.
‘Anna, she began, ‘ This morning, I have to keep a watchful eye on a boy who lives in another apartment where I work, who has just written his tenth standard exams.’
‘Why?’ I queried
‘His mother is off to work and has asked me to ensure he doesn’t do anything silly if he gets marks below his expectations. His mother says that you really can’t predict how children will behave these days.’

Can you imagine this? A mother who found her work more important on such a day, abdicating her responsibility of just being with her child to a maid. A mom whose known repression of her son led even her to believe that he could not be trusted with himself. Is this what education does to us?

Incident Two: two days later, I was seated by a window in an Airbus to Mumbai. Next to me was a two year old, with her mother beside her, holding an infant in her lap. Her husband sat across the aisle.
It was clear that the children were scared. They were crying at a very high pitch, with the mom trying hard to soothe them, to little effect. As the plane took off, the two year old turned hysterical, which made me suspect the possibility of a block in the inner ear, and some pain – a not unusual occurrence, as the plane gains or drops altitude. Thankfully, the television saved the moment, and the child quietened down, even as the mother nursed the infant. About forty five minutes later, as the plane dropped altitude, the children began to howl again, clearly due to the pain in the ear. The mother went back to nursing the infant, which only made the two-year old cry louder. In her embarrassment, the mother’s face turned red, her initial indulgence with the child turning to outright hostility – she began to beat and pinch the two year old, even as she herself began to cry. The air hostess offered some sugar that would help in swallowing and, hence, in relieving the pain. The angry woman rejected the offer – how could anyone know how to manage my child? I looked away, as she actually pressed her palm against the mouth of the child to prevent her from crying, her other hand pinching the child’s bottom with force. The screaming child shifted position and lay on her mother’s lap; her crying had now reached a feverish pitch. When I looked again, the mother had opened the dining tray onto the head of the two year old and was pressing on it with all her might to hurt her own child. I looked away and waited for this family to leave the aircraft before getting off myself. Is this what education does to us?

If, years (perhaps two decades or more) later, these two children – one, a boy who has just finished his CBSE and the other, a two-old girl belonging to a different city, a different culture – decide to dump their parents in an old age home, or choose to migrate to another country leaving the elders dependant on a nurse, can you blame them?
How does one start the movement from literacy to education?

A Scorpio isn't a sun sign, it's a nightmare

2010-05-23T21:01:00.000-07:00

If there’s one car I dislike, it’s the Scorpio. It has many influential cousins, all equally dislike-able, including the Outlander, Endeavour and the Land Rover. Well, the cars look good by themselves, I must admit. Its what happens to normal, decent, ordinary (though rich) people when they get behind the wheel of these metal tanks.

The driver of the typical urban SUV is reckless, fast, mannerless and uncaring. It is, I am certain, the result of the perception of power that one acquires in the insulated safety of a steel-encased tank, a perception fed adequately by the silly media industry that extols you to buy the monster for its power & go-anywhere feature (though a fraction of these monsters are actually used on roads they are designed to ‘conquer’). How else do you explain its bearing down on you as you cross the road, horn blaring and lights flashing, as though it were taking a patient on his last breath to hospital? Why else would politicians, for instance, and dodgy businessmen make SUVs (primarily the Scorpio because of its relatively low price) their vehicles of choice?

Reality often beguiles perception. I wondered if anyone had done any research work on the possible link between SUVs and self esteem (and its ugly side, narcissism). In the lovely book, The Spirit Level, I came across an excerpt posted below (with much delight):

“…the popularity of SUVs suggest a preoccupation with looking tough & reflects growing mistrust and the need to feel safe from others. Josh Lauer, in his paper, ‘Driven to extremes’, asked why military ruggedness became prized above speed or sleekness and what the rise of the SUV said about American society. He concluded that the trend reflected American attitudes towards crime and violence, an admiration for rugged individualism and the importance of shutting oneself off from contact with others – mistrust. Accompanying the rise in SUVs were other signs of Americans’ increased uneasiness and fear of one another: growing numbers of gated communities and increasing sales of home security systems.”

QED

Donald Duck in Cowboy Gear

2010-04-26T01:04:00.000-07:00

Many summers ago, when I first began a corporate career working with TDICI, then India’s premier venture capital fund, I was about as raw as one could possibly get (I find today’s freshers a lot brighter and informed). A couple of months into my job, I was handed over a company, in which we had invested over the years, to ‘look after’. The company’s name was Gum India and it made, very simply, a bubble gum called Big Fun.

The company was in trouble, indeed in every conceivable sort of trouble. It owed money to nearly every pedestrian in Chennai, was a marginal player in most markets and made a product that destroyed kids’ teeth, which didn’t quite put it on a pedestal anywhere. The company was driven by its sales people, who inspite of an alleged business education, understood nothing of finance, collections or profitability. And, if this was not enough, the company founder was (and still is) quite a character: full of bluster, grand ideas (never supported by his own reality, which he perceived to be but an irritant), and an ability to talk the hind legs of the most skeptical donkey you’d meet. In us, he had found not just a donkey, but a herd of them. This chap had a mean streak of arrogance, partly a result of breeding, partly an education from IIM and the rest a CV that was more window-dressed than real. This hauteur meant that he reserved his time for my CEO, consigning me to his beleagured finance manager.

This note then is about Ramkumar, Gum India’s finance manager. He was a short tubby chap, grey haired, with a moustache and a formal smile that hid more than it revealed. His was an unenviable position to be in, as you can well imagine; hounded by creditors, harassed by employees and impaired by a management team that found him to be an impediment in their grandiose plans. This is not to imply that Ramkumar was a suffering, silent saint; on the contrary, he was a skilled manipulator with a number of victims who were guided gently down a primrose path to nowhere, these victims including my CEO, some of my illustrious colleagues and me in particular. I am certain now that he was a most creative accountant, delving into a grey realm of fiction when arranging the company’s financials and there was some speculation that he had his hand in the till as well. Yet there is no doubting the stress he was under, which at some point presented him with a slipped disc.

I used to meet him regularly, generally in his office in Chennai (indeed, I suspect the company did not have the money to send him to Bangalore without excellent reason). I was always instructed to meet him with stern messages on company performance (or the lack of it) and sometimes rehearsed my lines, yet an hour with him would disable my ammunition and have me meekly submit to his extenuations. Our meetings always ended with a set of excuses for non-performance from his side that were to be relayed by me to my senior colleagues in the company’s defence. The next quarter, he would assert, would be spectacular for the company. It was a quarter that never came, yet every time we met, there was astonishing chutzpah on display.

Ramkumar’s room was a drab, grey cabin, with little to please the eye, except for a poster that was stuck on the wall behind him. It had Donald Duck in a cowboy suit, hat, holster, the works, twirling a gun on his forefinger, with a broad grin across his engaging face. The byline said, “Nothing will happen today that I can’t handle!”. Everytime I met him in his room, my eyes would fix on that poster. I kept relating it to the man himself, and realised that it reflected his philosophy, if indeed that is a suitable word to use. There I would sit, paying scant attention to what he was saying while nodding my head, thinking of just what this statement of assertion meant and the more I stared at it, the more it impressed me with its resilient overtone.

As the years have passed by, this visual of Donald Duck has stood me in good stead. When faced with a fire in my family home in the middle of the night, an airline employee who had closed the flight gates or a ticket conductor who asked (recently) for proof of identity that I did not have on me, I have sat back in despair only to see my friend, Donald, in his cowboy suit. Often then, a picture of Ramkumar opens up in my mind, his easy, at times sly, smile reflecting his confidence in making me putty in his hands. I have then composed myself and put on a smile to help build my defence. I cannot remember an instance when this statement has let me down, since I first accepted it.

Paths are made for walking

2010-03-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

The warm spring season in Feb-March is my favourite time of year.
As you walk by the different species of trees that line the roads, most of them in flower, the mild, yet intoxicating, fragrances emanating from them make you breathe more, deeper and fuller. The honge is in a class of its own, its mauve & white tiny flowers forming a carpet that attracts the apis indica in their hundreds and releasing the scents of a million blossoms in spring that power the imagination. No less is the large leaf Mahogany (about which I have written in the earlier post), the now-scantily flowering Cork tree (Millingtonia Hortensis to those who know of Millington, the great botanist in pre-Independence India) and the Champaka in white and blood red.
Stop to look around you and up into the foliage and you are greeted with a riot of colours, with the Tabebuias leading from the front. Colours from the delicate to the resplendent, from the ridiculous to the sublime – only Nature could prepare this Planter's Punch, in a moment of heady mirth. Walk longer, a lot longer, to reach Lalbagh and a lot more is in store – the Flame of the Forest (Butea), now alas a rarity in the city, the Coral Tree, the Silk Cottons in two colours that would shock and awe, the giant Mahua, the flowers of which would make a heady brew and, as April dawns and the season of Vishu begins (the Malayalam new year), the most beautiful, the most delicate, the most inexplicably charming necklace of petals, the Laburnum (Cassia Fistula, Vishu Kanni in God's own language).

As you can see, this is clearly my pick; I can spend a happy hour by a laburnum, watching the necklaces of yellow sway in the mild breeze, drop some flowers or draw a dizzy bee into their midst. When our ancestors first set store by this tree, profiling it as sacred, setting its flowers aside for worship and giving an otherwise ordinary tree a place of pride, it was because they had had their moments of exultant de bonheur, an unbrindled happiness at the sight of the Laburnum. We have a lot to learn from the history of beauty.

Mahogany Magic

2010-03-11T08:33:00.000-08:00

In late Feb - early March, something astonishing comes alive in Bangalore, a process that, because it is commonplace, is taken for granted by all of us.

Many years ago, as a part of the social forestry program, large-leaved mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) was planted all over the city. This is not the expensive-wood mahogany that is considered better dead than alive. Rather, it is but a poor cousin, poor enough to be planted by the road and grow unhindered. And grow it does to a large size, flush with large green leaves and capsule-like fruits, covered with minute knobbly projections, containing many winged seeds that are, as I write this note, scattered on our pavements and roads.

In early Feb, as if on cue, every tree of this species begins to shed its leaves. The beginnings are modest and I often stand for a few minutes under the benign shade, tracking the lazy swirl of a leaf as it breeze-dances its way to the ground. A couple of days later, the process acquires a momentum, a shot of inspiration, a fillip and the occasional leaf is now joined by many many more, turning shedding into a veritable shower. Park a car under the tree for a day and you could well miss the steel-and-rubber under the pile up. Imagine, for a moment, just what imperative the tree is responding to, to have to issue pink slips with such rapidity, to shake off its clothing, much as wet dog shakes off water with some annoyance.

The imperative, of course, is the heat which results in transpiration loss. In the tropics, our deciduous trees shed their leaves in the summer, unlike the temperates where autumn is the season for the shed-fest, yet the magic of the mahogany is the sheer velocity of the process, measured in hours, not days, in the briefest moments of a mild breeze, not in gradual phase of weather change.

And one day, the tree is bare, a shadow of its former self - indeed it is quite an appropriate turn of phrase, for a bare tree's shadow is but sparse. Standing on my balcony a couple of weeks ago, I saw the tree across the ground in just such a state, a gigantic fibrous root system it would seem, upside down. Miss this spectacle for a day or two though and you have missed it for a year. For very soon, the tree begins to grow its leaves again, bright dark-green leaflets, that soften the summer sunshine and fan the weary traveller. A week later, the tree is back to its former glory, bathed in a shiny green, a new look for the year ahead.

For some years now, I have watched this from my home with fascination. I have far more questions than answers each year; questions such as 'What determines the speed of renewal?' and 'Why does it not wait for some indicator of rain before sprouting its leaves back?'

When a spectacle forces a question, we know that Nature is at work. Here, it's the magic of the Mahogany.

Just Why I am a Genius

2010-03-05T18:25:00.000-08:00

One of my abiding questions has been: just why am I a genius? Indeed, I read somewhere that only geniuses ask this question.

Well, the latest issue of The Economist (page 78) has part of the answer. Research presented in the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Feb 19th proves that a post-prandial snooze sets the brain up for learning. Those who remain awake throughout the day become worse at learning. Those who nap, by contrast, actually improve their capacity to learn, doing better in the evening that they had at noon. These findings suggest that sleep is clearing the brain’s short term memory and making way for new information.

If you have additional insight on just why I am a genius let me know.

China is the wrong goalpost

2010-03-02T23:48:00.000-08:00

Just prior to the Budget this year, a newspaper headlined "Finance minister says India will beat China by 2014." This is about as boring and predictable as one can get. The media and India's corporate sector has succeeded effectively in placing China on an aspirational economic pedestal, compelling politicians to pander to their views.
China is the wrong goal. In the pursuit of economic growth, it is destroying its environment, depleting its soil, air and water and producing third rate goods, often made or coated with toxic material. Fast growth comes at its own cost - its a very heavy burden for current and future generations to bear.

Just why can't we take the best examples in comprehensive economic growth? These are not economic Page 3s, so to speak, not spoken about in hushed tones or with awe. But they are solid examples: Bhutan, Netherlands, Costa Rica and Norway, all have a great deal to teach us. In an earlier blog, I briefly commented on the essence of Costa Rica's philosophy. Bhutan measures not GDP, but Gross Domestic Happiness. In a couple of later posts, I will cover the other two economic models, if only to make the point that human happiness, green cover and economic growth are intensely correlated and have never been contradictory.

One reason why the aforesaid 4 are not on any economic map is their size, particularly vis-a-vis India. China fits the bill here, of course, yet the fallacy is in the belief that 'thinking big' is thinking right. Nothing could be further away from the truth than this rather fallacious assumption.
China is the wrong goalpost. Happiness - through whatever economic model we choose - is the right one. More later.

Vedanta - a man is known by the company he keeps

2010-02-21T06:36:00.000-08:00

The more I learn of the Indian mining major, Vedanta, the more I am convinced that it is a company whose designs and values are suspect. There are many such companies in India, of course, but the Vedanta group has set, by itself, a rather dubious standard of 'rape and run'. The group companies include Sterlite, Madras Aluminium, Bharat Aluminium and Vedanta Alumina.

Over the last few months I have been exposed to a fair amount of data, videos and photographs put together by a number of civil rights groups, committed non-profits and intrepid individuals and am convinced of the abuse of this management's power and money in its operations in Orissa and elsewhere in India. I have seen and read extensively of collosal, shocking air pollution with fly ash, of thousands of people affected by multiple skin diseases, of the use of State police to force poor people to vacate large areas of lands that the group wants acquired for mining, expansion or new development and of mass destruction of tree cover. This is the classic example of the company that Micheal Moore termed the alter ego, in some sense, of the psychopath - single minded pursuit of profits to the detriment of all else.
The final nail in the coffin was the decision of the Orissa Government to 'sell' a sacred hill for mining bauxite, to this company, a decision that regrettably was endorsed by the Supreme Court, which has often taken the side of environment and traditional heritage in its history. This hill - the Niyamgiri hill - is sacred to the Kondh people and they have fought a courageous battle that, in many ways, is only beginning.

Very interestingly, this is one environmental battle that is being fought in the financial services sector: a number of investors - mutual funds, charitable trusts, pension funds - are either dumping their Vedanta stock after learning of the company's activity or refusing to buy. These include Norway's Government Pension Fund (also called the oil fund), the Church of England, Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Martin Currie Investment Trust.
Hence, here's a request: please read to learn about Vedanta. If you don't like what you see, and you manage a fund, do the right thing. Write to the Mutual Fund Managers you know or those who manage some of your money about this company, requesting them to avoid buying or holding onto the stock of a criminally negligent company.

The Cost of Driving Your Car

2010-02-15T08:55:00.000-08:00

If you are contemplating buying your second car, for the home, the better half or possibly a grown up child, read this carefully. When an airconditioned taxi cab (with a chaffeur) is offered to you @ Rs. 15 per kilometre (Meru or Easy Cabs, for instance), you shudder. This is expensive, if used regularly. Much better to buy a vehicle instead.
Lets do some micro economics here:
Assume now, that you are purchasing a mid range car, say one that costs Rs. 6 lakhs and runs on petrol, giving you an efficiency of about 12 km per litre. Assume further that the car will run about 10,000 km a year. These are fair & realistice assumptions. Remember that this is the second car for the family.
Fuel cost per kilometre (including engine oil) : Rs. 5 (just a third of the cab)
Over a five year period, though, there are the following:
Daily washing, quarterly servicing and (inevitable) repairs, battery & tyre replacement and tinkering costs : Rs. 100,000, or about Rs 2 per km
Insurance : Rs. 50,000, Re 1 per km
Loss of interest (post-tax!) on the amount invested in the car : Rs. 3 per km
Loss on sale of car after 5 years (@ Rs. 3 lakhs) : Rs. 6 per km. The more expensive the car, the higher the loss per km.

Total cost of ownership : Rs. 17 per km. The saving to you by using a cab covering 50,000 km over a five year period is Rs. 1 lakh.
Throw in a personal chaffeur and the cost reaches Rs. 23-Rs. 26 per kilometre.

I use this argument against a second car, rather than the first, only because a single car may be seen as vital for, say, a medical emergency and hence not subject to critical economic analysis.
The moral: public transport is not just eco-friendly, it is common economics as well.

Costa Rica: happy and green

2010-02-11T22:06:00.000-08:00

I first met Carmen from Costa Rica in UC, Berkeley in 2001. What struck me most about this teenager was just how much she laughed all the time in the month long program she attended alongwith me and about thirty others. In Costa Rica, though, (as I read in a recent BBC report) her laughter and ready sense of humour is hardly an exception.
Costa Rica is a remarkable country. It has no army. Successive governments have poured money into books, not bullets, with the result that the country is almost fully literate.
It is the first developing country to state its aim of being carbon neutral by 2021, in part through the mass planting of trees. In the 1980s, about 20% of its land area was covered by forests. Today, about half of Costa Rica is has rich tree cover. About 90% of its energy supply comes from renewables.

Is being green also being happy ? Much as I would want the correlation established, Costa Rica is the only real example I can find, the correlation established in a report published by the New Economics Foundation, which has combined three variables - what people say about their life satisfaction, their longevity (very high at 78 years ) and their ecological footprint.

Sociologists and some others have extended this argument, making facts that are equally relevant and proven elsewhere (read Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers'). They say that, in addition to greenness, longevity can be connected to happiness which in turn is because of strong social networks of friends and familiers and a high level of tolerance of social divisions and opinions. A popular piece of philosophy in Costa Rica says no argument or quarrel should last more than three days.
We have a lot to learn from this beautiful country.

Laptop & change

2010-01-08T16:14:00.000-08:00

This month, my laptop (the first one I have ever had) completes six years of service. Perhaps IBM (now, no longer IBM, but Lenovo) should give me an award for persistence. On the other hand, I have used Windows XP all along (now, no longer Windows XP, but failed Vista, followed by Windows 7), so perhaps Microsoft should. Or, perhaps, the guy who sold me the laptop should be getting some flak from his boss for not tempting me with an upgrade, but then he has gone through three more jobs in the last six years. Then, the dealer (his boss), who sold me the laptop, is no longer a dealer, but has shut shop because of thinning margins.
Well, you get the gist. Everything (pointlessly) changes all the time, of course. Except my laptop. It has now become rather old and slow, much like an old man walking down a high-traffic stairway, holding onto the railing of predictability.
I am not emotional about things in general & would gladly let go of a product if it had outlived its utility or had been worn to its soles, yet there is an underlying environmental responsibility for full usage - after all, like most people I know, all that we use is the Office Suite in its most basic form. This laptop, old as he is, needs to use only about 10% of his potential to deal with me (which gives you an idea of just how tech savvy I am). Much of our dissatisfaction with computers is because of their speed, or rather, the superior speed of newer computers, when contrasted with the one you own. I call this 'engineered dissatisfaction' - a term I use for the egregious efforts of intelligent engineers and product managers who, in their effort to maximise profits for their corporations, encourage people to buy new computers without bothering about what they could do with the old one. They do this knowing fully well that the potential customer is rarely using the full product, but can be tempted with the Apple in the garden (no pun, of course, intended).

By using my laptop over this inordinate period and speaking about it, I am making a statement - to anyone who'd care to listen. Think. Before you buy.

Simple Living

2009-12-22T08:52:00.000-08:00

The other day I was at a dinner with folks who are clearly well heeled, if not very rich. They have a tastefully furnished home, a music system for the discerning listener and a high technology kitchen. The main protagonist of my story, a lady with some pretentions to minimalism, was mulling over how important money was to her. “It has its place,” she sniffed delicately, “I live within what we earn. Basically, I am a very simple person.” This argument is decidedly specious : indeed, ‘simple’ may just be the most abused word in the English language.

This got me thinking quite a bit about what simple living means to the middle and upper economic strata; in essence, it means living with just what you need, not with what you can afford. The more I think about it, the more I realise that the difference between these terms is the difference between night and day.
The Mahatma would have approved.

On the Opening Day at Copenhagen, December 2009

2009-12-07T02:18:00.000-08:00

This morning’s newspaper is a fascinating contradiction. The front page editorial of The Hindu, and many pieces on other pages, revolves around the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, that will debate on an issue as important as our future and the future of our children. Across the newspaper, though, are advertisements, enticing, cajoling ones, pushing the sale of 2009 model cars of every auto company, as car makers want to empty their stock out before the year ends.

You could believe, with some justification, that, as Governments across the World meet to address the single biggest challenge humanity has faced, that of catastrophic climate alteration as a result of excessive carbon in the atmosphere, the Corporate sector continues to address the only challenge it has ever faced, viz., that of increasing sales, at any cost, even if such sales was only to add carbon to the atmosphere. This is so accepted now that no one could see the contradiction, if it was served on a plate with a salad dressing around it.
Yet, we should begin to. The Corporate sector, to which all of us are dutifully attached in some capacity or the other, is the largest force in society today and the impact of, say, Toyota effecting a 25% reduction in its carbon emissions can equal that of a country. Indeed, as Paul Hawken noted, of the top 100 economies in the World today, over 51% are corporations.

The problem arises because corporations are considered to be amoral in some sense, and need not have values that are necessary for every individual to live in society. Just how this has happened beats me, yet it is true. Therefore, most of us have begun to accept that asking a company, the company you work with, for example, to reduce its pollution impact, is violating principles of a working relationship. Like many things assumed, this is never questioned or, when questioned, dismissed as heretical.

The Hindu’s editorial has a brilliant end note: The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgement on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. Are we, all members of an educated, ‘elite’, intelligent group, aware of the calamity ahead and what it means for each of us? Are we clinging to those dubious pieces of science fiction that deny that our climate is in inexorable alteration, because such prose is convenient to read and a feel-good story?

Are we willing instead, to change things around us towards a sustainable future, to make a substantial alteration to our standard of living and to become the catalyst, using the influence each of us has?

I do not have great aspirations from Copenhagen. Yet, in asking you to examine your own lifestyle, the consumptive and unsustainable way in which your business is run, as well as the future of our planet, and to disassociate all this reflection from business imperative, I am making a request, a sincere and heartfelt one, to do the right thing. As the many leaders debate and negotiate with, contradict and annoy each other, please use your circle of influence within your corporation to make a real, tangible difference to the planet, devoid of political agenda and, more likely than not, in contradiction to short term profit objectives. If the process of climate change is to be arrested, the first step will have to be taken by each one of us, not by the jesters at the court of Copenhagen.

In other words, its your problem.

The problem with solar energy

2009-11-15T08:38:00.000-08:00

The more I look closely at things, the murkier they seem to be. Take solar power, for instance, now much touted as the energy source of the future. The Indian Government itself has set a target, under the National Solar Energy Mission, of 20,000 megawatts (for Heaven’s sake!).
Solar energy is clean, no doubt. The problem is in the manufacture of solar cells.

Currently, much of the production comes from a process in which a chemical called cadmium telluride is used, a highly toxic compound known to be a carcinogen and now being actively chastised by many groups working on toxics. Since the life of a solar cell is about two decades (practically speaking), just where are the cells going to go, once their life is done? There is no recycling plant that I know of, in India at least, and the manufacturers of solar panels aren’t exactly lining up to receive toxic waste.

Nanosolar, a Silicon Valley ‘clean technology’ start up says it has the answer to cadmium telluride, an answer it calls CIGS. This is a combination of copper, indium, gallium and selenium, which will be less toxic and perhaps cheaper, if produced on a large scale. The issue here will be just how these metals will be extracted. Copper mines, for example, have an absymal record of toxic waste in spillage, from India to Malaysia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Mexico and parts of Africa, including Zambia, where copper virtually supports the export economy and Congo. If anything can be said in its favour, it is that copper mines have been impartial in their record of destruction. Indium is a rare metal & its extraction promises to be messy as well.

For the moment, however, we must take away two messages : the first that the cheapest form of solar power is solar thermal power, which involves heating water with sunlight to make steam, using good ol’ lenses. The second that, the only sustainable solution for all of us is to reduce our consumption of resources.
Many intelligent, educated people believe that our species will innovate its way out of this energy and climate change crisis, because we have worked ourselves out of crises, such as the food shortages of the ‘60s that led to the Green Revolution. This is silly optimism, backed by no data to support it.
There is no ‘clean’, unlimited party on this planet. Reduction, I believe, is the immediate answer.

Kumaran

2009-11-05T08:29:00.000-08:00

When I first saw Kumaran, I must have been four or perhaps five years old and I immediately took a liking to him, a fondness that lasted many years. The reason was simple: he would shower me with chocolates and toffees, amidst protestations from my parents. He used to visit us once a month, with the regularity that I particularly appreciated. The procedure would be the same: he would stand hesitantly, just outside our large two storeyed home, Bungalow 75, and clear his throat with a low cough. The servants, who had seen him walk up the driveway, would let my parents know of course and my father would come down, with a slight imperious air, me behind him in eager anticipation. Kumaran would hand over the goodies with a smile and begin a hesitant conversation in Malayalam, while my father would ask the mandatory questions: how’s the family, is the job going well, any changes in the organisation and so on…

I never actually saw Kumaran sit down, certainly not inside a room, for he saw himself as many levels below us in a hierarchy of native definition. Many years before I first set eyes on him, my father had secured a permanent job for him at Duliajan, about 20 km away, and played a role in his promotion to supervisor. Most people would have expressed their gratitude at these moments, perhaps brought a pack of sweets for the benefactor and then looked up at the career ladder.

Kumaran was different. His would visit us every month with a single message: thank you, he would say, often with eyes moist, a gentle smile and that hint of apology that I could never really understand. The somewhat forced conversation - and a cup of tea - over, Kumaran would ‘take leave’ and promise to return a month later, while my father asked him earnestly to not trouble himself – a trip to Digboi took the better part of a day for the man.

A month later, there he would be. With my chocolates.

When he stopped coming home, I asked Dad what had happened. He’s got a job in the Gulf, he said, a place far away. I remember him telling Mum that Kumaran would now make a good deal of money. “He will never forget us,” Mum said in her dramatic way and she was right, of course. Kumaran would write regularly to Dad and, from his accounts, it was clear that he was soon making more money that my father did in his last job as a Finance Manager, before retirement. When we moved to Bangalore in 1977, Kumaran began visiting us while on his annual holiday. T
Some things were now different: the chocolates were imported ones, and he brought my parents small gifts - an after shave, a perfume, a can opener - yet the message never changed : it’s because of both of you that I am what I am.

Years later, he retired and moved to Kerala. When he came to see my Mum after my father’s demise, he was inconsolable. I saw him some years later at our place again, that low cough, gentle smile, now on a wrinkled countenance. The chocolates were, understandably, not there any more and, as he hugged me, I found it hard to relate to him : I had never seen his family or known him. He sat down this time in the living room and I shortly excused myself. It was the last time I saw him.

Kumaran was, in the 1950s, just another young man from Kerala, escaping poverty by moving to a strange land called Assam. The overwhelming majority live on their survival instincts and indeed seek to forget those who helped them. Oscar Wilde once said: if you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you, but that is the principal difference between dog and man.

‘What made Kumaran different’ is a question I will never know the answer to.

The media's single obsession

2009-10-15T08:45:00.000-07:00

The transformation of the media into a money machine is a price that India has had to pay for our economic mutation (one can’t call the post – 1991 phenomenon ‘development’ without a shudder). Consider the latest issue of Outlook Business, the cover story being on small town tycoons, who have grown businesses working out of Class C towns, without ever considering a migration to the Big City. One such entrepreneur featured grew his business – manufacturing and selling pan masala and gutka – exponentially to list among the wealthiest in the country today. The issue celebrates his success, with an article that speaks of sales, profits, diversification plans and more profits.

Instead, it should have ignored his story, for he is a merchant of death, a man who has made his millions by selling an addiction, by poisoning people, by driving to poverty, families that incur huge hospital bills on a gutka addict with oral mucous fibrosis, the precursor to cancer. By placing the onus on the Indian consumer (‘we don’t force anyone to eat anything; it is the consumer’s right to choose’), these merchants of death - for there are many like him - fool no one. The gutka consumer is largely illiterate, a victim of peer pressure and hopelessly inept at understanding the implication of his consumption, instead placing trust on a brand that betrays him with vicious regularity.

Yet, for the media, such considerations don’t matter. There is no other denominator in which business can be understood by them or by their readers, other than the cold definition of profits. This is not just regressive, it is macabre.

In GK Chesterton’s quaint story, The Man in Green, the President of a country speaks with a character named Lambert about another person named Quin.

‘Is he really off his chump, do you think?’ asked Lambert.
The old President looked after him with queerly vigilant eyes.
‘He is a man, I think,’ he said, ‘ who cares for nothing but a joke. He is a dangerous man.’
Lambert laughed. ‘Dangerous!’ he said. ‘You don’t know little Quin, Sir!’
‘Every man is dangerous,’ said the old man without moving, ‘who cares only for one thing. I was once dangerous myself.’

banker.in.trouble @ gmail. com

2009-09-26T09:44:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine – I will call him Alex (not his real name, I re-emphasise) - was one of the earliest Indian adopters of gmail, which advantage gave him a ‘generic’ mail address: his email id is, simply, alex @ gmail.com. This initially was quite a bother, since he ended up with a number of mails offering propositions of marriage. Indeed, as he says, while some offered him loans, one mail offered him a transplanted heart, many combined the two to offer lonely hearts. As you can see, Alex is not without a sense of humour, and he has put it to good use.

Sometime ago, he received a cryptic email from a relationship manager at a foreign bank Alex has no connection with. “Please find enclosed your mutual fund statement and let me know if you want me to do anything.” Quite obviously, this banker had the wrong guy. When Alex clicked on the PDF file that had the statement, he got quite a shock. There were about two million dollars of savings in there, invested (wisely, no doubt), by an adroit man of the same name as he, in a set of mutual fund schemes.

Well, Alex thought a bit and sent a reply to the banker. “Please sell everything and transfer the proceeds to my account. Don’t tell my wife,” he added for good measure.

For some days there was no return mail. You can well visualise an assiduous banker, burning the midnight oil (and catalysing his ubiquitous ulcer) in carrying out the instruction from a wealthy client who was going through some active turbulence at home. About a week later, the banker sent Alex a terse mail that read: “Please delete all mail communication from this mail id. Do not respond to this mail.” One can only imagine the spanking that he must have got from his client, whose carefully built portfolio of gilt edged funds was now liquidated into a savings account.

I am sure there is a lesson here somewhere (other than, be careful of Alex)………

Wait Loss

2009-09-21T08:51:00.000-07:00

I read, recently, this most useful bit from a book called ‘Complications’ by Atul Gawande, a surgeon.
Quote
Human beings are subject to what scientists call a ‘fat paradox’. When food enters your stomach and duodenum (the upper portion of the small intestine), it triggers stretch receptors, protein receptors and fat receptors that signal “I am full”. Nothing stimulates the reaction more quickly than fat. Even a small amount, once it reaches the duodenum will cause a person to stop eating. Yet, we eat too much fat. How can this be?

The reason is speed. Foods can trigger receptors in the mouth to accelerate our intake – and, again, the most potent stimulant is fat. A little bit on the tongue, and the receptors push us to eat fast, before the gut signals shut us down. We eat fast not by chewing faster, but by chewing less. In other words, we gulp.
Unquote.

The lesson that I took away from Complications was to mimic the bovine: eat slowly, chew your food and enjoy your meal (have you ever seen a dissatisfied cow?).

Any benefits other than keeping your weight in check ? Yes, eating less apparently means living longer as well.

The first evidence that mammalian longevity could be increased came in 1935; restricting calories (without malnutrition) in rodents could delay the onset of diseases and extend life. In the July 2009 issue of Science, scientists reported that a 20 year study on rhesus monkeys showed substantially reducing caloric intake leads to longer lifespans in primates. An interesting lesson in this study was also that a low calorie diet started at any point in adulthood brings rewards of a longer lifespan, complete prevention of diabetes and, indeed, remarkable brain health. While humans live longer than primates and are (allegedly) more capable, the conclusions are obvious. Poetically put:

Fend off potent yellow fat
Keep the carbs far way
Chew in
deliberate circular motion
Prolong your stay.

(with apologies for some poetic licence)

A tribute to someone I never knew

2009-09-14T09:32:00.000-07:00

Being an agricultural scientist is infra dig, of course. Yet, for Norman Borlaug - who died yesterday at the age of 95 - his work was his mission. If there was one man who helped the World beat the gloomy prophecy of Malthus - a prediction that population would outrun food supply for it - it was Borlaug. I owe my existence, my full stomach, my absence of anxiety about my next meal to him. So do you.

If there is a flip side to this, it is in the excesses of the Green Revolution that we see today - the salinity of fertile land, the leaching of pesticides and fertiliser into ground water, the poisoning of animal populations (including our own species), yet none of this is due to Borlaug's work. It is the greed of those who took his work away from its foundation of values and into a world of production, distribution and profitability who have caused these excesses to occur.

We are now entering an age, hopefully, of a return to organic agriculture, based on a combination of science and tradition. We need Borlaug again (version 2.0) to help feed the future population of 8 billion.
An excellent note on this extraordinary human being, written by Justin Gillis for The New York Times News Service, was published in The Hindu today

2009-09-02T09:23:00.000-07:00

In 1989, twenty years ago, Vikram Seth wrote, with deep anguish, on the Tiananmen massacre. A few days ago, I came across the cutting that I had made of that poem, a remarkable verse, for its depth of feeling.

No miracle will ever clean
The memory, brutal and obscene,
Of those who, having fouled their trust,
Grew warped with dread and powerlust -
And order fire on the Square,
On unarmed people everywhere,
Brave people seeking to be free,
Of rottenness, of tyranny.

George Santayana once said: Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. This piece of history – belonging to our generation – must never be forgotten.

The Great Divide

2009-08-18T10:05:00.000-07:00

I spent a couple of days at Kabini last weekend, facilitating a workshop for a team. We stayed at a resort that could only be classified as seven star and, at the edge of India's finest national park, it stuck out like a sore thumb with its lap pools, jacuzzi and multi-cuisine breakfast. I have always been uncomfortable in luxury, perhaps because it is my nature to be contrarian, and this was certainly no exception. There was far greater beauty outside the resort than in it and Ravi, a friend, and I spent a few idle moments in capturing this beauty. This hut, for instance, represents the maxim of eco-consciousness, even as its inhabitants are unaware of the label. They were displaced, unceremoniously I might add, from the forest when the Kabini reservoir was created in 1974 in the interests of 'the greater common good', just another family, amongst those in 117 villages who were informed that they were in the way of progress. Thirty five years and two generations later, they seethe with bitterness at the raw deal they received in compensation. A family that has moved from the status of the landed to seeking Government dole and possibly a job for a family member in the resort that I stayed in.

A few hundred yards before the reservoir is a lovely old temple, alongside which is a bilpatre tree, the fruit of which had the peculiar fermented smell that had me asking for more...... This combination, temple and tree, belongs to another era, an era in which religion and conservation worked hand-in-hand, a symphony of synergy.

...and by the tree, we met Puttuswamy, an old man who farms groundnuts with the same passion that he reserves for a commentary on the breathtaking banyan tree in his field, bigger than the biggest I have ever seen. Did some other banyan giants sink in the reservoir in 1974? What did we lose then for the gain?
What we do know is that hundreds of hectares of priceless forest were drowned in the cacophony of development. In many parts of the Kabini, the branches of trees stand out in the water, mute testimony to an outage of reason.
As I spoke to the local people, the image of a paradise lost is unmistakeable. The Kabini reservoir is now a tourist attraction for those who carry a whistle-stop checklist and need to tick this one off. Yet, the locals, the ones who have stayed and borne the brunt of brutal change ask the question: Which thought-deprived, senseless, asinine system designed this blunder that robbed them off a livelihood and future security ?
The tourists in the resort will never understand these questions. They need just the right water pressure in their jacuzzi.......

Hemant - the candle in the wind

2009-08-10T09:29:00.000-07:00

I heard today that Hemant was gone. A candle, in the brightest moment of its life, extinguished by an unexplained calamity that modern medicine had no answer to. Hemant was not my best friend; indeed, I knew him only to a marginal extent, for he kept to himself. He was an outdoor support instructor for my training programs at Wonder Valley and I oftened marvelled at his ability to stay silent for hours on end, as participants played games and made predictable asses of themselves in pursuit of mythical team goals. In his quiet way, Hemant was a special guy, gentle to a fault, a contrast to his boisterous colleagues and I reflected this evening on the many days I spent at Wonder Valley, under the stars, making idle banter in his company.

Why? Why did he have to go, when others who are bad and nasty live to a ripe old age, leaving unhappiness in their wake? Hemant deserved to live more than most people I know and his smile - with its inherent simplicity that is the hallmark of the Pahadi - will be with me for a long long time.
What does someone's death do to us? You fret a bit, ponder as you potter around during the day, think of the times together, lament for one now gone and then ? Life goes on. As the World becomes busier by the day, there is little time for idyllic or sorrowful reflection or indeed expression. In the olden days, much time was spent in mourning, an activity so despised that professional mourners were often employed to do the job. Today, there is instead the escape that activity provides us, the sheer force of which compels us to look at the here and now, rather than to reflect.
Is there a larger purpose that we don't know about ?

We, the Peepal

2009-07-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

There is something magical about the rustling of the leaves of the peepal. Many years ago, when we moved in to Reach for the Sky, where our apartment is on the first floor, I noticed a small peepal sapling growing in a corner in the plot behind us. This plot had a small house, long since abandoned, and plenty of land around it The peepal is a hardy tree – it can even grow out of a crack in sheer concrete, because it gets its moisture, and nourishment, from the air. I knew that, in the course of time, it would dominate the landscape and provide beauty, shade and fruit, in addition, naturally, to the hypnotic sound of its leaves rustling in the wind. It was a rustle that The Buddha must have had inspiration from, as he meditated under it at Bodh Gaya.

The sound of the leaves on a dark night can be eerie. If you aren’t conscious of the Peepal nearby, if you are dreaming, as I often do, of nothing in particular or of everything in general, the sound can jerk you back to awareness, indeed heightened awareness, as you look around you in apprehension. Is it an animal ? you ask in that instant before the realisation.

By mid 2002, about a year after I had first seen the peepal from my backyard, the tree had grown well and a year later, it had reached the height, where its branches were at about eye level from my first floor perch. But it was in 2004 and the succeeding year, that the tree displayed its potential, as a possible transit point for the many mynas, tailor birds and crows that populate the area. On a lovely evening, we all watched a spotted owlet, its distinct call resonating in the stillness of a summer night, and it stared back at us with a touch of insolence. I hesitantly switched a torch on and it flew away, to be back the next day, and the next, with its equally vociferous mate. Now in its fifth year, the tree was tall, attired well and confident. I couldn’t have asked for a more distinguished neighbour.

I arrived from work one day to see it being chopped down. The old house itself was to be demolished, to be substituted with a much larger, modern city dwelling. The peepal was the first to go. I stood by the grill, upset and angry in equal measure, yet this was about as much as I could do. Architects are the ones who can truly prevent such idiocy, for their standing with their client gives them the credibility to propose options. Yet, architects are taught to build, never to preserve and those who do protect ecology, do so from the goodness of their heart, not from the practice of their curriculum; in a ‘professional’ course, trees are, well, unprofessional, if they don’t add to some standard measure of aesthetic appeal. …but that’s enough of discourse.

The owlets went away as well; the chopping of the peepal wasn’t the reason, for I heard them for some months after. When the new house was complete – a concrete castle, with not an inch of space for Nature – its new owners did a puja invoking blessings, no doubt, for selfish prosperity. It probably never crossed their conditioned minds that, had the peepal remained, their joy would have been infinite, beyond any measure that prosperity can define.
Last year, on our small farm at Javalagiri, we planted five peepals, and followed up with a couple of saplings in mid July this year. Maybe its the only way I know of getting back at the ignoramuses who own the house behind mine. Or perhaps, I yearn to hear the spotted owlet call out to us, from amidst the leaves of the peepal.......

The Truly Great

2009-07-24T09:20:00.000-07:00

My father, who passed away a quarter century ago, was a study in contrasts. He had the method of an accountant (which he was by profession), yet the heart and soul of a romantic. Rummaging through his papers and clippings, I came across Keynes and Keats and his own collection of thoughts often. I seem to have got his proclivity for method for much of his own writing and clippings have been carefully preserved.
Last month, as I opened an old diary of his - which now is a hiding place for my daughter's pocket money - a little piece of paper fell out, yellowed with age. I picked it up carefully; it had the smell and the feel of another age, and the neat trimming of the paper could only have been from my Dad's sure hand. The paper had a short poem printed on it, written, alas, by an unknown author, whose style is most unusual, yet brilliantly maverick. The poem reads:
This I have learned at last
That gentleness
Is bred within the strong of heart
Those who possess
It wholly are not weak, but brave
Seeing life clear
They understand that arrogance
Is hidden fear.

My years have shown me that
Compassion mends
Wounds graven deep upon the soul
And comprehends
That valour is an empty thing
When born of hate;
And only those with tenderness
Are truly great.

I have read this many times since and it has helped me understand my father a little more. A quarter century after him, I can only label this better late than never.

2009-07-08T09:50:00.000-07:00

Just how people choose their email ids is fascinating to observe. A number of them begin with their age or year of birth in the mail id – such as something like i-promise-i-am-not-a-moron_37@yahoo.com or shutterbug1985@bigshitnochief.com . Soon, this makes people self conscious. Every time they send a mail they worry if the truth will hurt them. “Will it get around that I am 37?” They then send out a mail to all those who have still kept in touch with them, despite their advancing years. The mail reads like this: “Please direct all communication (irrelevant spam, gossip, corny jokes, puzzles that add upto purple and the rest) to moron_halifax_texas@yahoo.com, a courageous attempt to get others to believe that the place they live in is a pleasing qualification to have on a CV. Sometime later, of course, when the downturn hits, they move to Hyderabad or Bangalore, necessitating yet another mail notifying change of identity. Why, you ask? Well, they do not wish to appear to be false, of course. When you live in Harohalli, you cannot have a Halifax mail id. The problem is that you cannot have a Harohalli, after the underscore, in your mail id as well. Its just not cool and the Yanks might think that you ain’t a comeback kid no more. This apparently complex problem is now solved: people simply appropriate the Harohalli onto their surname. So a Vinayak Harihar Rao in school (‘yuck’ to all the boys who knew him well, ‘Vinayak’ to his parents, ‘Rao’ to the PT Master, ‘Nose-digger’ to the girl sitting on the first bench), would morph into a US-returned Hari Harohalli, with an email id such as hari.harohalli@i-still-promise-i-am-not-a-moron.com . The full stop in mail ids is very powerful, much better than the underscore, more definitive than a dash. You will be amazed at just how many of India’s villages have thus entered mail ids. The defensive e-mailer always argues, with a weak smile, that the 'harohalli' is the result of the US Immigration Surname law - an argument that is now as old as the hills and rather strained.

This evolution of the email sapien carries considerable baggage. I have had, for a while now, a spreadsheet that I do not update every week, often sending mails to the original mail id. Now, I also know that these fellows checks their original mail ids at least once a week, so no doubt their year of birth or past age is still a matter of public knowledge. Perhaps, some academic type should write a paper on this matter.

Cabin Pressure at Air India

2009-06-25T08:55:00.000-07:00

Air India is a frustrating airline to fly, work for, read about or own. Ask me. As a flyer, I flew quite a bit on its planes, I have a friend who works for it and as a tax payer, I own a bit of it. Over the years, as the losses have grown, my shareholding has only increased as more money is sunk into digging a bigger hole. Now, airlines never make money. Richard Branson was once asked just how one could become a millionaire. “First become a billionaire, he said, “and then set up an airline!” Imagine a truly pathetic, poorly maintained airline service operating in an intensely competitive market, with a high fixed cost structure, amidst a global recession and the only thought that should hit you is “ Please, please shut this down, pay the salaries for a year to all, ground the planes and sell them at about $ 100 a kilo.”

Well, the Government is doing exactly the opposite: pumping Rs. 4000 crores into it, buying up all the new planes they can find, launching new, thoroughly unprofitable services to destinations that are well serviced by existing bleeding carriers. The Minister for Aviation is a businessman – his family owns one of India’s largest beedi brands, and he should know the rudiments of profitability. Just what could happen if Air India is not bailed out? The Aircraft unions will go on strike and a couple of airports will be besieged by staff who aren’t employable elsewhere, yet that is a small price to pay for the perpetuation of a myth. Keeping Air India alive is not compassionate capitalism (on which subject I hope to dwell, in a later note) – it is rank stupidity. So why is this asininity on display? The answer: because it is our money – yours and mine, and others, who have no accountability to us, are managing it.
Just imagine what we could do with a fraction of this money: how many trees we could plant, maintain and protect, how many villages we could install water purifiers in, how many lakes we could desilt, how many forest guards we could employ to protect our oxygen and water sources, how many energy saving bulbs we could distribute at a subsidised price. The lesson: in human development, common sense, not money, has been in short supply. Will the Government have the courage to do the right thing ?

The Selfish Gene - a twist in our tail ?

2009-06-15T09:19:00.000-07:00

In 2007, Felix Warneken and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology found compelling evidence that chimps behave altruistically in a very human way. They help out unrelated strangers without expectation of reward, and even go to great lengths to do so. Most humans, the vast majority of them, do not.
Just why are humans so selfish ? If a community or a nation is selfish this can be explained by getting a couple of anthropologists or historians, as well as psychologists into a huddle and thereby, a coherent conclusion, if a Corporation is selfish, it can be explained away by saying that so-and-so owns 83% of it and he is selfish, so, well, the Corporation is selfish. But all (or substantially all) of humanity ?
While we are forced to conclude that the streak of selfishness exists amongst humans at a gene level (else it simply couldn't be this universal), what strikes me as remarkable is that the animal life that comes closest to humans are utterly selfless amongst their own. Three examples of gregarious species with big brains (and bigger hearts) are chimps, elephants and dolphins. Its astonishing that we have evolved (allegedly) from them, and have left the quality of selflessness behind. I read a true story the other day, of a man who would have drowned in the Atlantic Ocean, but for a couple of dolphins who actually took him on their backs close to shore. Would the human ever do this service to a predator ?
And take the chimp. We - you and I - are 97% chimpanzee. We inherited some of its bad qualities, male chauvinism being a resplendent example, and ignored its selfless nature. My question is, just how did selfishness find its way into the other 3% of our gene pool ?

Calling names

2009-06-08T02:29:00.000-07:00

My parents' generation had a rather peculiar proclivity - that of appending professions to one's name. It was a habit that one grew up with to distinguish the million Nairs, Menons, Raghavans and Georges who circled Planet Earth. My earliest such memory is of the Honourable Pipelines Kutty, whose chief occupation, as you may possibly conjecture, was to maintain pipelines carrying crude oil in Upper Assam, where we lived. And then there was Naga Nair, a gentleman so named because of his misfortune, about fifty years ago, in being coerced to marry a Naga bride and thence spend his productive, waking moments to bringing her into the mainstream - but that's a story for another day.
I first thought that this profession-as-name habit was limited to the North East, but was mistaken. As we moved to Bangalore, there was Pesticide Radhakrishnan and Mysodet Gopinath (in the business of selling fertilizer), Vaporub Unni and Woodways Jacob (running a furniture store), Homeopathy Menon, Commander Nair and Planting Mathews. I once, at my loudest voice, bought my Dad's attention with "Dad, there's Pesticide Radhakrishnan Uncle" much to my father's amusement and my mum's embarrassment, who later admonished me. Having an inadequate appreciation of things, I then asked her if I should address this gentleman as "Pesticide Uncle" instead, upon which my mother decided that, she would let sleeping dogs - and ignorant sons - lie.

Yet, there was no better name that one given to a Mr. George Mathew, a Chartered Accountant, long since dead now. No one was really sure of his full name. Syrian Christians tend to have various combinations of George, Mathew, Abraham and Thomas, so it was agreed by all who knew him well that the best name for him would be one that incorporated them all - hence, GMAT was a born again name for the Rt Hon Mr. Mathew. He never got to know of it though, absorbed as he was, in his brief lifetime on the Planet, with racehorses and a ready wager.

This habit of profession-as-name has significantly changed, alas. Today, men with not uncommon names are known by a prefix as well: their wives' names. Hence, you have a name such as Radha Ravi, the first being the name of the wife of the latter, whose profession will always remain a mystery to the bystander in a gossip drenched conversation.
Life, as a result of this important, hiterto unheralded sociological transformation, has become just a bit more uninteresting.
This absence of spice has only been partly addressed by my dear friend Doc Verghese, the prefix for whose name is necessitated by the indisputable truth that he is Verghese Samuel, the son of Samuel Verghese.

Milking the Tender Cow

2009-06-05T10:37:00.000-07:00

Quite unexpectedly, I came across a tender notice of The Erode District Cooperative Milk Producers Union. Now, this is exactly what a jobless fellow like me would read - its not racy, has little feminity about it and is normally on the second last page of the least read business newspaper.
I read it with morbid curiosity - it was a tender for the supply of a number of items that go into the production of mineral mixture that is fed to the cow. The materials were as follows:
1. Dicalcium phosphate
2. Sodium thio Sulphate
3. Magnesium Oxide
4. Calcite Powder
5. Ferrous Sulphate (anhydrous, whatever this means)
6. Copper Sulphate
7. Manganese Sulphate
8. Cobalt Sulphate
9. Zinc Sulphate
10. Potassium Iodide
11. Trivalent Chromium Chelate
I wonder just how much of this a cow gets every day in her diet. I wonder, further, just how much of this I get everyday in my diet.
Thankfully, I have never been a big fan of milk, despite being reading, on many occasions, of the shortage of Vitamin B12 in a vegan's diet. Maybe my tastebuds found the trivalent chromium chelate a tad sour......

Means and Ends

2009-05-20T09:56:00.000-07:00

When I saw, on TV, the news of the death of Prabhakaran and of his diabolical organisation, the first thought that came to my mind was a visual image of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.
No man could be more different from Prabhakaran than the Dalai Lama, yet no cause, ab initio, could have been as similar as his. The Dalai Lama, over the last half century, has fought to regain his homeland, and, for his people, respect, equality and honour. The ethnic battle in Sri Lanka had a similar genesis, interestingly enough, much after the Tibetan conquest by the Chinese and the Dalai Lama's flight to India. Therefore, Prabhakaran and his ilk had a number of role models to emulate, and two primary paths - the violent and the non-violent - from which he could choose only one really. He chose the path most travelled.

The Dalai Lama, on the other hand, has traversed a long and lonely path of non-violence and gentility. This hardly guarantees result; however, there is nothing that can claim to consistently do so. I am told that Mahatma Gandhi once said, "I agree that non-violence is a bad idea. The only worse idea is violence."
Many months ago, I sat transfixed outside the Dalai Lama's residence in McLeod Ganj as he walked past the waiting gathering, his warm smile lighting the way to people's hearts. I am not a Buddhist, of course, but with the Dalai Lama this is an immaterial issue. Some months after McLeod Ganj, I met Wangchuk Fargo, a gentleman from Leh, in New Delhi in late February. He told me a story about the Dalai Lama: in the late 1990s, on a trip to a remote village in the mountains, the Dalai Lama reached a village where the population was entirely Muslim and very poor.
"Why is there no mosque in the village?" he asked
"We have no money," a villager replied, adding that the residents prayed in their homes.
Two years later, the Dalai Lama attended the inauguration of a small mosque in the village built from donations made by Tibetans and others he knew well all over the World, whom he had gently prodded to contribute. To repeat, the fact that I am not a Buddhist is, to the Dalai Lama, an irrelevant issue.

The real issue is of the means to an end. If he is a hero, a real hero, it is because he believes that the means are as important as the end and that all humans, the Chinese included, must be respected and treated with honour. If there must be a true definition of success, it must include the quality of the effort, the rectitude of the means as much as the achievement of the Goal. There is much to learn from him.

2009-05-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

Don't we sometimes read something that makes us think? Perhaps a paragraph, a poem, a sloka or some prose? Many years ago, I came across a short poem by an unknown poet called Sharp. The poem is titled 'A Bag of Tools'

Isn't it strange that princes and kings
And clowns that caper in sawdust rings
And common people like you and me
Are builders of eternity ?
Each is given a bag of tools
A shapeless mess
A book of rules
And each must make as time has flown
A stumbling block or stepping stone.

Of Bala Rao and other termites

2009-05-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

My first job, after the MBA, was with a company in Kolkata that is in the business of cigarettes - need we say more? Bala Rao, the chap I reported to on the first day of my career, is now thankfully retired, but presumably still a nuisance to someone, somewhere. When I joined this company in 1991, he had already been put out to pasture at a place in one of the company's offices in Tollygunge. This was Bala's private fiefdom; he was the king and the management trainees, all eight of us, were slaves to his wishes.
I was the first to report to work and spent the large part of my initial month doing his personal work for him such as delivering his share certificates to some decrepit building that housed his broker or writing out a precis of a book that he would never read. He had an opinion on everything I did and was particularly nasty in a caustic, British sort of way; he would say something acerbic and laugh in a series of short coughs, much like a leopard with a hernia. Having been a Wodehouse fan myself, I often rehearsed my repartee in my mind, but was too scared to have a go at him - those days jobs weren't exactly easy to come by and my financial condition was far from secure. What remains a million dollar question is just how he had got into IIM Calcutta - he had the intelligence of a cabbage and emotional development of a termite, without unduly seeming to insult the biological spectrum to which they both belong.

But then that was much before I learnt about how organisations, and the rules of political alignment within them, work. Many organisations actually reward fellows like Bala for being loyal, despite widespread proof of their incompetence. Look around you, irrespective of the nature of the organisation you are associated with, and you will see doctors, managers, civil engineers, artistes and sportsmen comfortably snuggled into a corner of the organisation marked "for idiots only".
Let's come back to Bala. He once told me (and he was dead serious), "There are two ways to do things in this place. There's my way and there's the wrong way."
Possibly the only redeeming feature about Bala is that he gave me enough stuff to fill this blog!

Post Script:
In early March, I went back to Kolkata, after 18 years. I was tempted to meet Bala, to tell him what a worm he had been and how, in the many months that I worked for him, I had had a sick feeling in the stomach that I had never felt before. I let a second thought prevail; drinking a chilled beer on my first evening with a dear classmate of mine, one could think of many things that were pleasanter to contemplate. The need for retribution was past.

An Experiment in Public Transport

2009-04-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

April is the first month in the last 25 years when my usage of public transport within the city will exceed my driving. Over the last year, the transition to Bangalore's bus system has been a humbling & delightful experience. On the bus from Indiranagar to Koramangala, for instance, or on the way back, one sees the microcosm of humanity that, in traffic, hides behind the ubiquitous helmet or dark-tinted screen. The air in the bus is heavy with the sweet smell of gutka, the killer substance I have elsewhere referred to as Branded Cocaine, the odd string of jasmine on a lady's hair adding to the existing heady perfume. A number of young men and women from the North East are regulars, leaving the lazy comforts of their lovely, verdant homes to labour in an alien city as watchmen, gym instructors and retail store staff. They - both men and women - are still the subject of some distasteful attention from the 'locals', despite Bangalore's cross-cultural, cosmopolitan history - the attention being entirely due to skin colour, the other Indian obsession (other than gold, that is). The odd foreigner is always interesting company for he (or she) has a most perplexed expression while conversing with the conductor, whose genetic absence of courtesy, combined with a rough, ready wit, is displayed in full splendour to the amusement of those around this odd couple. And then, there are the eunuchs.

Well, eunuchs need to travel, you know. What was most interesting for me was to learn that they were particularly well behaved with the conductor and with other passengers on the bus, in sharp contrast to the exaggerated displays of crudity that we see increasingly at traffic signals on main roads. One vocal pair sat behind me (a few anxious moments, I agree) and spoke in animated Tamil on domestic issues that we would otherwise ascribe to others, not as engendered (my childhood propensity for puns must be excused).
And finally, there are the mofussil commuters - the men and women who travel to and from the city everyday. If I had the lamp with a genie, I did wish that he gave them the opportunity to have a bath at shorter intervals. Thus, when I do take the mofussil bus, it is often with a heavy heart and a close examination of the carbon I am keeping out of the atmosphere by doing so.
A brief word on the Bangalore bus network: a huge improvement over the last decade, excellent connectivity, niche products for different price points and an army of drivers who would gladly slaughter the population to be on time, if their driving is to be witnessed from an inside-out view.
Here's the crux though: I don't find enough of 'us' on the bus. The definition of 'us'? Those who have the economic power to pollute - the middle & the upper middle strata of economic distribution. We are the problem. Just as in Mumbai, the problem is not the Bihari, but the rich Mumbaiya, who sees consumption of finite resources as his birthright, in Bangalore, the problem is the lifestyle - seeking software engineer, buying his SUV-cum-truck-cum dining-hall-in-the-back-seat, not the man from the North East. I am convinced that the tipping point for the environment will be when people who can afford something learn to not have it, rather than when people who do not have something get it.

Yes, we need more of 'us' in the bus, and not just in the air-conditioned Volvos that ply restricted routes.
The Volvo has its own charm, a subject that I shall keep for another day.

MacKhanna's Gold

2009-04-23T02:32:00.000-07:00

I just do not understand the Indian craze for gold - the 'festival' Akshaya Tritiya is around the corner and the marketing of gold has reached a frenzy. Gold is the cause of much distress in our country - witness the grief it brings to the millions who are the victims of unreasonable demand for it: the aged father-in-law and the young bride being two entrenched examples. Yet, no one, least of all the jewellery maker, learns. New ways are found to perpetuate this demand and the 'festival' is one such way.
Here's the odd part: gold has really no use; the bulk of it being used as an investment, the rest as jewellery that spends most of its time in a bank locker. Its investment record - if we were to 'normalise' the price trends of the last few years and look at a larger time frame - is, at best, average.
Here's the worst part: gold is a metal that kills. It is mined either by large corporations that move 250 tonnes of rock for just enough gold for a ring and then process this rock with cyanide or by artisans who use mercury @ 2-5 grams for every gram of gold recovered. Gold is an environmental catastrophe. Three additional sources of information are given below:
1. National Geographic - issue of January 2009
2. www.rootcause.in/gold.html
3. www.nodirtygold.org

The best thing we can do for the planet is to avoid buying gold. Being a responsible consumer is the single best way to drive change.

Dishing out advice to those who want to save water

2009-04-23T01:58:00.000-07:00

An old subject, but worth a visit. I have been experimenting with a number of ways of conserving water at home and the results are surprisingly reassuring.
For starters, I learnt to wash dishes, providing many moments of mirth and relief to my wife. If you are slow to open the tap and get just the right amount of water flowing from it, the saving is enormous, a factor that I find frustrating to explain to the house maid. In addition, I have also tried to wash dishes (other than the one used to boil milk) with used lime peels. I first rinse under a tap and get the food bits off, after which lime peels are used to scrub the vessel clean, followed by a rinse.
This has a number of benefits (in addition to the lime juice, that is)
1. the phosphates in detergents are not released into the environment - phosphates are bad for plants and the worms in the soil and do not degrade, leaching instead into the groundwater.
2. its better on your hands
3. the second rinse water is best collected in a vessel and used to water the garden. Of course, if your drain leads to a backyard garden, the water from the first rinse is excellent as well for plants.

If you want to go completely organic, use coconut fibre to scrub the vessels - its great for your biceps......