ದೇಶ ನೋಡು ಕೋಶ ಓದು - Part 1

Knowledge is indeed powerful and the pursuit of the same can be a journey of a lifetime. The yesteryear philosophers in my state narrowed this pursuit very simplistically to two things – ದೇಶ ನೋಡು ಕೋಶ ಓದು (desha nodu, kosha odu - roam the country, read the books). It actually seems too simple – but the more I think about it, the more accurate it seems to acquire well-rounded knowledge - mix the knowledge from books and written soruces with the knowledge gained from experience of travelling and meeting people. Reading through loads of archives helps our brain to acquire the bookish knowledge while traveling lets you experience the same knowledge contained in the books in person, thus making us wiser. If I think about my personal experiences, I do realise that it is indeed the books and travels which has helped me in my learnings. Ever since I was in kindergarten, I have liked geography, so naturally I was more inclined towards the desha nodu way of learning. As a kid, I used to look forward to the long road/train travels and kept a log of the places / stations that we visited in my dairy. It still brings back memories of those travels and experiences when I read through those pages! One of our favourite pastime as kids was to be engrossed in either an atlas or a map and look up countries, places, roadways and train lines. When we got a dial-up modem internet in our house, Wikipedia used to be my favourite site where I used to spend a lot of time reading about places, their history and culture. With ADSL and faster internet came the mighty google earth - I was completely fascinated by the level of detail which it made available to a normal person just at the click of a button! Me and my brother spent countless hours on google earth as we clicked through streets, houses, stadiums, train stations, airports and what not - exhausting all the costly bandwidth in the process!

Although we had the atlas, google maps, etc to keep us company, growing up in a middle class family and school/college schedules meant that we could not have real travels around the world - they were few and far in between and remained restricted to my surroundings in south India. I still remained a kosha odu person. For almost 25 years of my life, the northernmost place on the earth that I had been to was Dakshineshwar (a small town on the banks of river in West Bengal). And the irony* in that statement was evident for a geography lover like me, I used to wonder if that would ever change. Some of my closest friends Tosi and Gunda moved to the United States almost a decade back, a time when everyone of us were finding feet and getting independent in life. In fact, for the first two years after they moved, we used to eagerly wait for the mails that Tosi used to send us, chronicling his life in a new country and how he dealt with being a student and eventually finding a job and settling down in the US. When the rest of the us who stayed back met and talked, we used to always discuss those mails and the way he described his experiences. Most of our gang's opinions about the culture and way of life abroad in developed counties was based on the stories they used to tell us. It really shaped our world-view. As part of my consulting work, I used to work for clients worldwide, creating maps of early adopters for a telecommunications client in far south NewZealand to analysing buying ice-cream buying patterns for retail stores in the northern part of United States. Through the course of such projects, I learnt a lot about the people from these countries, their culture and everyday way of life… and with all these stories, I had formed an image of how these places looked like in my mind… all the while wondering if I would ever get a chance to actually visit them!

Tourist versus emigrant

Like every wannabe globetrotter out there, even we (my wife and I) had Europe in our bucket list. Now, no encyclopedia can be ever complete without the mention of this small continent called Europe - at some point or the other, almost 90% of the world was colonized by Europeans and they have had a great influence on shaping the history of the world. Although I knew about its historical significance since high school, the real desire to visit Europe came from one game which Ultra and I used to play on our computer during graduation - NFS 5 (Porsche unleashed). The game featured some of the famed roads located in European countries like Germany, France, Switzerland, etc and gave us an opportunity to race Porsche cars on these tracks. A significant amount of college days was spent playing that game, virtually driving those porsches on Autobahn, Normandy, Pyrenees, etc, and then reading up on the car models and highways / mountain paths/ race tracks across Europe. This was the early 2000s and there was no real deadline set in mind when I actually go visit these places. It always remained 'someday in the future'. Around latter half of this decade, with the new found economic independence, we found that so many in our social circles were holidaying in Europe and posing pictures with some philosophical captions, it seemed that taking a trip to Europe (especially backpacking and living in hostels) was the new cool in-thing! By then, we already had a fair share of our trips outside the country - some neighbouring tropical and relatively similar third world countries which had a bit of an exotic feel but mostly similar to our own in aspects of weather, food and local culture. But Europe seemed so exotic with lot of adventures and experiences to offer travellers. Ultra was already there for two years doing his masters and a visit was long overdue - maybe around the time of his graduation. So, we started looking up web-sites for travel deals in order to plan our European holiday!

In middle of all these travel preparations, came an opportunity to work in Europe and stay for few years. My wife and I were thrilled and scared at the same time! Travelling to Europe was definitely exciting but we still had to consider the relocation. When visiting a place as a tourist, we always have a normal - we have our lives, jobs and family back in our home country. We know the normal is always back home. We know the vacation is temporary, so the stakes are not as high. We could have one bad experience here, one not-so-great hotel there and still take back nice experiences. But moving meant so many things to consider - packing for the whole year, finding the right accommodation, arranging utilities, help with local language, shopping, tax, finances, etc. We would have to build a new normal right from the scratch. For some people, moving is not as big a decision as they find our country too judgemental. Don’t get this the wrong way - but people do find my country (especially the southern cities) a bit intolerant! I have had friends who have at some point complained that my city is a bit conservative. Especially, if someone is an non-local living an independent life or for couples who marry out of their own caste, there are a lot of people who quickly pass judgments! Although it is not directly on your face, the undertones are still there which is why someone who has experienced this would definitely have no problems emigrating! We had no such complaints. We had a big gang of our friends and relatives around us and did enjoy the company immensely. So, moving away from all of them was still a hard decision to make. However, in the end, we knew that the travels and stay out of our comfort zone, would give us more self-realization and would definitely help us expand our thinking horizon, thus we decided to go for it....

PS:
1. Daskhineshwar : Town on the banks of river Hoogly in WestBengal, India famous for the Kali temple. Irony is because the word Dakshin in Sanskrit means 'South' and it was somehow the northernmost place which I had been to in life

Continued in Part 2 here

The illusion of control

The scene is a typical Indian services quarters from the 90’s – the kind of sub-600square feet dwelling blocks the government usually provided to their lowest rung employees back then along with a meagre monthly salary. The camera zooms into one of the balconies of that building – a young man is staring into the night view deep in his thoughts – his small home in the background. There are celebrations in that house that night, as he has bagged a job in the esteemed Indian railways – about 5000 rupees per month plus benefits – something that the whole colony is excited about. But he has an alternate career in sports, knows that he has it in him to strike big but somehow things have not worked out as he had hoped. Although the offer in railways is very lucrative, he feels that it is a dead-end in life, and would take him nowhere close to what he has dreamed…

At this moment, his elder sister walks up to him, notices he is worried, and gives him words of comfort – saying he is destined to become a great man. She reckons that someday, he could even end up at a top position in the railways. The young man just smiles at her soothing words but the conflict in his mind is evident – he is struggling to accept the current reality and wants to know where destiny takes him in life…

****

The young man has now moved to the SER (South Eastern Railway) headquarters at Kharagpur, a handful of people have gathered in a small railway quarters in Kharagpur to watch India play the WC finals of 2003 against Australia. Tendulkar gets out pulling a slower ball from McGrath in the first over and everyone knows the match is gone! The same young boy gets up and walks into the kitchen to make tea for others. He is already feeling depressed that his life has come to a standstill, and is visibly upset. There are voices from the other room who start discussing that Kaif, Mongia and Yuvraj were contemporaries of their buddy at the under 19 level. But they have moved on to represent the country in the world cup, but somehow things have not worked out well for their friend. He listens to their conversation feeling sad and knows they mean well for him, but destiny has been cruel to him so far! Would his destiny ever change? Or would he live as a ticket collector all his life?

****

We all know where destiny took him!

****

Rahul proposes his love for Priya in college. She says yes and soon they become the cutest couple in college. Rahul gets good grades in tests whenever Priya wishes him with a red rose. During campus interviews, Rahul is able to secure placement in a very high paying MNC overcoming tough competition from his peers. Priya always feels that Rahul is her lucky charm and that she gives her best performance in exams / interviews when she speaks to Rahul. They believe they are lucky for each other. They want to get married and stay together all their life so that the lucky charm continues all their life…

Today, Priya is settled in the US after finishing her post-graduation from a top university. She is married to Arun, an US based NRI. While Rahul is settled in Mumbai with his wife and 2 kids. Rahul and Priya broke up 2 years after they graduated from college - Rahul wanted to crack CAT and pursue a career in management in India, while Priya wanted to pursue MS in US. Soon, the lucky charm started ditching them, Priya got rejects from most universities after a great GRE score while Rahul’s 2 attempts at CAT did not yield any positive results. They seemed to struggle for even trivial issues at workplace and missed delivery deadlines, got reprimanded by seniors for errors in their delivery, found the going very tough during appraisals and struggled to get even a 5% increment. They fought with each other whenever they managed to meet up on weekends amidst their coaching classes. One fine day, they decided it was enough and called it quits to go their own paths.

When they look back at their relationship from college days, they keep thinking whether it was their love for each other or the supposedly “lucky charm” that kept them together for 5 years.

****

Pooja thinks that she is born lucky and whatever she predicts comes true- like the outcome of a cricket / soccer match. During a college sporting event, her college team needs a highly unlikely 5 wickets to win in the next two overs while the opposition needs just 10 runs. She predicts that the opposition will be all-out within 1.3 overs and to everyone’s surprise the opposition chokes dramatically and does manage to lose, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory! This incident enhances her reputation among her friends and she starts to predict outcomes of national matches on TV and it turns out to be right all the time. She then tries her luck at stock market and strikes gold within the first two months. She thinks her life is set!

Today, Pooja has lost over 3lakhs rupees in the stock market. Although some of her picks have delivered good returns, there have been big crashes as well leading her to doubt whether she was born lucky in the first place.

****

Po wants to go watch the dragon warrior selection matches in the palace on the hill. He does not get tickets. His dad gives him a cart of buns to go and sell at the event, which he is not able to drag on the steps because of the cart weight. The gates to the event close before he enters and he feels unlucky that he has missed watching his favorite heroes perform at the event.

We all know where Po’s destiny takes him!

****

There seems to a common thread connecting these stories? All of them try to elucidate the effects of luck and destiny. Many people interpret these two words differently. But the one that most people seem to agree on is that luck is an instantaneous thing – something that effects the outcomes of our current situation. While destiny is more of a long-term thing – it is what we are entitled to do in the larger scheme of things. A small event in life like a job interview today or a football match tomorrow could be affected by luck, while destiny or fate is what affects in the long run. When a strong team bows out of the competition in a shocking manner, it could be attributed to luck or one-off bad event. But when a strong team with world beaters (say South Africa in cricket) keeps bowing out due to rain/luck or some other factors every single time, then the question definitely arises on the destiny of that team whether it is ever fated to win a trophy

Luck is usually a measurable quantity. Of all the likely events that are going to happen, some could be favorable to you and others might not be so much. You could use probability to count how many times you got lucky. But destiny or fate is something which cannot be determined. Many thinkers / eminent personalities / philosophers have spent a lot of time thinking about destiny and how to measure it, but it is something that is unfathomable. Yet, it is something that affects us greatly in life. If we were to link it with pure statistical terms, luck would be correlation – just the association between two events happening because of chance, while destiny is the real ‘causation’ – the real reason why things happen in a particular way.

Don’t worry about lucky charms – they come and go. The best part about life is we don’t know what we are destined for. We tend to worry about small things. Standing in the balcony of that railway quarters, young Mahi worried what would life turn out to be. Would it be any fun if anyone went to him right then and told him that his destiny would be to hit the winning six of the world cup final? We have to live in the moment, take control of what is controllable and play the game of life in the best manner possible. What is in destiny would eventually come to us. This is true in every field and in everything we do in life. Maybe that 3BHK apartment by a dream builder is your life’s ultimate desire at this phase of life. If you don’t get that/closely miss it due to bad luck, you might feel depressed. But if you are destined to own a villa, no one can stop you from getting it eventually. So, do not worry about seemingly important things now, because destiny always has the bigger picture in mind for you.

One thing the ancient people have concluded is that everything in life is controlled by your past actions. Although this might not be entirely true, it helps to explain the sudden unexplainable events – somebody rising in their field suddenly without any support, a miraculous escape from a sure shot death, etc. ‘RuNaanubandha rupeNa pashu patni suthaalaya’ - Destiny is nothing but a result of our past actions. So, if you are seemingly stuck at some point in life and feel life is being unfair, just remember that the only way out is to write off that past debt is by continuously giving your best shot at all things you do and hoping that things eventually turn out good for you. And finally, acknowledging that a higher force is responsible for the results of our actions would immediately comfort us in sad times and help us stay humble and grounded in happier times.

Another common occurence is that a lot of people interpret these ancient philosophies to undermine natural talent and hard-work. At times, people even get complacent thinking that things are anyway going to be controlled by destiny - Waqt se pehle aur nasseb se jyaada kuch nahi milta, so why put in the effort. This is exactly the opposite of what those philosophies stand for. It is absolutely essential to put in hard-work and improve our skills. It is only by doing this, that the effects of past actions would be nullified and things start turning around. What is more important, however is to not lose focus when things don’t seem to be going the way we like and persist with the efforts such that eventually there will be a worthy reward.

On the personal front, the year has been a demonstration of destiny in action. I tried do too many things and expected too many things too soon. I wanted very quick results for my seemingly heavy efforts, while I now realize that the efforts were average at best, minuscule at worst. I guess I was just hoping to get lucky with without putting in the real hard-work required for the results. The year has made me realize that there is no point in trying to control the uncontrollable and brooding over not being lucky on seemingly important things. Destiny will pan out itself eventually and it is better to let go of the illusion of control and concentrate on the putting in the efforts, in the hope that turnaround would happen when the time is due! And the most important thing is I've learnt that the only way to become better is by perseverance. I plan to continue the same efforts in the next year and beyond. My personal experience has been that whatever is destined would be much greater and better than what can be ever desired! The earlier we make peace with that, the more we can try and live in the present. I wish the coming years would turn out very good for each one of you and may your destiny bring you all those things that you ever wanted and much more. Wish you a happy new year!

PS:
1. Images subject to respective copyright owners. Source: Google images.
2. Movies referred to in the post: MS Dhoni: The Untold Story chronicling the life of Indian star cricketer and captain, MS Dhoni and the superhit 2008 animated offering from Dreamworks: KungFu Panda.
3. Comic strip from Dogbert can be found here.
4. Some fictional scenarios are used for illustrative purposed and bear no resemblance to any real-life people.

Great Expectations - Part 2

Read part one onf the post here

A very popular story taught in moral science classes speaks of a king who ruled over a prosperous land, was very wealthy and rich, and loved a lot by his subjects. However, the king could not sleep at night due to some anxiety or depression. Lot of physicians examined the king and tried to suggest a remedy for this unique problem but none of them seemed to work. Finally a learned priest examined the king and told his ministers that all the depression and anxiety would be cured, if the king slept for one night wearing the shirt of a happy man!

The ministers thought it was such an easy thing to find a truly happy man, as the country was vast and fertile and everyone in the kingdom were rich and prosperous. However, when they went in search of a truly happy man, they realized that everyone in the country had one or the other reason to be worried. The minister said that he fought with his son, the dukes said they were troubled by the turmoil in the neighboring states, the farmers were worried about making more money for the future, and so on and so forth. The search party was about to give up their quest for a truly happy person, when they found on the streets, a beggar happily singing and whistling.

Upon speaking to this ragged poor man, they found out that this man was truly happy. He had no money, no home and lived on the streets. But he seemed happy and content with what he had and expected no more. They took him to the king, only to realize that this beggar had no shirt!

****

A bunch of MBAs including me reported for work in a new company after college and we were immediately put through a rigorous training session, which involved us picking up technical skills like programming, data crunching, the ubiquitous office, statistics and analytics – all in a span of three to four weeks. And at the end of the month, there were back to back tests which grilled on all these topics.

On one fine day, there were two tests scheduled – one in the morning on data models and SQL, and the afternoon exam was on MS-Excel. Although I was very confident on programming and statistics, the data pull or SQL was something which I was being introduced for the first time. And all the questions asked very tricky. After spending sometime in the industry, I now know that all these questions were direct rip-offs from the now so familiar stack-overflow.com. But that time, all the questions seemed very difficult and I fared really miserably. During the lunch break, I was feeling so down and depressed, I did not want to eat nor wanted to study for the next exam. I just went to a meeting room and sat there thinking. A tear or two escaped from my eye. And usually sadness leads to more sadness. I remembered about the tough part I was going through even on the personal front and life seemed so depressing at that point. I had fared so bad in spite of being very passionate – be it the profession or the personal relationship!

It is at that moment a realization hit me. It just struck me from nowhere but the thought was very powerful – “In life there are no successes or failures. It is just that you/someone expected too much or too little from yourself!". That was enough to immediately calm me down and stop feeling depressed! I smiled at the simplicity of the thought. But it made perfect sense. We categorize ourselves as successful/failures only because of the expectations we set for ourselves. And if we do set unrealistic expectations, we are doomed to fail and feel sad more often than not. Quite simple, yet so powerful!

****

Consider this: By the time you turn 18 and are having a perfectly happy life in school/PU college, expectations are built up on getting into a very nice professional course. Suppose you do choose engineering (because, well, do you need a reason?) and get into an engineering college, expectations are built up aroung bagging the most coveted job offer from the campus. And lets say you managed to do that and landed in (where else?) the IT biggies, you feel successful and remain happy until you see your buddies planning to quit for better opportunities/higher studies. Again, expectations start building up and you feel tell yourself that you’ll be successful only if you got that coveted seat in the top ranked college. And after working hard you do manage to get into a top technology / management college, that’s when the expectations come in fours and sixes! … ‘listen ya! he is doing MS itseems, he should get atleast $120,000 package after college’ or ‘oye, heard she got into that top ranked MII, she will surely get minimum 50LPA package after two years’

Expectations are everywhere. And in today’s fast paced materialistic world, the expectations are never ending but always too high! People want instant results… They want a bike, a car, a house, and a eight digit bank balance by the time they turn 30! Graduates from engineering don’t want to go through the grind of technical jobs. They expect onsite roles in Amreeka within 2 years of joining! Fat people join gymnasium or aerobic and expect to lose more than 10 kg within a month! Even though their parents might have served in the same position for more than a decade, professionals expect promotions every year! Isn’t this too much too soon? And what happens when these expectations don’t get fulfilled? Depression, stress, anxiety, visits to career counsellors, psychiatrists, drugs, anti-depressants and what not! Do we really need to go down that route?

Even relationships are not exempt from this unrealistic expectation menace. Everyone wants that perfect partner who understands them without even having to speak or struggle. They conveniently forget the essential communication aspect which goes into making a relationship work. And adding to all this is the self-glorification tactics due to the advent of social networking sites. Even before you get to know the person, your expectations are set so high that the relationship is on thin ice even before it has begun. How often have you seen marriages/relationships fail these days due to mis-communications/failed expectations. And then there are few of those relationships which you never thought will last but have continued to do well just because the couples involved were willing to talk and set the right expectations.

The next time you feel really depressed or sad for someone/something, just pause for a moment and think – was it because of setting the expectations wrong? Maybe you under-estimated something or did not factor in some important considerations. More often than not, communicating and resetting expectations helps a lot. On that day when I realized this in between the exams, I just said to myself, ‘alright! Maybe I have fared bad in this one skill. That does not mean I have failed. Let me continue to focus on my strengths and achieve some quick wins. I can always come back to the weak areas later’. I went back to the next exam with a totally different approach...and yes, I did really well :)

A lot of people expect things for themselves because of comparisons they make with their peers. If you did really well in your job and did not get that onsite offer which your friend got six months ago, just sit back and think for some time. The situation was different, the evaluation criteria were different, and there was an entirely different scenario then. And instead of fretting about it and sulking, just speak to the leads involved and set the expectations very clearly so that next time you are clear on what you wanted. Success might not come exactly when you want it, but do realize efforts do pay off sooner or later. And yes, don’t just feel sad because you don’t have things in your life. Life does test you a little bit before things start going the way you want them. As the street urchin in the above story proved to us, if all that you expect is happiness, you can be happy even without a shirt. Right?

PS: Title credit - Charles Dickens famous novel. Used it as it made sense. Copyrights belong to their respective owners :)

Great Expectations - Part 1

“Amazon reports 45% drop in profit! Investors cheer and invest some more”

Amazon is the world’s largest online retail store. It has been in operation for over 20 years now. From its humble beginnings in the m-commerce sector, Amazon has now expanded to all things digital – from providing solutions to big data and investing heavily in computer controlled instruments. It made quarterly sales of $17 billion in the Q3 of 2013, and yet the profits it generated were almost zero. In spite of this, investors believe Amazon will make money in the future and hence, they keep on investing, regardless of whether the company posted very less profits or outright losses.

****

“Nokia sells 15.7 million smartphones!!! Investors, however consider the outlook to be gloomy for the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer!”

This happened in 2008, when Nokia was the still world’s largest cell phone maker. It had 40% of the world’s smart phone market share. It had recently launched its touchscreen device, 5800 Xpressmusic and was investing heavily in a lot of diverse platforms (Symbian/S60, meego, S40, etc) to counter-attack the newest entrants in the market – iphone and android. And although things looked promising for the future, investors had already started to expect the decline. The CEO’s actions or statements did nothing to re-assure them and win their confidence.

****

“Facebook acquires whatsapp for $19 billion”

Whatsapp is an instant messaging service. It has revolutionized the way people used their phones, by providing a simple data based platform with which users could conveniently exchange texts, and media. From its humble beginnings in 2009, Whatsapp was valued at $1.5 billion and had a user base of around 200 million active users. And within a year, facebook bought all of whatsapp for a whooping amount of 19 billion dollars, leaving the financial pundits perplexed. How could it command such a premium?

****

“Inspite of critics giving it a total thumbs up and technically well made, fiza bombs at the box office”

Fiza was Hrithik Roshan’s second movie in Bollywood. It was a movie with a well written script, well directed and all the lead protagonists acting so well. And inspite of all of this, the film was a disaster at the box office. Why can a movie fail after being so well-made?

****

Do you notice any connection in the above stories? For me, a common theme underlying in all these stories is expectations. Whether in business/ sports/ cinema/ politics, managing expectations is one of the toughest of tasks. If you succeed in this one task, anything else will hardly matter. Let us look at the Amazon example, why is it managing to attract investors inspite of failing to make money for the last 18 years? The answer lies in how the expectations have been set by the CEO. Mr. Bezos wants to set up a retail shop for the future! Whatever money the firm makes (and it is really a lot!), he goes on and invests in warehouses, hiring skilled people, robots, and what not. Amazon is promising to create a future with more cash for the investors, and hence, they are not worried for the moment. The same holds true with the acquisition of whatsapp; Even though the current worth of the application might not have been so much, analysts at facebook expected that the firm is much more valuable as it can generate money in the future. Not to mention, the variety of potential business models it could build up in the future by combining a smartphone based IM service, and their very own social networking. And no price seemed too much for having that control in this previously unchartered territory!

On the other hand, failing to meet expectations is something which can get down even the biggest of companies or stars. What killed Nokia was the fact that the top leadership failed to set the right expectations with the investors. During the time when Apple Inc. came up with an iphone and Google announced the open source android, Nokia virtually ruled the smartphone market (almost a 60% share in the market). Both the competitors had very promising device portfolios and nice products lined up for release, and the mobile telephone giant was totally unprepared for such an onslaught. Instead of focusing on getting their strategy right, they went all over the place, going back and forth on the choice of the OS, the choice of their CEO, and on almost everything. Investors lost faith in the company’s ability to take on the mighty competitors. They started pulling out their money. Nokia lost the battle without even fighting!

Perhaps no other Bollywood movie star has stepped into in the movie industry with so much of commercial success and hype as much as Hrithik Roshan. His debut ‘Kaho Naa.. Pyaar hai’ was a roaring success, and a runaway hit at the box office. It broke almost all records at the box office, the music stores and it bagged almost every award for the debutants in that year. Hrithik became an instant heart throb among the Indian female fraternity. So, naturally expectations started to build up when the promos of his second film started to surface. However, ‘fiza’ was a completely different movie as compared to the box-office pleasing romantic melodrama that kaho naa.. was. And hence, the expectations of the audience watching their star in a completely different role were grossly unmet. It was not because ‘fiza’ was a bad movie that it failed. It just failed because people had set very high expectations for the movie after the ultimate success of ‘Kaho naa..’

Expectation management is a very complex thing in itself, something like an art as well as a science. The success of any project depends upon how the expectations are set in the beginning and how the team works towards meeting those expectations. And a very crucial attribute that helps to get expectations right is communication. The importance of communication cannot be emphasized enough. Even at the cost of over-communicating, it is always better to talk to the people involved at regular intervals and make sure that they are aware of what to expect. Very often, projects go bad and draw flak from the stakeholders only because they were never told what to expect at the end of the project.

The other day, we went to a pizza outlet that advertised a ‘meal for two’ at Rs.500/- The person who took the order went on to suggest lot of modifications to the so called meal, without mentioning the costs. We just took what we thought were some reasonable additions (say an extra topping to a veg pizza, crushers instead of cola, etc). However, the final bill came to more than Rs 1200/- which certainly left us fuming and grumbling. That is when we realized that neither of us had bothered to change the hitherto set expectation on price. The waiter thought it was just fair that we pay because we were ordering something more than what was on offer. We just assumed that a little addition would not inflate the bill to more than 100%. Adding just an extra roti and masala chaas to an already advertised full meal, would not just double/triple your bill! Right? We paid up anyway, having learnt a valuable lesson for future eat-out experiences.

Because it is so critical in all professions, expectations management is slowly finding its way in the curriculum of most formal business management courses. It would be nothing more than a more formal course is communications, relationship management and diplomacy, but it is still important nevertheless. Even businesses realize that it is better to be forthcoming on their prospects and set the right expectations, than be secretive on information, which is only going to hurt in the long run. People never panic when things go as per some “plan”, however bad the plan is. In the concluding part of this article, we will see how expectation management applies to not only everything we do in professional life but also to our personal lives. If you have encountered things going wrong because of setting wrong expectations, or if you found things in this piece interesting, do let me know through comments. Set your expectations right and then success will be yours. All the best!

Continued in Part 2... here

The two T's

As MBAs we are all quite familiar with the 4 Ps of marketing or the five forces of strategy. But only KGPians will know that there are 2Ts which form an inseparable part of our stay here -'Trains' and 'Technology'. These 2Ts have fascinated me all my life. The long whistle of a zooming train in the middle of the night used to stir up my emotions like no other and I used to yearn for going on long train journeys. In a similar manner, technological advances which made life easier for the humankind never ceased to impress me. When I was a kid, I used to visit my uncle’s place only for two reasons – to explore a new computer that they had bought which was a rarity in those days, and to stand on the terrace of their house and wave hands to passengers on the trains on the Bangalore-Mysore route. So, when I finally got admission in the railway and technology town of Kharagpur, there was little hesitation in quitting my job and coming here.

Kharagpur is home to the longest railway platform in the world and is a major junction for the Indian railways. All trains on the East-South and East-West routes invariably pass through this station. Equally famous in Kharagpur is the Indian Institute of Technology, the first of the world class engineering institutes started in India. The IITs are known world over for producing the best quality engineers year after year.

The beautiful Kharagpur railway station, at km 114 from Howrah on the South Eastern railway

But the only dilemma facing me when I got an admission was whether a management course in middle of a technology hotspot was the right choice or not? After all, location seemed to be the most important thing in choice of a management institute. Would the two years in a remote place like Kharagpur be as rewarding as some of the self-advertising, money squeezing B-schools in other financial hotspots of India? It was a tough call to take but the experiences in my work life came to my aid. I had observed the daily issues in the company where I worked – one of the technologically admired companies in the world. I realised that technology had the highest scope for management. It is relatively easy to manage small scale industries or firms which operate under little number of constraints. But the real challenge for a manager lies when the technology gets advanced and quick decisions have to be taken under a wide variety of constraints and limitations. And how well a manager uses this technology to improve the daily activities in the company determines the success of the company. No wonder then, we see a large chunk of MBAs having engineering backgrounds. With these thoughts in mind, I left all the comforts of my workplace to be a part of this technology hub in middle of the jungles of Bengal.

The first Indian Institute of Technology was established in the year 1951

Universities across the world have management schools which offer under-graduate, post-graduate and doctoral programs in management. The number of management institutes in the world has only grown in the past few decades, and we have around 3500 management institutes in India alone offering the once prestigious MBA degree, compromising on the cost and quality of the same. However, this was not the case in the early years of the modern corporation when the new B-Schools were set up in the world like Wharton School of Business in 1881 or the Harvard Business School in 1908. The premier technology institute, MIT, foresaw the need for creating specialised courses for technology management and created the MIT School of Management which later came to be known as MIT Sloan School of Management. In India, IIT Kharagpur was the first technology institute to recognise the need for such techno-managers and with sufficient funding from one of its alumnus Vinod Gupta, opened up the first IIT B-school in 1993 – the Vinod Gupta School of Management

Vinod Gupta School of Management is one of the most beautiful structures inside the IIT KGP campus

There is technology everywhere inside the IIT campus. People here are so obsessed with technology that even the hospitals, clubs, swimming pools, and gymkhanas inside the campus have the prefix “technology” attached to them ? Work on the cutting edge technology for the next generation happens here and an expert in any field is right in the department opposite yours, if not in the same department. We got exposed to so much of technology here and felt that we could be aptly called as “techno-managers”. No other costly B-school claiming to have a location advantage could have given us the same exposure to technology.

People are so obsessed with technology here that all sport/recreational places inside the campus have the prefix 'technology'- Technology hospital, Technology guest house, Technology sports gymkhana, etc... there is even a technology swimming pool where all technologies swim together :P

While I relished the two Ts that define Kharagpur, there was one important thing I had missed – there is little else apart from these two Ts here. For someone coming from a big metropolitan city, the difference was immediately obvious – no motor vehicles inside the huge campus, no shopping malls or multiplexes, no choice of fine restaurants, not even street lights on the road outside the IIT boundary wall. It took some time getting used to the life in midst of greenery, cycling through the huge campus, the humidity of the place and the food at the hostel (even the mustard oil). But the journey was made very easy, thanks to the friends that I made here. Having stayed and worked in one city all my life before, the kind of diversity that this place offered me was simply amazing. One thing that was common to everyone studying here was the determination to succeed and the motivation to keep going despite many hurdles.

One fourth of my MBA life is already over and even as I write this article sitting in the comforts of my house during the semester break, I am filled with a sense of pride of being a part of a great institute and a deep desire to go back to the two Ts which have influenced my life all along... to the greens of Kharagpur, to all those places where we roamed around in KGP, and to the place which I have come to know now as my home away from home.

PS:
1. This article was written by me when I was pursuing my MBA at Kharagpur. It was published in the college’s annual alumni magazine. It is reproduced here with minor modifications and slight additions. You can read the original publication here
2. KGP - the station code for Kharagpur, and KGPians - people who stay/study at Kharagpur
3. Few images are copyrights of their respective owners, used here only for representative purposes. Specially those of the trains and stations, will reference the orignial links from the original source

That Dark (k)night

"There’s a storm coming Mr. Wayne!.... because when it hits you’re all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave very little for the rest of us!"

Selina Kyle kept building up the plot for the dark knight to rise again. Ultra and I were in the multiplex and enjoying every minute of the most awesome finale to a trilogy ever made. Little did we know of the mini crisis which we would face ourselves later that night…

We had gone to watch the evening show at Arch mall’s multiplex on a Sunday evening which is only 6 kms from our home. Our parents had gone to our native place Karkala to attend a wedding. The movie would get over by 9:30 PM in the worst case, we just needed to have dinner after that and go home. Plus, we had our own car to drive back. We had been outside home during later hours in the night and driven our car in the wee hours of the morning. Nothing in the current situation seemed that bad. What could possibly go wrong? What was different?

Well, the difference was that we were now staying in a rented house. 'Akshaya', our dear home for the 25+ years of our lives was now undergoing a renovation and we had to stay in a rented place nearby till Akshaya2.0 was ready. We had chosen a place near to our old home. It was on the main road to Nagarbhavi and in front of a temple. The traffic and the temple noises would never end for most part of the day. It seemed a little small as compared to the big house which we had earlier. There were problems in the electrical connections. However, it was still a manageable place for a one year stay and it was only 2 minute walk from our old home. We just overlooked all the inconveniences and decided to stay there.

But the real problem was not in the physical details of the house, but the softer aspects involved. The owner lived on the second floor of the house and ran a shop on the ground floor. And we were sandwiched on the first floor. He was a rough person, seemed to be ill-mannered, and had a reputation for getting irritated soon. He kept two dogs to guard the place. One was a white pomerian (the white knight) which made all the noise and barked each time we walked past the gate. The other was some sort of a greyhound (the dark knight) which seemed very dangerous. Thankfully, they kept both the dogs on leash and the darker one below the stairs so that we did not have to walk past it. We still fail to understand the need for dogs when he himself was enough for the task (no pun intended). They also had a cat which they kept on leash near the terrace door. It kept crying whole day asking for release from that messy place. The parking spot was always occupied by the inventory of the shop and was barely enough for our two wheelers. And the car had to be kept on the street on the way to Akshaya as there was no other spot for it.

And then came the human aspect of it. In our own house, we were like free birds – no one could question us for anything we did. We had a huge terrace where Ultra and I played football/cricket, sometimes very late in the night – most of the times the sport used to end with us fighting on who won the game :) We had parking for our vehicles and could park it the way we wanted. We had a neem tree near the gate, a coconut tree in the front yard, and could keep small pots wherever we liked. We had lots of open space and storage space – we even kept stuff like our childhood toys, kindergarten school books and what not! We could go out and come in at any time of the day/night. We could talk, scream or laugh to our heart’s content for any silly reason. We had scribbled all over the walls while growing up – no one dared to question our authority anytime. We could cook/eat anything we wanted – be it plants / pulses, eggs or those delicacies from the sea which we love so much ;)

Everything changed once we decided to move out from there. We had to discard lots of old stuff because the rented place didn’t have space to keep all of it. There was only one entry door to the house and only two main windows for ventilation – which made us feel that we were in some padded cell or something. There was no place to even keep the holy tulsi plant, let alone other pots. The first floor house was sheltered in between the owner’s house on the second floor and his shop on the ground floor and we felt we were under constant surveillance. Since he sat at the shop all day and had nothing much to do, our in-time, out-time, materials movement, lifestyle were all monitored by him as well as his family. On top of it, the owner’s mindset was of the traditional ‘Vatara’ of the 90’s, something which translates to ‘landlord is king’. Whenever we walked past the shop, he had some orders for us – ranging from how to park our two wheelers to where we should place the plants to how we should be talking inside the house. And since he was a strict vegetarian, cooking even vegetarian items with garam masala flavor was not allowed; let alone the occasional egg/seafood which we wanted to. Even ordering pizzas and taking it past the two dogs into the house made it seem a complicated task. The saddest part of all was that the gates were locked by 10 PM. In cases where all of us went out for dinner and came back after 10, we had to call up the owner and ask him to let us in. It felt too suffocating!

Back to our current situation, it was totally gripping to the watch the creativity of Nolan unfold on the screen blended with the musical genius of Hans Zimmer. However, the clock kept ticking even as that happened. Just last evening, we had been to the bus stand to drop mom and dad and returned home at 1045 PM. We had to call the owner and ask him to let us in. We did not want to be doing that again tonight as well. We didn't know what it was that made us bite our nails – the thrilling finish to the batman saga or the hunger pangs which set in us :) There would be no food at home and we had to eat out whatever we decided to eat. And in no way, we would leave the theatre in middle of the movie, though we both had watched it once before already. I had to put up with one cancelled movie show and the very first row seats at the digitally enhanced 4k sound of the Urvashi cinemas to catch it on the first weekend of its release. And Ultra being a hardcore Nolan fan had been to Hyderabad just to watch the movie on an imax screen. He went by the Garib Rath express during monsoons. It may be recalled here that the YPR-SC Garib Rath express is the same famous train which Ultra and Maama once barely managed to board on an adventurous monsoon evening. You can read the full story here and here!

It was finally 9:40 PM when we got out of the movie hall. The dog owner would lock the gates anytime after 10 and we had exactly 20 minutes to either have/pack dinner and go home. And we could not get any non-vegetarian food even if we decided to pack it. As we walked hurriedly towards the parking lot deciding what to do, the only outlet we could see in front of our eyes was the ground floor KFC! Life was so unfair and the call from the outlet was irresistible! ‘The only thing fair in an unfair world was chance’ we told ourselves and we decided to act – we two! We decided to take the chance. Ultra ran towards the parking lot to get the car out, while I ran into the KFC counter to order two zinger burgers and large chicken popcorn. We still had not figured out how to take it inside the house hiding it from the watchful eyes of the knights. For now, the priority seemed to be getting the food ready and getting back home. Within 5 minutes, I was out of the outlet with the food – thanks to the superfast service by KFC. As soon as I got into the car, Ultra suggested his master plan for the night – that we both would take turns to drive and finish off the food at the same time. That way we would get down at home without any non-veg, even if we were late. I wasted no time! We were passing through the dark and quiet Bangalore University roads and Ultra could not control laughing hearing me munching the zinger with the usual ‘chabad chabad’ noise. It was all done in 5 minutes and we stopped the car at the university gates to exchange places. I drove slowly now, as Ultra had to finish the burger and we both had to finish the popcorn in the next 3 kms. Ultra was already on it. But by the time he was done, we were just 200 metres away from the house and the dogs waited for us...

Plans changed instantly – Ultra decided that he will go into the house and stay there till I parked the car two streets away. That way, he would be there inside to open the lock and allow me in, even if the owner locked the gates. We still hadn’t figured out what to do with the chicken popcorn, but we knew for sure that we would not waste it or throw it away just because of the dogs. He got down from the main road itself and ran into the house, while I took a longer route to drive to the parking spot in order to buy more time, thinking of what to do – I decided to buy some bread and soft drinks from the nearby bakery to use as a disguise, just in case. Ultra would give me the signal if things looked out of control.

‘The dogs know… be careful and come home safe’ was what Ultra’s text read when I was parking the car. What did they know? How could they know? He did not even have any packet with him. All he had done was to have the zinger few minutes ago. Were the dogs that sensitive to know that? Or was Ultra playing a prank with me? I did not know. All I knew was that I had to be even more careful as I actually had the packet with me now. I would definitely take Ultra to task once I got home for sending such ambiguous message, and I would definitely get a bigger share of food anyway :) But first, I had to tackle the dogs! I walked as fast as my legs could carry me, mind thinking of situations, and heart beat increasing all the while. It was already 10:15 PM when I reached the gate. And surprisingly, the lights were still on at the portico. I opened the gate, and the white dog started barking immediately and I froze for a second. I already had the packet in the left hand which was far away from the dog. So, I gathered all courage that I can and went towards the stairs. That was when I saw it – the dark knight!... the more dangerous of the two dogs. It had come out of its sleeping place and was very close to the steps which I had to take. I had never seen this dog so closely before and today, it looked even more dangerous, ready to pounce on me. But the only saving grace was that it was still kept on leash. I gathered all the courage that I could muster and ran towards the steps, while the dog kept watching me all the time. After some tense, frightening moments, I was finally running up the stairs and managed to reach the first floor door, banging on it so that Ultra would let me in.

We finally savored the "prized" chicken popcorn along with fanta sitting in the house later that night. While munching the delicious fried chicken pieces, I kept thinking – managing to eat chicken popcorn had never been such an adventure before. It was just one adventurous night in that dungeon, but it symbolized something more – of all the dark times we had to undergo staying in that house. We had to struggle even for the smallest of things. It was a bad experience, but we managed to learn a lot about people and their behavior during that time. And since we were in it together, the bond between the family members grew tighter. And thankfully, we have now moved past those dark days. We managed to get into an awesome place in an apartment just in time for Dasara and Diwali season, and the happy days were back again. Especially, the festive season back home after two years, was really good in the new apartment, which almost feels like our own house these days. It is so close to everything – Oie’s place, Gunda’s place, my old school, and it feels so comfortable with all facilities – open spaces, basement parking, freedom to walk in/out anytime, big terrace to chit chat and hang out with friends and what not. Adding to it is the joy and anticipation involved in waiting and watching the new ‘Akshaya’ unfolding every day. We can now look back at those adventures in the dark house and laugh about it. But at the same time, prepare for whatever life has in store for us. And as is always the case, when it is with Ultra, life will continue to be a roller coaster ride of adventures!:)

Replaceable?

“You have so much knowledge about the work we do. No one can take your place here!”

“Sweetheart, you are one of the most wonderful people I have ever met in my life. I can never live without you!”

“You are one of the main pillars in the team. We cannot survive without you!”

“Sachin is irreplaceable in Indian cricket. He cannot be dropped from the side”

At some point or the other in our life, most of us have been at the receiving end of one or many of these statements. What would these lines make us feel? Do we feel proud that we have been able to establish so much credibility in things we do? Do we feel good that someone has placed so much trust in us and cannot do without us in their personal or professional lives? Do we feel scared that we might not be able to live up to these expectations? Do we feel so complacent that we have now become irreplaceable and hence can start taking things for granted? It could be one or many of these or even more, but one thing is for sure – it feels good to hear such statements whenever they come by (except the fourth one of course!). It also set me thinking about some of the bigger things that come with these statements – the themes and the philosophy associated with them!

The year gone by has been very pivotal for me. It began with so many things to look forward to – culmination of a professional course, a new job, moving to a new place (not city of course), happy times with family and closed ones, wedding ceremonies to look forward to and all that. Lots of things have turned the way I expected and have made me really happy. Some things have not gone the way as expected or have been extremely disappointing by the manner in which they turned out – but there were nice experiences and learnings I could take from them. At the end of the year, as I sit back and review all that happened, there seems to be one theme which I can associate to the year. If 2010 revolved around change management and 2011 revolved around skill management, then the main theme of 2012 seemed to be replaceability. Not only in my life, but even when i look at the events of the year, there seems to be the overwhelming theme of replaceability associated with it.

The year started with rumors, gossips and folklore about the world ending. What if the world really ended this year? How would all the damage start? Would it just go off on one day and replaced by zilch the next day? Or would it come slowly – one calamity after the other? Would we be replaced by some better people or life forms after that? Would it all start over again? After the kali yuga ends, shouldn’t the cycle start all over again with satya, tretaa, dwapara and kali lined up in cyclic order? All these made of interesting conversations and movie scripts. But I guess, we do not have much control on how things pan out at that level and as commoners, all we could do about these rumors is to wait and see how it unfolds. And of course, make plans for the Christmas and the new-year vacations :)

When we graduated from engineering, the most happening social networking site was orkut. If you dint have an orkut account or know what leaving a scrap or writing a testimonial meant, you would not have qualified to be called an engineer. And then there was a photo sharing site called flickr, where people shared photos in high resolution. Rediffmail was the mail account people wanted because it provided 1 GB of storage. MSN was the site that people opened for news/gossips. Yahoo messenger was used for chats and blogger was the site to post events and articles.... Today, all these have replaced by just two big names – fb and twitter! Personally as well, the number of posts on maama’s adda have also taken a beating because facebook enables microblogging and instant sharing which allows me to share easily and enables a wider reach. But that does not mean facebook itself can be complacent that it is irreplaceable. Tomorrow, something else might put facebook totally out of business and we dont even know what it is today!

Same is the case with gadgets. It is hard to believe that just a decade ago, we used to have so many different handy gadgets to make our life easy - a watch to look at the time, an alarm clock to wake us up in the morning, a calendar to plan holidays, a diary to write down contact addresses and phone numbers, a calculator to do quick 2+2 calculations, video games to play tetris, and what not. I don't even have to tell you the one device which has replaced all of these today. And with so many millions of transistors being added to the microchip every month, we dont know how many more gadgets this one ubiquotous thing will replace eventually!

After this, there was the talk on replacing the almighty Himself. Didn’t they build a huge hadron collider or something to create a replacement for GOD? I also heard that there was indeed some breakthroughs in their research in the form a Higgs Boson particle. Maybe they thought that since the world is ending anyway, it was necessary to have an alternate GOD ready to create a backup for the world so that this new god could create a new world and the people who created GOD could then claim copyright of all the thing that ever existed in the world! Thank God (old), I have written this post before their new God has taken control :) :)

Although the above paragraphs were written with pun in mind, I feel they somehow just reinforce the theme of replaceability which I have experienced for most part of the year. It just goes on to show that even though we do fear changes, we are always anticipating and preparing for them. Maybe it is the evolutionary instinct which makes us do so. If you are not able to adapt to changes, you will not survive. So, it is good to have an alternate plan ready. Students plan to work while at college. Employees plan to study while at work. Management plans for attrition when team seems to be good. Girls and boys in committed relationships plan for a backup in case things do not work out. Workers plan for retirement even while they are at prime earning age. People plan for replacements to their mobile phones, cars, etc all the time. ‘Exchange offers’ are ubiquitous these days. In fact, there are a lot of companies, especially the insurance and storage service providers which are doing business today only because people anticipate change and prepare for alternate options.

The gist of management theory is about managing risk and having alternate plans to achieve targets. In the industry, a substantial amount of money is invested in having backup servers in place so that they can handle the load in case the primary servers go off. Alternate resources, both human and machines, are always considered good to have to make sure there are no hindrances to plans. In infrastructure, service routes and detours while building roads is a primary requirement. All the new buildings designed will have alternate entry/exit paths for contingencies. New phones always come with an offer which promises an additional alternate storage space on the cloud just in case of crashes/thefts. In short, backups and alternates have become so much ingrained in lives that there is no way you cannot do without having them.

There is a very important human aspect which comes into play when we talk of backups. While machines and non-living entities are so cold and emotionless to all these ‘main’/’backup’ nomenclature, it becomes an entirely different case when dealing with people. The end-user of gmail would not even know if his mailbox got switched from a main server to a backup server on the google’s server farm. But if his manager at office was replaced by a new person, things would get so different. People have feelings and become really sensitive to changes around them. How would someone feel if the very person he was training in office for a certain skill replaced him and put him out of the job? How would workers in an industry feel if one fine day, a machine replaced them and they were asked to retire? How would it feel if someone who was a best friend till not so long ago starts ignoring you/acts very indifferent when you are around? How would you feel if your beloved for years started going out with someone who was just a friend and said that things between you two dint seem to work out anymore? These are really tough moments. Everyone would have dealt with such moments at some point or other. Some chose to take it in their stride and move on. Some might seek comfort in other temporary pleasures like alcohol/drugs/ bounce back relationships, etc. But, in some extreme cases, people get so depressed and never come back from it. It is really a tough job with replacements and backups when humans are involved, and a lot of high paying jobs today require you to possess the skill of effective communication while handling such tough situations.

So, is there a best way to replace people? Can we handle replacements when people are involved effectively at all? Well, it turns out that there are good options there as well. It is not considered fair when people are dumped unceremoniously. The onus lies in making the communication so effective that the other person feels so valued even when being replaced. Some sort of a golden handshake where everyone walks out from the deal winning. The voluntary retirement scheme in few organizations was one such example. The workers who wanted to be replaced were given handsome payouts such that they felt rewarded for their efforts. The organizations felt happy because they got rid of extra manpower and could now invest the money into buying new age machines or younger workforce. It was a win win situation for all. Even relationships lasting years together could end amicably sometimes. If one of them always wanted money/career and the other wanted care and attention, and if they managed to find it, people could part ways in a manner where there would be no hard feelings. There is this new term being used in the industry termed as ‘positive attrition’ where employees and the employers end terms on a good note. Employees go off to study in reputed institutes while employers get their brand built in such institutes thus creating a win-win situation. All in all, in any deal where the people are treated with respect and feel valued and cared, replacement becomes easy.

On the personal front, this year has been one of continuous change. We moved to a rented place for the first time in life because our old house had to be replaced by a new one. I have stayed in atleast 3-4 rented places in this year alone and the experiences have been a mixed bag – one of them really bitter, one totally awesome and others somewhere in between. Then, there have been experiences at work place where targets and priorities get replaced by new ones so dynamically that adapting to them becomes a challenge. As always, new people have come into life replacing some of the old and very special ones. There have been some people who were just acquaintances or casually walked into my life, but I have realized that they are as important to me as anyone else right now. The important replacement was that of goals. For almost six to seven years now, there was a specific purpose and goal which I pursued. And when that fell apart, lots of things changed. I wandered aimlessly for few days before it struck me that it was all part of some bigger picture which would become clear in a few days. And the most important realization that has dawned upon me is that no matter what happens, certain things or relationships in life are irreplaceable. The memories/lessons which people give are irreplaceable. One main thing that cannot be replaced is the ideology and the principles which we stand for. It is one thing which defines our character and identity and we cannot afford to lose it. I now know the people who are the most valuable in my life. They were always there when I needed them, are with me now, and will hopefully continue to be so. It makes absolute sense to hold on to them no matter what happens. I feel really happy when I know that there are so many of such close people in my life. Through this year-end post, I just want to thank (you) all for always being there!

At the brink of yet another year being replaced, there is one thing which we must all realize. It is the fact that change is the only constant in life and no matter how bad the changes seem at first, things will always turn out good in the end! There will always be experiences from which we can learn from. The replacements which come might not be welcomed at first, but eventually we will realize that there was a reason that the old one had to go and make way for the new – be it the old home, old worker, old machine, or even Sachin/Dravid/Vajapayee. Even if the world did end sometime soon, it would be only because it had gotten so bad that a better world was needed to replace it. As far as possible, try not to compare the old and new because each one had a specific purpose. Drawing parallels and lamenting about past would only make us weaker. So, let us continue to celebrate the journey of changes in life and learnings it gives us. Wishing you all a very happy new year 2013!

City Lights - Part 2 : The city of joy

[...continued from Part 1]

Kolkata has been referred to the city of joy. For me, it will always be the city of special love and that is one thing I immediately associate with the city - just plain and simple love and the faith that love cures all things going wrong. Right from the times when I first visited Kolkata in my high school days to the special weekend visits during the two years of MBA life, Kolkata has always been something special – a city with a heart and soul of its own. It was lot of fun getting to explore the city and its nuances. For the to-be corporate grads like us secluded from city life at our institute, Kolkata was the city where we would all rush to escape from the dull life. Since Kharagpur lacked a passenger airport, malls, software parks or anything faintly related to urban life, Kolkata was the go-to city for all these luxuries once in a while. Also, all opportunities like sponsorship for fests, interactions with corporate world, etc had to happen in Kolkata. More importantly, exploring a new city with some special friends and relatives always gives good memories of the place and Kolkata is one where I have lots of it.

For me, the most striking of all memories in Kolkata starts even before entering the city. To someone who loves the railways like me, the 22 platform Howrah terminus is nothing short of a holy shrine. The mad rush on the platforms, the red painted towers, the non-stop announcements about arriving or departing trains, the red uniformed coolies, the aroma of Comesum’s biryani near platform 18, coaches in all colors and classes to carry passengers – ah! Never has any Indian railway station fascinated me so much. Whats more – my first glimpse of India’s fastest train – the Duronto express was in Howrah. Even the first double decker AC coach connecting Howrah to Dhanbad was first spotted in the Howrah station. I have so many lasting memories of the Howrah station and the numerous journeys I used to take from Kharagpur to Howrah and back. I have travelled on this route so many times and in so many classes of trains – ranging from the basic Rs. 19/ ticket local train to the super luxury Rs. 541 priced ticket 1A coach on the TATA-HWH Steel express. I have also made these 2.5 hour journey at almost all times of the day/night – the most frequent of them being the early morning 6:20 MDN-HWH local to Kolkata and return on the 1930 is HWH-MDN galloping train. The oddest hour when I made this travel was at 0230 in the night when my flight landed in Kolkata at midnight on a cold December night.

Most of these journeys were undertaken in anticipation of special moments – be it sponsorship amounts, travel back home on flights, job interviews, rigorous academic terms that lay ahead or spending time with special people in the city of joy – each of these had a flavor of its own. There was a time when I could easily list out some 20+ stations on this route even in my sleep. It was always the same pattern - the vast expanses of lush green fields while passing through Jakpur and Ballychowk, then some green forest cover while passing Radhamohanpur and Panskura, the thermal power plant at Kolaghat and the bridge across river Rupnarayan. We would then zoom past the suburbs of Uluberia and cover stations like Phuleshwar, Chengel, etc and land into Santragachi junction, only to cover the next 10 kms in such frustratingly slow pace that entering into Howrah would make you want to get out of the train and dance.

The station, river, bridge the city and trams are something very unique to this city. While most other cities of the world have combinations of the above, Kolkata is one which boasts of having it all! The vintage yellow ambassador taxis and wooden framed colorful buses on Rabindro Setu with the silently flowing Hugli below is like a picture postcard you can mail to dear ones for having travelled here. When you get into the huge streets with old angrez buildings on either side, you will realize that these are places which have survived the test of time – they could be easily a century old. Park Street, Camac street, etc are essentially where the midtown madness is. Esplanade and the market areas around it are places where you can shop for any item –old and new. Each landmark or area in Kolkata gives you some sort of thrilling feeling when you know that there is a lot of history and heritage associated with it. When I pass through the huge maidaan, I just imagine the sports Englishmen used to play here back then. Eden gardens still echoes the roar of the 100,000 people who were there to witness that epic test where Aussie pride was dusted. Passing through Kalighat, Gariahat via Rashbehari avenue makes me think of how Mother Teresa used to nurse the leprosy patients on the streets here. Passing through Nandan talkies somehow reminds me of gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and his legendary compositions. Victoria memorial stands in testimony to the glorious Fort William days. Kali temple at Dakshineshwar and the ‘across the river’ Belur math makes me bow in reverence to Paramahamsa and his famous disciple Narendra who carried the essence of Hinduism across the world. I just felt every place in Kolkata had a story to tell and tried to listen, see and experience it to the fullest.

The newer areas, read Salt lake, Rajarahat, etc dotted with all the technology companies, high rise apartments and malls are akin to any other metro. However, purely from an economic standpoint, Kolkata is much less expensive as compared to the others. I just might be wrong here. But this is just a personal opinion. Maybe it is the variety of options the city offers which presents the overall combination as being a little less expensive. You can use the buses, the trams, the underground metro, the rickshaws, taxis and the ferries or a combination of these to get to any place you want. You can eat at roadside thelas, carry carts, fast food outlets, or the big restaurants depending on your wallet size. And regardless of your wallet size, you must have chai samosa at local tea stalls and rossogollas at mithai shops at least once! :)

One thing that people say defines Kolkata is the pujo time. It seemed to me that the Bengalis have only one festival in the year – Durga puja! There are different flavors that the city offers and the pujo flavor can easily be termed as its flagship. Pandals at every nook and corner of the city, each one built with so much thought and artistic design put into it make the city look so beautiful during the times. The all night stalls, the dance and the rituals and the variety of food on offer during this time make it a very memorable one for anyone. However, since the college used to shut down for almost a week during the pujo times, I ended up missing the real pomp and glory of Kolkata during pujo, as I used to come back home for vacations during both the years. I just wish that I get a chance someday to visit the city during puja time and experience it.

Kolkata has been portrayed in so many movies in so many shades, the recent ones being Bidya’s Kahaani and Ashima Roy’s haveli in Vicky donor. But to me, the movie ‘Love Aaj Kal’ and especially the song ‘yeh dooriyan’ is one which immediately makes me recall the city and all its memories. ‘Love aaj kal’ was the first movie which I got in super high quality in the super high speed LAN at Kharagpur. The movie and the songs served as constant time pass when I travelled on the trains or stayed in the lodges at Kolkata. Whenever I listen to ‘yeh dooriyan’, my mind races back to the city of joy – to the train journeys undertaken, to the romantic rides on the SaltLake’s cycle rickshaws, to the time spent at Kolkata airport so many times waiting for people/flights. The song is one thing which defines Kolkata in my mind. When I used to travel back and forth on the KGP-HWH route, my mind would contemplate on the lyrics of the song ‘aa raha paas ya door main jaa raha jaane na koi yaha pe’. In retrospect, it is vividly clear on what the lyrics used to mean.

In any city, there can be good things as well as bad ones. One thing I deliberately leave out when I write this articles are the bad experiences. Also, along with all the good things a city has, there will always be some things which you don’t like at all. For example, the one thing which you’ll notice as soon as you get out of the Howrah station is the huge pile of debris and filth. But we can have a separate article dedicated towards infrastructure management which can get on all that. These articles are only about the pleasant experiences the cities have offered me and a recollection of all things nice which I got to experience in these cities.

In statistical experiments as well as in life, people always expect an ‘unbiased’ opinion when looking for insights. And that is exactly the opposite of what would happen if I wrote about the experiences and memories in namma Bengalooru – it would be highly biased because of the fact that over 90% of my life has been spent in this city – the growing up days of the 90’s, the PU college days of 2000s, the heavenly BMS days, the ‘new to industry’ Symbian Ltd. days, the ‘60km daily travel’ workdays and all other days in between. Nevertheless, the only word and emotion which I feel when I think of Bengalooru is ‘bliss’! In fact, if I had to start elaborating on why Bangalore gets associated with bliss, I would be writing an entire autobiography, which I plan to do sometime very soon :) But for now, let me just say that each and every experience that my home city has given me have been such that I always feel good about it. Even the bad ones seem not so bad because of all that they have taught me. Maybe I will write more parts of this article by sampling some of the awesome moments that define Bangalore for me.

Other big cities that I have been to in India include Pune, Jaipur, Indore, Bhopal, Udaipur, Bhubaneshwar, Trivandrum, Hyderabad among others. However, I have not spent enough time in these cities to have a lasting memory or an incident linked to these places. I was just a tourist visiting only the must-see places or using the city as a quick transit point to get to other places. Of course, there have been experiences but nothing noteworthy of sorts. And then there are cities like Delhi, Chandigarh, Gurgaon, Guwahati, Srinagar, Shimla, Dehra Dun, Ahmedabad etc which I have always wanted to visit but never got a chance to. Maybe I will write more on these cities in the coming days. In the meanwhile I would like to hear from you all if you have any nice city memories/experiences. I know there would be bad points and cribbing about infrastructure, culture etc in all cities. But, no city if perfect in all senses that way. They are all in the development path and will take some time to improve. And the experiences which I shared were only subjective. Maybe someone else would have had the exact same experiences which I had in city A in other cities. The only thing which I want to state here is that people stop judging a city by the stereotypes and self-explore it. Take your own time and explore the city with the pace you are really comfortable. I wish you many more wow moments in your cities.

PS: 1. HWH - station code for Howrah, headquarters for Eastern and South Eastern railway divisions of Indian Railways
2. MDN - Station code for Medinipur. Local trains from Howrah run till Medinipur, passing via Kharagpur (KGP)