Most Favourite of Bharathiyar

I was thinking, which is the most favourite of the Bharathiyar poems that i have read. Of the 80 odd that i have read of Bharatiyar, this seems to be the best that captures the essence of the quarter life crisis that i have been facing for sometime now. This poem was wonderfully used by Kamal Hassan in his classic Mahanadi in the scene in which he is shown reading Bharathiyar Kavidhaigal in the prison.

தேடிச் சோறு நிதம் தின்று-- பல

சின்னஞ்சிறு கதைகள் பேசி -- மனம்

வாடித் துன்பமிக உழன்று -- பிறர்

வாடப் பல செயல்கள் செய்து-- நரை

கூடிக் கிழப்பருவ மெய்தி - கொடுங்

கூற்றுக்கிரை எனப் பின்மாயும் -- பல

வேடிக்கை மனிதரைப் போல - நான்

வீழ்வே னென்று நினைத்தாயோ?

Memories of Paatti

My paternal grandma passed away ten days ago. Since my maternal grandma was dead before I was born, she was the only grandma that I had and knew.

Born around 1930, no one is sure of the exact year, she had lived close to 80 years of life on this earth. She was born and bought up in a small town called Gangaikondan near the southern tip of the subcontinent. She must have spent till her mid teens there, before she married Grandpa who was a draughtsman and moved to Madras around the 1949.

She has had about 10 child births and 11 children, of whom 8 of them grew up to become adults. This means that she had been pregnant for close to 1/8th of her life. The difficulties that she should have underwent bringing up 8 children in what could best be described as a lower middle class family is unimaginable to our generation, brought up in the nuclear family in a globalised and liberal economy.

She had a great attitude towards life, which definitely helped her in surviving close to a quarter of a century after the death of our grandfather.

My memories of her are that of a friendly matriarch, who helped me get ready to go to primary school by combing my hair and tying my shoe laces. On Friday evenings, she would take me for a walk to the temple nearby and tell me stories of mythology. She was a woman of those times when people were happy seeing others being happy.

She had very good eyesight, reading magazines even until a year ago, without wearing glasses. We are proud that we could donate her eyes with the consent of everyone concerned.

Aamir – In every sense of the term

I watched the Gollapudi Srinivas Memorial Award ceremony 2008 on SS Music. The award is given every year on August 12th for the best directorial debut in memory of the namesake. Srinivas died in the seas near Vizag while filming his first movie. His family gives the award which is decided by a jury comprising of Kamal Hassan among many others. Aamir Khan is the recipient of the 11th Gollapudi Srinivas Award for his beautiful ‘Taare Zameen Par’. The award carries a cash of Rs.1.5 Lakhs (loose change for Aamir?). The award was announced in March and it was reported that Kamal himself talked to Aamir to come to the award ceremony in Chennai in August. Aamir who refuses to appear at award ceremonies was moved by the story behind this award and accepted.

The evening started off with Ghazals by Jagjit Singh (a very rare event in Chennai). The stage was occupied by Director K.Balachander, Anupam Kher, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and of course Srinivas’s father. Anupum and Vidhu spoke of the Aamir that most of us don’t know. KB was the one who stole the show and moved Aamir to tears. He said Indian Cinema was in safe hands with Aamir at the helm. He also said that he is the real ‘Dawn’ of Indian Cinema and said the pun was intended. (at the other Khan). AK’s faith in the story to make his appearance only towards the interval was highly acclaimed. KB ended by saying that AK was the new AB of Indian Cinema and said AB was Abhinav Bindra. Bindra had won the Gold medal on that morning.

Aamir was with moist eyes for most of the time that KB spoke. When Aamir spoke, he had in abundance a virtue that I have seldom found in Mumbai – Modesty. He said that most of the credit needs to be given to the Story and the Screenplay writers of TZP. He cried on stage when he said he wished his mother was there to watch this. Aamir donated the money to help budding moviemakers. He also took the copy from which KB spoke saying that he wanted to read that out to his grandchildren. Don’t miss the video on You Tube.

Summer 2008: Part 2

Coming back to Chennai from the capital, I left to join Infosys on May 12. Reached the spectacular Mysore campus on the 11th . Was put up for a six week training , two weeks in HR and then four weeks in my department. The Mysore campus of Infy is one of the best corporate training facilities in India. Had the best time of my life doing a lot of things like playing tennis, swimming, bowling, Go Karting and watching a couple of movies at the Infy Multiplex every weekend.

I went to a lot of new places around Mysore with my family on the weekends.

Talakad - the place where the river Cauvery takes a turn in the direction and hence is said to be extra wide at this place.

Tirumukodal Narsipur - The only place in India where three rivers confluence.

Somnathpur – A lesser known cousin of the temples of Belur and Halebeid. Intricate rock cut temple built during the Chalukya reign.

Srirangapatna – The capital of the Mysore Tiger, Tipu Sultan, this beautiful island created by the Cauvery gets its name from the 10th century temple of Sri Ranganatha. The statute of Lord Ranganatha here is very similar to the one that comes in the first ten minutes of Dasavatharam (the 12th Century sequence).

Nanjagud – A very well maintained old temple of Lord Nanjundeswara

In Mysore, I watched Dasavatharam three times in the theater within the first week of its release, which I couldn’t have done had I been anywhere inside Tamilnadu. Its still running full house in Chennai, 35 days after release.

So, after having a gala time at Mysore, I was posted to Mahindra City, an SEZ near Chennai. So, I came back home after living in Coimbatore, Hosur and Mumbai since 2000.

Summer 2008 : Part I

I am back to blogging after 4 months. My life was in a transition mode. I formally became a Master of Business Administration, though nothing much has changed. That happened on April 26th. Left Mumbai on that night for a trip of North India.

New Delhi. After 17 years.

A lot of water has flown through the Yamuna. New Delhi definitely looks more like a capital city now. I roamed about Delhi on a bike with a map in hand. The bike ride from India Gate to the Rashtrapathi Bhavan was highly enjoyable, but for the April Sun. When I was waiting on the signal before the north and south blocks, the Prime Minister’s BMW passed by from the Parliament.

I visited the National Museum on the Janpath. Inside the museum, foreigners outnumbered Indians one to five. It is one of the most extensive museums, I have seen in India. It houses a huge collection from the Mohenjodaro and Harrappan excavations of the 1920s. The other section I enjoyed was the bronzes from across the sub-continent, across ages.

Then I left for Vaishnodevi and Amritsar. Travelled to Punjab and beyond for the first time. Enjoyed the trek to the temple and the queue less darshan (its wrong and unfair, but still I did it) at the temple, thanks to my chittappa in CRPF at Katara. Left Jammu for Amritsar and Wagah.

Saw the Jallianwala Bagh and the Golden Temple. I feel we have started maintaining our monuments and places of worship much better than what we used to a decade ago. Jallianwala Bagh is brilliantly preserved. A little more civic sense from all of us and they will be among the best preserved in the world. Left Amritsar for Wagah.

Saw the ‘lowering of the flags’ ceremony. There was a huge turnout of people on both sides to watch, with competing shouts of ‘Hindustan Zindabad’ &‘ Pakistan Zindabad’ and ‘Vande Mataram’ & ‘Quaid-e-azam Zindabad’. There was no significant difference between the people standing on both sides of the gate. I was just wondering how it would have been if India had not been partitioned. Easily the most populous country in the world, I somehow felt that managing the ‘Akand Bharat’ would have been a much more difficult almost impossible task. But imagine how strong the Indian cricketing team would have been.

10 years on, some thing has not changed

India powered itself to an impressive back to back win against Australia to clinch the CB ODI series. What makes this victory sweeter is that the invincibles have been defeated for two consecutive years, last year by England. Also this is the last time the series is held in the triangular form, so it is definitely a cup of woes for Ponting, who wrote a few days back that the Aussies will not need the third final. Neither do we.

Sachin's batting in the last 2 matches, brought back memories of the 1998 Sharjah matches on the 22nd and 24th April, when he hit back to back centuries to power India into the final and another one in the final to enable Azhar win the trophy against the Aussies. It would have been poetic if he had scored 9 more runs today to make it a complete deja vu.

I personally feel Sachin should pause his one day career on this high note to preserve himself for test cricket for another 3 years and come back into the one day squad just before World Cup 2011 to end his career as no one else has.

எழுத்தாளர் சுஜாதா மரணம்

கடந்த புதன்கிழமை இரவு எழுத்தாளர் சுஜாதா இயற்கை எய்தினார். 20 ம் நூற்றாண்டின் தமிழ் இலக்கிய வரலாற்றில் தன்னிகரற்ற உச்சத்தைத் தொட்டவர். BEL இல் பொறியாளராக பணியாற்றி, மின்னணு வாக்குப்பதிவு இயந்திரத்தை உருவாக்குவதில் பெரும் பங்கு வகித்தவர். இலக்கியத்தில் சிறுகதை, நாவல், அறிவியல் தொலைநோக்கு கதை (Science Fiction), அறிவியல், நாடகம், திரைக்கதை, வசனம் என பல நடைகளிலும் கலக்கியவர்.

ஆனந்த விகடன், குமுதம், கல்கி ஆகியவற்றை வாங்கிய உடன் முதலில் நான் படிப்பது சுஜாதாவின் எழுத்துக்கள் ஆகத் தான் இருக்கும். தமிழ் இலக்கிய உலகில் அவர் விட்டு சென்ற இடம் நிரப்பப்படுவது கடினம்.

Tamil writer Sujatha (Originally Rangarajan) died on Wednesday night in Chennai. He was 72. One of my favorite writers in Tamil, he straddled across different genre of writing including short stories, novels, science, science fiction, plays, screenplay and dialogues. He was Dr.APJ.Abdul Kalam's classmate in St. Joseph's college, Trichy. He worked as an electronics engineer in BEL, Bangalore, wherein he was a key member in the team that created the Electronic Voting Machine.

Everyweek i used to start reading Kumudam, Ananda Vikatan and Kalki from the pages written by Sujatha. He has left behind a void which is very difficult to fill in the Tamil literary world.

Jodhaa Akbar

Back after a long time. Was busy with a number of things for the past 3 months. Trimester, Placements, marriages of 2 cousins and my only brother and the usual load of lazyness that i am endowed with. Got placed with Infosys as a Business Analyst on Jan 31.

Now,back to the content of this post.

Watched Jodhaa Akbar today at Chandan,Juhu. After Lagaan and Swades, I was dissappointed watching JA from Ashutosh Gowariker.

Good things first.

Hrithik and Aishwarya have lived their roles as Akbar and Jodha. While watching history, we tend to assume the actors with the roles they play, if they play it well.Krishna is Nitish Bharadwaj, Shakuni is Gufi Paintal for me even when i read Mahabharat, from the DD serial on Mahabharat of sunday afternoons in the 1990s. Akbar will defenitely be Hrithik Roshan in my history books.

The movie seems to have been made to show how visually appealing and artistic AG can make a period movie. A lot of effort has gone into building the sets and bringing to life the Mughal architecture and the war scenes. The art direction is greatly complemented by great camera work and editing during the fight sequences.

Words need not be wasted in describing how good ARR has done in his forte involving a lot of Sufi music. Khwaja meri khwaja and Jashn-e-bahaara are my favourites of the lot.

But all these good things are not enough to keep one riveted for over 3 and half hours. The movie becomes drab after a point becoming more like a chronicle of Akbar's life and achievements. The movie involves a lot of Urdu which went over my head. Subtitles in English/Hindi would have helped me.

Its unfair to compare someone's subsequent works with their magnum opus. But still, JA din't give me anything close to what i felt after watching Lagaan and Swades

India after Gandhi

For the past 2 months have been reading this 750 page book by Ramachandra Guha. Extremely well researched, giving a comprehensive history on India from 1948 to 2006, this book is a must read for people fascinated by the idea and uniqueness of India.

The book carries deep insights into most of the events in post independent India. At the end of the book the author dwells into "Why India Survives?". This is one of the questions that baffle me. The last few lines of the book is as follows,

so long as the constitution is not amended beyond recognition, so long as elections are held regularly and fairly and the ethos of secularism broadly prevails, so long as the citizens can speak and write in the language of their choice, so long as there is an integrated market and a moderately efficient civil service and army and so long as Hindi films are watched and their songs sung, India will survive.

I feel most people of my generation (born post 1980) have a myopic view of leaders like Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Everyone had their own failings but we need to understand them in the context of the time in which they lived. This book lets one take a look at the leaders of India in wholesome and understand their successes and failures.

Narendra Modi 2007

Narendra Modi is back in national news, with the Gujarat elections nearing. Last week he walked off midway from an interview with Karan Thapar. The Nov 3, 2007 issue of Tehelka claims to be the most important story of our times. It has interviews with the rioters, rapists, bomb makers et al. It goes into the gruesome details of how they went about it in Gujarat for 4 days from Feb 26, 2002.

Gujarat riots 2002, baffles us because it defies our assumptions that education and economic development (Gujarat being one of the most developed states of India) will lessen the differences and occurrences of conflict in a society. It has proved that we will let ourselves to be divided and ruled, no matter the progress we make as a society. Most Gujaratis I have met (Incidentally, all of them have been Hindus) have an idolatry view of Mr.Modi. Some of them have even said that as long as they were not affected, they didn't care about what happened to the communal harmony in their state. Modi might have made Gujarat the state attracting the highest FDI in India, but it is long since he ceased to be a human being.

This post has nothing to do with the fact that Modi represents the BJP which I equally dislike. For the record, Congress has been equally bad. Who can forget the 1984 Delhi Sikh riots, when Rajiv Gandhi remarked that "when a tree falls, the earth is bound to shake". Despite the Congress being in power at the centre since 2004, nothing has moved forward with regard to the 2002 riot cases.

I seriously hope there is something called hell and Modi stays there long enough.

Little known Great Indians

Over the past one month, a lot of noise has been made of India's triumph at the world stage. It started off with the Twenty-20. Then it was Viswanath Anand. Last week it was Dr. Pachauri, though the Nobel is meant for IPCC, which he has been heading since 2002.

A lesser known individual, Dr.Ullas Karanth has won this year's WWF Paul Getty Award for conservation leadeship. Dr.Ullas works in the area of wildlife conservation in general and tigers and elephants in particular. He has been fighting with the Government of India, to adopt newer scientific methods of counting tigers in the wild. These new methods like capture- recapture technique will lead to the real number of tigers alive, which have been inflated by the government as we saw in Sariska.

In an interview, Dr.Karanth says that the tigers will survive to the next century. We still have hope, as long we have men like Dr.Karanth and Mr. Valmik Thapar.

A saturday spent as Earth Day

Back after a hiatus. I was supposed to be busy with the 4th trimester exams for the past 10 days. We, the future corporate honchos were to be sensitized on the environmental issues over the weekend after the 4 th trimester exams. So, I went to the class today prepared for sessions of boring ppts, graphs and value matrices.

An old man entered the class. His name was Prof. Narendra Sakhalkar. He kept me spellbound and most of the class as well for the next hour and half. It was so intellectual that I attended the same session again with another batch. His speech made me déjà vu of having read A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

His speech covered a variety of topics from history, astronomy, geology, religion, physics and biology. The gist of what he spoke was:

We, Homo sapiens sapiens are in deep trouble regarding our survival as a species, because of the past 150 years of Industrialization, which might over the next 50 years, ensure a doomsday in any of the various possible ways. Whenever it has happened before, the most dominant species is the one which gets hit the most. This time it will be us and mammals in general.

He classified the past 4 lakh years from the Homo eructus to today into 4 time periods as,

Man within nature - The period when we lived as scavengers eating the dead animals in the jungle.

Man with nature - This was when we started agriculture. He made an analogy of this being like a child scratching its mother's face with its nails. Agriculture was the first time when we brought monoculture against the poly culture (diversity), which is nature's design.

Man against nature - This started with the industrial revolution in the Europe, and the laying of railway tracks, which lead to destruction of large tracts of jungle.

Nature against man - This is where we are now, when the earth has started showing the signs of refusing to accept whatever we have been doing for so long. Melting of glaciers as large as the size of California in a single year , increase in surface temperature of oceans and hole in the ozone layer of some of the signs which have been documented to prove beyond doubt that we have arrived here.

The most frequently said way out and why each of them will not happen are,

1.God created man as his image and hence He will not let us perish - All religions say that God is the creator and manager of the entire universe, the size of which we are still not able to comprehend. That being the case, He will not interfere into the affairs of a spec of dust called Earth, that too for a problem created over 150 years, which is not even a second in the cosmic clock.

2. We will evolve technology that will save us - This could be a possible solution if we can arrive at a consensus on this within 2010. We will need the top 1 percentile of the human intelligence to be dedicated to this. But it is unlikely to happen, as most of them are involved in the development of arms.

3. We will conquer other planets and galaxies and make it our home - This is the most ridiculous solution possible, surprisingly suggested even by Stephen Hawking. All the planets in the solar system have been ruled out. The current travel speeds in space achieved rule out reaching them before 10000 years even if we start now.

So, the bomb has started ticking. Its not a question of 'if' anymore, Its a question of 'when'.
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Part 2

In the afternoon four of us, flat mates decided to visit Gilbert Hill. Its a 65 million year old hill made of molten lava, located at Andheri, 10 minutes drive from our place. It offers panoramic view of Mumbai from the top, which can be reached by the stairs cut in the rocks. We could see as far as the Juhu beach, Hiranandani, Borivili and Thane. To reach it one has to pass through a shanty town. High rise buildings have come around the hill over the past 3 years until the Mumbai High Court passed a stay order early this year.

3 coffee, 2 sandwich and 5 quarter life crises

When you have a 10 day break between the trimester exams, one the best thing to do was to get around with a bunch of friends and chat. On the evening of a rainy day in Mumbai, 5 of us got together outside Dhiraj and talked for over an hour and half, between coffee and sandwiches, on the state of our lives right now, when we are doing II year MBA from a relatively well known institute. The five of us were SS, RS, RK, RM and me.

The discussion started off, when RM said that if we had a few minutes of clearer thinking during the two hours of CAT that we wrote close to 2 years ago; we would have been at one of the IIMs.

True. No denying of this. Life is Unfair - the earlier we start accepting this simple fact the better we are.

Then it turned on to the institute that we have landed ourselves in. If IIPM calls itself the largest b-school on earth, ours can surely stake claim to be the densest one. Most B-schools in Mumbai, barring NITIE have a concern over space, typical of the city in which they are located. But I m sure none of them can claim to have produced more MBAs per square feet of the land that they own than ours.

Education is the starting point of strengthening a nation. The better skilled the students going out of a system are that much better off the nation is going to be. So any anomaly in the system of education will get magnified down the line in the careers of the students. This is all the more true in the case of professional degrees like engineering and management.

This makes it very important to keep the 5 lettered word called G-R-E-E-D away from an educational institute. But we have found only that in ours and more of that as we have moved from the first to the second year. There is no problem with an educational institution making profit, but making profit without providing value for the money you charge is unpardonable.

The discussion moved on the line saying that in the first year of our course we could have competed with any guy from a top b-school. But as we have moved along the course, they have received considerable value added day- by-day and the gulf has widened that it might not be possible now.

It was sad to hear that a lot of guys had come into the institute with fire in their bellies, but as they progressed the fire had been doused and they have settled for a life of mediocrity.

As the number of students admitted into the institute has gone up, the institute has consciously chosen people with prior work experience, to leverage on their work ex during the most important placements. The going might be easy when the economy is booming and the industry is plagued by a serious talent crunch.

Despite all the negative tone of the discussion, a few of them, SS and RM in particular wanted to do something to stem the situation. All of us were left gasping as to what to do and where to start, if we needed to do something to the institute before it became our alma mater.

I m sure that despite all this, we might in the next twenty years see a few solid entrepreneurs and a number of high profile corporate performers from the batch of 2008.

Will this come true?

The HT reports that Kamal, Rajni and Maniratnam may come together for a new movie and have been meeting each other recently on the story discussion. So far the three of them have worked with each other separately but never have all three of them together in a single project.

As far as i know, Rajni and Kamal have worked together in at least 10 movies, excluding the guest appearances. Kamal and Mani came together for Nayagan in 1987, which is Kamal's best performance so far barring, Anbe Sivam. In 1991, Thalapathy brought Rajni and Mani together. This movie brought back on screen the Rajni of 1970s and 80s who made his mark as a 'performing' actor and not just as a superstar who banked on flipping of a cigarette and hair style.

If this does come true, it will hopefully be the magnum opus for all three of them, and the day the movie hits the screen will be marked by a frenzy in Tamilnadu that will overshadow what was witnessed for Sivaji.

Come Be My Light

The cover story on a recent issue of TIME, is about a book called Come Be My Light, which is a collection of letters written between Mother Teresa and her confessors and superiors over six decades from the 1940s to the 1990s.

Teresa had reportedly, requested the Church to destroy all her correspondences, as they might make people to concentrate on her rather than Him. But the Church refused to do so as all the correspondences are preserved and reviewed in course of beatification and canonization.

The letters indicate that for a large part of over 50 years, she found dryness, darkness, loneliness and torture, and couldn't find any evidence of God speaking to or directing her. In 1946, during the break she took from teaching with the Loreto Sisters, to Darjeeling, she claimed that God directed her to the service of the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. After this, she left the Loreto Sisters to start the Missionaries of Charity.

But soon enough her flip-flops had started and continued as late as 1995, two years before her death. The content of these letters seem more or less the same with only the recipient changing as her confessors died.

I feel that Truth is the nearest and the cleanest form of God that one can ever find on earth. With due admiration to the great work done by Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity, if she is not convinced of the existence of God herself, why should she go around the town claiming to do service to the poorest of the poor to fulfill God's will. Rather she could have just done things to ameliorate poverty for the sake of it than trying to answer some call which never existed in the first place.

Being an agnostic who goes to temple at times, I have always felt that, there has never been anyone on earth who has been convinced throughout his/her life of the existence of God. Similarly a dozen holes can be punctured into an argument put forth by an atheist to disprove the need of a God. A theist has his own moments of darkness when he doubts the existence of God and an atheist has his equal share of moments, when he feels his rationality crumbling down.

May be, only when the entire world accepts their shares of doubts, on either side of the debate, will God show up, for He knows that day is never going to come.

The Pursuit of HappYness

Ever since I did my summers at the private banking department of a bank in Hyderabad during May and June this year, my brother had been asking me to see this movie in which Will Smith is an intern at Dean Witter Reynolds. I had more or less been doing the same that Will does during his internship at DWR. Calling up prospective clients,(High Net Worth Individuals) for the private banking services of the bank. I didn't have the pressure of standing first among the group of 20 that Will had, to become a broker.

Moving on to the movie, there are very few movies, the mere mention of the name of which, brings you a myriad of images and makes you think for a few minutes, however busy you were or whatever you were doing. This definitely is one among those few. The others that fit this list from my limited scope are Forrest Gump, Shaw shank Redemption, Apollo 13, Life is Beautiful in English and Anbe Sivam, Kaakha Kaakha, Dalapathi, Mahanadi, Nayagan and Ethir Neechal in Tamizh.

The movie is based on the real life of Chris Gardner (played by Will smith), who struggles to make ends meet and tries every possible way to come out of the daily grind and make it BIG in life. Chris gets an internship at DWR and is simultaneously faced with crisis at home (with his wife leaving him), and is even rendered homeless, over unpaid dues.

I particularly liked the scene, where Chris tries to solve the Rubik’s cube, while Ronald Reagan addresses the nation on the state of the economy. It seemed as though the entire economy is one big Rubik's cube for which no one knew the solution, while common men and women endured agony for their existential necessities.

The best performance in the movie undoubtedly is by Jaden Smith, Will Smith's real life son who plays Chris's son Christopher. The rapport that Chris and Christopher share on the screen reminds you of the one between Guido and Joshua in 'Life is Beautiful’.

The movie brings to light the problem of homelessness that even the 'mighty' U.S faces. This is a stark contrast to the glass, steel and tarmac that we are used to associating with the U.S. The way Chris manages his time at the office without taking restroom breaks and rushes back to the charity shelter before 5 in the evening, after getting Christopher back from the day care, makes one feel that Life is a mystery and can be unravelled only by showing grit, when the world shuts its doors on you.

The last day of the internship when Chris is chosen among the 20 in his group to become the broker, Will Smith walks into the deal room with an ' I am the king of the world' look on his face, for savoring which any amount of hardship can be endured.

The AIMA Pune trip

Went with a gang of friends to Pune for 2 days for a management simulation game conducted by AIMA. The event happened at Singhad Institute of Management in a serene village called Kondhwa outside Pune. So, we started from Mumbai on Monday evening by the Deccan Queen. The train has a number of firsts and onlys to its credit, like

The first train to be certified ISO 9000 in India.

The only train with a cafeteria, where you can actually sit and have food as you do in a hotel.

The route between Mumbai and Pune is one of the most beautiful ones in India, as far as I have travelled, where the tracks cut across the Western Ghats. During monsoon, which it was this week, it offers you some breathtaking views of valley, waterfalls and mountains all in fresh green. The added pleasure of travelling by the Deccan Queen is that you can enjoy all this as you relish your cutlet and coffee as you do in a bakery down the street.

The game was conducted by AIMA on a software that they have developed called Chanakya. The software was robust. There was not a glitch in it throughout the 2 days that we played. The game was a board room simulator in which there were 4 members per team and each had to play the role as a CEO, CFO, COO and CMO.

Each four member team was a company. In each group there were 8 teams, which made it essentially as 8 companies competing for the same market. We had to take decisions on the operations, marketing and financial aspects each quarter, and the game was played over 5 quarters.

The winning criteria was the book value per share, which made the way you managed your finances more crucial than the way you invested in technology, produced efficiently or marketed the product. This winning criteria, made the reading of the seemingly simple Balance sheet, Income statement and the cash flow critical after every quarter. We felt that we should have had one of the CAs from our class in our team as they would have helped us in reading these statements in a jiffy.

The game helped us realise, at least now, how much of financial accounting had been misunderstood by us. We made a stupid mistake of not issuing equity shares during the 2nd quarter of the game when the chance came our way and hence not capitalising the share premium into the reserves and surplus, which would have improved our book value. This made us go from 3rd to 8th rank after round 2, the end of day 1.

The next day, we had to play 3 more rounds and somehow jump from 8th to the 4 th position to scrape through to the next round. We did play a little better on day 2 than on day 1, and managed to move from 8 to 6 to 5 and stayed at 5.

Of the 8 teams from NM, one managed to get to the regional finals and they have also ended up being the regional winners, who will play in the national finals at Coimbatore in October. Hope they win at Coimbatore and become the national champions.

Overall, it was a great learning that made us realise that small decisions that you make in the board room has a significant impact on the company, which makes business seem simple yet remain complex.

A treasure trove

The Hindu has come out with a superb 24 page supplement on the 60th Independence Day. I laid my hands on it at the NM library today. It can be accessed online here.

I haven’t read it in full and i think it will take at least a week for me to do it, because of the depth and the sheer number of the articles in it. These articles are a good reality check written by an illustrious list of contributors , than the breast beating that most of the other newspapers and magazines did on the occasion of the Independence Day.

It also has a special painting by M.F.Husain, and photos and cartoons from the archives of The Hindu.

I think it is a must read for every Indian.

India 2007 to 2022

India 2007

60 Years have passed since we got the right to decide on our own collective destinies. A lot has been achieved and a lot more could have been….

The Prime Minister's speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort has much of the usual rhetoric.

The key points can be summarised as,

1. Rs. 25,000 Crores infusion into agriculture
2. Rural infrastructure and connectivity through Bharat Nirman
3. Urban infrastructure augmentation
4. Planned Industrialisation
5. Universalising of secondary education
6. Increase in the number of IITs, IIMs and IIITs
7. Social security for senior citizens below poverty line
8. Conservation of natural resources and concern towards global warming

Overall, it was a reiteration of the UPA government's policy initiatives and the usual quotations and two from Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and ofcourse, Rajiv Gandhi. The text of the speech glaringly omits even a mention of the 123 nuclear deal between India and the US.

This being a special independence day, I decided to give my shot at some of the events that might happen between the diamond and platinum jubilee of our independence.

I hope that whichever of my predictions are gloomy, I am proved completely wrong and in the ones that look good, I have a gross underestimate.

India 2007 - 2022

The following are some of the key events that might happen between today and 15 years from today

1. The Government will keep pumping in thousands of crores of rupees under the name of agriculture under a minister who will spend his time in the offices of the BCCI in Mumbai or the ICC in London, while the farmers will keep commiting suicide in Vidarbha and Andhra Pradesh. Atlast, by around 2015, when farming becomes impossible for most farmers of India and our food security is threatened, the Government will call in for the private sector participation in agriculture. Large companies will enter farming and take over thousands of hectares of land. This seems to be the only way a second green revolution will be ushured in, unless the Government creates SAZs (Special Agricultural Zones) as adviced by Dr.M.S.Swaminathan.

2. The political structure of the country will not undergo much change, except maybe for a little more federalism and splitting up of a few states in the Hindi heartland towards governable smaller units.

3. The private sector will continue to flourish and remain the largest employment creator, absorbing large number of people displaced from agriculture.

4. Education and litreacy will spread. Hopefully, secondary education will be universalised before 2020.

5. College education will spread, foreign universities will set shop in the country, making careers in teaching remunerative and good teachers to be sought after.

6. More and more conflicts will be seen in the transition from agriculture to industry, like the latest one being witnessed for Tata's Titanium-di-oxide plant in Tamilnadu. This should settle by around 2012, when comprehensive regulations on rehabilitation should emerge.

7. God forbid, we will have a confontation with China, with the sort of resources they are building up in Tibet and coming very close to our backyard. Hopefully, UN will intervene and good sense will prevail.

8. India will win 2 medals in Beijing 2008 and 5 in London 2012, and hopefully one cricket and hockey world cup in between.

9. India will become a nuclear powerhouse and get closer to US as a strategic partner as we are the most trustworthy in Asia.

10. We will bid a sad adieu to a few great species that inherit the wild of our country. I hope it is not the Royal Bengal Tiger and the Asiatic Lion.

11. India will send an unmanned mission to moon in 2010, manned space mission in 2015 and manned moon mission in 2020.

The times have never been more exciting to live in India.

I hope to revisit this on 15th August 2022 and be happy to find myself totally wrong in the points 1, 6, 7 and 10 and 3, 4, 5, 8 and 11 being grossly underestimated.

Jai Hind !

India Quiz at NM - Finals

These are the questions from the main round of the quiz by me and Ankur.

The Answers are in black and you can highlight the space after the question to find out the answers.

1. Name this monument. Humayun's Tomb

2. This city derived its name from the Sanskrit equivalent of the term ‘city of virtuous deeds’ and was as usual modified by the British to its current name. Which city are we talking about? Pune from Punyanagari

3. Why was this gentleman recently in news? P.Sainath for winning the Ramon Magsaysay award in Journalism

4. Who comes next to complete the trio? Lata Mangeshkar, "The Nightingales of India". The ones in picture are Sarojini Naidu and M.S.Subbulakshmi.

5. Which Company says “ Its all about Imagineering” ? L & T

6. Yashwant Sinha, recently wrote a book with the oxymoronic title “ Confessions of a swadesi reformer”. Which politician from the opposite camp wrote the book with an equally oxymoronic title, “Confessions of a secular fundamentalist” ? Mani Shankar Aiyar

7. Flying officer, Nirmaljit Singh Sekhon, has a unique distinction on behalf of the IAF. What is it ? First and only officer from IAF so far to win the Param Vir Chakra

8. He was the youngest Indian participant in 2000 Sydney Olympic games. At the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, he broke the Olympic record but failed to win the medal in his sports event category. Who are we talking about? Abhinav Bindra in Air Rifle

9. This cricketer who was written off 2 years back, was asked at the airport, in West Indies during 1970-71 tour, if he had anything to declare. He said, “I have come here with runs and I’ll go back with more”. Walking the talk, he scored 642 runs in the 5 match series, next only to Sunil Gavaskar. After this series, he was referred as the “Renaissance man of Indian Cricket”. Dilip Sardesai

10. In 1932 Los Angels Olympics, India won the gold medal in Hockey by defeating the US Hockey team in the final. What is special about this match. Highest victory margin ever of 24-1

11. Who is the first Indian ever to win a medal in the World Championships in Athletics? Anju Bobby George in Paris 2003

12. He is the first army officer below the rank of brigadier to be awarded the Ati Vishisht Seva Medal, a non gallantry award for exceptional service. He essentially got this for exceptional service in a sport. Who are we talking about? Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore

13. This tournament is the third oldest tournament in the world in it’s game, started in 1888 in Shimla, with only the English FA-cup and Scottish FA-cup being older than it. Name this annual tournament. Durand Cup

14. Which iconic sports man’s biography was recently released under the name “ Forgive me Amma” ? Dhanraj Pillai

15. The founder of this media company decided on the logo of his company after he saw the bindi on the forehead of his wife. Which media company are we talking about? NDTV

16. This Indian company claims that only 4 countries in the world have population more than the number of customers it has in India. Which Indian Company is this ? LIC

17. This is an exhaustive list of Indian Companies. Connect. Indian Companies on NYSE

1. Dr.Reddy's 2.HDFC Bank 3. ICICI Bank 4. MTNL 5. Patni 6. Satyam Computers

7 .Sterilite 8. Tata Motors 9. VSNL 10.Wipro 11. WNS Holdings

18. Which is the largest food brand from India, in terms of sales ? Amul

19. Which Specialized Indian Government owned organization's logo is this? EXIM Bank

20. What was founded by 6 young men who, in 1976, left their well paid jobs at Delhi Cloth Mills (DCM)? Fortunately, an year later, this company got a fillip in its business when the Janata Party led government drove IBM out of India. HCL Limited

21. Who holds the Director Identification Number (DIN) Number 1 ? Ratan Tata

22. Maniratnam, in 1997 made a movie Iruvar, (The Duo), dealing with the dynamics of Dravidian politics with Prakashraj playing M.Karunanidhi and Mohanlal playing MGR. This movie also marked the movie debut of an already famous woman who played the role of Jayalalitha. Who made her debut playing Jayalalitha in Iruvar? Aishwarya Rai

23. This Indian film director, writer and composer has scored music for films like Sathya, Chachi 420, and also for serials like Jungle book, Alice in Wonderland (the Indian Adaptation). His first venture as a director was a children’s film and he later on also directed another children’s film, based on a story by Ruskin Bond. Who is he? Vishal Baradwaj

24. Sivaji: The Boss, recently became the first Tamil movie to figure in the UK Top 10. Which Indian Movie, in Aug 1998 had the distinction of being the first Asian movie to feature in the UK Top 10 ? Dil Se

25. He was a popular radio announcer with the Hindi service of Radio Ceylon before he moved over to Acting. He was elected to the Lok Sabha for five terms from the same constituency in Maharashtra. Who is this actor-cum-politician? Sunil Dutt

26. This Classical Musician from India was described by George Harrison as the “Godfather of world Music”. He holds the Guinness record for the longest International career. Who is he ? Pandit RaviShankar

27. He was jointly awarded the Grammy for best world music album in 1994. He modified the Spanish guitar to form a new instrument called Mohan Veena. What is his name? Pandit ViswaMohan Bhatt

28. This king like his father, lost his kingdom early but with Persian aid he eventually regained an even a larger one, controlling major parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India. Upon his succession of throne for the first time he had rivals in kings Sultan Bahadur and one more Afghan king who defeated him in the battle of Kannauj forcing him to flee the country. Who was he ? Humayun

29. Who holds the record for the highest victory margin of 62% of the electorate in a parliamentary election, while defeating H.N.Bahuguna in the 1984 General Elections ? Incidentally, he didn't complete his term in that Lok Sabha and had to resign in 1987, following the newspaper reports of his implication in a scandal. Amitabh Bachchan

30. What comes next
Fatehpur (UP), Ballia(UP), Nandyal(AP), Lucknow, Kanakapura(Karnataka), Jalandhar, Lucknow ,____________ Assam. The constituencies represented by Prime Ministers of India from V.P.Singh till Vajpayee. Manmohan represents Assam in the Rajya Sabha

31. What is this ?
1. Mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty
2. Mutual non-aggression
3. Mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs
4. Equality and mutual benefit
5 .Peaceful co-existence

Panch sheel between India and China

32. None of us can visit the building shown below anymore. Name this building ? Babri Masjid

33. Which King’s empire spread as far as this ? Rajendra Chola I

34. In which Rajput king’s court will u find Poet Chand Birdai, whose poems are still sung in most households in Rajasthan ? Pritviraj Chauhan

35. What happened when a demonstration was held to seek the release of Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew arrested under the Rowlatt Act ? Jallianwalla Bagh Massacre

36. ‘Pattern 1853 Enfield’. This holds a special place in the history of the India’s independence struggle. What is it? The rifle which was greased with beef and pork fat which caused the First war of Indian Independence in 1857

37. In the 1938 session of the Congress, serious differences arose between the Mahatma and Netaji, with the Mahatma saying, “ Subhas’s victory is my defeat ”. Facing a no-confidence motion, Bose resigned and formed a new party which is still alive today with 3 MPs in the current Lok Sabha. Name this party. All India Forward Block

38.Also known as Indian Statutory Commission, this was a group of seven British Members of Parliament that had been dispatched to India in 1927 to study constitutional reform in the Raj. Ironically, one of its members was Clement Attlee, the British Prime Minister who would oversee the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947. What is this ? Simon Commission

39. What does the drawing on the rear of a 500 rupee note depict ? Dandi March

40. This has been declared as a national geological monument. This is about 65 million years old from the Mesozoic era and now it’s a 61 m tall monolith column of black basalt rock from the molten lava. This is unique in the sense that such an old geological monument inside a big metropolis. Name this monument. Gilbert Hill in Andheri, Mumbai

41. The Geographic Indicator of this product reads like, “been cultivated, grown, produced, manufactured and processed in the hilly areas of Sardar sub-division, Kalimpong sub-division, comprising of Samabeong estate, Ambiok estate, Mission hill estate, Kumai estate and Kurseong sub-division”. Which Product are we talking about ? Darjeeling Tea

42. Which Indian nationalist, businessman, philanthropist’s memorial at Golders Green in London reads as, “What we call life, is a wonderful journey - full of purpose . When the mission is realised the person passes away ... this is the eternal law of nature” . G.D.Birla

43. There has been only one Indian, who has been named by TIME as the Person of the Year. Incidentally, He was also the first non-American to feature as the TIME Man of the Year. Who was he? Mahatma Gandhi in 1930 for the Dandi March

44. They were first used in India in 1989-90. Then it cost Rs.5,500. The microchip used is sealed and imported from Japan. Any attempts to tamper with the chip can lead to the destruction of the chip. Each of this can record 3840 entries and the data can be stored up to 10 years. In 2004, we used 10.3 lakhs units of them. This device has saved an estimated $ 40 million for India and precious greenery. What is this ? Electronic Voting Machines

45. It is an equinoctial dial, consisting a gigantic triangular gnomon with the hypotenuse parallel to the Earth's axis. On either side of the gnomon is a quadrant of a circle, parallel to the plane of the equator. What are we talking about? Jantar Mantar

46. On August 14th between 11 and mid night, the constituent assembly of India met when Nehru gave his “Tryst with Destiny” speech. Actually there were three speakers who spoke between the national song and the flag hand over on that day. One was Chaudary Khaliquzzaman representing the Muslims who chose to stay back in India and another who was arguably the most learned man on eastern philosophy. Who was this third person who spoke on that historic day ? Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

47. Potti Sriramulu, started a fast-unto-death on 19th October 1952 in Madras. This went on for 58 days against an unrelenting Nehru and Rajaji until he died on 16th December 1952. Ultimately after his death Nehru yielded. What did this fast lead to or what was it for ? Creation of Andhra Pradesh

48. What does Antrix Corporation do? Market the services of ISRO for launching the payload of other countries