Festival of Lights

Deepavali is just around the corner. Ads of the latest designs of sarees sported by models have started coming on TV. I paid a visit to T Nagar last Sunday and the whole locality was gasping for breath. It would become even more claustrophobic over the next few days before the city completely embraces the festival of lights. Deepavali is a festival that is expected with the same sheen by all the Hindu communities in India. Its a day of joy for the rich and the poor alike. When i talk about Deepavali, My pre adolescent years come to my mind during which i used to expect the day months in advance. We used to make many lists of what crackers to buy and how to fire them with friends. On the day of lights, we got up at 4 AM to take the oil bath (Ganga Snan) and get ready for the events to come. We even used to have a contest among friends as to who would be the first to come out early in the morning to light the first cracker. Neighbours would come to our house with sweets and we shared that was made at ours. It was a ritual for many years in our family to meet our relatives to share our joy and to get blessings of elders. Evenings would be especially spectacular with colourful pyrotechnics painting the whole sky. Doordarshan, the one and only television channel those days, would treat its viewers with interviews of the hottest cine star and end the day with a latest movie. For me, the day would end with a gloom for having to wait for Deepavali for one more year.

In the last few decades, the mood of festivals seems to have changed for the newer generations. People have acquired a liking for other materialistic things in life and the glitter of Deepavali seems to be fading away year after year. But, there is always a ray of hope, that the world would be as naive as what it was, once upon a time, to take pleasure in the simple sweet things of life, like the festival of lights.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Recently, I had the privileged opportunity of attending the two day Signature program of the 7 Habits of highly effective people. I should say that it was quite an
eye-opener of sorts. It helped me to introspect myself as what i am in different roles that i play on a daily basis, personally and professionally. The faculty
did a fantastic job of extracting and explaining the crux of the framework that stephen covey has formulated. It would have been quite an effort for me to read
the voluminous book which is heavy too. The program consisted of a series of lecture sessions followed by screening of many videos in which Mr. Covey explains each of the 7 habits and the advantage of learning and practising them. In a nut shell, the following are the habits which Mr. Covey claims will change your life.

1. You need the right mindset to succeed in anything (Be Proactive)
2. Begin with the end in mind
3. Put first things first ( Classify things in to 4 quadrants - Urgent (X) & Important (Y))
4. Think Win-Win
5. Seek First to Understand(Others) and then to be Understood (by Others)
6. Synergize
7. Sharpen your Saw

The program is followed up with a series of emails from the institute to deep root the 2 day learning. This is a worthy investment for corporates to train their leaders in. This would definitely help individuals to understand better the dynamics of success & relationships and would help them to handle people & tasks better, bothpersonally & professionally.

Serial Killers

Its 7 PM in the evening. Mamis' have returned from the Temple. Its time to tune on. Whats the news on TV today. Its pretty much the same as what it was 2 weeks ago. Only change is that the girl who went to buy grocery two weeks ago has just returned home. What are we talking about. Hold on. This is about the "Serial time Killers", that atleast chennai women and men of late, as i know of, who have got hooked onto the television soap operas. Its a packed evening between 7 PM to 10:30 PM. Just have to find time for dinner. Arnab & Anna take a backseat. Whats more important than the second wife of a third husband going out on an adventurous rendezvous. Is it time for dinner now?. Hickory dickory dock!!! Watches - phew. I can tell you the time with the title music of the soap operas telecast on TV channels. The characters and names that come and go are akin to that of the infinite mathematical series of Ramanujan. There are people who can put Ramanujan on the backseat for their precision with their memory on the names of characters without using any formulae. The TRP rating is directly proportional to the amount of twists and turn the episodes generate week after week. The daughter in law says that she does not like her mother in law and picks up the knife from the kitchen only for the viewers to see a "To be continued" climax for the day. But you can rest assured to vacation in Simla for the next two weeks to come back and see the daughter in law cutting vegetables with the same knife that she picked up from the kitchen. Nevertheless, Its new age entertainment to pass your time in the most unproductive way possible. Presume now is the time for books on time management for authors to make millions. They should concentrate on time management for the precious 3 hours between 7-10 PM on week days to earn the bucks.

Chill Out

of late, i have started to have a definite liking for ice creams to be
consumed with sweets. I had always been game for sweets be it the
ghee trickling Kesari or the juicy bengali sandwich. I think it i had
seen people consuming Gulab Jamuns' with ice creams which i believe had
got registered in me subconsciously. I am not very sure about my first
tryst with this combination. I think it was during one of our client visits
luncheon, when i had the oppurtunity to mix and consume the mouth watering
globe(Gulab) Jamun with the chilly vanilla. It definitely adds to the taste
to mix the warm and sweet Jamun with the cold and sensitising Vanilla.
After that, i have tried different mix and matches. Carrot Halwa also
seems to be an ideal spouse for Vanilla. But at the same time, some of
the flavors are a no-no for certain variety of sweets. Chocolate wont
go well with any of the indian sweet varieties that i know but is divine
with a chocolate cake. A word of caution; Beware that there are
certain creatures who always resist innovation and may put you off
with admonishing comments when you are about to you devour the elixir combination.
Believe me, try it once and you will get hooked on to the taste.
After all, taste buds are our best buddies. Treat them well.

Religion less Religion

The start of this year has been one of excessive and exciting cricket. India winning the world cup final against Sri Lanka and before that, dumping their arch rivals Pakistan in the semi final. This event was exhilarating for the already cricket crazy fans of India including myself. Now its the IPL season. The Delhi Daredevils have just now subdued the Pune Warriors in spite of a whopping asking run rate of 12 per over with 3 overs to go. The crowd seemed to enjoy the massacre of the bowlers and got the moneys worth. Its just a season which creates an expectation even before the tournament starts. Thats the magic, the game of cricket weaves around this country. It brings to the fore, the unknown cricketing heroes of the nation. Its reminds me of the phrase that this world is a global village, when you see cricketers from different nations hug and rejoice together their winning moments in the game. I personally feel happy when Tendulkar, forgetting the recent past, wipes his face when Malinga is hit for a six. The electrifying moments that this tournament produces lets you forget all your worries for the moment. The only thing that saddens me is the monetary benefits that our heroes of yesteryears were not entitled to, in spite of winning big events like the prudential cup in 1983. I recently read in a newspaper that the winning team of the 1983 final was paid a lump sum of just 14 lakhs for lifting the trophy. In my opinion, these heroes deserve much more credit as they were the ones that ignited the fire to start the religion on cricket in India. But, thats the way life is, i believe. Sometimes, the reward does not commensurate with your achievements.

A Five Star Experience

Its very rare for me to visit restaurants in star hotels. I get to visit them at times during our client visits. I had been to one such restaurant in Nungambakkan the other day during a recent customer visit. The seats were already reserved for six of us when we went there at around 7 in the evening. It was a restaurant that specializes and serves south indian delicacies. The interiors there was one of mood elevating. They also precisely knew how to jackup the ambience. On one side of a dais, there was this girl, an amateur, dancing bharatanatyam making small steps to the natuvangam of an old man. It was funny to see her stop and pose, whenever somebody tried to take a photograph of her. On the other side, there was a parrot fortune teller. who was looking very sleepy during that early evening time. The parrot seemed to be drawing everybodys' attention with its chirpiness. We settled for samplers and were served food items that were popular across regions in the southern part of India. We started with Banana Bajji and Vada. We were served Appams, Idiappams and parathas. The side dishes were too many and i dont remember the names of all of them. But i remember tasting different chutneys and also the avial and Poondu (garlic) kuzhambu. I should admit the taste of all these items were divine. I normally dont eat parathas, but the parathas served there were so spongy that they just melted in my mouth. I asked for a glass of grape juice without ice and the waiter astounded me by asking "At what temperature"?. I am not sure if any juice gets boiled anywhere. Finally, the bill arrived and we asked it to be billed to the company. I was curious to know the price of the different food items and just sneaked
into the bill. I could manage to see only the price of poondu kuzhambu and it read Rs 850 against it.

In the Rat race for a Pigeon Hole

Last week, there was a 3 page advertisement in one of the newspapers about a new hosuing complex that was coming up within a kilometer in a road off the IT corridor.
IT Corridor! I hope everybody knows that the age old OMR(Old Mahabalipuram Road) is now called the IT corridor of Chennai. If you want to know more, ask any budding BE graduate(Comp Sci guy preferably) in his 7th or 8th semester and he will tell you the history of the OMR transformation. This is just a 20 KM stretch from Madya Kailash to Siruseri, which is one of the major contributors to India's GDP every year. Coming back, the advertisement was dazzling. It had all the ingredients that any family could ask for. Gymnasium, Swimming pool, Play Area for kids, Walker's path for the old. As i am the one of those old prosaic software pro's, who has the privilege of touching the IT corridor everyday, i thought of having a glimpse of the location and surroundings of this newly coming up project on the way to my office. The construction site was about a KM in one of the narrow interior roads from the IT corridor. The leading road just had marsh lands and water stagnant fields on both sides. The road was too narrow and i couldnt avoid having close shaves with the vehicles coming from the opposite direction. When i managed to reach the site and enquired about the price per square feet, it was few hundreds more than what the advertisement claimed. I was told that only a very few apartments were offered at the price that the advertisement quoted. There were also a few other grand complexes that were coming up near by, and the rates were much higher. I could feel that a house with a decent amount of living space wouldnt be anything less than 50 Lakhs. Lot of other thoughts started haunting me. Where will all these 3000 odd apartments get water from? Deep borewells!! what will happen to the ground water table then. What about schools and hospitals. To top it all, It means an EMI of 20 to 25 thousand for the next 20 to 25 years. I heard that that most of the apartments have already been sold out. People seem to be brave and confident nowadays. But i really could not make an judgement of what Chennai as a place would be in the next ten years.