“During a power failure, you can either curse the darkness or choose to, light up a small candle. It might not brighten up everything; but it can act as a source for other small candles along the way. No surprise, if it ignites a big torch one day and becomes the primary reason for a large wild-fire. There are many instances in life where we see darkness in country, society, work, people…You have two options. Curse the darkness or light up a candle. I have decided to choose the second one from now...” ... Sriks
Sunday, 10 March 2013
Saturday, 9 March 2013
Managment Lessons on Road
He starts his day when most of us are asleep, travelling listlessly helping people. His eyes are always on the lookout for new people, one more person, one MORE person, ONE MORE person like hungry lion hunting on a group of rabbits. He unites people from different classes and economic backgrounds during his work. He is the king on the road .He has got style of a Rajanikanth and the skill of a James bond .He has a brown apron to wear on and a well decorated auto which resembles & competes with a Nano. I am referring to auto drivers who help us to commute, travelling to even places where is there is no or limited public transportation. I term my speech Management lessons I have learnt looking at them.
I am sure we all fear when it rains in Hyderabad not because we get wet but we have to wait in traffic. Not sure how many of us actually know that we on an average spend 10 days every year either waiting or struck in traffic. Many of us just wait for the traffic to be cleared or a green signal to be flashed, but an auto driver always thinks out box in a complex situation. How many times we have seen him to be innovative by discovering new routes on the fly and then leading others to follow him in the new route. He always sees a hope in the dark, a way in a deadlock, and a smile on Manmohan Singh. It tells us, whenever you are disappointed, disheartened and dejected, when you are pushed to the wall, please don’t lose hope but discover different ways and am sure you will find light & delight in your fight.
By design an auto has to carry 3-4 people, but by default it carries 7 passengers + 1 pilot, which can even astonish makers of it. If you seen tamil movie mike,madan kamaraju movie where you got confused with who is who,you will have similar difficulty to identify driver as there will be 4 people always sitting in the front,but our pliot is always tilted to extreme ends during driving. Imagine you sitting in a jam packed auto where you not only can smell others sweat and breath but also their greed for extra space. In this setup our pilot surprises us by stopping to a hand-way request in the journey. He requests us to adjust so as to accommodate new guest. With anger, resentment and eagerness you wonder how? It’s possible by moving butts here and there and to make things simple pilot takes you on a pothole which automatically set things right. Little later, you see another hand-wave; you assume that is not for this auto,To your disbelief & distrust ,you realize its meant for you when you hear to adjust again from your pilot. You now ask where the space is and why is this only visible to our hero and no one else.
It demonstrates that there is always a scope & room to be accommodative and receptive in life. It means in our fast paced busy life, it is possible to help little more to your spouse, to spend little more time with kid, to accept little more requests from your friends & family. It is possible, think about it as its relationships that count at the end of the day.
Most corporate have to observe him on his customer relationship management. An auto driver always sees that customer is first in any situation. He never denies any customer request whether to stop or to take in. He can go wildly & dangerously on the other way, like a school boy running over lunch bell, if someone waves a hand requesting his service. He can unmindfully stop on the middle of a road to comfort customer to reaching his place. He entertains people with nice music, papers of salman,shahrukh ,katrina, and help- line numbers; let’s not to forget his entertaining talk all along the way which will be mostly first post on happening things in the city, reviews of newly released movies
He is a reliable person and Mr dependable when you have crunch of time as he always takes you on a shortest route which he explores continuously. It reminds us calls from top leaders to you reduce turn around time and be efficient. He implements our tradition to respect our women by reserving luxury seats to them. A back seat is for reserved for women. If you are male, you can start your journey comfortable on a corner of a back seat; shuffle to the middle when a beautiful lady comes in and later moving to other end as per need. When you disembark your journey, you actually realize that you were actually designated as his co-pilot where you helped him hand signals, sitting beside him in the front.
In the era where we normally don’t know who our neighbors are, an auto driver bonds us with strangers who have different needs but similar objective. He provides us a small opportunity but definitely first step to make new friends ,meet new people and to blossom on new love stories. He exemplifies e how we can be innovative when pushed to wall, how we can still be accommodative & receptive in life even after reaching our limits. He also demonstrates on a real time how we can maintain our ethics and values even in small place or in a small living. I believe he is certainly a management guru on the road. Don’t you think so?
Marriage
It is the one thing; bachelors desire to jump into with lot of curiosity, hope and excitement. It’s the same thing married men think on getting out of it with detest, disdain and despise .It’s a beautiful memory for some and a night mare for many. Every anniversary reminds us on the joyful and painful decisions that were taken in the past. It is a dirty picture which we all want to watch it desperately only to end up in criticizing or debating on it. It’s all about marriage. Albert Einstein said “Men marry women with the hope they will never change, Women marry men with the hope they will change”. Invariably they are both disappointed.
One thing always attracts me in a wedding is the end part, where you see girl tearful and boy joyful. This is a reflexive moment for all of us, as you don’t see bride tearful again or the bridegroom cheerful again. Courtesy to marriage, life changes radically & drastically for both men and women.
As wise person told:
Life before a marriage is always Ups. You do a “Push Up” to impress her, then you “Top-up” your mobile to “call her up”. You “meet-up” talk over “7-up” to “cheer-up”. You “blow-up” balloons and “take-up” the relationship further.
Life after marriage is full of downs. She will be angry on you “boiling down”. You ask her to “Calm down”, “chill down”, “cool down”, atleast“sit down” at least. She hits you, and then you request her to “Slow-down”. You “tumble down” and eventually resulting in a “breakdown”
It’s easy to identify a bachelor isn’t it? He is always energetic, ever smiling. You can see him with a mobile, a fast track watch, wet gel on his hair. He prefers pulsar, and has 360 degree focus on the surroundings. He always worry that the back seat on the bike is vacant.
On the contrast, a married man is also easy to identify. He is mostly lost, always serious. You always see him with a Tupper ware lunch box and a titan watch. He is pregnant with fat and trust Nuzen’s hair oil for hair growth. He prefers splendor bike and has only 90 degree focus. He was a he-man, superman and spider man but now he is a Doberman without a smile and a tail.. He now worries that there is no seat left for him on the bike as kids take front seat and the wife takes back seat.
It’s interesting to observe how both people look out at the same thing but with different perspective:
A bachelor thinks the best way to build up a relation, is to talk, talk &talk while married men believe in silence.
A bachelor drinks for pleasure, while married men drink out of pressure.
One respects Abdul Kalam for his wisdom, while other admires him for maintaining his freedom by not marrying.
A railway station is a best place to witness their differences. You can find married men come with lots of luggage & planning. A bachelor comes rushing in the last minute with just a laptop bag & a RAC ticket. Married men read magazines such as “India today” and buy best seller books such as “How to stay calm & cool and not regretting on past decisions”. Bachelor reads magazines such as “women era & women world, women’s health” magazines and buys best seller book s “How to impress women”, “How to get women of dreams”.
It’s not that they disagree in everything; there is one thing they stand united. Both of them remember only Katrina and forget slice in a slice add and watch only Aishwarya in ignoring Lux in a soap add.
It’s that only bachelors have fun,married men also have it but they don’t reveal it.
A Bachelor’s life is like a perfume, nice but shorter with time. Married life is like a wine, its gets better with time.
A marriage is same as walking on a fire before a temple to get virtue or eating a neem leaf for better health. We only talk about the heat and bitterness, but fail to discuss on their virtues and benefits. There is no gain without pain. In a sea journey, you need to weather the storm, withstand the tide, to land on a beautiful island. It helps exploring your potential, gaining maturity and revealing your purpose and responsibility in life. Don’t fear looking at the honeybees, there is a sweet honey behind it, don’t worry of the thorns of the rose plant, there is a beautiful flower above it. Explore experience and enjoy beauty of marriage all by yourself!!! Like me
Innovations & Imaginations
No island would have been discovered if people were worried to leave their sight of the shore. It exemplifies their courage to step out of comfort zone and their unquenchable thirst to explore more. We have witnessed great innovations ranging from mobiles to automobiles, penicillin’s to pen drives, telegraphs to televisions, notebook to face book. All these are different by nature and need but they have one thing in common. They were constantly changing.
This is proven in the case Bajaj in early 80s which enjoyed its market leadership in scooter manufacturing .There were times when customer has to wait for more than a year after booking to own it. The company would have vanished by now if they were complacent & happy with just scooters business. They were threatened to extinction by their rivals with innovation of motor bikes which were more stylish and fuel efficient.
Imagine a youngster going on a pleasure trip with her GF on a scooter. Driving a scooter is easy but kick starting is a nightmare. In fact, you don’t really find any difference between kick starting a scooter or an auto, except that scooter uses stepper to kick start and auto uses hand lever. Both need at least 10 kicks to start. A scooter is even worse than an auto, as sometimes you need to tilt it to the extreme end to ignite.
Imagine how embarrassing it would be to the young boy before his GF and how shameful If it didn’t start in spite of doing all circus. It’s like watching Dellhi Belly movie with parents. A scooter is actually meant for a family where you have a wife, two children and 3 balloons as in Hamara bajaj advertisement. It is certainly not meant for a youngster where you find a distance of 1KM between two seats where she will be sitting sideways holding sidebar tightly to prevent from falling. How can we expect a relationship to be blossom in this setup, where she doesn’t even bother who is driving?
Bike of course has brought some cheer into their lives, it not only has united two seats, but also made rear seat inclined, which means she can hold him instead of bar to prevent from falling. To add more pleasure it is supplemented with disc brake. It’s fun driving a bike and even more fun when stopping it. With changing times and trend, Bajaj has no choice but to discover pulsar; rest is history.
Definitely we wouldn’t have enjoyed mobile if we were satisfied Landlines, digital cameras would have been existed if we are happy with film cameras. It’s the passion to think afresh, helped world to evolve better and better.
I have few imaginations which will encourage us to live better.
a) Technology which helps us in traffic – wouldn’t it be great if we have aerial cable cars in the city to commute. It’s same as MMTS but they are not running on road but hanging in the skies. Imagine we all go over a ladder to board on cable car which means just 5 minutes journey from secunderabad to Hitech city. Similarly if we have provision for our cars to fly when we are struck in traffic for few minutes. If every car fly at the same time, it’s still ok as you can now travel by road like before J
b) Scanning & streaming devices – Imagine a scenario where you were stand outside theathre and just show a device towards it, you then get information on the shows playing and their availability. If the show is full, you can movie by just streaming on it on to your device by standing in front of the theatre.
c) Mobiles without batteries/borrowing charge – Will there be a day where we can borrow Battery charge by just SMS like in recharging?
d) Conveyer belt in pilgrimages - Everybody can stand on it demarcated with small barricades and moves at small pace. This can prevent jostling and stampeding :-)
We are lucky to witness and experience great innovations so far, but its only a tip of a iceberg. The real beauty is still unseen, unexplored and unutilized. There is always a sachin after sunil,illena after sridevi and dhoni after sourav reminding us that its not the dead end, but branching new route from there to take on newer heights and horizons. Lets continue to innovate and imagine to realize our dreams. A day will soon arrive where school books will have to reprint their history chapters with our innovations and science chapters with our imaginations
Inequity- NORM
Inequity, the norm.
I would like to perform a little survey before I begin.
By a pure show of hands may I ask?
How many of you have been to a school with just one bathroom?
How many of you ever studied in a school that had no proper teachers, and you had to learn a subject on your own?
How many of you were asked during your childhood to leave school and work instead?
It may shock you to know that in a country as large as this, you form less than 5 % of the entire demographic of India
Ladies and Gentlemen, I term my speech “Inequity the norm”
All of you are aware of the extremes that govern this country from the below freezing temperatures of Kashmir to the sultry hot weather of the metropolis Chennai. We treasure our diversity from the south, the North or even from the North east. But as a country we face a much harsher difference and that is of Educational inequity.
In a country that boasts some of the best educational institutions in the world; it is perhaps a macabre form of irony that many of our schools in the sprawling metropolises like Mumbai and Delhi
The majority of children these days are not tech savvy; they don’t log on to facebook and tweet about everything in their lives. The truth is the majority of the children of our country will not even reach the class of 10. Many children are forced to leave school for work or other such reasons.
From statistics obtained from surveys conducted allover India
10 out of a 100 children will never go to school
50 % of those children will never reach class 5
Of those who do reach class 5, 90% will not reach class 10.
This in comparison to less than 5% of us that managed to go through school and on to college should seem utterly outrageous. The question all of us must ask is “Why is there so much difference?”
The answer is that these children are the products of our social system that divides us as rich or poor, from a higher caste or from a lower caste. These children do not finish school because they were never given the opportunity or the means to continue their education. The Government and lower income school systems are inadequate. From another survey that was conducted 1 out 4 teachers in such schools is absent on any day. And of those present only 50% of them are working at any given point of time. Being part of organizations that strive to achieve service excellence it should be appalling that such dereliction of duty not only exists in our system but is rampant. Apart from bad schools many socio economic factors such as child marriages stop a child from studying.
Inequity in Education is a norm not at exception. It exists and is ever growing. We are aware of what are the many causes of this inequity. What we need now are solutions innovative ones that are singularly aimed at bridging the gap. This need is urgent because education can ensure a higher standard of living. Education is the way to spell the end of radical ideologies that seem to permeate through our society today. But most importantly education is the way for a country of a population of more than one billion to perform to its fullest potential.
I will leave you with a quote from Albert Einstein “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Mobiles- A Game changer in everyone's life
Greetings, I am thinking which would be tougher in life, getting lost in a Mela or losing a mobile phone in our neighborhood. I believe you all agree with me with the second one. It’s easier to find way out from a Mela but life comes to a halt without a mobile and just the idea of losing itself is dreadful. Mobiles have become an integral part of our life, Gone are the days where mobile is just used for voice communication, its era of converged technologies which means voice, data and video. No surprise if a mobile replaces a Television one day. Ladies & Gentlemen Mobiles a game changer in everyone’s life.
Let me take you through my story of my college days, where I first felt a dire need of a mobile phone, I had a crush on my sweet cute juniorJ. She was very beautiful and resembled actress Tammana. I always desired to talk to her to get closer. Those were the days when mobile is not as prevalent as of today. She used to live in a fortress called ladies hostel where there was only one landline but 4 wardens. I used to go to a public telephone booth to call her up. The phone was always busy, it was obvious from the fact that it’s a ladies hostel all boys were desperate to try their luckJ. It used to take me 2-3 hours to get a ring tone; it was like tasting honey but only few drops of it as many times call used to end up abruptly. There was a rule in that hostel that she has to talk for only 10 minutes. Imagine me waiting for 2 hours just for a 10 minute talk. It’s like getting a teaspoon of water in middle of a desert. I still remember the face of the telephone booth owner who used to scowl at me for always keeping his customers waiting by blocking the telephone. He used to resemble an angry Doberman waiting to bite all over. You are right, by now you would have guessed it right I ended up in a tragic love story. I felt a mobile at that time would have made my life a Kushi movie. I Wish Manmohan Singh was PM at that time who desired mobiles for every Indian.
Now days there are applications on your mobile which alerts you when your friend is near your vicinity. You can always surprise them with a gift; pay the bill of her shopping. Mobiles are a game changer to improving relations by providing seamless communication, integrating with social platforms where we can know updates, status along with location based services based on real time.
Moving from a college life to metro, I see we are offered better services in our apartments. When we walk out of office, we can regulate temperature of our bedroom with an SMS of our mobile, ensure lift is grounded when we reach home; rice is cooked by controlling rice cooker in the kitchen. Mobiles are a game changer in improving efficiency in life.
It’s not that only city folks have all the fun with mobiles, villagers have their excitement too.
Let me take you to another story of Raju who is a farmer in his village. Everyday have to walk several kilometers to switch on his irrigation pump. Many times he feels disappointed with erratic power supply .In his meager earnings he sometimes employs a person to support him to walk during midnight, that’s the only trusted time where there is power. He needs to battle wild animals, snakes, difficult terrain, and heavy downpour all the way. It would be heartbreaking for him in case he finds his irrigation pumps stolen, which is a common sight in villages. Nano ganesh is a product which helps him to remotely operate his pump from his mobile, check if electricity is there, power is on. He also gets an alarm on to his mobile if someone attempt stealing his pump. This means Raju can now sleep comfortably and confidently. Mobiles are certainly a game changer in improving quality of life.
It’s not that everyone likes mobile; there could one who detests this from their core of their heart.
One could be manufactures of noisy strange alarm pieces, bulk music players, and expensive digital cameras, torch lights makers for mobiles taking their bread and butter and almost making them outdated.
Second could be criminals as mobiles are always police friendly in solving cases. SMS, call logs are digital traces which help in investigation. In every successful crime chase there is always a mobile behind it.
Mobiles have intruded everywhere, be it hospital, workshop, theater, restaurant, bathroom, bedroom...Etc. With emerging technology and innovation they should always be an enabler to improve quality of life, foster relation and increase efficiency. Let’s not use it as medium to spread panic by hate messages and fake pictures, it shouldn’t be a reason for fatal accidents. A mobile is like an iron whether you use it as a pillar of a building or a knife for killing is something I will leave it to audience.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)